Justice League Vs. the Legion of Super-Heroes #1 Review

What Happened That You Have to Know About: 

The Legion fights a space monster, successfully, and then a weird darkness thing happens which causes one of Triplicate Girl's selves to disappear. They later tell the United Planets that it's a manifestation of something Brainiac 5 is calling the "Great Darkness". Superboy puts them in touch with the Justice League, in the 21st century, who are also dealing with something similar. The Legion travels back in time to meet with them, and another weird darkness thing happens that causes everyone except Gold Lantern to disappear. 

Review: 

One of the things I've learned in my decade-and-change of writing this blog is that first issues, first stories, are easier than subsequent stories. Setting stuff up is easier than keeping it rolling. Introducing things is always entertaining; using stuff that has been introduced has to be made entertaining. 

For this reason I've been waiting for Brian Michael Bendis's fourboot to get to the point where it's left the introductory stage behind and is just telling Legion stories. But the old fox is too wily for me: through use of the two Millennium issues, the v8 issues, Future State, and now JLvLSH, he keeps pushing that into the future. 

So what can I say about it? It's a decent introduction to whatever we're doing here. Large likeable cast, vague menace, interesting details about Triplicate Girl, more teasing about Gold Lantern.

Do we think the Great Darkness is Darkseid again? I kinda do and I kinda don't. Honestly, the way it's being presented here, it seems like it's going to be some kind of rift. Wouldn't that be great? I only read this comic book for the rifts. 

What I'd actually like to do is wait until the damn thing is over and then review it all at once. But I'm not going to do that. I know this is a short review. But there really ain't a lot of moving parts to this comic, sports fans. 

Art: 50 panels/22 pages = 2.3 panels/page. 2 splash pages, 5 double-page spreads, 1 case of multiple panels being spread over two pages. 

Our artist this time is Scott Godlewski. Godlewski isn't Ryan Sook, but he seems adept at working in Sook's 31st century. For the artistic strengths and weaknesses of this issue, check out pages 6-7. It's pretty. But it's also a double splash page. One of five. Five! There are only fifty panels in this whole issue. That is not a lot!