Legion of Super-Heroes #22 Review

What Happened That You Have to Know About: Tharok, the Empress, and the Persuader fight Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl. It ends when Lightning Lass takes down the Persuader, and Tharok and the Empress teleport back to the Promethean Giant with Saturn Girl captive, and Lightning Lad tags along. Once on the Giant, Saturn Girl takes down the Empress, and Tharok wakes up the Giant, who is the secret fifth member of the Fatal Five. But Sensor Girl and Karate Kid (?) show up out of nowhere and Sensor Girl frees the Giant's mind from Tharok's influence. Then Polar Boy (who showed up with Invisible Kid right around then) freezes Tharok solid and the fight's over. The Legion starts to pick up the pieces and Brainiac 5 says it's all his fault; it's not clear if he's just taking the responsibility for the universe on himself or if he really did something to cause this.

Review:

I suppose it was a satisfying ending; it didn't come easily, and there was a big revelation, and a couple of impressive power stunts from some Legionnaires. I'm comfortable saying that this was the best long Legion story since Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds. I wonder how many people read it.

But, looking back on it... the Fatal Five. Who were they? What did they want? Compare this to the story that ended Abnett and Lanning's The Legion series, "For No Better Reason". Both had supervillain teams as the enemy, teams who attacked the Legion and their surroundings by turning off the technology. Both had a lot of nice moments for some of the Legionnaires. Both of them had unclear motives for the villains. (Interestingly, the villains in "For No Better Reason" were a kind of future Justice League, like the one that's going to be supplanting the Legion in DC's schedule.) Both were good stories. But I still want to know what the bad guys thought they were up to.

No Phantom Girl. But we'll see what happens next issue.

One touch I particularly liked was the lettering on Tharok's voice as he cooled to absolute zero. That looked cool. (All that was missing was him starting to sing "Daisy".)

Where'd Sensor Girl get that spaceship? It looks nice.

I have a lot of thoughts on the end of this series, but I'll wait until next month to share them. I'm not looking forward to it, but I am looking forward to reading the comic book. See you then!

Art: 86 panels/20 pages = 4.3 panels/page. 1 splash page.

Still not a big booster of Jeff Johnson's art on the Legion. Not that it's bad by any means; I just don't think his style is a fit. There were a couple of things I particularly liked about it: I like how he draws Bouncing Boy, and Jeckie was looking pretty sassy at the top of page 16... not like she's supposed to look, but good anyway.

Membership Notes: Duplicate Damsel, not dead. Plus we seem to have another Karate Kid now; he's said to be from Earth, and to have the original KK's soul, but it doesn't say who he really is.

In Other News:

This dirty great book that DC's publishing, Brainiac 5's history of Superman.

I don't know what I'm going to do about this thing. The Brainy thing gives it a Legion connection, but is it enough of a Legion connection to spend seventy-five clams on it? I mean, I like Superman and all, but...

And then of course it's written by Matthew K. Manning, and I have all kinds of time for Matthew K. Manning. Guy wrote three cracker Legion comics in his day and I'd be thrilled to see more Legion content from him.

I just don't know.