Legion of Super-Heroes v9 #3 Review

 What Happened That You Have to Know About

Imra makes the mistake of mentioning Superboy to the Emerald Empress, and Grimbor introduces Rokk to Triplicate Girl; their storylines are just check-ins this issue. On Winath, Garth brings Mekt home to try to make a reunion happen in the Ranzz family, but Ayla has become a full Persuader and she and Dawnstar try to apprehend Mekt. Brainiac 1 of 5 and Tenzil rescue Garth and Mekt from the situation, but Garth discovers that Mekt is a murderer, and stands up to him. The Persuaders catch up with them, and Mano reveals that the Persuaders are also part of whatever Legion thing Mekt was doing, and executes Mekt. Brainy, Tenzil, and Garth escape the planet. Brainy seems to think that Mekt's mention of "Superman" is the next thing to investigate.

Review

The thing about Imra is, she doesn't know anything's wrong. Everyone else is running around trying to accomplish all their nonsense, and Imra isn't aware of any of it. Why shouldn't she tell her new friend the Emerald Empress about the voices in her head? No reason at all! Man, I'm enjoying this story.

It's too bad about Mekt. (Up to a point. Coming into this issue, there were rumours that someone was going to die. I was worried it'd be Ayla or Brainy.) But, from the point of view of Mano, there's really not a lot you can do with the guy. If you're trying to do a supervillain-team thing, you can't keep him around, because he can never just chill out and forget his family issues. Sometimes you have to cut your losses. The Five Years Later writers knew this, and went another way, which was commendable, and the reboot writers just didn't use him much, presumably because they were as sick of him as I've become over the years. I already like this Garth-Mekt confrontation better than any of the others I've read over the years. And there have been quite a few.

While we're on the subject, though, the Persuaders' failure to scoop up Garth, Brainy, and Tenzil at the Winath spaceport must have been one of two things: an unforgivably stupid mistake, or a plan to let them lead the Persuaders to... something? You'd think "Superman" would have given strict instructions along the lines of "if you see any of these kids, don't let them run around loose! Grab 'em!" Then again, he must be aware of the potential danger in giving instructions like that to people like Dawnstar and Ayla Ranzz. You can't trust superheroes not to be superheroes! It will keep coming out!

Look at Garth, for instance. Garth not only knows that he wants to be a superhero--is a superhero--he also knows what that means. When Mekt tries to tell him that, sure, superheroes kill all the time, Garth doesn't even consider it. He knows better. This is not a transformative arc for Garth; this is a revelatory arc. The point of this story is not that Garth grows and changes. It's that we discover that he was the one we needed all along. 

I wasn't really thinking of this Legion series in these terms, but it's exactly true. This opening story for the Williamson/Sherman Legion is a huge, tightly bent revelatory arc. It's a lavishly elaborate story dedicated to the proposition that the hour must and will produce the man, or, in this case, the space teens. 

It's one of my favourite tropes: the villain's plan that will not, cannot work, simply because you can't break the heroes that way. The flaw is not with the implementation or the details but with the basic premise. Brainiac One Million and Hank Henshaw think that they can prevent the Legion of Super-Heroes with some trumpery time-travel tricks? They think that there's any amount of chronal engineering that would be sufficient to extinguish the heroism of Garth Ranzz and Imra Ardeen and Rokk Krinn and Querl Dox and Tenzil Kem and Luornu Durgo? You stupid jerks! You don't get it at all! This is your whole trouble! Laughable, the very idea is laughable, is what this trope says; and I love it.

For that matter, the Legion itself always was a time-travel trick. But it's old-school time travel: the kind we're all doing right now. Moving into the future at the rate of one second per second. That's how Superboy's legacy traveled to the future before germinating in new ground: one year at a time, a thousand times. Brainiac One Mil thinks he can beat that by taking a shortcut, and, no, it doesn't work that way.

I do wonder just how much of a shortcut it is. How much lead time did Henshaw have in setting up his fake Legion with their tattoos and Persuaders and stuff? I get the idea it wasn't all that long! Maybe a couple of years at the most? Very sloppy.

Structurally we can see the gears continuing to turn. Rokk, in this issue, is clicking maybe one tooth behind Garth, and Imra is one behind Rokk. Garth has a) started engaging with the rest of his world beyond what was normal for him, b) come into contact with a supervillain figure who's subtly trying to throw him off the superhero track, c) met up with other young hero types, and d) separated from the supervillain figure. Rokk has done a), b), and c); Imra has done a) and b). In other words: don't get attached to Grimbor, is my prediction.

Speaking of which. Who do we think Luornu's working with? She's here on Braal, she found Grimbor and some others, she's recruiting Rokk. Why is she? I don't want to sell her short and say she's not capable of acting on her own initiative, but... what knowledge is the basis for her actions? I'll guess that she had been working with R.J. Brande, and that Brande had some kind of plan for Imra before he was killed. I don't think that she's part of the same Legion as Mano and Mekt, because of her use of one word: "rescue". Grimbor might be! But not Luornu.

Still not clear to me what this is going to look like when it comes together. Like, these kids are going to eventually group up into some kind of superhero team. Right now it looks like it's going to be Lightning Lad, Cosmic Boy, Saturn Girl, Brainiac 1 of 5, Matter-Eater Lad, Triplicate Girl, Kid Quantum, and Timber Wolf. Plus maybe others? I'm sure Dawny and Ayla are going to be around. But there will also be an existing group called the Legion that has people in it, and there'll have to be some discussion about just what the group is and means and stands for and does. Plus, I'm very much looking forward to the inevitable scene where Brainy reviews the evidence and informs everyone else, "Somebody's been screwing with us!"

You know what I mean? Because to our heroes, it still seems like there's the world, with all of these larger forces out there, and trends and institutions and things, and they're just teens who have to discover a way through them all, according to their particular situations. But in the end they're going to learn: No. That's not what it was at all. All this stuff was not an organic development of history. It was put in place to stop you personally from doing exactly what you are nevertheless doing anyway. Can you imagine if that happened to you? Mindblowing. But also very satisfying.

It's quite an assignment Brainiac One Million gave to Henshaw if you think about it. "Okay. I'm going to insert you, a powerful cyborg astronaut of negligible history, into this futuristic parallel world. Your job is to rearrange the historical and sociopolitical and economic and cultural trends of this universe to gaslight a few dozen specific teenagers into doing something sensible with their lives." Comics!

Cripes, another month? I don't know if I can wait that long.

Art

112 panels/20 pages = 5.6 panels/page. One double-page of 13 panels.

In her conversation with the Empress, we see a thought-balloon of Imra's with four concentric layers. That's new, isn't it? Haven't they all been three, or maybe even fewer at times, up to now? It's interesting. You know what the Empress looks like? Looks like a character from Morrison's Doom Patrol.

Hey, check out page 5. Bottom half. Look at how Dawny's wings blend into Mekt and Garth's legs on one side and the sidewalk on the other side, through the panel borders. Composition is what that is, I'm told. Sherman may not be all things to all people, but we're so lucky to have them on this comic.

One thing they're good at is making people like Garth and Mekt and Ayla and Tenzil look like, not larger-than-life superheroes, but normal vulnerable life-sized people who happen to find themselves in the middle of this superhero story. Which you might think clashes with the revelatory-arc stuff I mentioned above, but I think it accentuates it.

Notes

- as mentioned we get a glimpse of Triplicate Girl in this story, plus Kid Quantum II and Timber Wolf. Any other interesting cameos in the power-fight scene? 

- one thing I didn't get: someone in the power-fight crowd asking "Can I get your remarque on my mind?" Whassat mean? Is it a throwaway, or a worthwhile detail being planted?

- someone check me on this: is this the first time in Legion history that Mano has straightforwardly used his powers as described? In my memory, his powers have been hyped up as a threat, a great danger, but one that the writers didn't ever actually want to *use* on anybody