Legion of Super-Heroes #6 Review

What Happened That You Have to Know About:

The Legion evacuates Earth in preparation for the Horraz attack. Then the Horraz attack. There's a big fight, during which Aquaman's trident comes into play. We don't see the end of the fight, but the Legion must have won it, and Earth gets its oceans back. Ultra Boy's dad, the leading general of Rimbor, is not pleased at how things turned out, and says it's time for war.

Review:

Short issue, and somewhat laced with false advertising. The cover promises to introduce us to new characters Monster Boy, Dr. Fate, and Gold Lantern. But really we just get a couple of panels about Monster Boy and Gold Lantern and that's it.

Should we consider this to be the end of this arc? If so... I mean, there really wasn't a lot to it. They get the trident, they lose the trident. They fight Mordru once and the Horraz a couple of times. Robin drops by to borrow a cup of sugar. And Ultra Boy's dad gets mad. Six issues.

It'd be okay if those six issues were rife with characterization and exposition that they had to establish in order to get the series off to a good start, but they weren't. There was some. But it was pretty interstitial.

I don't want to give you the idea that I don't like this comic book. It's quite readable and lively, and Bendis and Sook are clearly Trying Stuff. But they aren't great at distinguishing characters from each other, this first story was extremely fluffy, and our information about this whole situation is spotty at best. I dunno, man. I'm glad to have this comic book, but they'd do a lot better to tighten this clyde up.

I do like Saturn Girl's new logo.

But this thing with the trident restoring the oceans... was it supposed to be a surprise? Was it not clear from the beginning that this was what was going to end up happening? I don't get how something so directly obvious qualifies as a story.

An analogy. Let's compare Legion comics to food.

Silver Age Legion: Spaghetti-Os. Comfort food for kids.
Bronze Age Legion: Cheese pizza and chicken nuggets. The same, but more advanced.
Paul Levitz's run: Actual food that someone might eat for a meal.
5YL: Also actual food that someone might eat for a meal, but very rich and spicy; not for everyone and you can have too much of it.
Reboot: Chain restaurant food. Does the job but you might not go so far as to actually recommend it to anybody.
DnA: Good restaurant food.
Threeboot: Sushi. You may think you don't like it, but it's actually pretty good, although you're not going to have it every day.
Retroboot: Diner food. You nostalgically think you like it, but if you're honest you'll admit it just isn't very good.
Fourboot: Dessert. Looks fun; tastes good; will not nourish you.

(That's kind of off the top of my head. I freely admit that you can improve on a couple of those.)

Art:

63 panels/22 pages = 2.9 panels/page. That's low! Here's why: 2 splash pages, 2 double-page spreads, 5 cases of multiple panels spread over two pages.

I don't really know what to say about the art that I haven't already been saying.

Membership Notes:

Ferro Lad gets mentioned this issue; that's a name that hasn't been on our board yet. Honestly, I'm going to have to go through the series and compile everything we know for sure. Maybe soon!