Legion of Super-Heroes #10 Review

 What Happened That You Have to Know About:

The Legion splits up to achieve several purposes: Superboy and Saturn Girl go to Gotham for a date and get involved with the hunt for Mordru, also bringing in Doctor Fate to help. Brainiac 5, Blok, and Gold Lantern deliver Crav the General Nah to Oa so the Guardians can lock him up. Chameleon Boy, Phantom Girl, Colossal Boy, Shadow Lass, Karate Kid, and Wildfire go to New Krypton to find Mon-El, who seems to think he's quit the Legion. Lightning Lass consults with Brainy and Computo about whether she belongs in the Legion. Ultra Boy takes Monster Boy, Bouncing Boy, Dawnstar, Lightning Lad, and Timber Wolf with him as he tries to get Rimbor sorted out, and ends up becoming the leader of the planet. Mordru, it turns out, has gone to Xanthu, where he meets Rogol Zaar, who is apparently some kind of a guy or something.

Review:

See, this is better. This is more like it. We're still following a lot of Legionnaires, but not all of them, and in smaller groups at a time. And it pays off: we get motion on a few plots and subplots, and insight on a few more Legionnaires. This is the first issue of a new burst of story, and first issues are always easier, but this is certainly the kind of thing I've been asking for, and now that I've got it, I like it.

I haven't been reading the Superman titles, so all of this stuff with Zod on New Krypton and Rogol Zaar is a mystery to me. I have no intention of hunting down information on any of it; I'm just going to rely on whatever exposition Brian Michael Bendis provides in this title. I'm basically okay with this storyline, however it ends up going.

Really that's true of all the storylines. Great Darkness, Mon-El sulking, Mon-El with three kids, Ultra Boy leading Rimbor, Superboy and Saturn Girl dating. Sounds good; do a good job telling it to us.

A brief word on the Aristotelian unities. Basically, as I understand it (which may very well be inadequate), Aristotle had some ideas about drama and laid out some rules about how stories should take place in a single place and at a single time. The way I understand this is that he was guarding against amateurs with no technique jumping all over in time and space and losing their audience, and providing guidance to mitigate against that. Of course, the state of the art has advanced quite a bit since then and writers these days have all kinds of techniques for how to use different settings without confusing anybody. But I think Bendis may have made a slight mistake in this issue. Nothing terrible; just a little jarring.

See, we've got this comic where the superhero team has split up into smaller groups to accomplish various missions. We've seen this kind of thing before. The idea is, they're all simultaneous. So it's weird for us to see Brainy on Oa with Blok and Gold Lantern and then again on Earth with Lightning Lass and Computo. There's no logical reason why not; Ayla just goes to see Brainy when he gets home from Oa. It's fine. But we do have the expectation that these things are not happening sequentially but simultaneously. Not a big thing, but not ideal storytelling.

I got a kick out of Rimborean politics: "(POW!) As I was saying..." It seems to be pretty easy to become leader of the place, though; they should look into that. Last thing you want is some bad-faith mattressflipper becoming your leader; what if it turns out you can't get rid of them?

I also appreciate Cham entertaining young Laraz. I wonder where Laraz's mom is. And if Conner and Lane are the same age and, therefore, if the mother is Carggite. 

There's some kind of shenanigans going on with this title in the new year; I hope it's temporary and the steady supply of Legion comics continues, in this or any form.

Art: 107 panels/22 pages = 4.9 panels/page. 2 splash pages; 1 double-paged spread of 10 panels.

This time Sook gives us a header image introducing whatever planet the story happens to be visiting at the time. I like it when artists do stuff like that. Otherwise it's a normal good Sook performance. No standout panels for me. I did like Blok's face on page 8 panel 5.

Membership Notes:

It's possible that Mon-El has quit the Legion. We'll see how it plays out.