Legion of Super-Heroes #15 Review

What Happened That You Have to Know About: Glorith suddenly disappears, and reappears in Barcelona, where people want to burn her for a witch. The Legion is just getting around to looking for her when they're called to Barcelona because dinosaurs are attacking the place. There's a timestorm there. The Legionnaires find Glorith in the middle of it, and figure she's the inadvertent cause of it, so they have her shield everything from herself, and that shuts the timestorm down. The question of who arranged all this remains.

Meanwhile, Chameleon Boy suspects that there's a reason why they aren't making any progress with tracking down the Fatal Five.

Review:

It felt sorta like a fill-in, but no; there's presumably a reason why someone was messing with Glorith and, what, distracting the Legion? No, I'm going to assume that this is part of a larger story. And we haven't checked in with Glorith recently, so that's good too. Compare it to one of the early issues in Levitz's second run, like "Night Never Falls at Nullport". That was a done-in-one story, but the conflict with the Khunds turned out to be important for, well, the whole rest of that run, so really it wasn't a done-in-one story.

But weren't we supposed to find out who won the election this issue? Could have sworn. Oh well; it's not like I had a bet down. January is fine.

Another example of Levitz leaving important stuff offscreen: it looked like Glorith was going to be able to use her flight ring to escape there, and then the next time we see her she's barely conscious. So what happened? Should we have to fill these things in?

Check out the Fatal Five on that one page where Cham is talking. Who is that? Validus, Persuader, the Empress, fine. But what about that fourth guy? Is that Tharok himself? It ain't Mano. Someone new?

Speculation: Either Violet is the new Empress, or she's got some kind of connection to the Eye, as was suggested in the Annual back whenever that was. And that's why the Legion can't track down the Fatal Five. But has Cham clued into this? He's talking right to her! Presumably we'd see next issue.

More speculation: Whoever is poking Glorith with a sharp stick, the timing of it is suspicious. If it's an attempt to distract the Legion while the Fatal Five set up their plans, then is the same person sponsoring the Fatal Five? Or it could be a coincidence; Levitz doesn't mind having a few things going on at once.

The big news is this Keith Giffen interview on Newsarama. Those things he's saying there? Those are just the sorts of thing the Legion needs, and it's why Keith Giffen will always be welcome in any Legion comics I buy. I hope that this upcoming storyline is all it's cracked up to be. The creators involved are certainly capable of making it great.

Notes:
- just what were we supposed to understand from Harmonia's conversation with Chemical Kid on page 10?
- I liked the interaction between Brainiac 5 and Ultra Boy; clearly, they're comfortable with getting on each other's nerves
- the famous Legion teamwork is certainly on display in this issue

Art: 75 panels/20 pages = 3.8 panels/page. 1 splash page, 1 double-page spread of 5 panels.

Yay! Portela's back. By the way, compare Portela's skinnyish Glorith, in the interior of the issue, to the much more dramatically mammalian Glorith Steve Lightle portrays on the cover. There's a continuity error for you, if you want one.

I like Portela's Harmonia. Probably I've pointed that out in previous issues.