Legion Abstract: Legion of Super-Heroes analysis and commentary

Legion: Secret Origin #4 Review

2012-01-29T00:26:00.001-05:00

What Happened That You Have to Know About:

Not much really. More of the same; ships out of the wormhole, Legion continues to grow, attacks on Brande. Looks like the Legion is going to use the carrot of time travel to recruit Brainiac 5. Also, big surprise, the Legion's going to be called in to help out at the wormhole.

Review:

In a way I don't believe what I'm reading here. Paul Levitz has a technique for writing where every time he revisits a storyline he advances it in some way. But if that's what he's doing in this comic book, I'm missing it. I mean, it clearly is going somewhere, but slowly, which suggests to me that this whole thing could be done in fewer issues. How many assassination attempts on Brande do we need?

Part of the problem is that the various elements of the story--the security directorate, Brande and the Legion, the wormhole--all get introduced early, and now we're just watching them all shift into position. Plus there's too much attention paid to the stuff we already know about, like the various Legionnaires joining. I prefer the approach in the first issue or two, where the Legion was mostly in the background. Plus the idea of this series was supposed to be that we're getting all the behind-the-scenes stuff that nobody ever knew about the formation of the Legion, but there really isn't much of that. I mean, sure, we can see the security directorate discussing the Legion, but it isn't of any consequence.

I don't know. I like this series, but man, it's moving slowly. One thing, though: it's going to make an excellent jumping-on point for new readers. Once it's complete and collected in TPB form, you know.

It is possible, as with Star Trek/Legion of Super-Heroes, that there's really something interesting coming up and this has all been setup, and the thing will be great once we get to the end of it. That's fine for guys like me who are going to get the whole thing regardless, and it's fine for the tradereaders, but it makes for a lousy serial experience. If you have a hook, you don't wait for the second-last issue to put bait on it.

There have been too many decent Legion comics recently. And not enough really good ones.

Art: 86 panels/20 pages = 4.3 panels/page. 2 splash pages.

Chris Batista does give his characters the long smooth horsy faces, doesn't he? Reminds me a little of Lee Moder only without the big hair. I mean, I don't have a problem with it or anything; it's just that's his style.

Legion of Super-Heroes #5 Review

2012-01-23T23:47:00.001-05:00

What Happened That You Have to Know About:

Nothin'!

Review:

It's the Christmas issue! Oh yes it is; that's exactly what it is.

I have strong opinions about the superhero story and its conventions. I believe that a superhero story is about some kind of conflict that is ultimately expressed and resolved through physical conflict. So you'd think I wouldn't like an issue like this, where you'd have to really stretch to find any such element of the "story". It's just a day-in-the-life issue where we check in on all the Legionnaires and see what they're up to. I liked it quite a bit.

Not the first such issue I've liked; another of my favourites was the Infinity Inc. issue way back when that followed up on the Justice Society story where the JSA are all condemned to fight Ragnarok over and over forever. No combat in that one, either; it was just really good. Anyway, yes, this issue is a bit of a rulebreaker, but anytime Paul Levitz wants to get experimental he has my full support.

One thing I've always liked about Levitz's handling of the Legion is the way he establishes that former Legionnaires, like (in this book) Garth and Imra and Blok and Mysa and Chuck and Luornu, may not be on the team at the moment but are still part of the cast. They're off the team but not off the book. I think that's not only a realistic approach, but also a pleasant one.

Notes:
- so Computo isn't smart enough to come up with "Stonehenge" when he's looking for big old stones? I don't blame Dreamy, who's an alien, but you'd think Mon-El would have twigged to it
- Luornu seems to be "Duplicate Damsel" again. Damsel, Girl, Lass, whatever, just pick one and stick to it
- I don't believe I've ever seen the word "piss" in a Legion comic before

Art: 107 panels/20 pages = 5.4 panels/page. No splash pages; 1 10-panel page.

Yes, yes; Walt Simonson, all very well and good. And he did a nice job. I wouldn't call him a great fit for the Legion, but what the hey. Simonson and Levitz were generous with us, too; this thing was packed full.

Check out Element Lad's face, page 5, panel 6. He's not into her at all, is he?

Membership Notes:

We find out that Quislet disappeared in battle sometime between LSHv6 and LSHv7. Glad to have it said, but I hope Levitz isn't just throwing him away.

Legion Lost #5 Review

2012-01-22T21:46:00.000-05:00

What Happened That You Have to Know About:

Alastor fights off Dawnstar and Tellus, and Tellus calls for help from Tyroc and Wildfire, while Timber Wolf gets Yera to safety. We get some of Alastor's backstory, which Tellus uses to hit Alastor where he lives. Gates shows up out of nowhere and they ponder their next move, while Timber Wolf meets the Martian Manhunter.

Review:

You know what this issue reminds me of? Partly? The Two Towers. Because Tyroc and Wildfire keep running back and forth between Timber Wolf and Dawnstar just like Gandalf kept riding back and forth across the plains of Rohan.

I have to say I liked Tellus's solution to Alastor very much. It's appropriate to the characters, it's appropriate to the theme of the book, and it's appropriate to the Legion. I approve of this section of Nicieza's master plan.

But I wonder if it means that Tellus's prediction is actually going to happen, or whether he was just saying what Alastor didn't want to hear. Obviously if humanity does change in the way that Tellus said, it means we don't need Mon-El to seed the worlds. Which is liberating for the Superman writers, I suppose. On the other hand, weren't some of these races supposed to already exist in the 21st century? Or maybe I don't quite get what's going on.

I'm also glad to see Tellus doing something useful. There's a lot you can do with Tellus and I hope we see more of it. It's worth noting the differences between Tellus and Saturn Girl: Tellus is less experienced, less confident, less comfortable in human society. But I think he also... this is going to sound contradictory... he's more innocent and also has fewer scruples. Or that's what I recall from the Baxter era, anyway; Nicieza and DeFalco may have different ideas. Only thing that bugs me about Tellus is how he thinks and talks in ellipses. Makes it seem like he's perpetually fighting off unconsciousness.

My enduring memory of Dawnstar is from the issue where Blok first joins the Legion, and she has to fight the Starburst Bandits all by herself. She says to herself, "I'm a tracker, not a stomper." Nicieza's take on her seems to be that she's a bit of a stomper too. Hey, if she can survive in space and fly faster than Superman, then it makes sense that she's got a bit of power, yeah.

So basically I think this was a good issue, one that certainly makes me want to read more, but then again DC is hotswapping Nicieza out for DeFalco, so how much does any of this matter? Maybe a lot! Maybe not at all! We don't know! Any time you have a big discontinuity looming, it sort of takes the air out of whatever leads up to it. None of which is the fault of this comic book, which is, again, fine. The first trade of Legion Lost looks like it will be recommendable. The second? Maybe! Maybe not! Et cetera.

Notes:
- glad to see Gates back, of course; now let's hope DeFalco uses him right
- it is "DeFalco", of course; two capital letters. Like DiDio
- I wonder what the lingering effects are going to be on Yera. And if there are any on Gates

Art: 69 panels/20 pages = 3.5 panels/page. 1 splash page, 1 double splash, 1 spread of 7 panels over 2 pages. Wow, that is not a lot of panels. At the moment I cannot but regard this as an anomaly, but certainly I'm going to be paying attention to next issue.

Star Trek/Legion of Super-Heroes #4 Review

2012-01-21T17:57:00.000-05:00

What Happened That You Have to Know About:

One of the two Legion teams goes back in time and fights some cavemen. The other one investigates their current time and infiltrates the capitol of the evil empire. The two groups discover that the main villain here is both Flint and Vandal Savage, but there also seems to be something else weird going on.

Review:

You know what this is starting to remind me of? That two-part The Brave and the Bold story where it was the Legion and the Doom Patrol in the first issue and then you got the other side of the story with the Subs and the Inferior Five. I never did review that here. I had been looking forward to it, just like all of you were, and then I read it and my reaction was, I can't possibly review this. There's nothing here! The whole thing felt like just an exercise. The menace was dull and a cliche, the characters weren't given anything interesting to do, and the story seemed designed to fulfill the parallel-structure idea and nothing else.

ST/LSH isn't that bad. Roberson does seem to be trying to let the characters be themselves, and the premise he's come up with is more interesting than just "there's a rift!" But it's still an exercise. The fun of this series is the correspondences between elements of the Legion's universe and elements of the Star Trek universe, and can we figure out how Roberson has mapped it out before he shows us. It is perfectly natural for a fan of these two franchises to enjoy this, and if you're into it then I hope you like this series. I am not into it and that's why I've been impatient since the first issue. Some of you may think it's awesome and I won't disagree as long as you'll admit that something can be awesome without actually being good.

As for this issue, well, I guess we're getting somewhere; our heroes have confronted the main villains, and we've gotten hints of the villains behind the villains. That's acceptable. I was hoping to be able to say more about this series than "it's acceptable", though; I expected better from Roberson.

Notes:
- "Don't count on seeing any more of it than this." Shady, there isn't much more of it than that
- crackpot theory time: the mysterious "he" that Flint is consulting is Quislet and that's why he's not in LSHv7
- why is Vandal Savage a surprise? Wouldn't it be more like, "Ah cripes, of course; freaking Vandal Savage again. What a pain"
- I hope nobody's being misled by these covers. "Where's Timber Wolf?! The hell?"

Art: 78 panels/22 pages = 3.5 panels/page. One splash page. I compare the Moys art on this series to Kevin Sharpe's on Adventure: in both cases you can't really count on faces looking right from page to page, but the Moys are more consistent and thorough in their renderings. I expected better from the Moys.

Legion of Super-Heroes comics reviews

2012-01-18T08:50:00.002-05:00

...will not be appearing today; this site is shut down to protest SOPA and PIPA. (I've fallen behind again; today's issue of LSHv7 will make three comics I need to review.) I'd black out the whole site except I don't know how to do that. I offer instead some light reading here and here.

Legion: Secret Origin #3 Review

2012-01-03T15:43:00.000-05:00

What Happened That You Have to Know About:

The wormhole near Anotrom opens wider and produces a giant spaceship, which the United Planets defeat with Brainiac 5's help. Phantom Girl gives the security directorate some data and joins the Legion. More attempts on Brande's life.

Review:

We're halfway through this miniseries now and I wonder if we know what it's about yet. The plot points we've seen have sort of been repeating themselves. The assassination attempts on Brande, whatever that business is with the wormhole, the security directorate... None of it seems to be moving very fast. It's interesting and it's done well, but I wonder if it needed six issues.

One thing I kind of expect to see is that Brande is behind the attempts on his own life, because he's looking for an excuse to put the Legion together. I also wouldn't be surprised to see the Time Trapper mixed up in this. I also wouldn't be surprised to find out that Brande is the Time Trapper, somehow.

I do like Phantom Girl's attitude in this series. It seems like Levitz has really enjoyed writing her since he's come back to the Legion. And I'm glad; she was always one of my favourites.

Given the premise of this series, I wouldn't expect much discussion of what the Legion is all about. Some, maybe, and we do have that in this issue with the Superman reference. Mostly I'd expect to see what the UP thinks the Legion is all about, and there hasn't been much of that, yet, because of course the UP has no idea what to make of them and Brande has been playing his cards close to the vest. I hope the series does touch on it, though.

The way Legion membership has traditionally been chronologically arranged, this is the stage right now with the lowest male-to-female ratio (2:3 or 2:5 if you count Luornu as three). (The early reboot era took it even further, with the high-water mark for female membership being 8 out of 13 or 10 out of 15 (depending on whether you count Luornu as one or three).) It is unusual for superhero comics; supergroup membership is almost always predominantly male. Yet I don't recall ever seeing a panel where Lightning Lad and Cosmic Boy take note of the favourable odds. I would. I suppose it's in character, though; Garth has been a one-woman man right from the start, and Rokk tends to be the pursued rather than the pursuer.

And we're all caught up!

Notes:
- is it just me or is R.J. Brande starting to sound like Quislet? Hmm...
- is the security directorate ever going to do anything? And do they still exist?
- I would like to know about those other Legion applicants, eftsoons or right speedily. Especially the Starman-cowled guy and the catguy with the goggles
- who? Reep who? No, no; just happened to pick him out at random. Complete coincidence

Art: 93 panels/20 pages = 4.7 panels/page. 1 splash page. Batista still on his game.

Legion of Super-Heroes #4 Review

2012-01-02T23:54:00.001-05:00

What Happened That You Have to Know About:

The Legionnaires get Res-Vir under control and chase off the Dominator fleet.

Review:

I wonder what it was about the stuff that happened this issue that made Levitz pay so much attention to it. Invisible Kid finding Kryptonite on Daxam? Chemical Kid dropping Res-Vir where he stood? Chameleon Boy scouting a Dominator spaceship? Brainy discovering Glorith's powers are time-based? Dunno. None of it seems like a big enough deal to take up as much of the issue as it did. From a plot point of view, anyway.

Take the Chemical Kid scene. He doesn't seem like the same kind of cavalier jackass he did in the Legion Academy stories in Adventure; he's much more tentative. Given that, I'm not sure if this is really a good Chemical Kid scene so much as it's a good Element Lad scene. In the past, Levitz's Element Lad has been too curt with people to work with young Legionnaires this effectively, but then again that was before he was Kon-El's chemistry teacher. More to the point, it looks like Levitz has taken the time to figure out what he can do with Chemical Kid's powers, which is key to using the character well; it was Bates and Shooter's failure to do this the first time that led to Chemical King's untimely death, at least as much as the Adult Legion story.

Anyway, a scene like that doesn't advance the narrative at all. Res-Vir was already beaten and immobilized; it would have been no trouble at all for Levitz to leave him like that. But no: he wanted us to spend some time with Jan and Hadru, and that's fine.

I wonder when Dragonwing is going to get some attention. We seem to know a lot more about what makes Chemical Kid and Glorith tick than Dragonwing; it's not clear to me just what her place on the team is going to be. Maybe next issue; am I remembering the solicit right? There's something going on with Dragonwing next issue?

Here's what's so great about Brainiac 5. And also why he must be such a problem for a writer. Brainy is not satisfied with comic-book logic. Sure, okay, obviously Glorith's powers are based on magic, but how exactly? Just because you've put a name on it doesn't mean you know how. And it's important to know! Threeboot Brainy was like this too: not lazy. Brainy always wants to do the work. Most superpowers let you avoid doing the work; you can accomplish things with them that you can't understand. Not good enough for Brainiac 5. He's got the advantage that his 12th-level intelligence lets him do all the work fast and well, but he still has to do it. There are no shortcuts for Brainy. He's like Karate Kid in that sense, especially if Karate Kid had trained himself in superspeed instead of martial arts.

I guess everyone's looking forward to next issue with Walt Simonson. Walt Simonson is all very well but I hope Levitz gives him something to do.

Notes:
- What's going on with Mon-El?
- And while we're at it, what's going on with anti-lead serums these days? Levitz once wrote a whole comic about how the serums need Kryptonite
- Lightning Lass's new(ish) costume. I think it works better as a superhero costume if the shorts are blue or white or even yellow. The red seems exhibitionistic
- I wonder if Hadru will ever learn to turn off Jacques's powers the way Condo did with Lyle
- Still no word on Quislet, or definitive status on Harmonia

Art: 92 panels/20 pages = 4.6 panels/page. 1 splash page.

Is Simonson going to do a better job than Portela's been doing? I think Portela's been knocking it out of the park all series long. Look at the Brainy/Dream Girl pages. Just excellent.

Legion Lost #4 Review

2012-01-01T16:10:00.000-05:00

What Happened That You Have to Know About:

There's a big ruckus at the mall as Timber Wolf, Tyroc, Wildfire, and some cops try to apprehend Red Rage, aka Yera, and he/she/it fights back. It ends with Red Rage getting away, with Timber Wolf in hot pursuit, and the other two Legionnaires trying to keep the lid on the cops and follow along as best they can. They eventually catch up with him/her/it, only to find that someone called the Black Razors have already made the capture and now want to add three Legionnaires to their collection.

Meanwhile, Tellus and Dawnstar are doing some scanning and find Alastor in Duluth. Dawny whisks him out of there and they confront him out in the woods someplace, but he uses his Carggite DNA and transforms and splits into three on them.

Key point raised this issue? Tyroc stocked up on supplies before the Legionnaires headed back through the time barrier, suggesting that he knew something about how this was going to work out. Watch this space.

Review:

First of all.

What is this nonsense about Nicieza leaving the book after #6?

Sure, sure; I've read his reasons on the CBR forums and all. But come on. Legion Lost was always a weird idea for a book. To get one guy to develop his ideas for it for six issues and then switch to another guy... Does that strike anyone as a recipe for success? Especially considering the personnel involved. I'm willing to believe, provisionally, that Fabian Nicieza had a vision for this series and that that vision was something that would, in the long run, prove to be intriguing. I am (based on my own impressions and what I've heard from others) somewhat less ready to believe the same about Tom DeFalco. Don't take this the wrong way, but DeFalco is six years older than Paul Levitz.

I mean look. Certainly DeFalco is going to produce a proper comic book. But I want this comic book to be intriguing, and I don't see that happening now. Don't know what it's going to take to get one of the New 52 titles cancelled, but I have to believe that Legion Lost's survival chances have dropped.

As for this issue, well. It's fine; maybe a little on the short side. The Dawnstar POV seems more like a stunt than anything else, as we spent so much time not with Dawnstar; she's nowhere near most of the action of the story. Everybody's falling all over Nicieza for this rotating-POV thing because it's so revolutionary, except that novels use this technique all the time, and except that the story isn't well-suited for it because the action is so split up that the POV character isn't present for all the events you're reading about.

In this issue, for instance, I feel like I'm getting a lot more about Timber Wolf than I am about Dawnstar. And I like it, let me say that too; this is a cool Timber Wolf. (Except for the projectile fingertips of last issue.) Actually, they're all cool, mostly; Dawny's the only one who's less together than before, but in a way that actually works for her. (And of course Yera/Red Rage.)

The key figure in this series, so far, is Alastor, and when he showed up again I was hoping that we'd learn something about him when he showed up again, but no: he misses his sister, he hates humans, and he's quick on the trigger. I wonder what his plan is now? He's already released the hypertaxis virus, so what's he got left to do?

Notes:
- I'm not reading a lot of DC's other titles. Anybody know if the Black Razors have anything to do with those military types who've been monitoring the situation all series?
- I'm also not all that familiar with the north central U.S. states. Are Nicieza and Woods doing any kind of a good job of capturing the essence of the area?
- On Alastor's cap there, is that supposed to be Homer Simpson or a monkey?

Art: 83 panels/20 pages = 4.2 panels/page. One two-page spread; one splash page.

Another fine effort by Woods. Someday I'll figure out who his Dawnstar reminds me of, with the rounder face and squared-off bangs like that.

Star Trek/Legion of Super-Heroes #3 Review

2011-12-30T23:24:00.001-05:00

Sorry for the delay on this. I'll try to have things caught up relatively quickly. Superhero/comic-book related loot received: Volume 2 of the collected Terry and the Pirates, Knight and Squire, the xkcd book, this T-shirt, a giant Peanuts collection in a slipcase, and Seth's Wimbledon Green.

What Happened That You Have to Know About:

The Legionnaires and Enterprise crew fight briefly, then decide not to fight. They trade information, and this world's version of the Fatal Five show up and try to apprehend them. The good guys are triumphant in this fight, and then they split into two groups to try to crack this time-travel situation.

Review:

Now, see, that's much better. I call that a good first issue. We had a lot of stuff happening here, and it looks like we're actually getting somewhere. I was worried that the fight between the Legion and the Treks would take a whole issue to resolve, but I was pleasantly surprised.

It really is starting to seem to me like the main attraction for Roberson in this series is in combining the various villains and alien races from the two franchises together. And I can't deny that this is a fun kind of thing to poke around with, and would probably be irresistible to me too were I Roberson. I just hope that the final resolution of the story doesn't derive its narrative force only from the identity of the villain.

On the two two-page spreads where Roberson and the Moys introduce the Legion and the Enterprisers to each other... I'm not sure Roberson really gets at the heart of these two groups of characters. They're okay descriptions of the Federation and the United Planets, I guess. When Kirk says, "We're not soldiers. We're humanitarians, explorers," it's a bit of wishful thinking, isn't it? They want to be humanitarians and explorers, and most of the time they can be, but every now and then they have to be soldiers, don't they? They're clearly in a military organization. As for the Legion, well, you and I know what superheroes are, but Kirk and Spock don't, and it might have been appropriate to throw in a couple of words about Superman there.

Anyway, good! Not too late to make this series a net positive!

Notes:
- "I had no choice but to shoot first." Really? Is this really consistent with Kirk's character? Please advise
- not to be mean about it, but the initial fight seems to me like someone took twelve action figures into the sandbox and filmed it
- everybody catch Supergirl there in that two-page spread? Well, IDW certainly isn't going to tell 'em to leave her out!

Art: 74 panels/22 pages = 3.4 panels/page. Two double-page spreads; one splash page.

The Moys haven't gotten back into that groove they were in in #1 of this series. Look at Brainy's and Imra's faces, page 1, panel 1. I mean, it's basically competent, and they don't skimp out on the backgrounds much, but I was hoping that the characters would look more consistently like themselves. But doesn't Shady give you a bit of a Diana Rigg vibe on page 9?

And it's still not a lot of content for the money. 74 panels is relatively few panels. I don't mind hammering on this point again: an issue of this series may seem two pages longer than a regular Legion comic, but really it is effectively about five pages shorter, and costs a dollar more while we're at it.

Hail the New, Ye Lads and Lasses

2011-12-21T09:12:00.002-05:00

I know I owe you guys a couple of reviews, with another coming down the pike this week, and a couple of other things I've been meaning to write. I'm kind of stuck for time, though, so it may be a little while. But I should be all caught up by the new year. The management thanks you for your patience.

If you don't already know about it, you may want to head on over to my other website, matthewe.com, where I'm counting down the top 25 Christmas songs; as of this writing, I'm up to number six with five to go until Christmas.

And, last but not least, if you've ever wanted to own a copy of Teenagers from the Future, the book of essays about the Legion of Super-Heroes, with two articles in there by me, but have been worried about the price, now's your chance. Apparently Julian and Mike have been working some angles and the thing now costs a lot less than it used to. Go check it out for yourselves. Might not be in time for Christmas, but then, it might be; how should I know.

More later!

Legion: Secret Origin #2 Review

2011-12-01T22:41:00.000-05:00

What Happened That You Have to Know About:

The Legion gets a headquarters and someone is still trying to kill R.J. Brande. Brainiac 5 and Phantom Girl fight some guy on Anotrom. Young Gim Allon seems to be considering Legion membership. The security directorate decides to try to use the Legion for its own purposes.

Review:

I constitutionally don't believe in a Paul Levitz comic in which nothing happens. This seems like one, so let's look more closely. (When I say "nothing happens", I don't mean nothing happens; I mean that the plots do not seem to be advanced.) There is much more action than in the first issue, so that's one good thing. Plus we get some progress toward the growth of the Legion as an institution: the HQ, Colossal Boy, and Brande's "search lists".

But there are also some hints about stuff we used to know about that may now be different, or about stuff we don't know anything about. There's R.J. Brande's past, for one thing. There's whatever Saturn Girl might have been reading in his mind on page 18. There's the Naltorian on the security directorate not being able to read anything off of Phantom Girl. There's whatever disaster has befallen Cargg. There are the raids on Bgtzl's colony worlds. The unique power source for Brainy's force shield belt. It's a bit of a step back from the first issue, but then, second issues usually are.

I'm enjoying the rapport between Brainy and Tinya. I don't recall the two of them interacting much in, well, in any other Legion story, but it works here. Both of them ridiculously confident in their own ways, presumably because they both know perfectly well that there's nothing around that can hurt them. And yet they're also both shy--Brainy obviously so, but Tinya too: look at how much time she spends with her arms folded. That means she's feeling the need to protect herself.

I wonder if we're going to see Superboy or Supergirl in this series.

Notice how Lightning Lad and Cosmic Boy are already pretty good at fighting? It's just crooks in little spaceships, of course, but they seem to have already crested the learning curve. I might have started them off less competent, but I guess Levitz only has so much time to cover everything he wants to cover.

Anyway, it's coming along. I imagine things will pick up next issue.

Notes:
- the covers continue to be my least favourite thing about this series. Sorry, Tom Feister: I am not the right reviewer for you
- but look closely at that cover! Tiny tiny writing
- have we ever really heard the story of the Quintile power crystal? Or is it just like Lord Peter Wimsey and the Attenbury Emeralds?
- sort of a shame to introduce Luornu and then not give her anything to do. Oh well; there's time
- hey, look, it's Pheebs! Hi, Pheebs
- Levitz is still playing with Brande's accent
- Myecroft seems to be Mycroft in this issue

Art: 96 panels/20 pages = 4.8 panels/page. 1 single-panel page.

Batista kind of flattens out the faces for us in this issue. It's not my favourite look and in some cases I don't think it works at all; see Luornu on page 2, panel 3. Also, the backgrounds are blank a little more than I'd like. Still, though, it's Chris Batista, so I'm just nitpicking here; the issue looks fine and the art works very well.

Legion of Super-Heroes #3 Review

2011-11-18T00:05:00.001-05:00

What Happened That You Have to Know About:

Legion reinforcements arrive on Panoptes in time to help Mon-El and Ultra Boy beat the Renegade while the others fight off a Dominator fleet and still more investigate on Daxam. Brainiac 5 is still testing Glorith's powers.

Review:

I thought this was quite a good issue of the comic book right up until the end, and then I had a big problem. And my big problem is, what happened? I had to read it over and over and I'm still not sure that I get it. First, how'd Mon and Jo beat the Renegade? Just keep punching it out with him? That's fine, and we don't necessarily need to see it, because we've seen punching before. But what happened to Shady? Since when does she faint from using her powers? Or what?

I'd have to go back and check, but I think that might be a habit Levitz is falling into in this run: not showing us the ends of fights. I can think of another couple of scenes like this, where we see the start of a fight but not how it's resolved, and it's not clear enough to let us be sure that we haven't missed anything. I mean, I don't need everything spelled out for me, but in this case I think the stepping stones are too far apart on those last two pages.

Other than that. What we got a lot of, a lot of, in this issue, was Legionnaires using their powers effectively and interestingly in ways that is appropriate to their personalities. And that's the basic currency of superhero comics. Whatever new readers this series has, they got a bonanza this month in terms of being introduced to these characters. Let's do a count: how many Legionnaires get a moment here where we find out not just what they can do, but what they're likely to do? Phantom Girl, Brainiac 5, Glorith, Chemical Kid, Mon-El, Ultra Boy, Shadow Lass, Sun Boy, Comet Queen, Polar Boy, Chameleon Boy, and Element Lad. That's pretty good for 20 pages.

It's unlike some of the issues in the LSV arc of LSHv6, too, in that there's some plot advancement: the Dominators are not just bumbling around, but are Up To Something; they have a Mysterious Ingredient for the anti-lead serum; they have a Secret Weapon waiting for any Legionnaires stupid enough to follow them. These are things I want to know about.

I had been, for quite a while, vaguely disappointed by Paul Levitz's return. I'm much less so now. This series is operating with more authority now and I hope it continues like that.

Notes:
- there seem to be a few missing people on Daxam; wonder if that's just there for verisimilitude or if they're important
- why is it that the Legionnaires have belt buckles but no belts these days
- the Dominion uses Interlac? I find that hard to believe

Art: 90 panels/20 pages = 4.5 panels/page. 2 single-page panels.

Portela's art is getting a bit more stylized; look at the Legionnaires on the first page for an example. On the one hand it looks kind of weird; on the other hand it's certainly not bad, and if Portela's in the process of becoming more like himself then I'm all for it. The thing I really like in this issue is the panel boundaries and arrangements: check out how he handles them on pages 11, 14, and 16. I hope Portela stays on this title for a good long time, like fifty issues or something. Notice how the really good artists don't stay long enough?

Lot of stuff going on

2011-11-16T00:01:00.000-05:00

There's a lot of stuff going on these days; probably some of it has caught your attention. War, climate change, economic disasters, natural disasters, political upheaval, political repression. And I sit around saying, well, what am I doing about it. Not enough, is what I'm doing about it. No good reason why not, either. I mean, sure, I have hostages to fortune, but I can do something, right?

So let's start here: according to this website, today is American Censorship Day. Go read it, think about it, consider what to do next. Sure, my site here is in important respects a Canadian website... but the blogging service that runs it is American-based, so that's one thing. Plus, I don't know, one cannot do everything, but one has to start somewhere, and this is a good somewhere.

Legion Lost #3 Review

2011-11-10T21:32:00.001-05:00

What Happened That You Have to Know About:

The Legionnaires pursue a hypersapien who's been hypertaxed into some kind of Okaaran beastie. Timber Wolf catches up with it in a mall and fights it; turns out it's Yera trying to harvest Durlan DNA from her victims to reconstitute herself. And it seems Timber Wolf has caught the virus himself and it's given him disturbing new powers.

Review:

Lots of stuff in this issue I don't like. I don't like Brin shooting his claws across the room; ew. And I don't like Yera killing people, whether she's in her right mind or not. But then I'm not supposed to like it, and it doesn't make this a bad comic. It's just what the Legion has to deal with.

Nicieza's getting a lot of compliments for this thing he's doing where he rotates the POV to a different character with each issue. It's a perfectly reasonable way of doing things, but I don't see what's so revolutionary about it. To me it doesn't really work in this issue as well as it could, because it feels like we're getting so much of Tellus's point of view.

But, still, what can we learn about Nicieza's view of Timber Wolf from this issue? He's angry a lot of the time. He's a loner and he has a strong pack instinct; wonder how that works. He's the guy in the group who challenges Tyroc's leadership (interesting; you'd think that'd be Wildfire's natural role, but Wildfire didn't do much of that in his spotlight issue). He's animalistic enough to lick blood off a corpse without getting skeeved out. He's not dumb.

Part of Nicieza's intent seems to be to box these Legionnaires in, to put them in a situation where their options are severely constrained: can't go home, can't call for help, Presumably he's got something in mind of the form, "...and when the Legionnaires are in such a situation, here's what they'll do!" And in the meantime we are getting characterization and setup and action and stuff. So in this case I'd have to say that my nagging feeling of not-enough-comic-book probably comes from the fact that it's only 20 pages.

Getting back to Yera for a second. Okay, so she's still alive, and trying to get over what the hypertaxis virus did to her. Very good. And for all I know she's not even really herself now; she's this weird Okaaran monster. But the Okaaran monster has killed people; to what extent has Yera killed people? Legion code against killing, guys; this is serious. Of course, there's a lot about how this works that we don't know. Do you keep your mind when you hypertaxi to another form? The experiences of Dr. Scanlon and Timber Wolf suggest that you do. So what's Yera's excuse? Out of her tree from being cut in half, or whatever? Okaaran Rdrayyjes are killing machines whether they like it or not? This is one of those plot developments that, if treated properly, is going to be with us for a while.

Sorry; I've got a cold and am not at my reviewing best. It's entirely possible that I've missed a bunch of really cogent points about this issue but, if so, they ain't coming to me tonight. I need some sleep.

Notes:
- I like Tellus's human-illusion form
- what's-her-head on page 1, panel 3; she's going to be a recurring character. You can see it in the marks on her face
- Nicieza is casting Dawnstar as a perfectionist. I think that's a good call
- to spell it out for anyone who didn't pick up on it: "Red Rage" = "Rdrayyj"
- "I'm tasty delicious."

Art: 96 panels/20 pages = 4.8 panels/page. One two-page spread of 17 panels.

Thing about Pete Woods? He sometimes outlines things weird. Check it out; he gets some interesting effects.

Star Trek/Legion of Super-Heroes #2 Review

2011-11-09T22:09:00.001-05:00

What Happened That You Have to Know About:

The Legionnaires and Enterprise crew get away from the people they were fighting and flee across the continent. They meet each other on the last page.

Review:

So what the flip is Roberson up to, where we get two whole issues before the Legionnaires meet the Enterprise crew? What's going on in these two comics that's worth us reading? I mean, it's got to be something, right?

I know what one part of it is: Roberson is sharing a lot of details of his alternate universe with us. And...

I don't dispute that it's cool stuff. I mean, I don't care, but certainly if I was in his position, messing around with these two franchises, it'd be very tempting to do this kind of mixing and matching like he does. If what you're into is the minutiae of Star Trek or the Legion, well, it's interesting. But my problem with it is the same as my problem with Flashpoint, which is, I know this world isn't going to last, so why would I make any emotional investment in it? I wouldn't, that's why.

So what else have we got? A couple of generic firefights? Please tell me what. I'm trying to come up with something positive I can say about what happens in this comic book and I can't think of anything. I mean, it tastes right; it's not like Roberson doesn't know the characters. It's just that they haven't gotten to do anything yet.

Notes:
- just what was the deal with that panel on page 7 where the Legionnaires turn into monochromatic streaks?
- no trouble opening the comic book this time; that's always a plus
- if the Trek guys are the first "temporal disturbance", then are the Legion the other one? If so, they didn't have to go very far to find themselves...

What have we got, three issues left? Bring 'em on quick and get it over with. Not impressed so far.

Art:

77 panels/22 pages = 3.5 panels/page. One set of three panels spread over two pages; no single-page panels.

Second-issue syndrome for the art; some of the panels look kinda sloppy and some of the characters have big-head syndrome, which is not unknown from the Moys. Look at the bottom of page 18, for instance. One thing I think I noticed was that the Legion pages used slightly fewer panels than the Trek panels. Maybe superheroic characters need more room to move than science fiction characters. Or maybe I'm making something out of nothing.

I'd like to point out that 3.5 panels per page is not a lot, and 77 panels is less than you usually get in a 20-page Legion comic.

Legion: Secret Origin #1 Review

2011-10-26T23:59:00.000-04:00

What Happened That You Have to Know About:

This all takes place in the 31st century before the creation of the Legion. (Not the 30th century? It says the 31st century on page 1.) The United Planets is exploring the galaxy trying to reunite with old allies and make new friends, but when one of their expeditionary forces arrives on Anotrom, they find that someone's just wrecked the joint and killed everybody. They call in the Coluans, who bring in Brainiac 5, who goes to investigate. He meets Tinya Wazzo from Bgtzl there and she warns him that there's some kind of trouble brewing for the United Planets.

Meanwhile, the UP security directorate, I think that's who they are, a three-person council consisting of a Coluan, a Naltorian, and an Earth human who's been around the block a few times, are monitoring R.J. Brande as some guys try to assassinate him but are prevented by three superpowered teenagers. The Naltorian instantly knows something important is going on with this bunch and they make sure that the Science Police doesn't interfere with them or with whatever Brande wants to do with them. Whatever he wants to do, it involves recruiting a girl from Cargg, however she got there.

Review:

Go back and read this issue again and see for yourself. There's only one speech bubble this issue attributed to a Legionnaire, and it's the only one you need: Imra saying, "They're trying to kill that man!" I wish Legion history would settle on a definitive wording for that outburst; I always remember it as, "Those men--they're trying to kill Mr. Brande!" But whatever. However she says it, it's the key point in the creation of the Legion, just as unexpectedly crucial as "We'll go out through the kitchen" was for another group. I like that it was highlighted this way. (Note: Brainy and Tinya also speak, but they're not Legionnaires yet.)

Anisa, the Naltorian in the security directorate, says about the three Legionnaires that "these three are not a chance... they are a certainty..." Which is great. Why couldn't the Time Trapper have been listening in on this conversation? Because this is exactly why he can't beat the Legion: history is only elastic up to a certain point, and the existence of the Legion is beyond that point.

I have some wild speculation here on that experimental cruiser poking around in that wormhole. Just maybe the crew of this cruiser is going to consist of Jo Nah, Thom Kallor, and Gim Allon. After all, they're all early-to-join Legionnaires who got their powers in weird space accidents, and this could be Levitz's way of streamlining their origin stories. Just pouring that out onto the porch to see if the cat licks it up.

Last week I complained about the first issue of the Star Trek/LSH crossover. I said (among other things) that it wasn't a complete story. (For a miniseries, I suppose it's okay if your single issues aren't, strictly speaking, stories on their own. Although I think it's better if they are, as much as possible.) Well, this isn't a complete story, but I like it better. I have several reasons for this.
1. It's a buck cheaper.
2. I didn't have to pry the pages apart.
3. It's got 26 more panels in it, which works out to about five pages or so.
4. With no disrespect at all intended to the Moys, Chris Batista is better.
5. Free flight ring.
6. (The big reason) It does just about as much setup as did ST/LSH #1, but in addition to that it gives us some of what we want.

What we wanted out of this series was to see the Legion created. And we did see it. There they are! (But now there's more to it than that.) What we wanted out of ST/LSH was to see the crew of the Enterprise meet the Legion. They didn't. Depending on how the timeline works, they may not next issue either. See the difference?

In this series, so far, the main character seems to be this old guy Myecroft on the security directorate. He's trying to make sure everything goes smoothly for the UP, however he has to do it. Myecroft is faced with the problem that R.J. Brande seems to be doing something unorthodox with this bunch of teenagers who saved him. He decides to let it play out for a while. But then at the end of the issue he's faced with the fact that they're entirely out of his control and he has no idea what they're up to. That's the beginning of a story, all right, but it's not a whole story.

If we insist on having a complete story in this issue, that story is the initial creation of the Legion and the induction of its first new member. On the one hand, that's something that feels important to us, so it gives us that sense of closure we want in our single issue. On the other, it's not really the A plot of the comic book. Overall it's effective.

And it's excellent for new readers. This is the jumping-on point Levitz should have given us with LSHv7 #1. Starts off with a brief explanation of the United Planets and its circumstances. Gives us new characters fairly slowly, and not too many in the first issue. Shows us the Legion without expecting us to know too much about what it is... you know, I only just realized now that there wasn't much action in this issue? Hardly any, really, but I didn't miss it. Normally I would miss it.

Pleased with this one.

Notes:
- I trust you all got your flight rings? Who knows when this chance may come again!
- Maybe for the next free-stuff giveaways DC could provide us with transuits and telepathic plugs
- Or if they want to do rings again, how about an Insect Queen ring?
- H-E-R-O dial?
- Notice the Interlac P on Phantom Girl's uniform? But if Bgtzl's not in contact with the United Planets, how do they speak Interlac?
- Also, compare the coloring of Phantom Girl's costume between the cover and the interior art. Which one's right? Interior, I hope
- There's already some speculation on how "Anotrom" is just "Trom" with a new name. I guess we'll see... but those guys on pages 1 and 2 don't look like Element Lad to me
- Lightning Lad, Saturn Girl, and Cosmic Boy became the Legion of Super-Heroes offscreen sometime between pages 10 and 19. Maybe page 15? It's not explicit, but that must be what it is

Art: 104 panels/20 pages = 5.2 panels/page. One single-page panel, one page with 10 panels.

Always nice to see Chris Batista drawing the Legion, and he acquits himself well here. The panel layout is a bit weird; I counted each separate point-of-view headshot of one of the security directorate as a panel, which inflates the panel count, but in a way it's just a framing device. On the other hand, it also gives us a look at what's going on with the UP behind the scenes, so really it's more than that. Check out the UP officer's uniform on page 3. Plus Brainy looks very callow and smug in this issue; nice touch. Really they all look young; check out Phantom Girl in panel 4 of page 16.

It took me a while to put together just what was happening with Luornu on page 19. I guess we're supposed to get that she's triplicated and meeting the other three separately, then merging together in panel 9, but it's not obvious.

Thing I want to say about the cover. (It's by Tom Feister.) What kind of style do you call this, anyway? I remember this kind of art showing up during the DnA run a couple of times, and I can't say I'm really a fan of it. Not that it isn't any good; I just don't like it when they do it like that.

Legion of Super-Heroes #2 Review

2011-10-20T22:03:00.000-04:00

What Happened That You Have to Know About:

A Daxamite called Renegade shows up and roughs up the Legion team on Panoptes, capturing everyone but Phantom Girl, who summons help. Renegade or Res-Vir, is trying to use the anti-lead serum to free Daxam from United Planets "oppression". Help arrives in the person of Mon-El, who frees the other Legionnaires but all of a sudden there's a fleet of spaceships overhead.

Meanwhile, Legionnaires are doing stuff at HQ and on Shanghalla but it's mostly not important. Except maybe that Brainy has an idea about Glorith being able to solve their time-travel problems. That's probably a good idea, right?

Review:

So Levitz is turning his attention to what we must admit is a plot hole that's been in existence for most of Legion history: why don't more Daxamites take the anti-lead serum and come out and be with the people? For a while it was suggested that it was because they were all quiet and shy. In the reboot, it was because they were xenophobic. In the threeboot, it was because the Tromites had killed them all off (although LSHv5 #1 suggests otherwise). Now Levitz is giving us the idea that it's because the UP has withheld the magic potion so that the Daxamites don't come out and kill everybody like they almost did during Great Darkness (which doesn't answer the question of why they didn't get the serum before that).

Which is understandable on the UP's part. Then again, the Daxamites always seemed like decent sorts to me; would they really be such a problem? Even Renegade doesn't seem like that bad of a guy. And that means this storyline has some potential, because ideally you'd like your villains to have some kind of a personality and a motivation and a sympathetic aspect, and we've got all of those here. Plus it means that Mon-El has some interesting decisions to make.

Then again we can't just have a universe full of powered-up Daxamites. It's not workable. So whatever the status quo is after this storyline, it's not going to involve Daxamites all over the place.

What the flip is the matter with Polar Boy, hitting on Comet Queen? Dude, you don't want any part of her, and you should know that. Not like you can't do better, either (see LSHv6 #1). He's lucky she wasn't into it. Are there no other single female Legionnaires? Let's see: Dragonwing and Glorith; too young and new. Dream Girl, Lightning Lass, Phantom Girl, Saturn Girl, Shrinking Violet, already attached. That leaves Shadow Lass and Harmonia. I don't think Shady has much time for Polar Boy, and anyway Earth-Man's body isn't even cold yet, so that lets her out. And Harmonia, well... I have to say that I just don't see it. So Brek is going to have to look outside the Legion's active roster. My suggestion? Night Girl. Think about it. Is there another human in the universe with a better idea of what a worthwhile guy Polar Boy is than Night Girl? In any case, anything, including celibacy, is preferable to getting mixed up with Comet Queen. I do think I see what Polar Boy had in mind, though, now that I think about it. Geoff Johns gave us a new, swashbuckling, neck-or-nothing attitude for both Polar Boy and the Subs, and Comet Queen has displayed similar audacity, so I guess they have that in common. But I still can't support it.

And let me just say a word here about my girl Tinya Wazzo. The part where she escapes from Renegade and hides inside Panoptes waiting for help to show up? See, she's a member of the Espionage Squad, but espionage is not what her power is primarily good for. Yes, she can hide; yes, she can pull off cool combat moves (like we saw in the cartoon). But the real advantage of her powers is invulnerability. Really she's got pretty much Ultra Boy's power of invulnerability: if she's got a split-second to prepare, she can be untouchable by any physical attack. It's a very good superpower. Now, unlike Ultra Boy, she's got the limitation that she can't really do anything else while she's invulnerable, which is why she's just sorta hanging out until Mon-El arrives, but sometimes it's useful just to have someone who's around and paying attention.

When I write these things, the way it sometimes works is that I pose a question, and by the time I finish typing I've come up with the answer, and then I have to type that. Like right now, I was about to ask, if Phantom Girl is so invulnerable, why's it so important that she hide from Renegade? What's he going to do to her? But, obviously, he can threaten one of the other Legionnaires until she surrenders herself; she's a free agent only so long as he can't deliver that threat. So that's okay.

Notes:
- I very much like the broken-chain logo on Renegade's temple. Free your mind!
- "Res-Vir". Relative of Ol-Vir, one must assume?
- still nothing new on Harmonia's membership status
- someone asked Levitz recently if Quislet was still a member post-Flashpoint, and he answered, "That's a good question!" Which implies that there's some kind of interesting answer to it, which is really all I want to know

Art: 84 panels/20 pages = 4.2 panels/page. Three single-page panels.

Fine work by Portela as always. I direct your attention to Tinya's little grin on page 16, and the parallel poses of Phantom Girl and Ultra Boy and Dragonwing and Chemical Kid on page 1. No skimping on the backgrounds either. I'm very pleased with Portela's art; he looks like a keeper. But three splash pages? No reason for all those to be splash pages. Especially page 10; it's just Mon-El flying.

Star Trek/Legion of Super-Heroes #1 Review

2011-10-20T19:43:00.001-04:00

What Happened That You Have to Know About:

Six of the crew of the USS Enterprise and six Legionnaires, separately, while traveling, end up on a 23rd-century alternate Earth where it's all totalitarian and stuff. Actually it doesn't look like the two groups have gone back to exactly the same time and place; the Legion could be a little later in the timeline than the Star Trek group. The two groups don't meet up.

There's also something going on on prehistoric Earth, and, uh, really it's not clear how the timeline of this Earth fits together; there's stuff with the Talokians and the Durlans and the Dominators and I don't know what all.

Review:

I had been really looking forward to this series; I figured Chris Roberson was practically born to be a Legion writer, and I really wanted to see what he could do with the characters.

Sure enough, Roberson demonstrated in his first issue that he's quite adept at writing Legionnaires, and, if I'm any judge, of Star Trek characters. If a wrong note was struck, I didn't hear it. And it's clear that Roberson has some kind of idea for this story that could very well be an interesting one. I am still looking forward to this series.

And I hope it starts soon!

Because this is all setup. It's good setup; it looks like something intricate is going on here, which is fine; always nice when a writer is really thinking about this stuff. And I have no idea how it all fits together. But... well, I guess it depends on what I'm supposed to care about.

If I'm supposed to care about the plot, then this was an eventful issue; we've got some kind of an alternate-earth deal where history has gone wrong in some way that's not obvious to us, and it looks like there could have been some tampering involved somehow. And who's the "something powerful" that Saturn Girl detected, and who's the guy with the glowing eye, and so on.

But I don't, in the strictest sense of the word, care about the plot. I'm interested in the plot, and I know the difference between a good plot and a bad plot, and I certainly want there to be a plot, but it's not what brings me to the comic book. The plot is like the bread in a sandwich: you have to have it, and the bread is what makes the sandwich a sandwich, and there's a difference between good and bad bread... but rarely is the bread the thing that separates a good sandwich from a bad sandwich.

What I do care about is the characters and how they are expressed. (I'm making this up as I go along, but it sounds right.) What do they do in the story that tells us more about them, or that gets at the core of what the character is all about? How do they interact with each other? And so on. In this series, in particular, I was looking forward to seeing the Star Trek characters interact with the Legion characters. See, the two franchises represent the same kind of thing: optimistic-future space-adventure. But they do so in different ways, and the contrast between the two is one of the only reasons why anyone would even want such a series to exist. And another is, because some of these characters are so beloved and distinct that we're almost rubbing our hands together at the thought of them meeting. C'mon: Spock and Brainy! Kirk and Shady! Bones and Brainy! Spock and Saturn Girl!

We didn't get any of any of that.

Anyway. I'm looking forward to the next issue. It pretty much has to be better than this. Doesn't it? I mean, this wasn't bad. But it's all appetizer, and it's making me feel like an idiot for buying comics at all. Ha ha, psych! The main event doesn't start until #2! Maybe! Thanks for your money! It's a well-done comic about the Legion and it's making me want to quit comics.

God damn it all.

Notes:
- my copy of this comic had a real problem with pages sticking together; not impressed
- the Dramatis Personae page has Saturn Girl listed with Winath as her home planet. Which isn't wrong, really, but it may not be what people need to know about her...
- my Trek-fu is not strong enough to know whether characters like "Commander Starr" and "Captain Tomorrow" are established characters or what. Can't be Tommy Tomorrow, can it?
- I wonder if we're ever going to find out about what mission the Legionnaires were on that they're coming home from

Art: 78 panels/22 pages = 3.5 panels/page. Three single-panel pages, one case of three panels spread over two pages, one case of eight panels spread over two pages, one twelve-panel page.

Art is provided by Jeffrey and Philip Moy, who are of course well-known for their work on the reboot Legion. I don't want to make it sound like the two are joined at the hip or anything; my recollection is that Jeffrey Moy was the regular penciller and Philip Moy also got a bit of work here and there; please let me know if that's not accurate. Anyway, the art in this issue avoids being heavily stylized in the way that the reboot Legion was, which I believe is a wise choice. I can't pick out any panels or pages that particularly impress me, but one thing I do like is the way they give the characters a lot of room within the panels; see page 13, panel 2, for an example of what I mean.

Notice that there were only 78 panels in this issue. Typically a 20-page Legion comic has more than 80. And a typical 20-page Legion comic is also a buck cheaper.

Legion Lost #2 Review

2011-10-14T23:47:00.000-04:00

What Happened That You Have to Know About:

Red Lake Falls is having a funeral for all the people who died from Alastor's plague attack, and Timber Wolf is scouting it. He sees one of the men who's supposed to be dead, walking around. This is Dr. Jeffrey Scanlon, who's been turned into some kind of energy being. The Legion tries to help him come to terms with his new situation but instead he elects to blow himself up and eventually lets himself dissipate into nothingness.Plus something is stirring in a nearby swamp.

Review:

One of the intriguing aspects of the current formation of the LL team is that the characters are going to be pushed into unfamiliar roles. Look at Timber Wolf in this issue. He's the only one of the five of 'em who can move inconspicuously in public. Who else? Wildfire is humanoid but not human, Tellus isn't even that, Dawnstar's wings don't come off, and Tyroc... Tyroc can go out in public, no problem, but he's going to stick in people's minds because there aren't that many black people in rural Minnesota. So it's just Brin. And Brin is certainly comfortable working solo like that, but in this case he's not really working solo; he's scouting for the team. He's an ambassador for the team. In this issue, he does okay in this role. But this is exactly the kind of thing that's going to jump up and bite them one of these days.

I like Wildfire's observation that the Legionnaires in this group aren't the smartest ones. And of course they're not. I wouldn't call any of them dumb, not by any means, but it's true that they're not geniuses. I might except Tyroc from this, as we haven't seen that much of him over the years, but then he was bright enough to lead a planetary resistance, be named president of Earth, and weasel his way out of the presidency, in the 5YL run.

Interesting that Scanlon has become part Teallian. I'm surprised it's possible; I can't imagine that Teallians even have genetics as we understand them. But I guess in the 31st century, the biologists' science is pretty tight. Wonder what the other problematic human/alien hybrids are going to be. Daxamite, I suppose. Bgtzln. Imskian. Sephian. Hykraian. Naltorian, maybe.

I've seen criticisms of the first issue that say that the Legionnaires basically messed up their mission in every way they could have. So, in this issue... I reread it with that in mind. And I don't really have any complaints of that kind, except for one big one, which I'll get to at the end. They've found a base of operations, and they're checking out the town, and Timber Wolf and Wildfire are keeping an eye on the memorial service. This seems like a reasonable way for them to start. They identify a pathogen victim and try to help him. They fail, but I don't see anything fundamentally flawed or stupid about their approach. (Okay, one flaw: Tellus could have been a bit faster on the draw when it came to figuring out Scanlon's mood and intentions.)

However. Here's the big thing. Just what do these guys plan to do about this pathogen and its victims? What abilities do they have, super or otherwise, that can be effective against this threat? They can't cure anyone of this disease. They can't stop it from spreading. Can they? Just what exactly is the plan here? And I don't mean I want to know how they can solve the problem. We'll find that out in time. I just want to know if there's anything sensible they can even try anytime soon, and if so what.

This was something of a done-in-one issue, which is always good. I know a lot of people were glad to see the exposition and backstory. I was doing okay without it but I know not everyone keeps up with the interviews and stuff the way I've been.

Notes:
- Scanlon had that Jim Corrigan hair, red with a lock of white at the front. Wonder if that's DC code for "I'm really dead"
- Is it just me, or does Dawnstar have a shower every time she visits the present day?
- So it's the Psions who first made this virus. I haven't heard much about the Psions lately. They were in Omega Men, right?
- I am unsure about what this issue says about the nature of Teallians and of Wildfire. I am unsure that this is somewhere we want to go. On the other hand it's better than the Red Tornado thing

Art: 83 panels/20 pages = 4.2 panels/page. One two-page splash, one section of five panels over two pages.You know what I like best about Woods's art so far? I like what he's doing with Dawnstar's face. She doesn't look generic-comic-book-pretty anymore; she looks like a specific person. I wonder what it is exactly--maybe the way her bangs are cut straight across her forehead. That's probably part of it at least.

Legion of Super-Heroes #1 Review

2011-09-22T23:37:00.000-04:00

What Happened That You Have to Know About:

The Legion has a squad (Ultra Boy, Phantom Girl, Chameleon Boy, Dragonwing, Chemical Kid) on planet Panoptes, which is apparently a planet where the United Planets keeps an eye on the Dominion. But something weird is going on there. Turns out the place is sending signals to the Dominators, and there's some kind of renegade Daxamite involved.

Review:

I've been reading about how this issue isn't really new-reader-friendly, and I don't know about that. I mean, I'm pretty far from a new reader, but I don't get a sense of being thrown into the middle of a confusing story here. The comic is about the start of a new mission for some Legionnaires; there's some setup, some action, and ends with a cliffhanger. We see all the characters, and get to know some of them. Sure, some things are mentioned but not explained, but nothing we can't handle not knowing. Maybe not the best new-reader issue, but workable.

On the one hand it's a thoroughly acceptable setup issue for a new Legion mission, and there's all kinds of character stuff too, not just with relation to the mission and other Legion business, but also to the many losses the team has recently suffered. All stuff that should be in there, and well done too... but I would like more out of my Legion comics, and I'm not sure what more. Come on: in LSHv6, Levitz made the final storyline partly an exploration of the theme of wisdom, and was that enough for me? No, I made fun of it. So I guess there's no pleasing me.

Levitz returns to one of his favourite touches here: the Legion is overworked and understaffed. Really though things aren't that bad; they've got a membership of 22 or 23 (see below), and it's been way lower than that under Levitz. In fact, it's seldom been higher! Okay, so the new kids are still green. Surely that's offset by the decades of experience the rest of the team has. One thing I'll say, though: the Legion will live to regret inducting Comet Queen. She's not the stupidest Legionnaire ever--that would be Ferro--but she is the biggest screwup. It will not end well.

(Which is not to say that I'm against her membership!)

I was glad to see Colossal Boy recognizing how ineffective a Legionnaire he had been recently. As long as it was something Levitz had been doing on purpose, and not just out of disregard for the character. Remember how Levitz works, though: just because he's not a Legionnaire anymore doesn't mean he's not a character in the book. We have not seen the last of Gim.

Have we ever seen Paul Levitz make use of the Dominators before? I don't remember it. They're good villains but they don't stand up to overuse. I hope he's got an interesting take on them.

So! Strong issue, as a first issue should be. I liked it better than Legion Lost, I think, but I'm looking forward to both. Plus, next month: four Legion comics!

Notes:
- woman in purple robes in panel 1 of page 7
- so Harmonia Li's a "natural elemental", is she? Whassat?
- I like how Glorith's using the Legion emblem as a cloak clasp
- where was Quislet this issue? I mean, I know we don't have to see everyone in every issue, but I thought there was an effort made to get everyone onscreen for this one

Art: 89 panels/20 pages = 4.5 panels/page. One two-page spread of two panels.

Is it a fairly recent development to have the page divided into a top-to-bottom stack of short wide panels? I seem to be seeing a lot of pages like that these days.

Art by Portela. We already knew he could do good work with the Legion, and this is more of it. It's a busy-looking issue, too, with lots of detail in the background. Let's keep an eye on how long he can keep that up. I can't pick a standout panel or page; it all looks similarly good. If he keeps that up it's going to make these parts of the reviews pretty hard to write. "Art by Portela. Good again."

Membership Notes:

Well, the six Legionnaires from Legion Lost aren't on the team anymore. Nor is Colossal Boy, who's quit to join the United Planets starfleet. To replace them, we have... well, Glorith, Comet Queen, Chemical Kid, and Dragonwing for sure, and maybe Harmonia Li; it's not clear. I'll put the first four on the Legion Roster page and hold off on Harmonia for now. (Not tonight. Soon.) Here's a question, though: is this Glorith the same character as in the Silver Age and 5YL? Or is she a new character with the same name? I ask because I've got a column for "created by", and I'd like to know whether to credit her to Levitz/Jimenez or to Siegel/Forte.

I was hoping for XS but no such luck.

For those who may be reading the Legion for the first time, here's the current roster of the team, as best I can tell: Brainiac 5, Chameleon Boy, Chemical Kid, Comet Queen, Cosmic Boy, Dragonwing, Dream Girl, Element Lad, Glorith, possibly Harmonia, Invisible Kid, Lightning Lad, Lightning Lass, Mon-El, Phantom Girl, Polar Boy, Quislet, Saturn Girl, Shadow Lass, Shrinking Violet, Star Boy, Sun Boy, Ultra Boy (22 or 23). (Note that Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl seem to be on a leave of absence, or extended vacation, at the moment.)

Legion Lost #1 Review

2011-09-15T22:32:00.000-04:00

What Happened That You Have to Know About:

A group of seven Legionnaires (Wildfire, Dawnstar, Tyroc, Gates, Timber Wolf, Tellus, Chameleon Girl) are stuck in the present day, in Red Lake Falls, Minnesota, chasing a guy named Alastor who hates humans and has released some kind of pathogen. The Legionnaires aren't coping well with their surroundings and their technology doesn't work. They nab Alastor and try to return him to the future, but he blows up, apparently destroying Gates and Chameleon Girl along with him. The Legionnaires don't know what to do.

Review:

This is a fast-moving comic book. I appreciate that, and I hope Nicieza can keep it up. It's totally in my face and the Legionnaires are always off-balance. More, they're off-balance in every way; there's nothing they can count on. Not their flight rings, not their transuits, not their time bubble. Not even each other, the way they keep dashing offscreen while you're trying to talk to them. It's an excellent situation for short-term tension but I have no idea how Nicieza plans to maintain this comic in the long run. Are they going to reach some kind of status quo? Or is it just going to be one damn thing after another forever?

We don't get a lot of backstory here. My experience with comics suggests that issue #2 is going to be pretty flashback-heavy, which, oh well. Also if anyone doesn't already know about it, Nicieza gives us some extra material on Alastor and his motivations here.

I'm on the fence about Gates and Yera being dead. I'd miss 'em both. Yera's got the exact right type of powers to survive what happened to her. Gates doesn't, but he might have lived through it anyway, somehow, maybe. Plus look: both these characters, especially Gates, are quite distinctive for superhero characters, and killing them off is a waste. But we'll see.

Some nice touches. Alastor hates humans because of what happened to his sister, but can't kill the little girl who can't find her sister. Always good to have a villain with a motive. I don't have a clear idea of his powers, though; does he just hulk out? Or what is the deal?

Remember, everyone: first issue syndrome. Setup is easy; follow-through is hard. We won't know where we are with this series until we're well into the second arc. But so far I'm intrigued, because I don't know where this is going. LSHv7 #1 next week!

Notes:
- License plates: one says "POX 102", which is appropriate for the disease theme of the story; one says OU812, which is probably but not necessarily a Van Halen reference
- I like Tyroc's goggles. Don't know that I've ever seen the character so cazh
- Also fond of Woods's approach to Timber Wolf and Dawnstar's faces
- I imagine that Nicieza has considered that only Brin and Tyroc (and Yera, if available) are really publicly presentable, of all the characters on this team
- Not yet a huge fan of the LOST part of the logo. It's too big!
- Is that the famous woman in the purple hood at the top of page 10?

Art:

88 panels/20 pages = 4.4 panels/page. 0 single-panel pages; one spread of 3 panels over 2 pages, one spread of 5 panels over 2 pages.

I wasn't previously familiar with Pete Woods's art, but it has a jump-off-the-page quality that I haven't seen before on the Legion, and I like it. "Cartoony" isn't exactly the word I want, because I use it for stuff that doesn't really look like this, but it's almost the word I want. Some of the character renderings were a little scrunchy, but not objectionably so. The panel arrangements were unconventional and the panels seemed often to be zooming in more than they usually do, bringing us right into the story. Overall I liked looking at this comic book.

Couldn't help notice that Tellus was drawn with hands and feet. Ah, well; I guess all characters eventually become humanoid no matter what they start off as. How long before we find out that that's Darrell Dane flying around in Quislet's little white spaceship?

Membership Notes: With this issue, Wildfire, Dawnstar, Tyroc, Gates, Timber Wolf, and Tellus can be considered to be inactive Legionnaires, since they aren't with the main team in the 31st century anymore. Plus Chameleon Girl isn't available as a reserve member either. If and when this series comes to an end and these characters return to the future, they'll go back on the active roster, naturally, but what shall we do if these Lost Legionnaires make a friend in the 21st century? What if, I don't know, Miss Martian starts hanging around with them? We'll have to come up with a way of deciding whether such a character has become a Legionnaire or not.

Rereading the Ghostboot

2011-09-11T15:22:00.000-04:00

So I finally did what I've been saying I've been going to do, and reread the whole of LSHv6. I didn't reread all of Levitz's Adventure run, but I did read the couple of issues that were included in the storyline of LSHv6, with Saturn Queen and all that jazz, plus the LSV Special and the Annual.

And it was good! I enjoyed it more that way than I did reading the individual issues month-by-month. I'd say it wasn't as good as late-v2-early-v3-Levitz, maybe, but better than late-v3-Levitz. And it's certainly preferable to Geoff Johns's recent efforts with the team; at least Levitz is focused on the Legion themselves and not on Superman or Kon-El or Superboy-Prime.

One thing I definitely found was that some of Levitz's foreshadowing and subplot-simmering is a lot more effective when you read it this way. Harmonia Li first appeared at the start of v6, and right from the start she was emphasizing the importance of wisdom, something that wouldn't pay off for another year. Or look at Timber Wolf's mini-quest to be the guy who hunts and brings down Sun-Killer.

It's worth noting that Levitz was hampered by having to cut his stories down from 22 to 20 pages, and also by the relaunch forcing an end to the storyline with #16. We can hope that, now that the relaunch is out of the way, LSHv7 will allow him to proceed with the next storyline unimpeded, and that he's fully adjusted to the 20-page issues.

One thing I was hoping for when the comics shrunk down to 20 pages was that the stories would stay about the same length, and we'd just get more panels per page. It doesn't seem to have happened, but I suppose sometime I should sit down and run the numbers. I wonder how much harder that is for the artists, to pack more panels into a page. In one way you'd think it wouldn't make any difference, that a page's worth of art is a page's worth of art, no matter how many panels it's divided into. But then maybe there's a change in the density of detail they have to draw, and they have to take the trouble to compose the individual panels, and so on. But I do know one thing. From our point of view, the more panels there are on a page, the better, all other things being equal.

Levitz's method previously was to provide an individual story in each issue that contributed to the overall plot and also kept subplots humming along. It looks like he's still doing that, but that the individual-story aspect of it is less true than before. I wouldn't have said before that Levitz was a guy who writes for the trade, but it's always been true that he writes big long stories that just happen to be divided into smaller pieces; and that most Paul Levitz comics are connected to the next issue just as much as they were connected to the previous issue; not many dramatic climaxes. (Although, when he does do an issue that's the grand finale to a story, it's a good one.) Modern comics storytelling seems to have made enabled Levitz to continue doing some of what he's always done while deemphasizing the individual issues. Which I can't say I'm a fan of; I like done-in-one stories. (More than that: I think done-in-one stories are objectively preferable.)

I seem to be approaching a recommendation to wait for the trade on these Legion comics. I'll never do it; I like the month-by-month nature of comics and anyway a fine blog this would be if you didn't hear from me about current Legion matters but every six months. If you're not happy with the quality, though, but you're still fond of the characters, you might want to consider it.

Updates

2011-09-09T21:43:00.003-04:00

As promised, I have updated the Legion Chronological Roster page, the Legion Roster page, and the Where Should I Start with the Legion page. But I have a hunch that the two roster pages are going to have to be changed extensively over the next couple of weeks, and maybe beyond that. If I left anything out of any of these articles, let me know, won't you? I wouldn't want any mistakes to sit there uncorrected.

Legion of Super-Heroes #16 Review, and Announcements

2011-08-18T10:36:00.000-04:00

Some notes. This is the last Legion comic before the big DC relaunch. It's going to give me more time than usual between issues before the new Legion series start, and I plan to use it to good effect. The Where Should I Start with the Legion post could use an update, as could the Legion Roster and Chronological Legion Roster pages. Plus I want to reread Levitz's section of the retroboot and see how it holds up all together. I'll let you know when I've done those things.

I don't expect a lot of continuity changes from LSHv6 to LSHv7. Flashpoint gives Levitz the opportunity to make such changes, of course, but then he made it clear when he took over with LSHv6 #1 that he felt free to switch stuff around however he wanted anyway, so it's not like he's been waiting for an opening. There could be a couple of things. Superman and the Legion should still have the same basic relationship, give or take, but I guess the whole Supergirl extravaganza is up in the air again; oh well.

plok at A Trout in the Milk is washing his hands of DC and Marvel for reasons he explains himself. I support this. I can't bring myself to join him in his stand, partly because I want to keep running this blog, but I've thought about it, and I suggest that all of you do too. I have not finished with this issue in my mind and I will have more to say about it in days to come.

I'm planning on going to Fan Expo in Toronto at the end of August. Anyone else going to be there? If so, I plan on making myself easily identifiable: I'll be wearing an Ottawa Fat Cats baseball hat (bright red, logo looks like the letter O with a cat's-eye pupil in it). The expression on my face may suggest that I hate all people but that's just how my face works; if you see me walking around, go ahead and introduce yourself.

What Happened That You Have to Know About: Saturn Queen and the blue space dude try to turn Earth-Man to their side, but Sodam Yat (on Oa) and the Legion lend him their willpower and hold them off. Other Legionnaires defeat the rest of the LSV quite handily. Dyogene shows up to confront the blue space dude, and Mon-El and Earth-Man pull a nice power stunt where Mon uses his ring to let Earth-Man soak up the powers of all the Legionnaires, thereby making him powerful enough that he can absorb the blue space cove's powers. I think that's how it works. Anyway, this finishes off the blue space gink, but Earth-Man is killed in the process and the Legion wraps things up. Mon-El quits the GLC and it sure sounds like Harmonia Li's becoming a Legionnaire.

Review:
Even after all this time I can't help but think that Levitz has had to pare down his storytelling to fit it into 20 pages. There wasn't so much going on in this issue that we should have needed more than 20 pages to finish it, but it still seemed like he had to rush through the action to hit all the points he wanted to hit. Just me, maybe.

I'm going to have to go back and check the last couple issues of Adventure and also LSH #15. I want to know how all this fits together. First, there's the whole thing with Cosmic King and the attack on Legion HQ. Then there's this part in this issue where Brainy says he expected Cosmic Boy to arrive; well, where's Cosmic Boy? He doesn't appear in this comic book. I can't keep track of all these freaking superheroes. Why couldn't I have been a Fantastic Four fan instead? You don't have these kinds of problems with the Fantastic Four.

Let me see if I understand this right with the blue space joe. He's what Krona released at the birth of the multiverse, right? Is that what Levitz is implying? When Krona looked back at the birth of the universe, and interfered with it, this blue space chappie is what messed everything up from there? I wish they could have pinned a name on him.

Earth-Man's story seems to have come to an end, and I can't say I'm going to miss him. There were always a few basic ways it could have gone: he backslides and betrays the Legion, he continues as a Legionnaire that they can never be quite sure of, he dies heroically. Levitz picked door number three, which is a resolution if not an innovative one, and now we don't have to put up with Earth-Man in our Legion comics anymore.

Harmonia Li has been an intriguing character since she first appeared, and I've quite liked her. Never thought of her as a Legionnaire before now, though. She's not really the Legion type, you know? Legionnaires are young, one way or another, even Mon-El, and Li is a grownup and has been so for quite a while. Not that I have any objection; it's just different.

Notes:
- sorta looks like the first speech balloon on panel 2 of page 10 is misattributed. Should be Earth-Man saying that, right, not Dreamy?
- it's always fun seeing Brainy punch people out. Not often there's someone he can handle, but that just makes it better
- the stuff on the last page, where Levitz muses at us on the nature of faith, wisdom, and will, is just part of the price we pay for having Paul Levitz write comics for us. Overall we're coming out ahead on the deal
- so who was that villain in the pink pig costume or whatever that was?
- about time Colossal Boy did something right

Art: 78 panels/20 pages = 3.9 panels/page. 2 single-panel pages, 1 double-page spread of 8 panels.

Daniel HDR fills in this month, and does fine. Although. He may have been kinda rushed on the issue, maybe? I think? The reason I say so is that there is not a lot of detail on the backgrounds here. Lots of panels where the background is basically a solid colour. I have to say I'm not really a fan of that, but he does render the characters pretty well, and that's job 1.

Membership Notes: Earth-Man dies, Mon-El comes back full-time, and it seems like Harmonia Li joins up, although I guess we'll find out more about that later.

Adventure Comics #529 Review, and More

2011-08-04T23:31:00.003-04:00

What Happened That You Have to Know About:

The other Academy students notice the fight in Legion HQ and show up to help. Cosmic King is holding his own just fine, but in the end he tries some kind of lethal attack on the students, and Variable Lad uses some kind of reflecting power to defend them. Both Variable Lad and Cosmic King are killed in the process. Gravity Kid quits the Academy to join the SPs on Takron-Galtos.

Review:

So that's Adventure Comics.

It ended on an up note, anyway (in the sense that the story was pretty good, I mean). Although I suppose we'll see the title surface again at some point.

I'm curious about how the timing works out between this comic and LSHv6. Cosmic King showed up in LSHv6 #15, and we know now that that couldn't have happened after this issue. So it must have been before it. Is there going to be a panel in LSHv6 #16 where Saturn Queen pulls Cosmic King out of the fight and sends him to Earth?

I don't really care for how both Adventure and LSHv6 ended, or will end, with characters dying. It's too conventional. It's a surprise twist that isn't surprising or twisty.

At the end of the issue, Bouncing Boy says that the students have increased their odds of becoming Legionnaires with the events of this story. I'm not sure I see it. True, they were brave; true, they showed initiative. But they didn't use teamwork to any noticeable extent. They couldn't really use their powers effectively against Cosmic King. The only one who really got through was Variable Lad, and he got killed. To me, they don't look any more like Legionnaires than they did before.

For the Jaquaans, what exactly is the advantage of that third arm on their back? How did it evolve? There's no eye-hand coordination with it, so how do they learn to do anything with it? I'd like it if some smart science fiction thinker came up with a real good story to explain that.

Art: 75 panels/20 pages = 3.8 panels/page. Two single-panel pages.

Low panel count, but it felt like a substantial story, so what do I know. Very pretty work by Borges, too; I direct your attention to Variable Lad on page 4 for an example of what worked for me.

In Other News:

Well, we're getting a miniseries where the Legion crosses over with Star Trek, published by IDW. I guess that's one idea. It'll be drawn by the Moys, which is cool as far as the Legionnaires are concerned but I can't quite picture their style being applied to Star Trek. Best news for me is that it'll be written by Chris Roberson, for whom this whole thing is right in his wheelhouse. I've wanted to see him write the Legion for a while.

I've thought of a couple of people like that, people whose takes on the Legion I'd enjoy seeing. Matthew K. Manning, for instance; he wrote a few issues of LSH31C that I enjoyed, and I figured that he'd do okay if he had a real chance to explore the characters. Or William Joyce: he's got that pulp-retro-future sensibility that ought to work great.

That's good thinking, right? Those are two decent candidates?

Combine them with Roberson and Fabian Nicieza and Paul Levitz, all of whom are going to be writing Legion comics this fall, and all of whom have impeccable credentials, and you've got five white guys. So I just fell into the same trap DC Comics did when they were doling out books for the relaunch. How come there have been so few women working on the Legion? For instance.

Not none. Mindy Newell. Mary Bierbaum. Colleen Doran. Gail Simone. But, issue by issue, across the long sweep of the Legion's history, very few.

And I don't imagine it's anything malevolent on DC's part that leads them to do what they do. They're doing what's easy. They have a stable of creators they know, trust, and like, who are acceptably professional and who are willing to write and draw whatever Geoff Johns thinks up for the 52 different titles, so where's the percentage in looking around for anything other than that?

This is something else people have been talking about a lot this week. For instance, my colleagues over at the Legion of Substitute Podcasters wrestled with this topic and came to conclusions I disagree with. Colin Smith at Too Busy Thinking about My Comics took on a related topic.

I read an article recently, and I'd link to it except I can't for the life of me remember where I read it, about some company who does some kind of creative work. Might be advertising or something; I dunno. The people in charge of the company decided that, for the work they did, they were going to hire 50% women and 50% men, period. So they did it and it worked out great for them. They're thrilled with the results of this policy. So, okay: why can't DC do the same thing?

Most of the people who give an opinion about DC's failure to hire female comic creators will say that they don't want quotas; they want the best people hired who will therefore produce the best comics. Which is all well and good except that
a) the available talent for DC certainly exceeds the number of available jobs by so much that DC could restrict themselves to the most constraining of quotas and still be able to fill the jobs without any perceptible loss in quality
b) it's easy for white guys to say that they just want the best comics possible; maybe the rest of the world could use something in addition to quality out of their comics (and, sure, it's true that superhero comics have a predominantly male audience... but is that the chicken or the egg?)
c) if your comics have been so overwhelmingly white-and-male for so long, how do you even know that you're getting the best comics? I bet baseball fans of the 1940s thought they were seeing the best possible baseball, too, before Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby and Aaron and Mays showed them that they weren't.

So, never mind Manning and Joyce for a while. What would Kelly Link do with the Legion? What if they turned the title over to Colleen Doran? Or Tara Tallan?

When I open a comic book, I want to see stuff I've never seen before. And, sure, I'm a Legion fan: I want to see Legion stuff I've never seen before. But at this stage I don't know if Paul Levitz is going to give that to me. Maybe we could try something radical and let someone from outside the boys' club have a pop at it.

A Few Thousand Words

2011-07-31T11:17:00.005-04:00

Here's another few pictures from Sarcasm Kid's collection.

Color Kid, by Tony Cypress. And in black-and-white, too; how piquant.

Emerald Dragon, by Joe Staton.

And Thunder, by Damion Scott.

Thanks to Sarcasm Kid as always!

Legion of Super-Heroes #15 Review

2011-07-25T00:47:00.001-04:00

What Happened That You Have to Know About:

Harmonia Li uses Star Boy's power to bring the Legion to Utopia, where the LSV is already trashing the place. Then they fight.

Review:

Where exactly did all those extra members of the LSV come from? Radiation Roy and Chameleon Chief and all those guys. Was Saturn Queen keeping them in her ear for just such an occasion? I regard that as not exactly fair play on Paul Levitz's part. (Oh, wait, now I see it; Mekt explains it on page 4. Still don't like it.)

So there's not much in this issue except fighting, but it's interesting fighting, taking place in different locations and with different groups of characters. It's exactly the kind of thing that can work really well in Legion comics, and it works well here. I suppose really I should go back and reread Sun-Killer's first appearance, so I can refresh my memory of just what the trick was that Timber Wolf and Sun Boy used to beat him. Eventually I will.

The one Utopian guy says, when faced with the prospect of his world being destroyed, that he has lived long and learned acceptance. I don't think acceptance is necessarily that wise a policy. What's so wise about allowing bad things to happen? (Obvious answer: well, Matthew, you're obviously not wise enough to understand it. I reject the obvious answer.)

We've only got one issue left to wrap this storyline (and LSHv6!) up for good. Anyone think we actually make it to Oa in that one issue, or does it all end here on Utopia? (Not that Oa would be a big loss; the only one there is Sodam Yat, and he can survive in space unaided. All he has to do is stuff the extra rings in a big sack, tie a tow rope to the giant power battery, and he's good to go.) From a dramatic point of view you'd think that the LSV would polish off Utopia and the Legion would have to make their last stand on Oa, but from a time-management angle you'd have to say that we don't want to spend any of those last twenty pages traveling from one planet to another.

Notes:
- hey, Black Mace is there! When does this story take place, compared to the Adventure story about the Academy?
- notice, on page 3, the starfield effect has faded from Thom's costume
- Gates's homeworld? Still Vyrga. Still not Vyraga
- blue space baby is even older now; I guess we have to call him the blue space guy

Art: 83 panels/20 pages = 4.2 panels/page. Two single-panel pages plus one double-page panel.

Cinar's work is fine here, and basically up to his usual standard, but I'm wondering if he isn't suffering from Francis Manapul syndrome a bit.

In Other News: Obviously a lot of interesting stuff coming up for the Legion. This fall there will be four monthly Legion series on the stands: LSHv7, Legion Lost, LSH: Secret Origin, and the LSH/Star Trek crossover miniseries from IDW. Plus there's supposed to be some kind of flight ring giveaway for October. I don't know if this compares to the LSH golden age we had a few years ago when the cartoon was on the air, but it's certainly impressive, and it's going to make a lot of work for me here, which is all to the good. Let's hope that there's some quality to go with the quantity!

Have there ever been four Legion comics going on at once before? Must have been. Late '90s, maybe?

Adventure Comics #528 Review

2011-07-06T23:17:00.000-04:00

What Happened That You Have to Know About:

Graduation day for the previous class of Academy students, and they all get assigned to the Science Police, which nobody is happy about.

Meanwhile, Cosmic King, on a mission for Saturn Queen, raids the empty Legion HQ. Bouncing Boy, Duplicate Girl, and Night Girl show up to stop him and he makes short work of them, but some of the current Academy students are right behind them.

Review:

For some reason this one didn't seem short to me. I don't know why. The panel count wasn't that high and it was still only twenty pages. But it seemed like (the first half of) a substantial story.

Levitz has shuffled Jed Rikane, Lamprey, Nightwind, and Crystal Kid off to the Science Police. I wonder if that's because he doesn't have much use for the characters or because he has plans for them in their new roles. I dunno. In general I'm not a big fan of any of 'em either, but I can see a couple of useful features in Nightwind. No big deal, though.

The basic idea here, that nobody's happy about the graduates joining the SPs, is a natural one, and one that's developed in multiple sensible ways, which is nicely characteristic of Levitz's writing. A single event that spins out implications in all directions, like the destruction of Titan. We must never forget that Levitz does actually know what he's doing.

Next issue's fight could be an interesting one. There's no reason to expect that Cosmic King knows anything about the students' powers, so they may have an advantage there. Plus there could be spare Luornus kicking around who can coordinate. I don't see Dragonwing's powers as much of a difference-maker in this fight, and Comet Queen could be worse than useless: a Venusian might be right at home in amongst the comet gases. But Chemical Kid could be just the thing. Are Cosmic King's transmutation powers chemical changes, or controlled by a chemical process in his body? If so, he's in trouble.

I'm curious about Cosmic King's mission here at Legion HQ. Was he specifically trying to take the reservists off the board, or was that just something he was doing so that he could do what he really wanted to do?

Final issue coming up. I'm about ready to move on to the next thing anyway. The Academy students aren't that interesting, yet anyway, and the Adventure title has been pretty much a dog's breakfast all the way through, despite some very good work from time to time. So let's put it to bed with thanks to all concerned and bring on Legion Lost.

Notes:
- we finally get details on Jed's new powers. Personal density control, huh? Like Kono, I guess?
- confirmation that Jed and Gravity Kid are a couple. Fairly unambiguous, too; we probably can't hope for anything more definitive out of Levitz
- who exactly was that presiding over convocation?
- nice touch on Cosmic King: he doesn't like sunshine! Of course he doesn't
- the lettercol this issue contains a missive from MaGnUs, one of my co-authors on Teenagers from the Future
- I really don't like Gravity Kid's looks. I don't know why anyone would make their head look like that. It's profoundly unappealing. It's like if Friar Tuck was a speedskater

Art: 89 panels/20 pages = 4.5 panels/page. 1 single-panel page.

The art this time was split between, and I'm assuming that the inking was split the same way the pencilling was, Borges and Alquiza for some of it and Getty and Hunter for the rest. They don't tell us who did which pages but it's easy to spot the difference in styles. (And jarring.) Occasionally it was kind of underdetailed, although more effectively so than I remember getting from Kevin Sharpe. One thing I particularly liked was the panel arrangement on page 5, with Dragonwing's breath. Sometimes the features were a little exaggerated, like Duplicate Girl on pages 16 and 17... but I kind of liked that anyway. I don't think the blending of the two styles was handled as well here as it was in that Supergirl Annual, but the quality of the work is still pretty high. Oh: the way Cosmic King's powers were rendered was also pretty cool.

Legion of Super-Heroes #14 Review, and More

2011-06-23T22:33:00.001-04:00

What Happened That You Need to Know About:

Immortus is winning a fight against Wildfire and Ultra Boy, when the Titanian refugees intervene and pacify him. Elsewhere, Saturn Queen kills Akka so that the blue space waif can power up Hunter enough so that he can find Utopia, which he does, and the LSV go there and start trashing the place.

Meanwhile, Harmonia Li stops the procedure Brainiac 5 and Dream Girl were performing on Star Boy and they all, with Mon-El's ring construct, take off for Li's home planet, Utopia, the mysterious wisdom planet; they meet Dawnstar and Mon-El and Dyogene. And, I guess, the other Legionnaires, all in Legion cruisers.

Also Dreamy has a future-vision of a funeral at Shanghalla in which Brainy tells her that Star Boy's power won a battle.

Review:

Man, Saturn Queen isn't careful with her personnel, is she? She's lost Immortus, Micro Lad, Akka... The only thing that's keeping me from saying that she's being reckless or short-sighted is that I know perfectly well that she doesn't even want any long-term plans in the first place.

This doesn't usually happen, but it felt like the size of the cast was getting away from Levitz this issue. Star Boy only had a couple of lines, and his silence was noticeable the rest of the time. What kind of shape is he in? Crazy or not? We can't tell; he won't talk.

Short issue. 81 panels? Come on. Plus it's a short issue in the middle of an action-heavy arc. Obviously we made progress this time, as everyone's converging on Utopia, and a couple of LSVers got taken off the board. But it seemed like a pretty flimsy issue anyway. I swear I'm going to have to go back and reread this run of comics and see what it's like in retrospect.

What's the advantage of a world of wisdom that nobody can get to? Okay, they're wise. How do you learn from them if they aren't around? What would be different if Saturn Queen wasted the place? I would like this explained to me. It's supposed to be one of the foundations of civilization, right?

Notes:
- Immortus is looking more and more like the Doom Patrol villain General Immortus, isn't he?
- ...but what's he being set up for? Anytime a comic can make me ask stuff like that, it's a plus
- So the blue space waif has a master? Huh
- What exactly is so wise about "the end justifies the means," the way Prof. Li was trying to talk Dreamy around?
- I wonder if there's anyone we know living on Utopia
- the part where Ultra Boy talked about Superman; that was good

Art: 81 panels/20 pages = 4.1 panels/page. One single-panel page. This month the art was brought to us by Fernando Dagnino, and it's okay for a fill-in. I actually like the way he makes the Utopia wisdom-planet look; it's neat. But Saturn Queen's smile, glittery mad in previous issues, is just kind of goony here, and check out Ultra Boy at the bottom of page 6. Looking forward to Portela's return.

In Other News:

We know more now about what DC's going to be doing with the Legion once Flashpoint is over and done with: LSHv6 will end and be replaced with LSHv7, starting at #1, written by Paul Levitz and drawn by Francis Portela. No more Legion in Adventure, but we will get a Legion Lost series, featuring seven Legionnaires (Wildfire, Dawnstar, Yera, Gates, Timber Wolf, Tellus, and Tyroc) stuck in the present day, written by Fabian Nicieza and drawn by Pete Woods. Also, according to Dan DiDio, there will be no significant changes to Legion continuity; it'll be one of the least altered of all DC's titles in that respect.

All of which is not too bad.

Like almost all Legion fans, I have a lot of affection for Paul Levitz and his writing. There's no way to construe it as bad news that he's going to be continuing as Legion writer. I've been enjoying this his third run on the Legion, and I expect to continue to enjoy it. Only thing is... we sorta already know what we're getting with Levitz. He really stretched himself out on his first and second runs, but I'm not sure that he's doing the same thing now. Maybe he is. I don't know if the results of his third run deserve to be compared to those of his second run, though, or if they ever will. I do know that I would like to see what someone new has to bring to the franchise. Someone like, oh, maybe Matthew K. Manning, who did such a great job on his three issues of LSH31C. Or Chris Roberson, a big Legion fan who's fresh off rescuing the Superman title and who's boiling over with big ideas. Or even Mark Waid or Keith Giffen (or both together!), who certainly have had their chances in the past to shape the Legion, like Levitz... but, unlike Levitz, who never seemed to approach the end of what they had to say about these characters.

I am reliably assured that Fabian Nicieza is well supplied with the technical skill and adroitness necessary to handle an ensemble book like the Legion, especially when boiled down to seven characters. And he also is a big Legion fan. I've never read any of his stuff that I recall, but I'm perfectly happy to find out what he brings to the table.

Obviously there's no problem with Portela or Woods. What, are you kidding me?

I do have a couple of qualms about the storylines. I've read a couple of interviews with Nicieza where he talks about the premise of Legion Lost. My worry was that if you take these seven and isolate them in the 21st century, does your comic book lose some of its basic Legion-ness? And Nicieza seems to be aware that this is indeed a concern. Which is all I need to know; as long as he's aware of the problem, I'm not really worried about what it is he's doing about it.

It's kind of funny that DC would make a specific point of preserving retroboot Legion continuity when a) they didn't show any such consideration for the post-Crisis Legion, or the Five Years Later Legion, or the reboot Legion, or the threeboot Legion, or the animated Legion, and b) the retroboot Legion hasn't been around long enough for anyone to get attached to it. Except, of course, that we're all supposed to pretend that the retroboot Legion is the same as the original Legion, which we're also supposed to pretend is the only version of the Legion anybody ever cared about, and enough people are willing to go along that DC finds it worth sticking with.

One thing though. Look again at that lineup of characters in Legion Lost, and take note of what decade each of them were introduced in. Wildfire, '70s. Dawnstar, '70s. Yera, '80s. Gates, '90s. Timber Wolf, late '60s. Tellus, '80s. Tyroc, '70s. Removing this crowd from the Legion makes the remaining Legion very, what shall we call it, very Adventure-Comics-centric. I worry that this is a way of making the retroboot Legion extra-nostalgic.

Who's all left in the 31st-century Legion, after this? Lightning Lad, Saturn Girl, Cosmic Boy, Phantom Girl, Ultra Boy, Star Boy, Mon-El, Brainiac 5, Shrinking Violet, Sun Boy, Colossal Boy, Chameleon Boy, Element Lad, Lightning Lass, Polar Boy, and Dream Girl, all from the early Adventure era, plus Shadow Lass (late Adventure), Invisible Kid ('80s, but a legacy version of an Adventure era character), Earth-Man ('70s), and Quislet ('80s). Of course, one of these characters is presumably going to die, as per solicitation text, so there's something going on we don't know about. Also, we don't know what's going to happen with XS ('90s), not to mention the long-rumoured Karate Kid III, and there are a lot of Academy students around who could be pressed into service, some new and some less new, not to mention Night Girl, Bouncing Boy, and Duplicate Girl, all from the Adventure era.

If there's going to be any new blood in the Legion, it's probably going to come from whatever new recruits they get from the Academy. And I'm not really sold on any of the new Levitz-Jimenez characters. They've got potential, certainly. I don't know if I'm ready to hand any of them flight rings yet. Nightwind, sure. Power Boy, maybe once you explain to me what his new powers are, but maybe not. Lamprey, no; Cosmic Boy convinced me a few issues of Adventure ago. Comet Queen, well, she's a lot of fun and everything, but you can't convince me she'd actually be up to the job.

(Let's come up with a list of eight new Legionnaires to replace the seven lost ones and the one who's going to die. Here's mine: XS, Nightwind, the Teen Lantern, Karate Kid III, Power Girl, Kid Quantum, Kent Shakespeare, Flederweb. What do you think? Who are your eight?)

One more thing I want to point out. Who wants a preview of the new Legion Lost series? Because I think I know where you can find one. Here's whatcha do. Go to the message boards on the Comic Book Resources website, the DC message board specifically, and click on either the Legion of Super-Heroes FAQ thread or the Long Live the Legion! thread. And look for any posts by Alastor; there are a few, going back weeks or months.

See, I read something or other about how Fabian Nicieza was supposed to be doing something clever on message boards to promote Legion Lost, and I remembered that this Alastor cove had been posting these fanfictiony nonsequitur posts on these threads. Most tellingly, one of the threads was the Legion FAQ thread, which is moderated, suggesting that whatever was going on, it was with the connivance of the moderator and therefore not just a fanboy goofing around. So my theory is that Nicieza is posting these Alastor things, and the whole thing with Alastor and his sister is some kind of prequel to Legion Lost. Maybe, given the nature of the (at this writing) most recent post, Alastor himself is supposed to be the big villain of the series.

Don't say I never do anything for you guys.

The Legionnaires: Nemesis Kid

2011-06-11T19:22:00.002-04:00

Programming note: Next week's LSH review is going to be much later than usual, by, like, a week or so. Sorry 'bout that; unavoidable.

Nemesis Kid aka Hart Druiter of Myar, aka Churl*. Created by Jim Shooter and Sheldon Moldoff.

Legion history is full of people who join the Legion under false pretenses, to try to betray them or take them over or whatever. In general it's not worth counting them as official Legionnaires. Nemesis Kid was one such character, but it's not on that basis that I'm including him here; it's because he joined the animated-series Legion in the Karate Kid episode, and remained with the team thereafter. If he appeared in the cartoon again I missed it, but he did show up in an issue or two of LSH31C and remained a member in good standing when that series ended. Probably, if there had been a few more issues of LSH31C, the writers would have gotten around to having him betray the team in some way, but even if that had happened he had already logged enough legitimate superhero time that I'd still give him an entry here.

Nemesis Kid originally had an adaptable superpower: he had whatever superpower he needed to defeat the person he was fighting. This was formidable, but it had a big loophole: his power couldn't adapt to fighting more than one person. That's original-continuity Nemesis Kid, mind you; threeboot Nemesis Kid's powers were never described, and animated-series Nemesis Kid had the power to neutralize anyone's superpowers, which is a lot easier to parse.

Nemesis Kid was a villain. He was a longtime member of the Legion of Super-Villains, he was essentially responsible for the first death of Karate Kid, and he was executed for his crimes. Nobody misses him. For his signature moment, let's pick the one time where he really did seem like a nice guy. It's about five minutes into this clip:

(This is from the episode where Karate Kid and Nemesis Kid join the Legion. Nemesis Kid is taken on as a full-fledged member, because he's worked with the Science Police and he has real superpowers; Karate Kid is a probationary member. As such, he has to do all kinds of menial tasks around Legion HQ, such as laundry, while characters like Cosmic Boy and Nemesis Kid look sternly at him and generally lord it over him. (The racial politics of this have not escaped me. I have no idea what the writers of the show were thinking.) By the end of the episode, Karate Kid has proven himself as a Legionnaire, and Nemesis Kid offers to do his laundry.)

* not really

Yeah, Like I'm So Sure These Are Legion Sketches

2011-06-05T20:53:00.004-04:00

More Legion-related sketch art from the collection of Sarcasm Kid. He actually sent me a whole bunch of these but I don't want to put them all up at once, so here's a couple.

These are both by famous inker Bob Wiacek. First, Celeste Rockfish:

Next, Cary Wren, who isn't exactly a Legion character, but close enough:

Sometimes I wish I could draw like that. Look at them: obviously quick sketches, miles from a finished product, but they're both looking right off the page at you.

Still also wish Celeste had been developed more as a character.

Adventure Comics #527 Review

2011-06-04T23:33:00.001-04:00

What Happened That You Have to Know About:

The Academy students continue their training, and Comet Queen tells Glorith her origin story. Some of us have seen it before, and some haven't; basically, she always wanted to be a Legionnaire and let herself get strafed by a comet, Star-Boy-style. And it worked. Then there's the part we haven't heard before: she graduated from the Academy, was assigned to the Subs, and got nailed by Saturn Queen after Titanfall. Saturn Queen damaged her mind so much that it stripped out all her training and a lot of her memories, so now she's back at the Academy to start over.

Review:

These comic books are too short and it's ticking me off.

We've been having The Comet Queen Story teased at us for a while now, and I have to admit I was expecting something a little different. I figured she would have suffered all that mental damage while doing something heroic. Maybe she threw herself on some psychic bomb or other, to save a bunch of trapped children, or like that. Instead she was an unlucky victim. Granted, we do get the added bonus of amping up Saturn Queen's villainous status, which is worth doing.

The other thing we get is a more sustained focus on Comet Queen herself. Visually, she is, as always, striking: alien and weird and lithe, but not exactly sexy. Her dialogue, well... that needed to change. When she was first introduced, she spoke basically in Valspeak, but that won't fly in 2011, so Levitz had to come up with something analogous. Now she sounds more affectionate and, oh, cosmic, I guess, which is weird and may be all Levitz was hoping to achieve. Personality: she used to be meaner than this, I recall; now she's flighty and oddly attracted to Bouncing Boy, a radical interpretation of previous texts.

Maybe I'll take a minute here to kick around the big announcements from DC. The digital-release thing is okay by me. I don't plan to take advantage of it, but I like to see people try stuff. As far as the mass reset to #1 issues of 52 different series, well... I suppose I'm going to lose some things I like, such as Bryan Q. Miller writing Stephanie Brown as Batgirl, but in general the only thing I care about is whether there's going to be a Legion comic or not. And my understanding is that there is. (Rumour has it that it's going to be some kind of Legion Lost deal, at least at the start.) So that's fine.

What do I expect from this Legion comic? Honestly, I just want it to be interesting. Interesting and good would be better than interesting and not good, but I'd rather interesting-and-bad than uninteresting-and-good.

I wonder if Levitz is going to write it. (We know Cinar is moving over to the new Firestorm comic; best of luck to him.) I don't mind if he doesn't, tell you the truth; I always like to see someone new get a shot at it, and Levitz is something of a known quantity.

I also wonder if it's going to be a reboot or not. There's been speculation that this whole effort is commercially driven and the big idea is to make all the new comics maximally commercially viable. (Which would be sensible enough.) As such, do you leave the Legion pretty much as it is? You might. Or you might strip them down even more, make them a group of, oh, ten alien-futuristic superheroes trapped in the 21st century, and let all that complicated 31st-century stuff with the hundreds of characters boil away. It could happen! Anyway, I don't really care so much if the thing does get rebooted; the retroboot hasn't been around long enough for me to really get attached to it. I'm still waiting for it to grab me. And if it doesn't, well, maybe the new thing will.

As long as it's interesting.

Notes:
- Not really a fan of Grava's attitude toward the Subs, but I accept that she might think that way
- One of the letters in the lettercol was written by intrepid correspondent Martin Gray
- Does anyone else think that Levitz missed an opportunity by not having Comet Queen come from Tamaran? Would have been easy to do, back at the time
- Comet Queen was the fastest to graduate from the Academy, ever? I find that hard to believe

Art: 108 panels/20 pages = 5.4 panels/page. No single-panel pages! That hardly ever happens.

Actually the comic book wasn't that short; the panel count was significantly up, which I appreciate. Borges was especially good rendering Glorith, but I appreciate how he let us know exactly how Comet Queen's skull was shaped; the whole hair-energy-contrail thing makes more sense to me now.

Legion of Super-Heroes #13 Review

2011-05-21T23:22:00.002-04:00

What Happened That You Have to Know About:

The LSH and LSV continue fighting on Colu, with mixed results. The LSV tries to recruit Earth-Man. Saturn Queen fails to find the planet of wisdom and asks the Blue Space Urchin for help. In the end, the LSV warps away, and Harmonia Li seems to have some crazy idea involving Star Boy.

Review:

My first reaction here was, man, these Legionnaires really don't know how to fight. Look at Element Lad versus Immortus. Element Lad is supposed to be smart. He's fighting Immortus, who has a robot body of regenerating inertron. And Element Lad doesn't know what to do about that. I guess his trick with the oxygen and Willie Pete is cool and everything, but wouldn't you really want to just create more inertron? I guess it must be tough stuff to make, but you don't need much; just enough to lock up his joints and bearings. If his body's trying to make more inertron anyway, it should be easy for Jan. I thought of that right away and I'm neither a superhero nor a Trommite.

Look at Timber Wolf. He's trying to wake Earth-Man so Earth-Man can wake Brainy. Why not just try to wake Brainy himself? To be fair, he could have tried it off-screen, before we see him trying to wake Earth-Man. But since we don't see it, Timber Wolf looks like an idiot.

Or look at Shadow Lass. She's fighting Sun-Killer. If you're Shady and you're fighting a guy with light powers, wouldn't you try blasting him with your shadows? Might not work at all, I grant you, but then again it might work really well. They did beat Sun-Killer without my expert advice, of course, so who am I to complain.

Or look at Earth-Man. Hmm. Well, we don't actually see him react to Hunter's offer, so maybe he's going to turn out to be not so dumb after all. But if I'm him, I certainly let them think I'm going to go along with whatever they want. Spying on the super-telepathic Saturn Queen when your fellow Legionnaires already don't trust you is a tricky business, to be sure, but it's too good an opportunity to turn down.

My second reaction was that it's a lot of fighting and not much else; a very middle-of-the-story kind of issue. Which isn't actually true; we do get some motion on this and that. It's a rare Levitz issue that doesn't have some storyline beginning or ending, though, and this is one of them; maybe that's what I was thinking of.

I guess we've all seen the August solicits, so we know that a Legionnaire is set to die at the end of this LSV story. I have to say I'm a bit leery about this. I mean, by all means, have a character die if it makes the story better... but this death is being presented to us as just something that the Legion writer does every now and then, and maybe we should start a pool about which Legionnaire draws the black spot. Bleah.

Art: 99 panels/20 pages = 5.0 panels/page. One single-panel page. This issue didn't look typical of Cinar's stuff; I wonder how much of that is because of the inker (Glapion). In particular I wasn't so much on the last page, but I thought Quislet's transformations were particularly well done.

Still the Biggest Thrill of All

2011-05-06T23:20:00.003-04:00

Intrepid correspondent Sarcasm Kid brings to my attention a commissioned picture he's just received from Joe Prado, depicting White Lightning Lantern Lad. Thanks very much for sharing it with us; it looks cool.

Adventure Comics #526 Review

2011-05-06T23:18:00.001-04:00

What Happened That You Have to Know About:

The Academy students cover up Chemical Kid's dad's misuse of the Chemical King gene modification by magically extracting it from Alchemical Girl's body. Then they turn Black Mace and the rest over to the cops. Meanwhile, there's some inconclusive discussion about whether any of the students are Legion material.

In the backup story, XS is taking it easy and making a mosaic. Exciting, right? She stops by the Olduvai Gorge and runs into some evidence of the blue space baby. She takes a rock from the site for her mosaic, which might be important, but probably isn't.

Review:

Not much main story this issue. Only twelve pages, and not much happened of consequence. The idea of stealing back Alchemical Girl's powers is an intriguing one, though; I quite like it. It raises all kinds of questions. Like, do they have the right to do it? Can superpowers really belong to someone, do humans have a right to be more than human if they can do it? Or does it matter how they do it? I mean, if Black Mace and the gang had stolen a weapon, the students would certainly be in the clear if they confiscated it and put it back where it belonged. How much does it matter that one of the crooks internalized the weapon? Why should that mean she gets to keep it? So I liked that part.

One of Levitz's favourite Legion buttons to push is the "undermanned" one, where the Legion just doesn't have enough manpower to cover the whole United Planets. Sometimes what he used to do is have the Legion consider adding new members and then not do it because none of 'em were ready and it was better to have to few Legionnaires than another dead one. This whole Academy arc is full of this theme, and some issues of the main title also touched on it. Either Levitz is building up to one of the anticlimaxes of all time (and it'd be a neat trick if he could do it and make us like it) or we're going to get some new Legionnaires out of this. It has happened in the past. The main candidates, though... I agree with last issue's evaluation of Lamprey; Power Boy just isn't that interesting; and Crystal Kid is nothing in particular. But I'm holding out some hope for Nightwind.

XS is one of my favourite Legionnaires, so I was looking forward to the backup story here, but Jenni was acting pretty passive. She's not doing anything! She could be learning about her new homeworld, or being an active Legionnaire, or something. But no; she's making a mosaic all by herself. Okay, fine; if she needs a break and is working through some stuff, it's understandable. Until she finds something dangerous and blows it off because she figures the Legion can handle it, even though they don't know about it, as far as she knows; it's one of the stupidest things I've ever seen a superhero do.

The only thing that could justify this to me is if the mosaic was significant somehow, maybe even hypnotizing her. Except then we'd have the added problem that I don't like that idea.

Is this going to tie into Flashpoint? I'd really rather it didn't tie into Flashpoint.

Is it Comet Queen next month, or graduation? I think it was supposed to be Comet Queen but then she got pushed back a month. Looking forward to it either way.

Notes:
- Levitz seems to be suggesting that Jed Rikane has more powers than just the superstrength. Sure looked like it last issue
- Funny how much "raw genes" look like kryptonite
- I presume that Luornu's last line is for the benefit of new readers, who don't know that she actually is a nice person
- Didn't see much of Variable Lad this arc, did we?

Art: Borges: 53 panels/12 pages = 4.4 panels/page. Two single-panel pages. Moy: 38 panels/8 pages = 4.8 panels/page.

If you can't have Jimenez, you could do a lot worse than the job Borges does here. The splash page where Glorith is dechemifying Alchemical Girl is worth the price of admission all by itself, and the closeup on Chemical Kid on the last panel of page 10 is good too. The Legion is swimming in good artists these days.

I wasn't a big fan of the Moys in their previous stint on the Legion. Not that they weren't any good; it's just that their style didn't appeal to me. Their characters looked, oh, kinda plastic, like toys. (That said, I far prefer the Moys to most of the rest of the art in comic books of that era. Far.) But that's a lot less true in this issue. Don't really care for their portrayal of Night Girl, but they make Jenni look really good. And that phantasmagoria she experiences in the Olduvai Gorge is very nicely done too. Overall the backup was pretty nice to look at.

Legion of Super-Heroes #12 Review

2011-04-21T22:59:00.001-04:00

What Happened That You Have to Know About:

Mekt and Atta are trying to recruit muscle on Rimbor, and some Legionnaires show up to fight them. The Legionnaires mostly win, but Mekt and Atta get away.

Timber Wolf is still hunting Sun-Killer. Mon-El and Dyogene happen upon the rubble of the Rock of Eternity.

Brainy leaves Starman's treatment (Star Boy's treatment?), and Harmonia Li, behind as he leads a squad of Legionnaires to Colu to see why it's been cut off from the rest of the galaxy. They run into Saturn Queen and company, and there's another fight. Saturn Queen, Questor, and Zymyr duck out early, though, having found what they were looking for, and leave the rest of their guys (including Mekt and Atta, who show up at the end) to keep the Legion busy.

Review:

I have the idea that the reduced number of pages is cramping Levitz's style. We got one page each of checking in on Timber Wolf and Mon-El, and to what end? Just to remind us that they're there?

The plot here reminds me of the Great Darkness Saga. Supervillains teleporting around all over the place, chasing targets of ancient significance. The Legion pursues them and manages to contain them but not defeat them or ruin their plans (which remain mysterious). The villains are hostile to the Legion but not really interested in killing them. What would cinch it? I guess it depends on what happens in the climactic ending. (Which doesn't look like it's coming soon.)

Don't know what else to say about it. It's the middle of everything. The only real development is that Saturn Queen finds where the second world to destroy is, the world of wisdom. Wonder if it's someplace we already know about.

Notes:
- so, did Brainy manage to summon Tellus and Gates? And, what, send them after Zymyr and the other two? It's possible; Earth-Man had telepathy at the moment and might have transmitted their destination
- we get another minor supervillain in Stegus, a big dinosaur guy. I hope Saturn Queen wasn't counting on the extra personnel, though; they had no luck in recruiting on Rimbor
- so we got a glimpse of the other Star Boys as Brainy released Thom's multiversal energy, fine, but who was the one with the red mask?
- Colossal Boy gets roughed up again. Should we start keeping track of this?
- When did Mon-El meet Captain Marvel? CoIE?
- Another new supporting character: Science Police officer Adin

Art: 92 panels/20 pages = 4.6 panels/page. One single-panel page.

Cinar turns in his usual fine job. I find myself wondering about his panel arrangements. It's not like he's in a rut or anything (he had a sequence of seven pages, each with exactly five panels, none of them the same) but the panels are often stacked or layered in ways that I don't know why they're like that. I mean, I could be making it more complicated than it has to be; he could just think it looks cool.

Adventure Comics #525 Review

2011-04-15T23:19:00.001-04:00

What Happened That You Have to Know About:

In the main story, Black Mace's mysterious ally turns out to be another Phlono with chemical-reaction powers. Glorith mysteriously revives, though, and takes out all the supervillains. This whole thing is about Chemical Kid's dad and his gambling debts.

Meanwhile, Cosmic Boy and Night Girl take Lamprey and Jed Rikane on a training exercise, which goes okay but not great.

In the backup story, the activity of the blue space baby causes Mordru to wake up inside Mysa's magic. She squashes him back down and takes a spare moment to send some power to Glorith, which is what causes her to wake up in the main story.

Review:

I gotta say that twenty pages doesn't go very far when you're splitting it among three different stories. Thanks to Jimenez and his high panel count, the lead story actually has room for a lot of action, but the nature of two of the stories (Lamprey and Jed rounding up the elephants, Mysa vs Mordru) are backup-feature types of stories, and what was meant to be the main story, the action on Phlon, went into wrapup mode almost immediately. So it felt like a tag-end of an issue. Oh well; maybe it'll read better in TPB form.

One payoff we did get was Chemical Kid learning the true meaning of Christmas. Not surprising, but nice to see. And after all, there's no point in turning this guy into a villain when we have Alchemical Girl around. Let's take note of this: Levitz has been doing a nice job of replenishing the Legion's supply of useful minor supervillains. (Although this actually started with Johns and Shoemaker giving us Cryo-King, who is exactly this kind of character.)

Jed and Lamprey's mission touched on a lot of familiar Legion subjects--organleggers, escaped zoo animals, H'hrnath's species. They were combined in new ways, but it's still well-trodden ground. Of greater interest was the byplay between Cosmic Boy and Night Girl, as their history intrudes on their conversation. Of greater interest to some, anyway; it seemed to me like a scene that was included out of duty and not because there was anything new to be said about Rokk and Lydda's failed relationship.

The Mysa-Mordru confrontation was similar. It seemed obligatory. I was just thinking... what we saw in this issue wasn't that interesting. Mordru tried to mystically assert himself over Mysa and her magic, and got slapped down. What would be more interesting? Not sure about that, but maybe Blok could play some kind of a role. Mordru's weakness, after all, is to be buried alive, encased in the earth, things like that. Well, Blok basically is the earth in a lot of ways. Maybe there could be some kind of deal where Mysa traps Mordru within Blok? Maybe... I hesitate to say this, but it is possible... maybe this is what Levitz had in mind when he first had Blok attracted to Mysa way back in the Great Darkness Saga in 1982. If so, that is really planning ahead.

Not an overwhelming comic book. Next month's has the "end" of the Legion Academy story, sort of only I think not really, plus XS! Looking forward to it. All twenty pages of it.

Notes:
- well, look at all those people on the cover. Any of 'em we don't know already? Like the big guy with the shoulders? Or the little flying box? I remember the little flying box from before, but I always thought it was how Tellus attended classes before he had his helmet
- what was that that Jed was diving through there on page 11? How does that work?
- Lamprey's last name is spelled "Scott" here, not "Skott". Could be a mistake, could be a revision
- Not excited to see Mordru again

Art:
First story (Jimenez): 73 panels/12 pages = 6.1 panels/page. One single-panel page, pages of 10 and 12 panels.
Second story (Borges): 37 panels/8 pages = 4.6 panels/page. No single-panel pages.

I think one of the things I like most about Jimenez's art is the panel arrangements. Check out pages 6 and 8, for instance. While I mention it, what is the deal with panel 2 on page 8? It's got a little tag end at the bottom left. What for? Nothing in it we need to see; nothing in panel 1 that needs covering up (as far as I can tell). Maybe it's to provide a sloping effect (along with the Phlono building in panel 1) that leads the reader's eye down to the start of panel 3.

(And the first panel of page 4 is just pretty.)

I'm not really enthusiastic about Jimenez's new design for Lamprey. She looks like Fire from the JLI. Or Neon from Legion on the Run. It's just not a distinctive look. Meanwhile, I don't want to complain about the job Borges did on the backup, which overall was quite good, but he made Mysa's antennae look kind of gross.

Membership Notes:

Sure looks like Lamprey and Power Boy aren't destined to become Legionnaires. And I can't fault Cosmic Boy's reasoning, either. But what's Lamprey going to do on Takron-Galtos? Isn't there some water planet someplace that can make better use of her?

Legion of Super-Heroes #11 Review

2011-03-26T00:00:00.001-04:00

What Happened That You Have to Know About:

Some Legionnaires go to Rimbor to round up the LSV escapees from Takron-Galtos. They don't get any of the big fish. Brainy wants Dawnstar to help investigate what Saturn Queen's up to, but she insists on chasing the blue space baby instead. Dream Girl returns with Star Boy, and Mon-El shows up to assume leadership, so Brainy can treat Star Boy's mental condition. Timber Wolf searches for Sun-Killer in Japan, but finds Sun Emperor instead, and defeats him. Whatever the LSV is up to on Colu, it's severed all communications to the rest of the galaxy. And Harmonia Li shows up to accept blame for the Colu situation, for some reason.

Review:

One of the principles of Paul Levitz's writing technique, he has said, is that every time you revisit a plotline, you should advance it in some way. This comic book was written by Paul Levitz. Therefore, we should be able to see how plotlines advanced in every scene of this comic.

I guess the progress in the Rimbor scenes is that this is the Legion's first engagement with the LSV. They round up a bunch of infantry, but none of the commanders, so that's not significant. Fume and Frost are introduced as new villains, but they get caught, so... are we going to see them again? It is unclear.

Can't tell what progess was made on Takron-Galtos. Nothing we don't already know.

Dawnstar going rogue is new information; fine. Also Dreamy returning with Star Boy, and Mon-El showing up, and the stuff with Colu and Harmonia Li.

The main part of the story seems to be Timber Wolf versus Sun Emperor in Japan. I would suspect this part of being gratuitous fighting except that a) I don't think Levitz does that, and b) Saturn Queen's first appearance in this series was quite similar and that turned out to be a big setup for this storyline. So I don't think Sun Emperor's appearance here is just a throwaway. Maybe he's part of Sun-Killer's backstory somehow.

I think the part of this comic book that's going to go over biggest is Brainy's conversation with Dream Girl where he says that he stays with the Legion because they're his friends. It is an important side of Brainy's character. If he was really as arrogant and obnoxious as he was famous for being, he wouldn't stay with the Legion; he'd do something else. And this version of Brainy, as I recall, never really had to learn the lesson of friendship, not like reboot and threeboot (but not animated!) Brainy.

I am curious about just how Harmonia Li is involved with whatever it is on Colu. Because that suggests that she's tied into the whole thing with the LSV and Saturn Queen and the blue space baby and the Olduvai Gorge and everything. But then she's already connected to Saturn Queen because it was her time-travel experiment that caused the destruction of Titan, which is what brought Saturn Queen into the story in the first place. Possibly too many connections here. I mean, it's not ridiculous yet; the blue space baby didn't cause Mysa to become the Black Witch and Sun-Killer isn't Dyogene's long-lost twin brother or anything. But still. It's okay for some things not to have anything to do with each other. Makes it more realistic sometimes.

Having said all that, it's quite possible that Levitz's idea of how he wants this story to go is a good one and I should keep my yap shut until I actually see what he's got in mind.

Notes:
- the letters page has the vote totals for the election. Phantom Girl was fourth. I wonder if that was because of us
- notice they're calling him "Star Boy" and not "Starman"
- Colossal Boy must be the most incompetent superhero this side of G'nort. When was the last time he actually won a fight?
- the Moys are going to be drawing XS in Adventure this spring. Haven't they already had their chance at her?

Art: 81 panels/20 pages = 4.1 panels/page. 1 single-panel page.

This month we get a fill-in from Daniel HDR and Wayne Faucher, and it's very good by fill-in standards, although I'd rather have Cinar or Portela. HDR has a different style with faces that sometimes makes the Legionnaires look unfamiliar, and, at worst (see the first panel of page 2) approach a kind of Sharpeian minimalism that I've come to dislike. Other than that, the look of the comic is well within tolerances for this series. Note: this issue was very consistent in its panel count from page to page. Except for the splash page, all the pages had four, five, or six panels; none more than six or fewer than three. That's unusual; typically there's a larger swing.

Membership Notes: Mon-El comes back to active duty. Star Boy shows up, but I don't know if we can really call him an active Legionnaire yet.

Adventure Comics #524 Review

2011-03-17T23:09:00.001-04:00

What Happened That You Have to Know About:

The cadets, in disgrace after being caught at the end of last issue, are grounded. But Chemical Kid is worried about his dad, so he goes back to Phlon with Gravity Kid, Dragonwing, Comet Queen, and Glorith, and they end up in a confrontation with... I guess it's the Taurus Gang. Black Mace, anyway, and a few other people. And it doesn't go well.

Review:

Second-issue syndrome, but that's okay; Levitz and Jimenez have a plot in mind that's just starting to ramp up. I don't know what there is to care about with the Taurus Gang and Chemical Kid's dad, but both the villains and the planet Phlon are fairly fresh territory for Legion comics, so there's a lot of room for interesting stuff.

Characters. I hope they give Luornu more to do in this series than to be the shouty one. Seriously; she's good for a lot more than that. Also, I'm glad we got to see some of Chemical Kid's good qualities this issue; he seemed genuine in that scene where he was talking to Glorith. For a second, anyway.

Is it just me or is the legacy aspect of the Legion Academy overdone a bit? Too many of these characters have connections to the Legion. Variable Lad is Dr. Gym'll's nephew and Glorith is Mysa's student; in the past we had Laurel Kent and Shadow Kid and Magnetic Kid, all with Legionnaire relatives. Also, Chemical Kid's family is rich. I'm getting the idea that the Academy is kind of exclusive. (Obviously there are other ways in; Dragonwing seems like she's from the wrong side of the tracks, and Comet Queen and Glorith are nobody in particular.)

My Taurus-fu is not strong. I'm pretty sure I've got their other appearance somewhere, but if anyone would care to explain in the comments just which Taureans we're dealing with here and what their deal is, I'd appreciate it.

Now that we've got the Academy starring in a comic book, at least for a little while, let's think about what kind of superhero group they're going to be. I came up with ten fundamental points about the Legion here; go look at 'em and come back. Of those ten, some of the superficial ones certainly apply here (1,2,3,4,7,9, and 10). Specifically, they're trying to stress the teamwork angle, which, from a pedagogical point of view, makes sense. The differences? There aren't as many Academy students as there are Legionnaires. It's not special to be an Academy student (although see Nightwind's appearance in the "For No Better Reason" arc of DnA's The Legion series!), but it is special to be a Legionnaire, and the Academy does kind of feed on that a little.

And most of all, there's no evidence of Superman's influence in the Academy. (There was when Laurel Kent was a member, but not since then.) There's a lot of Legion influence, but nothing specific to Superman.

We could say another couple of things about the Legion that have become true since I first wrote that thing: first, that the Legion helped Clark Kent become Superman, and second, that the Legion is a beacon of diversity in a xenophobic universe. The Academy isn't really using these things either. The Academy students are overall less diverse than the Legionnaires are (do you realize how many Earthlings there are in this group?), but I suppose you could say that, as kids being taught how to be heroes by ex-Legionnaires, they're sorta playing a Superman role... except that they don't resemble Superman in the slightest. (Except maybe Jed.)

So that's how they're like and not like the Legion. Let's keep our eyes out for things we can say the Legion Academy stands for other than the obvious, that they're a way of feeding the UPs superhero systems.

Notes:
- "Since I was a snot." Way back then, huh?
- Is there a comic book character who has appeared on more covers, with less known about him, than Urk?
- I didn't realize that Gym'll was so squat compared to Variable Lad
- I have to keep reminding myself: Phlon is where Chemical King and Kid come from; Phlan is the setting of Pool of Radiance
- last panel of page 11. Is that Dragonwing or Black Mace causing that FWOOSH? If it's Dragonwing, why's she doing it?
- Michael Chiklis as Black Mace in the movie? Maybe Bruce Willis?

Art: 91 panels/19 pages = 4.8 panels/page. One 12-panel page, two single-panel pages, one case of 5 panels spread over 2 pages. 19 pages?! Hold the line at $2.99 all you want, DC, but it doesn't mean much if the comics keep shrinking.

But Jimenez does his usual fine job. I particularly like his Bouncing Boy. And Phlon looks like a real interesting place! (Despite what Chemical Kid says about it.)

Legion of Super-Villains #1 Review

2011-03-10T21:55:00.000-05:00

What Happened That You Have to Know About:

Saturn Queen raises hell on Takron-Galtos and recruits a new Legion of Super-Villains. Their mission is to reduce the universe to anarchy, and in pursuit of this they destroy the Rock of Eternity and are about to raid Colu to select their next target.

Review:

The biggest thing I take from this comic book is the new cosmology: the universe rests on three worlds: Dormir, Ttrxl, and Earth... no, wait. The worlds of faith, wisdom, and willpower, which turn out to be the Rock of Eternity, something we don't know yet, and Oa. This strikes me as something that Levitz (and other DC writers) could get a lot of mileage out of. Especially how the three have been conspiring against evil throughout history.

Levitz's take on Saturn Queen is noticeably different from Geoff Johns's. Johns saw her as someone who believed people were evil and corrupt deep down, and wanted to use her powers to bring that out in everyone. The opposite of Saturn Girl, who always sees the best in everyone. Levitz has (with the assistance of the blue space baby) turned her into a kind of psychotic evangelist of anarchy. I think I liked Johns's idea better, but there's no denying that Levitz is making her formidable. (Although my favourite is still 5YL Saturn Queen.)

The new LSV seems like an interesting group. I mean, anytime Lightning Lord is the voice of reason, you know you're pretty much through the looking glass. Some of the LSVers pose interesting questions, like just what is Sun-Killer's backstory? Or who was Immortus before he put his brain in the robot? General Immortus of Doom Patrol fame? What's Questor's story? (One problem: Zymyr. Anytime you have a teleporter in your group, you've got to work extra hard to make them more than just the one who gives everybody a ride all the time. Right now all Zymyr has is his alien appearance and speech pattern. It's not enough. (And if you want to go through that reasoning, substituting "Gates" for "Zymyr", it'll be just as applicable.)) (Oh, and what's Hunter doing here? Does Levitz actually have an idea for making him interesting?)

The obvious question with the Rock of Eternity is, now that it's been destroyed, does that mean that Thunder's going to be showing up in this book? Probably not. Levitz doesn't seem to like doing stuff that's already been done. Presumably that hand that appeared in the last panel of page 32 is whoever's acting in the role of the wizard Shazam these days. I like how the Rock looks like a big floating d8.

It's a pretty good comic book even though it was mostly just setup. I mean, the only reason all this didn't happen in the pages of the regular LSH title is that Levitz wanted to have some room to spread out, right? Which is fine. After all, more is better. And, even if we didn't get a complete story, the story we did get is, oh... semi-complete? I guess you could say that Saturn Queen succeeded in creating her new LSV, and that's the story. And only two weeks until we find out what happens next, and an issue of Adventure in between! We're being spoiled.

Notes:
- the being extruded by the Rock of Eternity looked a lot like Abnegazar, Rath, and/or Ghast, huh?
- wonder what kind of recruits Mekt is going to find on Rimbor
- I'm going to miss Micro Lad. Oh, wait: no I won't

Art: 154 panels/38 pages = 4.1 panels/page. 4 single-panel pages and 1 double-page spread. Nice job by Portela. In particular I like how he portrays Saturn Queen. I'm not sure that her kooky-bloodthirsty appearance really fits with her character, but it's nice to look at. (I say Emma Caulfield plays Saturn Queen in the movie.) Really, it's shocking how good Legion art has been over the decades, with the rarest of exceptions.

The Legionnaires: Superman X

2011-02-21T16:22:00.000-05:00

Superman-X aka Kell-El of Earth. Created by, uh, the writers of the Legion of Super-Heroes cartoon. I could look up the names, but I wouldn't know which ones were specifically responsible for this guy.

In the second season of the Legion cartoon, some important focus-group testing showed that the collection of yard apes and crumbcrushers that KidsWB wanted to sell shoddily made toys and nutrition-free food simulations to wanted fewer girls, more fights, more costumes, and more cool superpowers than the show had had before. So the cartoon's creators immediately made plans to revise some characters' looks, to remove Saturn Girl and one-third of Triplicate Girl from the scene, and to beef up characters like Brainiac 5, Timber Wolf, and Lightning Lad and make them more !xtreme and fighty. This worked in the sense that they did it and weren't struck down by a bolt from the heavens, but it didn't work in the sense that the show wasn't as good and was cancelled at the end of the season for unrelated reasons anyway.

The other thing they did was to introduce Kell-El, an aggressive, impatient Superman clone from the far future. I guess the idea was that he'd be just like Superman, but a better fit for the show since he had a new costume, some crystal-generating and energy-blast powers as well as the regular Superman powers, and wasn't interested in anything but fighting evil as hard as he could. Part of the arc of Season 2 was to give this dork some sense of humanity and empathy and heroism, making him more than just a warrior. I have to tell you that I could have done without him, but, hey, he was a Legionnaire.

Here's a look at him from his signature moment (about a minute and a half into this):

...in an episode that addresses just what happened to Lightning Lad's twin sister Ayla. Turns out that when the Lightning Beasts of Korbal attacked the three Ranzz siblings, Garth and Mekt got lightning powers but Ayla was actually turned into some kind of electric cloud that's been wandering the galaxy ever since. The Legionnaires encounter this cloud but have no idea what it is... except they can detect a signal coming from it, that of a little girl's voice singing a children's song. This notion blows Kell-El's tiny little mind.

"The cloud is singing?!"

The big goof.

Come Look at My New Website

2011-02-21T15:45:00.000-05:00

I started a new website. It's at matthewe.com, and you're all invited over there to check it out.

Mostly what it'll be about is this novel I'm writing and will publish, but I expect to touch on other stuff as well. Particularly of interest to this crowd is the Superhero of the Day feature I'm planning.

I'm not abandoning Legion Abstract; I'm planning on giving it about the same level of attention I have been all along. Anything I write that's Legion-specific will still go here; anything that's about superheroes in general may go here or there.

Legion of Super-Heroes #10 Review

2011-02-16T21:53:00.001-05:00

What Happened That You Have to Know About:

Cosmic Boy finally gets through to Mon-El, wherever he is, to tell him that he won the election. Mon-El doesn't want the job, but it looks like he's going to come back and take it anyway; in the meantime, Brainy's in charge. Brainy sends Cham, Phantom Girl, and Yera to Brande's estate to poke through the records and figure out what the Durlan assassins are really up to. This forces a confrontation with Cham's aunt, which turns into a fight that the Legion wins.

Meanwhile, Dawnstar wakes up and flies off after the blue space baby in her underwear.

Review:

Man, these comic books feel short now! Oh, well; it's a lot better than an eight-page backup.

The interesting thing is that there was a twist in the story of the Durlans: they weren't zealots; they were thieves. Kind of like in Die Hard. I like that. It would have been more interesting if there had been more riding on it, although I'm not sure how that could have been accomplished. As it is, I'm interested that their plan is different from how I thought it was, but there's no consequence to me because of it. Unless, perhaps, the Legion's finances are now all messed up?

So right now Brainiac 5 is the acting leader. This is not such a bad thing. Original-Legion Brainy is actually a nice guy, and obviously he's smart. He has social skills. Now, retroboot Brainy has a few spikes on him, but he's still nowhere near as bad as reboot or threeboot Brainy. He might actually make a decent leader. If this issue is any indication, he'll be fine.

Okay! Enough Durlans! Let's see what the LSV is up to these days.

Notes:
- What's the rush, Dawny?
- Yes. "Relieved." That's the word.
- Once again. Vyrga. Not Vyraga.
- I do like the distinction drawn between Cham's and Yera's specialties. It might be nice, someday, to see a situation where Yera's acting skills are more useful than Cham's, what, combat experience.
- Dr. Gym'll with four arms again.
- I'm assuming there's more to be said about Chief Zendak's death. It's like the destruction of Titan; one of those things that I think Levitz wants to take a long look at.

Art: 90 panels/20 pages = 4.5 panels/page. One single-panel page. Another nice job by Cinar.

Membership Notes: Dawnstar's out of her coma and Mon-El seems to be coming back to active duty. Yera, aka Chameleon Girl, shows up in this issue, but a lot of emphasis was placed on her acting career, suggesting that she's a reserve member just helping out. I prefer that. I like Yera just fine, but I also like my superhero titles to have a strong supporting cast, and, to me, that's where Yera belongs.

Adventure Comics #523 Review

2011-02-09T22:18:00.001-05:00

What Happened That You Have to Know About: The Legion Academy brings in a new student from the Sorcerer's World: Glorith. Glorith joins some of the other Academy students for some after-hours partying. Duplicate Damsel takes a dim view of this and puts them through a surprise training exercise against Night Girl, which Chemical Kid, the bad seed, succeeds at. They head out later for some more partying but are unexpectedly apprehended by the cops.

Review:
First item: some of the cover ink came off on my fingers. This is unacceptable. I mean, I don't really care about whether the thing is in mint condition or not, but I would like the freaking ink to stay on the paper. It's not a damn newspaper.
I like how Levitz is giving the students distinct personalities. That may sound like a strange thing to say; isn't it a standard thing for a writer to do? Characterization? But Chemical Kid is already more interesting than Chemical King ever was, and I wasn't sure that was going to happen. Comet Queen has depth all of a sudden; who would have thought that was possible?
Let's talk about Glorith, shall we? Glorith has three basic points of contact with Legion continuity. The first one was back in Adventure #338, when she was the hapless stooge of the Time Trapper. She messed up fighting the Legion and he de-aged her to protoplasm. I suspect that it's this Glorith that Levitz is using: if that protoplasm were allowed to grow up into a person again, how old would it be by now? Old enough to attend the Legion Academy?
Second point was her role in the Mordruverse/Glorithverse extravaganza that occupied so much of the 5YL era. This is out of continuity now, and Paul Levitz is notoriously not emotionally attached to this part of Legion history. If another writer had brought Glorith back, I might have suspected that there'd be some effort made to bring back some part of 5YL, but this is not something I expect from Levitz. So I don't really think that 5YL Glorith will have much similarity to how the character is shown in this story.
Third point was the cameo appearance of her corpse in Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds. How can she be dead there but alive here? Three* possible answers:
1. Some kind of time-travel thing will happen in the future to make it all fit together.
2. It's not the same Glorith.
3. Shut up, that's how.
Of these answers, 2. is my least favourite. I prefer 3., but I understand that some may insist on 1., and that's okay too.
Apparently Glorith's powers in this are "magic", full stop. 5YL Glorith had had some time-manipulation abilities. Now, these aren't mutually exclusive, so it's still possible that the two versions will converge in this sense, which would make sense given Glorith's relationship to the Time Trapper. What I was thinking of, though, is what kind of superhero name she's going to have. 'Cause, see, if she did have the time-manipulation powers, she could call herself Future Girl, and the whole thing comes full circle.
The action that we saw this issue was strictly training-exercise stuff. That's fine. But we're going to need some actual superhuman conflict here, and I wonder just what the recipe is for providing it. It can be done, of course; no problem there. Look at New Mutants, or Harry Potter. But what's Levitz going to come up with?
Adventure Comics has had a ridiculous number of ups and downs in the short time since its revival. But there hasn't been an up as up as this issue, and I haven't been looking forward to any next issue as much as I am now. This was a real good start.

Notes:
- Hey, there's Harlak again. Hi, Harlak.
- I like how Blok and Mysa haven't actually gone evil and still consider the Legionnaires their friends.
- How exactly does it come about that Glorith is attending the Legion Academy but doesn't understand that the idea is to maybe become a Legionnaire one day?
- Just how long of a course of study does the Academy offer that Jed and Lamprey are still students after all this time?
- Are we supposed to infer that Gravity Kid and Jed are a couple? Or Jed and Lamprey? Or does Jed just hang out with everyone with no shirt?
- Look, it's Urk. Hi, Urk.

Art:

The art is of course famously by Phil Jimenez, and it looks awesome. I mean, look: the Legion has had some great artists over the years, and I've been a fan of many of them. There are almost too many to list. But even the best and most famous of them, like Cockrum or Grell or Giffen or Kitson, have been great Legion artists partly because of their talent and partly because their style brings in something that fits with the Legion. That's not what's going on here. Jimenez is giving us some George Perez action here, where the style gives you this transparent impression of photorealism, where everything looks good not because of his take, but because it looks good. You know what I mean? The kind of style that tricks you into thinking that he doesn't have a style, he's just showing you what everything really looks like. When it works as well as it does here, it looks better than anything else. He can stay as long as he wants.

131 panels/20 pages = 6.6 panels/page. (That's a lot.) 1 single-panel page, and 4 pages with 10 or more panels. Man! Can Jimenez keep that pace up as a regular artist? It'd be great if he could.

--

* or maybe, just maybe, Glorith is Ben.

Legion of Super-Heroes Annual #1 Review

2011-02-06T21:06:00.002-05:00

What Happened That You Have to Know About: A new Emerald Empress has taken over Orando, and happens to capture Lightning Lass and Shrinking Violet. There is fighting, and partway through, Sun Boy, Sensor Girl, and Gates show up to help. Eventually they defeat the Empress.

Review: Why exactly was I supposed to like this comic?

Was it because of the Emerald Empress? I've seen Emerald Empresses before, and there was nothing particularly interesting about this one. Was it because of Orando? Orando's boring. Was it because of the art? See below.

I did like that it was a self-contained story. I did like Vi's exploration of the Eye; that was probably the strongest part of the Annual. I like the limited cast of characters. I like the efforts made to make the comic book new-reader-friendly.

The new Emerald Empress is not a compelling figure. We spend the whole comic getting to know her, and then at the end she isn't the Empress anymore. Her origin is on the trite side; another sexually victimized woman stumbles across a power source that's too much for her. It's been done before, and I wouldn't mind if it wasn't done again. Like with Cera Kesh, for instance, except I liked Cera better than this. Well, the Eye's still out there; I hope it picks someone more on-the-ball next time. Like, maybe, Harmonia Li? Although I like her well enough without needing her to be the new Empress.

We're reminded, of course, of the Legion of Super-Villains' attempt to take over Orando and have it for their own. In that story, Ayla switched from being Light Lass back to being Lightning Lass; it was kind of a new chapter in her life. I was looking for something similar here, except it didn't happen.

Notes:
- eye don't like the conceit of the Empress using the word "eye" as a first-person-singular pronoun
- I wonder if that was Oli Queen showing people around Weisinger Plaza
- still no definitive word on Vi and Ayla's relationship
- I guess this Annual takes place before the blue space baby put Dawnstar into the coma
- has Levitz decided that Gates just doesn't take part in fights? I'm going to have to check my reboot issues to see how much he mixes it up in them...

Art: 178 panels/39 pages = 4.6 panels/page. 4 single-panel pages. (Not counting all the stuff at the back.)

You may have heard that Keith Giffen did the art on this comic book. I was quite looking forward to it. Then I actually read it. I don't want to be too harsh: when he's not drawing people, Giffen does a fine job in this comic. And sometimes when he is. But the way some of the characters are rendered...

I don't want to be a jerk about this. So what if Ayla and Vi look brawnier than I'm used to? Really, it's sensible that a superheroine would have a powerful build like that, and they aren't teenagers anymore. And as long as they're well-portrayed and superheroic, so what if they aren't attractive? Prettiness isn't a necessary ingredient here; if Giffen wants to draw a superheroine with a face like a pumpkin, he's got the right to do it, and I just have to get used to it.

But still. There's some weird stuff going on with Giffen's anatomy here. Limbs are bent in odd places, heads and shoulders and necks are stuck on any which way, and women's breasts start too high up on their chests. For instance, look at Ayla on page 12, panel 2. I didn't like looking at a lot of the characters in this story sometimes. (Giffen's Gates, in particular, is not one of my favourites.) If Giffen becomes the regular artist again, which has been discussed, I hope he doesn't keep drawing Legionnaires the way he does here.

Is it because of the eye injury and the big rush? Is it the inkers? Is Giffen trying stuff? I hope it's Giffen trying stuff, because that means he can stop.

Membership Notes: Sensor Girl seems to be taking a leave of absence as of this comic book. Looks like Paul Levitz is trying to trim the roster back a bit. (My guess for the next one to go? Element Lad.) Maybe he has some new characters in mind; that'd be good.

Legion of Super-Heroes #9 Review

2011-01-19T23:57:00.001-05:00

What Happened That You Have to Know About:

Brainiac 5 and Chameleon Boy go to Durla to try to get a handle on the assassins from that end. Chameleon Boy gets his costume ripped off and eventually Brainy figures something out and says they have to go back to Earth because of Cham's aunt.

The remaining assassin attacks a United Planets council meeting and Tyroc and Timber Wolf fight him off.

After Chief Cusimano puts pressure on the Legion, Tellus accesses Dawnstar's powers while she's comatose to try to find Zendak, but (unsurprisingly!) is unsuccessful.

Review:

That 20 pages really does seem shorter. I wasn't sure it would, but it did this time.

Part of Levitz's method for writing comics is that, every time he checks in on a plot or subplot, it should be advanced in some way. In this issue, it's obvious how part of that is achieved; Brainy figures out that Cham's aunt is involved with the assassins. That's fine. It's not as clear how the Dawny/Zendak line is advanced, or the fight against the assassins themselves. I guess the first one depends on how final GiGi takes Tellus's assessment that Zendak's dead, and the second one depends on just what the Durlan meant when he said, "My purpose here is served anyway."

So Cham's aunt is the mastermind here? Well, that's... easy, I guess. I mean, we haven't seen the character in forever, so we can do without her no problem. So what's the big deal, then? I guess I shouldn't complain; I was a bit worried it was going to be Yera.

The thing of it is this. The Durlans are basically personality-free. They don't have names as far as we know, and there's no telling one from another. Their power of shapeshifting is reasonably interesting but familiar enough that it isn't a big attraction. What they mostly have to sell as villains is their motivation. The isolationist Durlan mindset is strange, on the one hand, and when you combine it with their desire for revenge it makes it a pretty intriguing situation. See, we can identify with the Durlans up to a point (which is Superhero Comics 101, make your villains relatable); we, and the Legionnaires, sympathize with them for wanting revenge for Brande's murder. They're totally wrong in their choice of targets, of course; the Legionnaires already dealt with the guy responsible, and the Durlans could probably have found that out without too much trouble. But we can't just say that they're evil, they're misguided, they're crazy; it's not that easy, and that's why this story isn't boring.

I would have liked to see more of Tellus trying to find his way through Dawny's mind. As it is, we only got hints of what it's like in there, how her powers make her experience of the world different from ours, what difficulty Tellus might have in dealing with it. It could have been a whole issue on its own!

In a way it's stupid for me to review these issues. Because the strength of a Paul Levitz comic book is that you can save it up and go back and reread them all in a row a couple of years later and it'll be really good. If you review them when they first come out, though, one at a time, you get the sneaking suspicion that not a lot is happening. It's not true, but it does seem that way. Levitz sneaks up on you.

One thing I was wondering about was whether there would be any references to the stuff that happened in the Annual that we're supposed to know about by now but don't because it hasn't come out yet. I guess they're canny enough to avoid that one.

Anyway, the Durlan thing is supposed to end next month, and by then I'll have had quite enough of it.

Notes:
- still Vyrga. Still not Vyraga.
- okay, good: an explanation for Brande's new dialect.
- where was Gates during the fight against the Durlan?
- I imagine Cham's use of the hummingbird form is a callback to his previous visit to Durla, mentioned in this issue. Trying to make a point to the Speaker?
- the Legionnaires sure have been having bad luck with the Cancellite.

Panel Count: 90 panels/20 pages = 4.5 panels/page. One single-panel page. (Cinar/Faucher)

The most noticeable thing about the art in this issue is the different style they switch to while Tellus is in Dawny's mind. It looks neat, like it was done with coloured pencils or something. I also like Cinar's Durla and the shot of Gates teleporting in.

The Legionnaires: The Detectives

2011-01-09T15:19:00.007-05:00

I recently wrote an article that explored all the different things that superheroes do. Originally I was going to include that as part of this article, but decided it deserved its own separate existence. Anyway, it turns out that one of the jobs a superhero might expect to have to perform is that of detective. Here are two of the Legion's best detectives.

Chameleon Boy, aka Reep Daggle of Durla, aka Chameleon. Created by Jerry Siegel and Jim Mooney.
Celeste Rockfish, aka Celeste McCauley of Earth, aka Neon. Created by Keith Giffen, Tom and Mary Bierbaum, and Al Gordon.

In preparation for writing this article, I checked the famous 2994 Sourcebook to see how many ranks the various characters had in the Detective skill. Cham was an 8, which is very good indeed, and Celeste was a 7, which is exactly half as good. The only other Legionnaires to have the skill at that level were Brainiac 5 with an 11 (understandable, in that you need to be able to simulate 12th-level intelligence in as many ways as possible) and Colossal Boy with another 8 (which, I don't know, must be a combination of his experience and his Science Police training).

Cham is one of the longest-tenured Legionnaires, of course, and under Paul Levitz he became (after some growing up!) an excellent character. Likable, relaxed, intelligent... Cham seemed like he had it all figured out. (Reboot Cham was much the same, once he learned the language, but threeboot Cham was a vastly different character. Animated Cham was a young-loose-cannon type; not sure why they decided to go that way with him.) He has, of course, the Durlan power of shapeshifting; Paul Levitz in Adventure Comics #516 was kind enough to set out the current rules for just how Durlan shapeshifting works, and it's admirably nonrestrictive.

You could say that Cham is the closest thing to Batman that the Legion has. He's a detective, for one thing, and he comes from a rich family, for another. (His dad was Legion sponsor R.J. Brande, if you're joining us in progress; it's a long story.) Like Batman, he had to grow up without his father, but unlike Batman, his father didn't die until Cham was a long-established superhero. (Let's imagine Cham, instead of a young Bruce Wayne, saying, "A bat! That's it! I shall become a bat!" And then a minute later, "That was fun. Now I shall become a raspberry bush!")

As a detective, Cham's technique isn't so much deductive as infiltrative. He works by using his superpowers to go undercover, and find the truth out that way. Here, he solves the Arctoraan Jewel Case (S&LSH #249) using just this method:

After some efforts at conventionally investigating fail...

Celeste was... well, she never really got her chance at the spotlight. In fact, I would say that exactly zero percent of her potential as a character has ever been touched.

Celeste was a Five Years Later character. She was a private detective (and estranged cousin of sleazy zillionaire Leland McCauley) hired by Earthgov (through Sun Boy) to investigate Roxxas's murder of Blok, and this brought her into contact with the Legionnaires. Then she got caught in the crossfire when Roxxas attacked the team, and was badly hurt, but was healed when she was unexpectedly invaded by what was probably some Green Lantern energy. And then it was sort of assumed that she was part of the Legion, although just how or why this happened was never addressed. For one thing, she didn't have any actual superpowers for quite a while after that; it took years before she was converted into some kind of energy being. Maybe that's what they had in mind for her all along, but even when she had powers she seemed suspiciously generic.

Anyway, I think she was a lot more interesting as a PI than as a green glowing humanoid who can fly and shoot energy blasts, so as her signature moment I pick the little hint of detective work she was allowed before she got caught in the Mangle of Generic Superhero Neglect. That's Celeste with the auburn hair.

Adventure Comics #522 Review

2011-01-05T23:06:00.001-05:00

What Happened That You Have to Know About:

Some guy called Sun Killer tries to spring Saturn Queen from the ship taking her to Takron-Galtos. Mon-El shows up and stops him. Also some kind of blue space baby is there; Saturn Queen prays to him in her sleep, but he leaves when he sees Dyogene (who's there accompanying Mon-El). Dyogene and the blue space baby are apparently some kind of old enemies.

Dawnstar's still comatose on Medicus One and Dr. Gym'll says it doesn't look good. There's also something going on with Harmonia Li, who's on her way back to Earth.

Review:

Look at what Levitz has done here. With Dawnstar, I mean. The plot requires that the Legion not be able to find Mon-El, and that they not be able to find Chief Zendak. Therefore Dawnstar's powers can't be available to them. Therefore Dawnstar has to be in a coma.

This is the whole trouble with Dawny. Her powers are just too useful for her to be allowed to use them. DnA had it right when they made up Shikari: the power to find a place is a lot easier for a writer to cope with than the power to find a person.

Anyway, it's kind of clumsy, don't you think? Put her in a coma to patch a plot hole? Levitz shouldn't let me see him palming a card like that.

Adventure Comics continues to be neither fish nor fowl. This issue, while a complete comic book superhero story (don't get me wrong), seems like an appendix to the main LSH title. Maybe Adventure will get an identity of its own once the Legion Academy stuff starts; I hope so.

Anyway, while it was complete--Mon-El, in his first act as a Green Lantern, stops a prison break, and obviously needs a lot more training with the ring--it doesn't seem entirely standalone. If we only had two issues of Mon-El's initiation with the GLC, shouldn't they have taken us further into it? It feels like the start of something that's not going to be finished. Oh, and the stuff with Saturn Queen and her LSV is fine... but it's also something that's going to be resolved in the main LSH title, not this one.

Imagine if you were only collecting Adventure and not paying attention to anything else DC was doing. Do you think you'd find it a satisfying experience?

I feel like I'm dancing around the point. What was the meat of this issue? I guess it was Sun Killer himself. He seems like an interesting sort of a supervillain. He's motivated, he's got a clear sense of his limitations, he's got something intriguingly nonstandard about his powers (taking the light from the cold world of Orivan?), and he's very polite. I think Levitz has a keeper here. (Despite the fact that the Legion's had more sun-powered villains than any two superhero teams can use.)

Notes:
- Sun Killer is the latest in a long line of Japanese solar-themed supercharacters. Isn't it just as easy not to be stereotypical?
- Tellus has hands again in this issue.
- I'm not sure if Sun Killer is supposed to be the thing that launched itself out of the Olduvai Gorge last issue and took out Wildfire and Dawnstar. Somehow I think he isn't.
- Or maybe the space baby is the thing from Olduvai. I like that better.
- That's Sun Killer on the cover of the LSV special coming in March. I wonder if Cryo-King will also put in an appearance.

Panel Count: 84 panels/20 pages = 4.2 panels/page. One single-panel page. The art this month is provided by Geraldo Borges and Marlo Alquiza, and it looks okay. Not the best, but fine. I liked the Harmonia Li parts most of all.

Oh! Let me talk about the cover! I just realized something. The Legion symbol that's used on the cover? Circle, inside of which is a letter L, and in the crook of the L is a shooting star arcing down?

Has anybody ever speculated on just what that shooting star represents?

I put it to you that it represents a small rocket carrying the young Last Son of Krypton down to the surface of the Earth.

Suprmetrics 2: What Do Superheroes Do?

2011-01-03T15:15:00.001-05:00

Recently in this blog I've been keeping up with reviews okay but haven't been doing many other articles. Ideally I'd like to do one or two other articles every month. Not sure that I will, but I'd like to.

Also I'd like to mention that I may be shifting my review schedule a bit. It's been my policy to try to review every Legion comic on the day that it comes out. I have another writing project* I'd like to devote more time to, though, and one way to make that easy for me might be to shift the comic reviews to the first weekend after the comic comes out. I haven't entirely decided yet, and I'm probably not going to make a rule for myself, but if a Legion comic hits the streets and you don't see a review here that Wednesday evening, it may be because I've decided to do it Saturday instead.

Anyway, I was about to write another entry of The Legionnaires, and I figured out a way to introduce it, and then I realized that my introduction should be a post on its own. This is that post.

One of the things I like to pretend this blog is for is to break down superheroes and the superhero genre. I'm curious about that stuff. Not only do I have a lot of affection for superheroes, but they're about as odd a cultural artifact as you could ask for, and so I think that anything we can figure out about them is worth it.

I don't imagine that what I'm about to say is going to be revolutionary or insightful or anything. Actually I think it'll be elementary and obvious. But I'd still like to do it because I don't recall it having been said before, and it's the things that go without saying that should be said the most carefully.

One way we can look at superheroes is in terms of what they do. What do superheroes do?

We can break the job of "superhero" down into a list of other jobs. Not all of these will apply to all characters (which is part of what makes it interesting). In alphabetical order, with shorthand codes in brackets at the end:

-Bodyguard. Self-explanatory. Rare, but it does happen. (BG)
-Celebrity. Like Booster Gold used to try to be. Anytime a superhero shows up at a parade or cuts a ribbon at a mall opening or whatever, she's acting in the role of celebrity-superhero.(CL)
-Detective. Detective-superheroes investigate mundane or partially mundane crimes that have already happened. (DC)
-Diplomat. Includes first contact with alien races. (DP)
-Explorer. Self-explanatory. Includes outer-space exploration, undersea, lost worlds, other dimensions, microverses, time travel... (EX)
-Policeman. Not exactly the same as "detective"; a policeman-superhero is one who stops mundane crimes as they're happening. (PC)
-Rescue Worker. Rescues people from disasters, whether man-made or natural, and may help to fix the disaster itself. (RW)
-Role Model. This is a bit of a vague one, but I think it belongs. When a superhero makes a public appearance to inspire kids, or acts as a community leader, he's acting as a role-model-superhero. Examples: the Detroit-era Justice League, 'Mazing Man, Meteor Man. (RM)
-Scientist. Not that the science itself is that superheroic, but it often provides technology or discoveries helpful in the superhero's other roles. Also, there's often an overlap between "scientist" and "explorer". (SC)
-Soldier. Superheroics do occasionally overlap with military operations, as in the case of an alien invasion, or like with the Invaders or All-Star Squadron. (SO)
-Spy. Really this is just here to reflect that often superheroes have to be stealthy and sneaky and not so much fighty. They hardly ever work as actual spies. (SP)
-Warrior. Fighting monsters, giant robots, powerful supervillains, or other superheroes is the work of a warrior. (WA)

Here are some jobs that are specifically not part of being a superhero:

-Judge. Pronouncing a person guilty of a crime, sentencing him, and executing that sentence. (JG)
-Social Activist. Transforming society in potentially unwelcome ways. (SA)

I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that I left some stuff off of these lists; if you have any suggestions, please leave them in the comments and I'll work them into the article if I agree.

I think that when people don't like some particular take on a superhero, it's because of an issue with these roles. The threeboot Legion? SA is on the Don't list. Superman Returns? Not enough WA. I think Kingdom Come came about because of an industry-wide overemphasis on the WA role and an underemphasis on everything else.

In fact, Superman is a good touchstone for this idea. Anything that a superhero might do, we can ask the question, would Superman do this? If he would, it's an appropriate superheroic activity. If not, not. Look at the SA role: when Superman was first created, he did do some SA-type stuff, where he fought for the little guy and stuck it to the man and what have you. But somehow it was decided that that didn't really fit the idea of the character, and now the SA role is not part of superheroics. (Which is not to say that the threeboot Legion aren't superheroes! Of course they are. They're superheroes and social activists.

But we can see the Legion all over that list. They're always being dragged into jobs where they have to be DPs or RWs or BGs. (Maybe there should be an Animal Control entry on there.) And it's granular: Brainiac 5, for instance, is the best suited Legionnaire for the SC role, but you wouldn't want him as a WA. You'd want Timber Wolf or someone. Mon-El prefers EX, although he's pretty good at SC and RW and WA and even SP. And so on. If we chose, we could go through a comic book and pick it apart based on what superheroic activities are present: LSHv7 #10: page 1-7, RW; page 10-11 WA, page 17-20 PC. Collect enough data like that and we could get a pretty good idea of how different writers see their characters, or how they see superheroics in general.

Again, I don't pretend that any of this is profound. But I hope now that it's explicit and that we have a bit more of a vocabulary to talk about it, maybe that'll help us come up with something that's a little more profound later on.

--

* I don't want to give details on this writing project until I actually, you know, get something done. I've made a good start, but that's not enough. When I have something real to tell you, rest assured that you won't be able to shut me up about it.

Legion of Super-Heroes #8 Review

2010-12-22T23:08:00.000-05:00

What Happened That You Have to Know About:

Well, Mon-El's leader, for one thing.

The Legionnaires fight a bunch of the Durlan assassins, and bring in two of them, including the Zendak impersonator. The last one, though, defeats Colossal Boy and Earth-Man and kills Brande's former assistant Pheebs.

Review:

Let's look at what happened with these Durlans. Dream Girl and Shadow Lass nailed one of them; fine. Cosmic Boy, Invisible Kid, Phantom Girl, and Element Lad got another; fine. Colossal Boy and Earth-Man lost to the last one. Poor Colossal Boy; he's always the punching bag. It's too bad. I mean, I expect Earth-Man to get kicked around by his opponents; he's basically a supervillain who must let his opponents determine the terms of the fight. It's not a recipe for success. Colossal Boy, though, is a pro. He's not only a superhero; he's also had Science Police training. He should be a lot better at this. But no: his problem is that he's got the strength of a powerhouse but no corresponding invulnerability. Plus he's a big target. Still, this has happened way too often. I'm ready for a story in which Colossal Boy, you know, succeeds at something.

There were only ever four Durlans, right? And now only one of them is still at large? I guess I should have been keeping more careful track of this. Okay, yes, next issue's solicit confirms that there's only one Durlan still out there.

Okay, so, this Durlan-assassin plot is moving along nicely; shouldn't we start seeing some more seeds of plots to come?

Some interesting bits in the voting. Cosmic Boy and Dream Girl and Element Lad voting for Sun Boy, really? Earth-Man voting for that filthy Tharrite Polar Boy? What the flip is that all about? Gates voting for Earth-Man? I don't freaking think so; not in a million years. That would simply never happen. I don't say stuff like this often, but Levitz got that wrong. Brainy and Polar Boy voting for themselves; cool. Quislet voting for Gates, well, I could certainly see it. Gates is quite an intriguing candidate; is the implication that Quislet is the only one who can see that, or that only Quislet is frivolous enough to vote for him? And Violet voted for Polar Boy, too? I guess she's come around on him since the election that he won, back in LSHv3.

I wonder if the voting was intended to mimic the proportions of the votes sent in by readers.

With Mon-El not around, it looks like Brainy is going to be the interim leader, as Mon's deputy. The thing I don't get is, why does Brainy want to be leader at all? I mean, I get why he thinks he'd be better at it, but it strikes me that he's always complaining about being too busy in the first place, and I don't think that his extra duties as leader would be that interesting to him. If I'm Brainy, what I do is I delegate almost everything.

Another good issue. Shame that the Annual's going to be late (delayed due to Keith Giffen's medical problems); oh well. We do have the LSV one-shot to look forward to; wonder what the deal is with that. I hope Levitz isn't planning one of these elections for every year; once every few years would be enough for me.

Notes:
- page 8, "We're stretched thin,"--there it is again
- Earth-Man to one of the Durlans: "That's human! The species that covered a galaxy--and didn't blow ourselves up." Got to admit he scored a point there
- Now. Did that last Durlan get away, or is he disguising himself as Earth-Man now?
- Who is that statue on page 15, panel 3? Between the Karate Kids?
- Timber Wolf was the only one who voted for Cosmic Boy. If I'm Cos I'm not letting him get away with that. "Listen, you doofus, I told you I don't want to do it anymore!"
- On page 6 we've got Dr. Gym'll with four arms. That's not right, is it?
- Yes, yes; Cancellite for the diehard fans. I know

Panel Count: 128 panels/30 pages = 4.3 panels/page. 2 one-panel pages. Cinar gets some help on the art this week by someone called Daniel HDR. Not sure how that breaks down, although Earth-Man's and Colossal Boy's scuffle with the Durlan does look a bit different from the rest of it.

Membership Notes: The Legionnaires listed as voting are the same Legionnaires indicated by the Mission Monitor Board a few issues ago, so I guess that's definitive: Star Boy, XS, Night Girl, Chameleon Girl, Bouncing Boy, and Duplicate Girl are not active Legionnaires. Mon-El isn't listed among the voters, but I think he's best regarded as being on a temporary leave of absence, which, one must presume, is coming to an end now that he's been elected leader.

Adventure Comics #521 Review

2010-12-01T22:20:00.000-05:00

What Happened That You Have to Know About: Dyogene reviews the Legionnaires to see who he wants to give the Green Lantern ring to, and settles on Mon-El, since he's the strongest. Mon-El departs the Legion for GL training.

A team of Legionnaires is in Africa, doing rescue work after an earthquake or something near the Olduvai Gorge. They find that it wasn't a regular quake; it was caused by something digging itself out of the ground real fast (causing some people nearby to die of fright) and flying off into space. Wildfire and Dawnstar pursue, but get casually blasted to semiconsciousness and the thing gets away.

Review:

I was wondering why, at this stage of the game, we were spending so much time on the Legionnaires helping out at another natural disaster, but the mystery behind the cause of the quake is certainly a worthwhile story. Since we've got a Green Lantern kind of thing going on, and the whatchamacallit seems to have some kind of fear abilities, it's natural to wonder if somehow we're dealing with Parallax here. I hope not; I'd rather see a new villain, if Levitz has one in him.

One story that's just waiting to be told is that of the failure of the 31st-century Green Lantern Corps to live up to its predecessors. Sodam Yat is a crybaby and I don't know what Dyogene's good for. I'm not worried about Mon-El not being heroic enough, but since when are GLs selected on the basis of personal power? I don't think this is going to end well. You remember the messed-up new oath from FC:L3W, right? This is trouble waiting to happen. (One interesting implication, though: Dyogene seems to think that Harmonia Li is right up there, power-wise, with Earth-Man and Mon-El.)

It sorta looks like Mon-El has won the election for Legion leader. Levitz is taking him off the team for a while in this issue; Levitz has said that the new leader is someone whose election is forcing Levitz to revise his plans frantically; Mon-El led the exit poll at the Legion Omnicom. Your own fault, Paul; if you weren't prepared to have him as leader you should have left him off the ballot.

What with Mon-El getting his new ring, and all, I checked his hands to see if he was also wearing his flight ring. He wasn't. So I looked through the rest of the comic to see if I figured that that meant anything, and I concluded that it didn't; flight rings aren't often visible on Legionnaires' hands throughout the issue. There are quite a few in the first couple of pages, as Element Lad and Invisible Kid and Sun Boy are fighting the fire, but that's about it. I think I only saw Dawnstar's once. I have a notion that the rings are only visible when the Legionnaires are actively using them to fly, and as a theory that might hold a bit of water. (The theory isn't about how the rings actually work, you understand; it's about how Borges decides whether to draw them or not.)

This was one of the better issues of this comic we've had. Not much to it, but what there was was fine, and I'll be happy to have the next issue come around.

Panel Count: 79 panels/20 pages = 4.0 panels/page; 4 single-panel pages. That's a pretty fast read. The art is by Borges and Alquiza this time around, and it's perfectly nice. I especially like the way Borges does Dawnstar's face.

Legion of Super-Heroes #7 Review

2010-11-17T22:51:00.001-05:00

What Happened That You Have to Know About: Durlan assassins attack the Winathian ambassadors, and a Legion team defends them. They catch one and save one of the ambassadors. Brainiac 5 is frustrated about something to do with time travel, and goes to Naltor to confront Harmonia Li. Chameleon Boy goes too, and Beren has a vision of the other Legionnaires attacking Cham.

Review:

Takes you out of the story a bit to have the issue chopped in half the way it is, but the plotlines continue to develop, and it's not like there's a dropoff in art quality between Cinar and Portela. The story seemed fairly sparse, and I wondered if there had been a dropoff in panel rate, but no; we're actually up a bit from issue #5. Maybe it's because of the split story, maybe it's because there are a couple of pages here and there devoted to... I won't call it inconsequential stuff, but it's stuff that I can't quite see yet how it's consequential.

The confrontation between Mon-El and Earth-Man, for instance. Well, we all knew something like it was coming, but I guess what this really means is that Levitz looks at this Earth-Man/Shadow Lass relationship as a Continuing Plot, with capital letters, that's going somewhere, and not just incidental background stuff. The conversation the two guys were having puzzled me a bit. Earth-Man wants to know why Mon and Shady broke up? Really? That would imply that he actually likes her, which I have a hard time accepting. It also took me a minute to understand just what it was that Mon-El did to Earth-Man and why it was clever, but it actually was pretty good.

Are we to believe that Shadow Lass is going to be the next Green Lantern? She's capable of holding down the job, but it's a bit strange to consider how she'd be the bearer of three great heroic traditions - the Legion, the Green Lantern Corps, and the Shadow Champions of Talok. A neat idea, but also kind of overkill.

I do like this business of having small squads of Legionnaires handling menaces without bringing in the whole rest of the team. Lets us get to know them; leaves the possibility of failure on the table.

At some point, Levitz should start laying the groundwork for some kind of major opponent for the Legion. We've had a couple of small-scale villains in a row, with the xenophobes followed by the Durlans. Gotta keep changing speeds on us. Bring on Continuus, Despoiler of Everything!

Coming up: who's the Green Lantern gonna be, and who's the new Legion leader gonna be? I'll tell you: I'm going to be glad to know both those things, because then it means we'll be finished speculating.

Notes:
- what's with all the Zendak handshakes?
- SimGalaxy!
- Polar Boy has his arm back. I kinda liked the ice arm
- perfectly sensible that they'd think of Chameleon King. Would have been easy for Levitz not to mention it. I appreciate that

Panel Count: First story (Cinar) -- 77 panels/18 pages = 4.3 panels/page; no single-panel pages. Second story (Portela) -- 53 panels/12 pages = 4.4 panels/page; one single-panel page. Anybody else find that the shadows on the side of Tyroc's head occasionally made him look bald? I mean, naturally bald as opposed to shaven-headed. Also, the fight had a couple of confusing parts. Check pages 14 and 15. At the bottom of page 14, does the Durlan that Timber Wolf is fighting change from Timber Wolf's form to some kind of reptile just for the last panel, and then back to Timber Wolf for page 15? Or is it a second Durlan? And then, going from panel 1 to panel 2 on page 15, Timber Wolf's and Tyroc's color palettes are just similar enough (so's Ultra Boy's, for that matter) that the transition is a difficult one; your eye doesn't warn you that we're switching characters.

Membership Notes: Sun Boy says something about "when Star Boy finally gets back." So maybe he is still some kind of Legionnaire.

Supergirl Annual #2 Review

2010-11-07T20:32:00.001-05:00

What Happened That You Have to Know About: This takes place not too long after the founding of the Legion; membership seems to be at less than a dozen. Supergirl is in the 30th century with the Legion, and has a lot of her classic Legion adventures via flashback. She also visits the Superman Museum and finds out how she's going to die (although the standard Legion Memory Trick seems to cover that over). She helps them deal with a falling satellite, but it seems that Brainy has released an alien demon from a weird statue. The demon is named Satan Girl, and Satan Girl takes over the world real fast. Supergirl and Brainy jump forward in time to fight her better, and Supergirl uses a real neat and fun trick as part of this effort. Brainy's stupid time-energy plan works, and the Legion brings Supergirl back home to her time.

Review:

I haven't been reading Supergirl, so I don't know how well this fits into the series, but as a piece of ghostboot Legion apocrypha it works just fine. The writer, Sterling Gates, seems to have been paying close attention to how Levitz has been portraying Brainiac 5 in the meet-the-Legion arc of Adventure Comics, because he matches it note-perfect (and artist Matt Camp really helps him sell it; see page 43 for an example).

My favourite thing about this issue is when Supergirl says, "We're going to need an army to get into Satan Girl's base, right? [...] I know just where we can get one." I won't spoil it for you; go read the comic yourselves. It's worth the price of admission.

Much of the story is taken up by establishing the relationship between Supergirl and the Legion, which a lot of people have been wanting to get established, and this Annual obliges us by covering a lot of ground. After this comic book, it's not going to be necessary to rehash the really early Supergirl/Legion stories anymore; they've been dealt with. I guess there are a few more that might come up, although I'd be willing to skip the one where Brainy builds the Supergirl robot in his sleep.

Also grateful that Satan Girl's origin has been updated; I'd rather an alien demon than another freaking red Kryptonite story. And, while we're at it, just how many stories were there where the villain was secretly Supergirl? Plus, Stanicule Gyrstress of Brocia is reusable, and the Legion could use more decent villains. (Oh yes they could.)

One problem with the Legion's expanded profile within the DCU... you really have to pay attention to make sure you get all the relevant comics. I don't think I've missed anything important yet; fingers crossed. Anyway, this comic book had a lot of Annual-appropriate content, some really nice art, a cool twist, and it seems to be setting important stuff up for the future. I'm a lot more impressed by it than I am by what Levitz and Sharpe have been doing in Adventure.

Notes:
- 30th century, not 31st century. Not a mistake!
- Supergirl remembers her time with the threeboot Legion. I'm glad they're taking the time to keep that straight
- Gates even weaves the xenophobia deeper into the Legion's history. But what's the point of being anti-Kryptonian? There basically aren't any Kryptonians!

Panel Count: There were two artists on this issue; let's count them separately. Matt Camp: 127 panels/31 pages = 4.1 panels/page. 1 single-panel page, one double-page combination of three panels. Marco Rudy: 73 panels/20 pages = 4.9 panels/page. At least I think that's what it is; Rudy's idea of what is and isn't a panel is not something that I can gather from looking at this comic book. It's cool! And it's a nice contrast with Camp's fine work in this book, which is very orderly indeed; not only the panel arrangements, but even the looks of the characters. If you don't have a copy of this you should at least flip through one to see what I mean; it's cool.

The cover is done by some combination of Amy Reeder, Richard Friend, and Guy Major. I mention it because I noticed Phantom Girl looking kind of realistically plus-sized on the cover. I don't have a specific preference for this look when it comes to Tinya, but I give the artists credit for allowing themselves to show a superheroine that way in general.

Adventure Comics #520 Review

2010-11-03T21:44:00.000-04:00

What Happened That You Have to Know About: Lightning Lad gets killed fighting Zaryan. The Legionnaires mourn him and clean up some of Zaryan's men.

Review: There's really not much here we don't already know about. If you've read the original Lightning Lad death story, you've covered about the same material. This one is told in flashback and we get a 21st-century-style look into Saturn Girl's head as opposed to an early 1960s-style look into her head, but that's about it.

Interesting choice on Levitz's part to end the meet-the-Legion arc on Lightning Lad's death but leave out his resurrection. Especially since it's another example of one of his big points here, that Saturn Girl doesn't want anyone else to die for her. Does he figure that, what with the Lightning Saga and stuff, we already have it fresh in our minds? Does he just want to leave people wanting more?

Of course Mon-El was the ghostly voice in the clubhouse a few issues ago. Anybody who read the original story should have known it, too, although I think Levitz did an excellent job of showing it to us in a way that seemed fresh.

Sorry I don't have much more to say about this issue. But there's not much new here, and there isn't much of it (see below). Next month: Green Lantern stuff; yippee skip. Oh well; maybe it'll be good.

Notes:
- nice touch on the cover: the three L-symbols (on the flag, the building, and the coffin) in a line, as a silent "Long Live the Legion."

Panel Count: Back to Kevin Sharpe this issue; oh well. 70 panels/20 pages = 3.5 panels/page, noticeably less than the last couple of issues. Two single-page panels and one double-page spread. What's Ultra Boy got in his mouth on page 11? I don't want to be too harsh; Sharpe does a pretty good job by his own standards here.

DC Legacies 6.1 Review

2010-10-22T00:05:00.001-04:00

What Happened That You Have to Know About: The Legion comes back to 20th-century Smallville to invite Superboy to join their club. And then things get a little confusing.

Review: Len Wein is listed as the writer for this story, and Keith Giffen as the artist, but... See, I've certainly read comics by Wein, but I don't know his stuff well enough to recognize his fingerprints on a story. Giffen, on the other hand, I know much better, and this thing reads to me a lot like a Keith Giffen story. I am going to assume that Giffen had some input into what Wein wrote. I may be wrong, and I may not give Wein enough credit, but that's what I think.

I got the first couple of issues of this series, but dropped it when I realized that it wasn't telling me anything I didn't already know. It was only because the Legion appeared in this issue that I flipped through it in the store and decided it was worth getting. 'Cause, see, this isn't just another retelling of Adventure #247; it's a funny story that makes a point about the Legion: that anything to do with the Legion is too confusing to be worth getting into.

Now, for me and probably for you, this isn't a welcome point. It's something that we could argue with, and to the extent that it's true we wish people would get over it. It's something that we don't like it when people say that.

Which is why Keith Giffen is so great. Because, you know, sprock us if we can't take a joke.

Notes:
- nice to see the threeboot Legion for a second here
- which Brainiac 5 was that at the bottom of page 7? Looked kind of like the one from the Legion episode of Justice League Unlimited
- that last comment on the bubbles... anybody think it could also refer to the identification bubbles that Legion writers have been relying on for the past six years?

Panel Count: 57 panels/8 pages = 7.1 panels/page (including one 17-panel page!). No single-panel pages. Giffen's art is just what you'd expect from him; jawy faces and shadows and all. Not his best, but fine.

Legion of Super-Heroes #6 Review

2010-10-20T22:48:00.002-04:00

Don't forget to vote for Phantom Girl!

What Happened That You Have to Know About: Not a lot, really; this is kind of a wrap-up issue for some of the stuff relating to Earth-Man and the Titanians. There are a few minor missions this issue (some Titanians who have to be told to keep off the grass; a stray xenophobe; a forest fire) but nothing to write home about. Earth-Man gets officially pardoned and remains with the Legion; he gets a regular flight ring but it turns out that whatever behaviour modification stuff Brainy put in the last one wasn't working as well as he thought it was. Colossal Boy's mom is president again; did we already know that? The last of the displaced Titanians find homes. Cosmic Boy calls an election, the new Karate Kid may be showing up, fake-Zendak and Gigi ask for the Legion's help in protecting the United Planets council against assassins.

Review:

I have to say I like the way the subplot with the Titanian refugees was handled. Usually, when a planet blows up, that's about the last we hear about it. In the first arc of this series, there were all kinds of repercussions, and it made these comics ring true.

Also I like Earth-Man's new attitude. He's not a time bomb who's going to explode once he takes Brainy's "mood ring" off, and I'm glad that we don't have that hanging over our heads. He hasn't changed unrealistically. He's just swallowed an unwelcome truth, that's all. I'd be shocked if his "relationship" with Shadow Lass was destined to last any time, though.

I am curious about all those people who were hanging out at the Legion Academy. Power Boy, Crystal Kid, Visi-Lad, the Skreeaks, Lamprey, Nightwind, Urk... why are they all there? Are they all still students? Is it alumni week? Are they instructors? I mean, I'm not surprised Comet Queen's still there; when you get a character as distinct as her, you hang on to her. Plus she's a loser, so it's quite possible that she's still at it.

The other new characters, though... Mixed, I'd say. If that really is the new Karate Kid, there's nothing about him that's captured my interest so far. Chemical Kid is a little treat for the nostalgists, and I am not a nostalgist. Gravity Kid isn't that cool of an idea. Variable Lad I do like, quite a bit; he's Dr. Gym'll's race, right? Must be. His costume eats it, but I like his powers. As for Dragonwing, I don't know if I like her, but she looks awesome with that translucent dragoncloak, and her powers are decently nonstandard, too.

With this little Academy backup (and the temporary departures of Lightning Lad, Saturn Girl, Lightning Lass, Shrinking Violet, Mon-El, and Polar Boy), we get the return of one of Levitz's favourite Legion themes: The Legion Is Spread Too Thin! How is Cosmic Boy supposed to run the Legion when crises are erupting everywhere and he doesn't have enough personnel? Those Academy students better train fast!

When the solicit for the Annual came out, and it was learned that Ayla and Vi were going to be the main Legionnaires on the scene, it quite naturally led some of us to speculate on whether Levitz was going to revive the idea that the two of them were a couple. (Levitz was the one who thought it up in the first place, anyway.) Well, they leave Earth this issue on their way to Imsk, which sets up the Annual, and their body language (page 11, panel 3) certainly does nothing to dispel that idea. But while we're on the subject, maybe they're not the only same-sex couple Levitz has brewing for us. Just what exactly is keeping Mon-El and Polar Boy on Tharr for so long? I don't want to put too much weight on that; there are all kinds of possible answers to that question. A couple of plausible ones: Mon-El is helping Polar Boy regrow his hand with Daxamite medical science. Polar Boy is consoling Mon-El after Mon's breakup with Shady by introducing him to the sister of whoever he was in bed with in #1, maybe one of the same chickiepoos that Sun Boy couldn't get anywhere with back in Adventure #3.

On the one hand you've got Jim Shooter and on the other hand you've got Paul Levitz. Jim Shooter shows us Triton and the Scattered Disk and other exotic locales of our own solar system. Paul Levitz gives us Jewish culture and Tibetan culture and the Painted Desert. Comics!

I accept Shady's reasoning for testing out Earth-Man's absorbancy boy. I mean, she's an idiot, but it's true to her character. Which, now that I've typed that, means that I know what my take on her is going to be for the The Legionnaires article I write about her, I guess. But does she think he likes her? Does she care? I don't know. For all I know, he does like her, although I kind of doubt it.

Notes:
- who's that between Lamprey and Nightwind in panel 1 of page 24? I can't recall if I've seen her before or not
- also, in the panel with the hall of dead Legionnaire statues, I can tell who everyone is, but who's that between Karate Kid and Karate Kid? Is it Mentalla?
- Cosmic Boy mentally asks his mom to forgive him for Magnetic Kid's death. Are we to believe that his mother's alive in this continuity? Or am I misinterpreting?
- this is, of course, the second time (at least!) we've seen Colossal Boy and Phantom Girl in the Himalayas (and I'm glad that Levitz has learned to spell it over the years)
- in the final confrontation with Earth-Man, Brainy only says two and a half words. I didn't think that was possible
- quote from Luornu: "I told Chuck I'd have more fun here than at his dumb reunion!" I hope she means by that that she went to both of them. She has, after all, no excuse not to

Panel Count: Let's break the three different parts down separately. Main story (Portela): 63 panels/14 pages = 4.5 panels/page; no single-panel pages. Backup (Jimenez): 94 panels/15 pages = 6.3 panels/page (very high!). Two single-panel pages and one 14-panel page! I approve of Jimenez. Election Call (Cinar): 6 panels/1 page.

Three different artists working on this one, and they all looked great. I like how Cinar treated Matter-Eater Lad's face (has Tenzil always had those fingerless gloves? Other than in panel 4, I mean), I particularly liked how Jiminez packed so much stuff into his pages, but still felt free to indulge himself on page 25, panel 5. Portela's new to me, but I like what I see so far, and took particular note of how he seems to like to arrange narrow panels beside/below each other, with one of them spilling out of its boundaries and the others not. (Although the way Shady's cloak sort of faded into dark nothingness behind her didn't really work for me.) If Jiminez is really drawing the new Academy series, it's going to be unusually good.

Membership Notes: The Legion election has thrown all my understanding of the membership into disarray. For one thing, Chameleon Girl is listed on the ballot, but she wasn't on the Mission Monitor Board a couple of issues ago. For another, the ballot didn't have Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl on it, presumably because they're on some kind of leave of absence as of this issue. But Mon-El and Polar Boy aren't? Or Lightning Lass and Violet? It is all, as Artemus Ward would have said, onsartin.

Legion of Super-Heroes Election 3010: Vote!

2010-10-19T23:45:00.002-04:00

You can cast your vote here, between October 20th and November 10th.

As I posted here, Legion Abstract has endorsed Phantom Girl in this election, but obviously you should vote for whoever you think best.

The Legionnaires: Triplicate Girl

2010-10-14T17:16:00.003-04:00

Triplicate Girl, aka Luornu Durgo of Cargg (or Carggg), aka Luornu Durgo Taine, Duo Damsel, Triad, Una, Duplicate Damsel. Created by Jerry Siegel and Jim Mooney.

Luornu was one of the first Legionnaires to join the team in each of its incarnations. She's appeared in every version of the Legion. In original-Legion continuity she had one of her three selves killed by Computo and remained a Legionnaire, as Duo Damsel, for quite a while before retiring to run the Legion Academy.

What sometimes happens with the Legion is that a writer decides that a particular character is silly or underpowered, and kinda shuffles that character offscreen. It doesn't usually last; these kinds of characters tend to work their way back from limbo. Happened with Bouncing Boy, more than once; happened with Matter-Eater Lad, more than once; happened with Tyroc; and it happened with Triplicate Girl. Paul Levitz found a balance for her and Bouncing Boy that he seems to like; he made them instructors at the Legion Academy. This keeps them as part of the Legion's supporting cast but relieves Levitz of the responsibility of finding ways that they can be useful in a fight.

And Triplicate Girl isn't all that powerful, it's true. Her power is, simply, to become three people instead of just one. Useful on a day-to-day level, sure, but does it really help you fight Mordru? Still, Luornu's power sets her apart from almost all the other Legionnaires in this way: she's the most alien character on the team. (This idea isn't original to me, but I can't for the life of me remember where I first read it.) We can, if we stretch our imaginations far enough, fool ourselves into thinking that we know what it's like to be Karate Kid or Lightning Lad or even Dream Girl or even Chameleon Boy or Tellus or Quislet. We might get it wrong, but we can put our minds to work on it.

But we'll never have any idea what it's like to be Triplicate Girl. She's three people and one person, all at the same time. We don't have a mental model for that, and we don't have one that can be customized to fit.

Now, various Legion stories over the years have explored just what Luornu's nature is. In the original Legion, the writers eventually started speculating that her separate bodies had separate personalities. The reboot Legion writers used that and ran with it, giving us an interesting look at Carggite society while they were at it. The threeboot Triplicate Girl was a whole other deal entirely: Cargg was full of Luornus, merging and separating all over the place and sharing information and experiences that way. Triplicate Girl was what the three of them who had left Cargg to join the Legion called themselves. But then it turned out that their horizons had been broadened enough that they were too different to remerge with the other Carggites when they went home for a visit. In the threeboot, there was originally just one Luornu personality, but a second one developed by being separate from the rest of the population for too long. Presumably, Triplicate Girl's three individual selves could also become distinct from each other if they stayed apart too long and had different experiences.

Then in Legion of 3 Worlds, Geoff Johns introduced retroboot Luornu as "Duplicate Damsel", with the power to create as many duplicates of herself as she wanted. It's not my intention to keep whizzing on Johns's shoes, but I wonder if he thought this one out carefully enough. Maybe he did!

On the one hand it's a significant power upgrade for Luornu, one that makes her a lot more useful than just being able to separate into two or three bodies. And it's certainly nice to see a superheroine get powered up for a change.

But it's pretty well established that Luornu has three separate personalities for her three separate bodies. So if she can now separate into an unlimited number of bodies, is that still true?

If it is true, then does each different body have its own personality? Where did these personalities come from? If they just sort of automatically show up, that's fine, I guess, but how does she decide whose turn it is to separate out from the rest? Are there infinite Luornus in there clamoring for freedom that, for some of them, can mathematically never happen, in much the same way that hockey parents compete for ice time?

If it's not true, then does that contradict all the stories that showed her with distinct personalities for her separate selves?

Of course, there's no reason why she couldn't have had separate personalities up until the point that she only had one body left (after Una was killed in Countdown), but now that she's down to one, all the bodies that she can split herself into are carriers for her one remaining personality. That actually does work. But is it what Johns had in mind?

(Luornu will be a test case for how Paul Levitz wants to handle the difference between retroboot and post-Crisis continuity. Johns has implied that retroboot continuity tracks original-Legion continuity closely until Crisis on Infinite Earths, and then diverges. Levitz has suggested that retroboot continuity tracks original-Legion continuity right up until the end of the Baxter series. There are several problems with Levitz's approach, though, and one of them is that Luornu lost a second body in LSHv3 #50. If that was still true, then there should have been nothing left of her when Una was killed in Countdown. (Of course, I also had the idea that Una was temporally recruited from moments before her death at the hands of Computo, way back in Adventure #340, in much the same way that Karate Kid was rescued from death above Orando by Lightning Lad, Saturn Girl, and Cosmic Boy in preparation for his appearances in "The Lightning Saga" and Countdown. This isn't supported in any way; it's just an idea.))

One thing I'd like to point out is that Triplicate Girl was one of the best things about the animated series. It turns out that her superpower lends itself particularly well to animation, which I did not see coming at all. I knew Bouncing Boy would animate well; that's obvious. But the animators figured out a lot of really nifty and fluid combat moves, based on flashing back and forth between one Luornu and three of them, all at high speed, that looked spectacular. Go watch the first episode again; it's really quite impressive.

There have been a surprising number of good Triplicate Girl moments over the years: LSHv5 #3 and Legionnaires #24, to name two. But this is one that a lot of fans remember, from Adventure #369, in which Luornu grows up.

Adventure Comics #519 Review

2010-10-13T22:42:00.001-04:00

What Happened That You Have to Know About: Chameleon Boy, Invisible Kid, and Shrinking Violet successfully raid Zaryan's spaceship, carrying a shipment of war robots. Meanwhile, Lightning Lad, Saturn Girl, Cosmic Boy, and Brainiac 5 visit with Superboy in Smallville. They have fun hanging out and later destroy one of Brainiac's probes.

Review: The Zaryan part of the story seems to have two purposes: it gives a look at some of the Legionnaires we haven't seen much of yet, and it establishes that Zaryan has a freeze ray. Other than that, it's really just a way of keeping this storyline warm until next issue.

The other story is a little more interesting to me. Well, in one way it is. I really don't care about the Brainiac probe, and I smile politely at the whole hanging-out-in-Smallville thing. But what Levitz has done here is pick up some themes and symbols and stuff from earlier in this incarnation of Adventure Comics; this is all the same kind of stuff we saw from Kon-El in the first few issues.

That's worthy of comment, isn't it? That Levitz is picking up on some abstract threads that had to do with a completely different character written by somebody else? I wouldn't have done it if I had been in Levitz's place; it would never have occurred to me. Because I'm only interested in Adventure Comics because of the Legion; I don't really care about all the other stuff we've had in it (although I do like the Atom). So this deal with Smallville and the checklists isn't really for my benefit. It's for the benefit of Adventure Comics readers. Adventure Comics has been a patchwork kind of enterprise ever since it started, but Paul Levitz is doing what he can to fix that. Retroactively! It is admirable, I say, and skillful.

About that checklist. It draws a parallel between Brainy and Kon-El. Not something I ever would have thought of, but it works: two descendants of Superman's greatest enemies, both trying to immerse themselves in the world of his youth. Really it's comparable to the Brainy-Alexis-Superman triangle in the animated series. Even the thing about Brainy sending the Legion back to meet Superman too early in his life, by "mistake"... that's from the cartoon too! Think of it. We've got Brainiac 5 in Smallville, and just because he's thinking about the day's events in terms of a checklist, that makes Lex Luthor a presence in this story, when his name isn't even mentioned! Isn't that impressive?

I wonder how thoroughly Levitz thinks this stuff through. Does he write these stories with full cognizance of the symbolic implications and interrelationships, or does he just know that he's got characters and symbols with rich connections between them, and is confident that anytime he juxtaposes them, he'll get results that you and I can pick apart like this?

I'm curious about one thing Brainy says: the probe homed in on the Kryptonian rocket as the most sophisticated technology on the planet. Is it really? It kind of depends on how DC has their timeline set up these days; were there other heroes active during Superman's adolescence? Like, say, the Metal Men? Or Red Tornado? If you see what I mean.

Panel Count: 85 panels/20 pages = 4.3 panels/page. 1 single-panel page.

Thing about the art in this issue... on the cover it says Sharpe/Alquiza, but inside it says Pansica/Ferreira. And, looking at the art, it does seem like someone new has taken over. The key thing to look for when identifying Kevin Sharpe's art is the faces: faces that are at a distance are underdetailed, and close-up faces often don't resemble themselves sufficiently from panel to panel. When I look for those things here, I can find them... I think. But overall the art looks much better and I'm inclined to think that the Pansica credit is accurate. One thing Pansica does especially well in this issue is to make the Legionnaires look like kids. They're scrawny and gawky and very real-looking. (Not on the cover, though; they look like buff grownups on the cover. Cover art by Clark & Beaty.) Check out, in particular, mmm..., page 4, panel 2. It's a good shot of Brainy, looking very youthful, but Pansica uses a neat little cheap trick here too: he positions Brainy's head very low down in the panel to make him look short. Lots of effect from a little bit of effort and thought.

This was a pretty strong issue. I hope Pansica sticks around, and I'm definitely looking forward to next month.

Legion of Super-Heroes Election 3010: You Got to Be a Spirit; You Can't Be No Ghost

2010-10-12T19:33:00.001-04:00

You've probably already seen the recent Legion-related announcements that came out of New York Comic-Con. (If you didn't, they're here.) I'm most enthusiastic about the one about the Legion Academy series, but the one I want to get into here is the Legion election.

DC has a long history of letting the fans pick the Legion leaders, and it's certainly a gimmick worth trying now. I don't think it makes the comic book any better to let the fans tamper with it this way (although there have been times when it's worked out real nice), but if Levitz is prepared to cope with it, then why not? Gets some attention, gets people involved, it's fine.

Now, in this election, there are of course many characters who would make plausible leaders for the Legion, and many more who would not be quite so plausible but who would, if elected, provide the opportunity for some good stories. So there's really no wrong decision here. It's not like, if we all stuff the ballot box for Quislet, that then Levitz will go out and write a story where Quislet gets the whole Legion killed and the comic book is cancelled forever and Levitz says, "Sorry; there was nothing I could have done." We're insulated from negative consequences, is what I'm saying.

So I am now prepared to announce that Legion Abstract is endorsing Phantom Girl for the 3010 election. Here's why:

1. Phantom Girl is one of the longest-serving of all Legionnaires, yet has never been leader.

All the other Legionnaires with comparable tenure--Lightning Lad, Saturn Girl, Cosmic Boy, Superboy*, Supergirl, Brainiac 5--have had their turn as leader (except Duplicate Damsel, who isn't currently eligible). Cosmic Boy's a great leader, sure, but we've already read that story. Let's read a different one now.

2. We can narrow the gender gap a bit.

So far I count 22 different Legionnaires who've had a shot at being leader, and of those 22, 16 were guys. Breaking it down further, the six girls/women to become Legion leader were disproportionately blonde--four out of six of them. Let's mix up the demographics some more.

3. She does have a bit of leadership experience.

She's served as acting leader of the Espionage Squad in Chameleon Boy's absence on occasion. And, you know, it'd probably be useful for the Legion to have a leader who is well-versed in sneakiness.

4. She is trusted by her constituents.

In recent years it has become the convention to portray Tinya as the confidante of the other Legionnaires, the one that everybody can talk to and feel better afterwards. This is obviously a useful quality for a leader.

5. It's about time she got some of the spotlight.

When was the last time a story really focused on Phantom Girl? There was the Dave Gibbons backup from early in the threeboot. There were a couple of issues in the DnA run. There was that whole thing in the early reboot where she was a ghost. And before that... do I have to go all the way back to the Reflecto story? Oh, wait: there was some stuff with the animated Legion. Still, it's not much for a character who's been around as long as she has.

So! When the voting URL opens up, let's all go and vote for Phantom Girl. E-mail me if you want a sign for your lawn.

--
Note: If one has to be on Facebook to place a vote in the Legion election, then this one, at least, is not voting. For the present I prefer not to be on Facebook. I'll post about this again when the voting starts.
--
* I know, I know. Details.

Where Should I Start with the Legion of Super-Heroes?

2010-10-04T20:42:00.003-04:00

Frequently I'll see, on comic-book-related message boards, someone asking the question, "Where should I start with the Legion?"

So I figured I'd write this up as the most complete answer to the question I can give.

The short version is: Jump in anywhere. Pick up any Legion comic that you can find and give it a try. If you like it, look for others that are similar to it; if you don't, look for others that are different from it.

You may have heard that Legion continuity is so convoluted that you'll never be able to follow it, what with the dozens of Legionnaires and all the reboots. It's not true. It's a superhero comic. Pay normal attention and you'll pick it up as you go along, no problem.

However, some of you may want more of a roadmap than that, so here goes.

First decide what you're interested in. Do you want to read the current series, or the classic stories, or some more modern stories, or something else? You don't have to read it all. The Legion's been around for more than fifty years; don't strain yourself.

I want to start right at the beginning!

-Then Start With: Either the Legion Archives or the Showcase editions. The Archives are expensive and can be hard to find, but are in color and are nice hardcovers; the Showcase editions are easier to find and way, way cheaper, but are in black-and-white. So far there are twelve (thirteen soon!) Archive volumes that will take you up to the late '70s; at this writing the fourth Showcase collection is out and will take you up to partway through volume 10 of the Archives.

(A brief history of what publications you'll be seeing in these collections: the Legion started off as occasional guests in various Superman-related titles before getting a regular gig in Adventure Comics as of #300. Jim Shooter had a famous run as Legion writer that ran from Adventure #346 to Adventure #380; this material is covered in Archives #5-9 and Showcase editions #2-4. When the Adventure run came to an end, they had a few backup stories in Action for a while, and then were eventually picked up as costars of the Superboy title.)

-If You Like That Then Read: If you've gone through all that and you still want to keep going, you have to dip into the back issue bins. The twelfth Archive edition takes you up to Superboy #223, so you want to collect #224-230, then Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes #231-258, then Legion of Super-Heroes v2 #259-#283.

-Notes: What I did was to get volumes 10, 11, and 12 of the Archives, because those are the ones with the Cockrum and Grell art. I wanted that in colour. For the earlier stuff I'm happy to rely on the Showcases; I'm not much of a Silver Age guy in the first place and therefore don't mind the black-and-white.

See how I said "Legion of Super-Heroes v2" a couple of paragraphs up? Not v1? That's because LSHv1 was a little series of reprints DC came out with in the early '70s. If you get the Showcases or Archives you'll get all those stories anyway, so you don't also have to get LSHv1 unless you're a completist.

(Also: In the mid-'70s, Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl got married in a one-shot tabloid-format comic book listed as All-New Collector's Edition #C-55 (catchy, huh?) which is hard to collect. I don't have a copy, nor have I ever seen one. Best of luck.)

-Timeframe: 1958-1982.

I want to read the Levitz-Giffen stuff!

-Then Start With: Start with LSHv2 #284, and continue with LSHv2 right up until issue #313. Don't forget the Annuals! Get LSHv2 Annual #1 and read it between issues #289 and #290 (make sure you get the right Annual #1; this is the one from about 1982, entitled "Monster in a Little Girl's Mind"); it's a honey. You may find that it's easier for you to get the new Great Darkness Saga hardcover to collect this stuff; it gives you #284-296, plus Annual #1. A second hardcover, The Curse, goes from #296 to #313, with two annuals; but see below.

-If You Like That Then Read: In the early '80s, DC decided to take a couple of its more popular titles, including LSHv2, and make them available through the direct market only. So here's what they did: they renamed LSHv2 Tales of the Legion of Super-Heroes and started a new series, comic shops only, Legion of Super-Heroes v3. Tales of the Legion of Super-Heroes had one year, twelve issues, of new stories and then started reprinting stories from LSHv3. The idea is, if you were a newsstand reader, you'd get the same stories that comic shop readers would get, but a year later. Setting aside the question of whether this was a good idea, the upshot is that if you're collecting comics from this era you get LSHv2 up to #313, then TotLSH from #314 to #325, then LSHv3. Then stick with LSHv3 up to #63. (Don't forget all the Annuals! Some of 'em are real good.)

-Notes: The first twelve issues of LSHv3 have been collected in TPBs called 'An Eye for an Eye' and 'The More Things Change', if that helps you.

LSHv3 #37 and #38 can be hard to find, but they're included in the Superman collection Superman: The Man of Steel vol. 4, so if you want those issues and can't find them, that may be a way for you to go.

This run, from LSHv2 #284-LSHv3 #63, is actually Paul Levitz's second run as Legion writer. His first run was shorter and occurred in the late '70s. I don't know the exact issue numbers, but it was around #240 and contained the legendary Earthwar story (#241-245). Definitely worthwhile but not as glorious as the second run. His third run is going on right now in LSHv7.

-Timeframe: 1982-1989.

I want to start with the Five Years Later Legion!

-Really?

Really!

-Good for You! Then Start With: LSHv4 #1. Start slow. Get the first few issues and give 'em a try. They're not for everyone. If you find yourself smelling what Keith Giffen and the Bierbaums are cooking, stick with it up until issue, oh, say #40.

-If You Like That Then Read: Well, certainly you can get Legionnaires #1-16. That's good stuff. You can also stay with LSHv4 from #41 to #50. If you still haven't had enough you can keep going with LSHv4 up to #59. You may even, if you really want to, indulge in Valor #1-21.

After that, LSHv4 #60-61 and Legionnaires #17-18 and Valor #22-23 are all tied together in the Zero Hour-crossover story "End of an Era" which puts an end to Legion history and sets up the reboot Legion. I find it unpleasant reading.

-Notes: LSHv4 begins (in in-story time) five years after the end of LSHv3. This is the famous Five Year Gap, and it's why LSHv4 is often called the Five Years Later Legion. And it's very different from the stuff Levitz was doing. The stories are darker, more adult, more wacky at times, more experimental, more confusing... A lot of people really didn't like it, and it's certainly not a good place to start reading the Legion; it demands a lot of the reader and it really helps to have a good handle on Legion history before you read it. Personally, I think it's the most powerful run of comic books I've ever read, and a highlight of Legion history. Up until about issue #40, anyway.

Legion continuity receives its first big shakeup a few issues into LSHv4. The details can be found here if you want them. It's not a reboot yet; just a big retroactive continuity tweak.

Both LSHv4 and Legionnaires have Annuals, some of which are well worth getting and some of which, shall we say, will not, by comparison, impair your ability to enjoy other Legion comics.

That other Legion series, Legionnaires, stars some time-sliced clones of young Legionnaires (also known as the SW6 batch) who were discovered partway through LSHv4. This series is lighter in tone than LSHv4 was, features Chris Sprouse on art, and is in many ways a precursor to the reboot Legion.

The other new series, Valor, is about the early (20th-century!) history of Mon-El in this Five-Years-Later continuity.

-Timeframe: 1989-1994.

I want to start with the Reboot Legion!

-Then Start With: Okay, then, you've got two titles to worry about: LSHv4 and Legionnaires. Their numbering did not get reset with the Zero Hour reboot. What happens with this Legion is that the story bounces back and forth between the two titles every month; it's like having a single bimonthly comic. To start off with, you want these comics:

LSHv4 #0
Legionnaires #0
LSHv4 #62
Legionnaires #19
LSHv4 #63
Legionnaires #20

et cetera.

The easy way to start off, of course, is to track down the Legion of Super-Heroes: The Beginning of Tomorrow TPB, which collect the first ten issues of all this.

-If You Like That Then Read: Keep right on going with LSHv4 and Legionnaires right up to LSHv4 #121 and Legionnaires #78. Don't forget the Annuals!

-Notes: This here is the first part of reboot Legion history we're talking about. The early years of the reboot Legion were kind of light and cute, both in story and art. Sometimes people call them the Archie Legion. It's not the strongest the Legion franchise has ever been, although it's not bad either. There is a general dropoff in quality between 1994 and 2000, but nothing to get worked up about.

The existence of the two titles can make it hard to arrange your comic collection, because how do you know which issue of Legionnaires comes directly after which issue of LSHv4? Later on they'd put sequence numbers on the covers to fix this problem, but for the first couple of years you were on your own.

-Timeframe: 1994-2000.

I hear the DnA run is really good!

-Then Start With: It is really good! What we're talking about here is the second phase of reboot Legion history, written by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning ("Dan and Andy" = "D and A" = "DnA". That's where that comes from). They take over the two ongoing Legion titles with a great story called "Legion of the Damned" (covers LSHv4 #122-3, Legionnaires #79-80) and then end those two titles with a three-parter called "Widening Rifts" (covers LSHv4 #124-5, Legionnaires #81). That leads into a twelve-issue limited series called Legion Lost which has been collected into hardcover. Also, "Legion of the Damned" has been collected in one volume as DC Comics Presents: Legion of Super-Heroes--Legion of the Damned. No help with "Widening Rifts".

(Technically the starting point for this stuff is Legion of Super-Heroes Secret Files and Origins #2, but it's not really essential and it can be hard to find. (Actually, all the DnA stuff can be hard to find, and expensive, so good luck.))

-If You Like That Then Read: After Legion Lost comes a six-issue limited series called Legion Worlds, and then an ongoing series entitled The Legion. DnA remain on The Legion until #33. Many will say that The Legion isn't much good after the first 15 or so issues, but I think it's still above average, and in particular I think that they did a good job of wrapping things up in their last few issues.

The Legion continues under fill-in writers until issue #38, and I think these issues are very good. Then the reboot Legion draws to a close with a two-part story spread over New Teen Titans v3 #16 and the Teen Titans/Legion Special #1.

-Notes: The most important part of the DnA run is Legion Lost. It's the core. "Legion of the Damned" and "Widening Rifts" lead up to it, Legion Worlds is supplementary to it, and The Legion is a followup to it. Legion Lost is awesome: doesn't lose that "Archie Legion" innocence, but nevertheless tells a serious and gripping story.

Except for this rumoured hardcover collection of Legion Lost, the only large part of the DnA run that's been collected is the Darkseid story in the Foundations TPB; this collects The Legion #25-30, which was pretty much the least best part of the DnA run.

-Timeframe: 2000-2004.

Can you set me up with the Threeboot Legion?

-Then Start With: Glad to! The easiest thing for you would be to get the first two TPBs, as this is the era of the Legion that has been most thoroughly collected. The first two are called Teenage Revolution and Death of a Dream, and they cover LSHv5 #1-13.

(Technically the threeboot starts with a few pages at the end of the Teen Titans/Legion Special that ended the reboot. It's really not essential, though, and can be hard to find and expensive.

-If You Like That Then Read: Next you keep reading LSHv5, up to issue #36 (covering trades Strange Visitor from Another Century, Adult Education, The Dominator War, and The Quest for Cosmic Boy).

Jim Shooter takes over as writer with issue #37 and changes the tone of the book considerably. Some of what he tried didn't work and it makes the progress to #50, the final issue, something of a death march, but at least he (like Mark Waid, who wrote the first thirty issues) wasn't afraid to try new things. #37-50 are collected in Enemy Rising and Enemy Manifest.

-Notes: The title of this series, from #16-36, is not LSHv5 but Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes.

The threeboot Legion gets a lot of abuse from fans, but I liked it and will always defend it. It had some excellent art from Kitson and Calero and Manapul, it had a really different take on the Legion that should have been explored more deeply, and it had the best characterization I've ever seen. It didn't live up to its potential, but it's certainly worth your attention. I'd still like to see someone take another serious try at it, though.

-Timeframe: 2004-2009.

How about the animated series? Worthwhile?

-Then Start With: Yes, it's worthwhile; very much so. Start with the DVDs of Season One, available through your video store or Netflix or zip.ca or wherever you get your videos.

-If You Like That Then Read: Then you move on to Season Two. I don't actually have any advice for how you'd go about doing that, as it's not out on DVD, but if you can do it then do it. If you can't, then console yourself with the knowledge that it wasn't as good as Season One anyway.

Also you can read the comic books based on the cartoon. DC published 20 issues of Legion of Super-Heroes in the 31st Century under its "Johnny DC" imprint, and they were a lot of fun. Some of the issues were among the best Legion comics I've ever read. I think they were collected, at least some of them, but I don't have the specifics.

One thing about LSH31C: don't read the first issue first! The first issue is a nonlinear retelling of the first episode of the cartoon, and, while it's a good comic book, it works terribly as a first issue. So do this: take your stack of LSH31C issues, put #1 between #5 and #6, and start reading with #2. #2's a pretty good first issue, and #1 is an excellent middle issue.

-Notes: One thing you might be interested in is that #20 of LSH31C establishes that the animated series and LSH31C all take place in a computer simulation Brainiac 5 runs to make sure it's safe for Saturn Girl, Lightning Lad, and Cosmic Boy to go back in time and meet Superman the first time.

-Timeframe: 2006-2008.

That is all too much Legion! What do I need if I just want to read the current series?

-Then Start With: There are three ways you can go. Here's the simplest: start reading LSHv7 with its September '11 first issue, and, if you want, Legion Lost v2, same time frame. Second way: Read Paul Levitz's first arc in the current Adventure Comics title (#12, #516-520 (see, after #12, they reverted back to Adventure's original numbering...)), which I'm sure will be collected at some point. This story, though it may not hang together very well as one piece, is specifically intended to bring new readers up to speed.

The other thing you could do is read all the stuff that's come out in the last few years that was designed to bring Geoff Johns's revival Legion to our attention. This includes, in order:

"The Lightning Saga" (Justice League of America v2 #8-10 and Justice Society of America #5-6)
"Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes" (Action Comics #858-863)
Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds #1-5
Adventure Comics #1-4, 8-12 (along with whatever issues of Supergirl, Action Comics, Superman, and Superman: Last Stand of New Krypton you need to fill out the "Brainiac and the Legion of Super-Heroes" story) and #516-529 (see, they went back to the original numbering...)

-If You Like That Then Read: Then start in on LSHv6 #1 and keep going with the rest of that series, to #16. Don't forget the Annual! This also includes Adventure Comics #516-529, and the Legion of Super-Villains Special #1. Then there's DC's big relaunch, which leads us into LSHv7, Legion Lost v2, and the Legion: Secret Origin miniseries.

-Notes: DC intends the current Legion, the one Geoff Johns introduced and the one Paul Levitz is now writing about, to be viewed as the original Legion, the ones they were writing comics about from the late '50s through the late '80s. There are a couple of problems with that, including that Johns and Levitz seem to have different ideas about just how all of this is supposed to work, but the best advice is not to worry about it and enjoy the ride.

-Timeframe: 2007-current.

I don't know where I want to start!

-Then Start With: Best thing you can do is go find that LSHv3 Annual #1 that I mentioned way up there in the Levitz section.

-If You Like That Then Read: Try more Levitz stuff, especially from the early part of his run. Try #284 and #285.

Or try some stuff from the early part of the reboot era, or from the early-to-mid '70s, or from the Silver Age, or from Levitz's current Adventure or LSHv6 series.

One thing that might help you out is the Legion of Super-Heroes: 1,050 Years of the Future collection, which contains a nice cross-section of stories from the '50s right up to the '00s. And it hangs together thematically remarkably well!

All right, I get all of that. Anything you haven't mentioned?

-Then Start With: There have been quite a few Legion-related miniseries and specials and stuff over the years. Most of them aren't as good as the regular Legion comics, but you can still give 'em a shot if you're interested. Famously, there's the L.E.G.I.O.N. '89 series that I'm sure a lot of people would recommend, although it doesn't have that much of a connection with Legion stories. Anyway, here are some that I'd specifically recommend:

-Superboy's Legion, a hard-to-find-and-expensive two-issue Elseworlds story by Alan Davis
-DC Comics Presents #59, with Ambush Bug and the Legion of Substitute Heroes
-Titans/Legion of Super-Heroes: Universe Ablaze #1-4 (expensive and hard to find, but better than its reputation)
-The Brave and the Bold v3 #4
-Secrets of the Legion of Super-Heroes #1-3
-Star Trek/Legion of Super-Heroes #1-6 (starting Oct '11) (published by IDW, not by DC!)

I will try to keep this article up to date, to reflect changes in availability and relevance. Please suggest any improvements I could make in the comments.

Legion of Super-Heroes #5 Review

2010-09-22T22:08:00.001-04:00

What Happened That You Have to Know About:

The Earth Force, former allies of Earth-Man, attack the Titanian refugees; Earth-Man helps apprehend them. Then later Phantom Girl catches him and Shadow Lass sleeping together.

Dyogene shows up on Naltor and tries to foist the power ring off on Harmonia Li, but she refuses it; later, in conversation with Circadia Senius, Brainiac 5 learns that Dr. Li is a lot older than she looks.

The Durlan revenge squad assassinates Chief Zendak and replaces him with one of their own, disguised, as part of their plot to avenge R.J. Brande.

Review:

The solicit for this issue said that we'd learn the final fate of Lightning Lad's and Saturn Girl's kids. And we didn't see anything about that. Of course, last issue seemed to neatly end that subplot, so our takeaway from this incident is that solicits lie. Not that that helped us with the Shadow Lass thing; people have been guessing for months that she was going to trip the light fantastic with Earth-Man, and that's just what happened.

Is it just me or was this a short issue? It seemed like it was over in a hurry. Not that many subplots addressed, and a couple of the ones that were addressed were addressed quickly.

I'm going to miss Chief Zendak. Good supporting characters are hard to come by, and he was definitely one of the good ones. There are other good Science Police characters around, true, and I think I have an idea what Levitz has in mind.

What we've got with Earth-Man and his rehabilitation is the normalization of xenophobia. The way I figure it, Earth-Man is still a xenophobe; he's just a moderate one instead of an extreme one. And now he's a Legionnaire. That's the effect of extremists in real life, I think: they rarely get their way, but they do clear some space for the moderate versions of their views. I wouldn't be surprised if Earth-Man was shrewd enough to realize this. But anyway: we've got a Legion of Super-Heroes that now has some entrenched xenophobia in it, and they're going to be going up against a bunch of Durlans, of all people, and they'll be fighting mad because of Zendak, and it'll be real easy for the powers that be to really put the hammer down on not just these Durlans but potentially all aliens, or all Durlans at least, and there's gotta be a faction of Legionnaires who'll oppose that (Chameleon Boy and Colossal Boy for two). The Legion could split right down the middle on this, and Levitz is making it look easy. And all of that is just me thinking off the top of my head; Levitz has actually put some time into it and has likely come up with something that's like that but, you know, interesting.

The big controversy this issue is supposed to be Earth-Man and Shadow Lass, of course. At the moment I have no opinion on it because I don't know what anyone's thinking. Ask me next month. The other stuff... I wasn't impressed by the Earth Force and I don't know why it took the Legion so long to polish them off; I don't know why it's taking Dyogene so long to find a Green Lantern and I'm starting to lose what little interest I had in the question; I don't know what is the deal with Harmonia Li but I think this could be the most intriguing subplot of all. She's real old but looks young; she does time travel research; she has a beef with the Oans. What's it add up to?

Panel Count: 107/30 pages = 3.6 panels/page; 3 single-panel pages plus one 2-page panel. No wonder it seemed like a short issue! Check it out. Here's the rate of panels per page in each issue since #1:

1 4.8
2 4.5
3 4.4
4 4.2
5 3.6

The difference between this issue and the first one is 1.2 panels/page. At 30 pages, that's 36 panels, which calculates conveniently to 10 pages. Now, issue #1 was extra-long, at 39 pages, but even if it had only been 30 pages, it'd still be effectively 10 pages longer than #5. That's a lot!

Adventure Comics #518 Review

2010-09-10T22:16:00.001-04:00

What Happened That You Have to Know About:

The Legion is in the middle of a campaign against Zaryan and his raiders. They're working effectively and win two battles, including one on Naltor. After that, Dream Girl has a vision of a Legionnaire dying (take a drink!) and sends a warning message to them. Meanwhile, ghostly voices around the Legion clubhouse are disconcerting some of the Legionnaires.

Review:

My only problem with this issue is that I know where it's all going. Believe me, if it was a new storyline, I'd be all over it. But this part of Legion history is very well-trodden ground indeed. Levitz does an excellent job of coming at it from a new angle, so it feels new, and is in general a pleasure to read, but if you think about it for two seconds you can see all the pieces falling into place.

One example: the ghostly voice. When I first read that part of the story, I really sat up and took notice. Wow, I thought, what could that possibly be? It can't be any of the Legionnaires, because none of them are dead yet. Is it Fortress Lad himself? Then I thought about it for two seconds and I was all, oh, right, of course; I know who it is. Oh well; new readers are in for a treat. There are new readers reading this, right? That's what it's for, after all.

You know one difference this story has from the original Silver Age story? In this story, Superman has a history. In the Silver Age, he didn't, really; he only had a present, a status quo. So who cares if Superboy goes into the future and learns about the past? Oh, I know, I know; can't let him know that he's going to work at the Daily Planet. That's not what I mean. I mean, then, there wasn't much about Superman's life that Superboy would react to much, learning it temporarily. Now there certainly is, and it's appropriate for Levitz to show us some of that.

Now that I think about it... the core of this arc is that Saturn Girl doesn't want anyone else to die for her. She'd rather do the dying, if anyone has to, and we know very well from Legion history how that plays out. But there's another Legionnaire death alluded to in this issue: Superman's, at the hands of Doomsday. Where was the Legion during that time? One answer is, when that story first came out, Superman had never been a Legionnaire, according to continuity. But now he has been again. So will we ever get the story on why the Legion didn't (or did!) intervene? Or did they just figure that he eventually came back to life, so they weren't needed? Or, more to the point, I wonder how Saturn Girl regards Superman's death as compared to Lightning Lad's death. I don't want to make the Superman/Doomsday thing all about the Legion, because that was never what it was all about, but Levitz is the one who brought it up, after all.

So this is the fourth of six issues in this arc? I wonder if Levitz is going to have time to colour in any Legionalia that's not related to, shall we say, Zaryan and his aftermath. I guess we'll get some hint when the solicits come out in a week or two. Next issue, apparently, the Legion goes to Smallville. Sounds major.

Panel Count: 83 panels in 20 pages = 4.2 panels/page. 2 single-panel pages. I think Sharpe is improving in his time with the Legion, to this extent: there are some beautiful panels. Look at the three pages with Dreamy and Berem, for instance. But then you get panels where you wonder if he knows what these characters are supposed to look like (compare Phantom Girl to herself on page 7, for example). Oh well; if the Legion is really being bumped out of Adventure, it'll stop being a topic of conversation.

Legion of Super-Heroes Roster

2010-09-06T22:16:00.009-04:00

Status	Name	AKA	Planet	Created By
d	Atmos	Marak Russen	Xanthu	PL,GL
I	Blok		Dryad	GC,JS4
d	Blood Claw		Khundia	TMB,SI
I	Bouncing Boy	Charles Foster Taine	Earth	JS1,JM1
*	Brainiac 5/Brainiac 5.1/5	Querl Dox	Colu	JS1,JM1
i	Calamity King	E. Davis Ester	Touston	EH,CS1
~	Catspaw	April Dumaka	Earth	TMB,CS2
~	Celeste Rockfish/Neon	Celeste McCauley	Earth	KG,TMB,AG
*	Chameleon Boy/Chameleon	Reep Daggle	Durla	JS1,JM1
I	Chameleon Girl	Yera Allon	Durla	PL,KG
*	Chemical Kid	Hadru Jamik	Phlon	PL, PJ
D	Chemical King	Condo Arlik	Phlon	JS3,CS1
i	Chlorophyll Kid/Plant Lad (threeboot)	Ral Benem	Mardru	EH,JF
i	Color Kid	Ulu Vakk	Lupra	EH,CS1,JG
I	Colossal Boy/Leviathan (reboot)/Micro Lad (threeboot)	Gim Allon	Earth, Mars	JS1,JM1
*	Comet Queen	Grava	Extal Colony	PL, KG
~	Computo	Danielle Foccart	Earth	PL,KG
*i	Cosmic Boy/Polestar	Rokk Krinn	Earth, Braal	OB,AP
i	Crystal Kid	Bobb Kohan	Earth	GC,SD,RC
I	Dawnstar/Bounty		Starhaven	PL,MG
i	Devlin O'Ryan/Reflex		Xanthu	KG,TMB
~	Dragonmage	Xao Jin	Earth	TMB,CS2
*	Dragonwing	Marya Pai	Earth	PL, PJ
~	Dream Boy	Rol Purtha	Naltor	MW,BK
*	Dream Girl/Dreamer (reboot)	Nura Nal (Nura Schnappin (reboot))	Naltor	EH,JF
D	Earth-Man/Absorbancy Boy/Zoraz	Kirt Niedrigh	Earth	CB,MG
i	Echo	Myke-4 Astor	Khundish Calish-Aetia	JS3,CS1
*d	Element Lad/Alchemist (SW6)	Jan Arrah	Trom	EH,JF
D~	Ferro Lad/Ferro (reboot)	Andrew Nolan	Earth	JS3,SM
i	Fire Lad	Staq Mavlen	Shwar	EH,JF
i	Firefist		Khundia	TMB,SI
i	Flederweb		Aetia	TMB,SI
I	Gates	Ti'julk M'rasz	Vyrga	TM,LM,MW
~	Gazelle	Giselle Smith	Triton	JS3,FM
~	Gear	I.Z.O.R.	Linsner	TM,TP,SK
*	Glorith			PL,PJ/JS1,JF
i	Impulse	Richard Kent Shakespeare	Earth	KG,TMB,AG
i	Infectious Lass	Drura Sehpt	Somahtur	CB,DC
D~	Invisible Kid	Lyle Norg	Earth	JS1,JM1
*	Invisible Kid II	Jacques Foccart	Earth	PL,KG
D~	Karate Kid	Val Armorr	Earth or Omega Colony (reboot)	JS3,SM
D	Karate Kid II	Myg	Lythyl	PL,SL
di	Kid Quantum	James Cullen	Antares or Xanthu (reboot)	TMB,DW
~	Kid Quantum II	Jazmin Cullen	Xanthu	TM,TP,LM
d	Kinetix	Zoe Saugin	Aleph	TM,LM,MW
i	Kono	Brita An'nan	Sklar	KG,TMB,AG
~d	Laurel Gand/Andromeda (reboot)		Ricklef II or Daxam (reboot)	KG,TMB,AG
*	Lightning Lad/Live Wire (reboot)	Garth Ranzz	Winath	OB,AP
*	Lightning Lass/Light Lass/Gossamer (SW6)/Spark (reboot)	Ayla Ranzz	Winath	EH,JF
D	Magnetic Kid	Pol Krinn	Earth, Braal	EH,JF
i	Magno	Dyrk Magz	Braal	TM,JM2,RS
I	Matter-Eater Lad	Tenzil Kem	Bismoll	JS1,JF
*	Mon-El/Valor/M'Onel (reboot)	Lar Gand	Daxam	RB,GP
d	Monstress	Candi Pyponte-Le Parc III	Xanthu	TM,TP,LM
~	Nemesis Kid	Hart Druiter	Myar	JS3,SM
I	Night Girl	Lydda Jath	Kathoon	EH,JF
i	Nightwind	Berta Haris	Earth	GC,SD,RH
*	Phantom Girl/Apparition (SW6, reboot)	Tinya Wazzo	Bgztl	JS1,JM1
*	Polar Boy	Brek Bannin	Tharr	EH,JF
i	Porcupine Pete	Peter Dursin	Earth	CB,DC
*	Princess Projectra/Queen Projectra/Sensor Girl/Sensor (reboot)	Jeka Wynzorr (reboot), Wilimena Morgana Daergina Annaxandra Projectra Velorya Vauxhall (threeboot)	Orando	JS1,SM
*	Quislet		Teall	PL,SL
d	Reflecto	Stig Ah	Rimbor	JS3
*	Saturn Girl	Imra Ardeen (Ranzz)	Titan	OB,AP
*	Shadow Lass/Umbra (reboot)	Tasmia Malor	Talok VIII	JS3,CS1
~	Shikari		the Kwai galaxy	DnA,OC
*	Shrinking Violet/Virus/LeViathan (reboot)/Atom Girl (threeboot)	Salu Digby	Imsk	JS1,JM1
~	Spider Girl/Wave	Sussa Paka	Earth, Taltar	JS1,JF,JT
*	Star Boy/Starman	Thom Kallor	Xanthu	OB,GP
i	Stone Boy	Dag Wentim	Zwen	EH,JF
i	Storm Boy	Myke Chypurz	Earth	JS1,JF
*	Sun Boy/Inferno (SW6)	Dirk Morgna	Earth	JS1,JM1
I	Superboy/Superman	Clark Kent, Kal-El	Earth, Krypton	JS1,JS2
i	Superboy II	Conner Kent, Kon-El	Earth	KK,TG
I	Supergirl	Kara Zor-El	Krypton	OB,AP
i	Superman-X	Kell-El	41st-century Earth	MJ
I	Tellus	Ganglios	Hykraius	PL,SL
i	Thunder	Cece Beck, sometimes Cecebeck	64th-century Binderaan	JO,MM
I	Timber Wolf/Furball	Brin Londo	Zuun or Rimbor (reboot)	EH,JF
I~	Triplicate Girl/Duo Damsel/Triad (reboot)/Duplicate Damsel	Luornu Durgo (Taine)	Cargg	JS1,JM1
I	Tyroc	Troy Stewart	Earth, Marzal	CB,MG
*	Ultra Boy/Emerald Dragon	Jo Nah	Rimbor	JS1,CS1
d	Veilmist		Khundia	TMB,SI
i	Visi-Lad	Rhent Ustin	Earth	PL,GL
I	White Witch/Jewel/the Hag/Black Witch	Mysa Nal, Xola Aq	Naltor, Zerox	EB,CS1
I	Wildfire/ERG 1/NRG	Drake Burroughs	Earth	CB,DC
I	XS	Jenni Ognats	Aarok	TM,JM2

Status Key:

* - active Legionnaire in current continuity
~ - active Legionnaire only in other continuity
D - deceased in this continuity
I - inactive Legionnaire in this continuity
i - inactive Legionnaire in other continuity
d - deceased Legionnaire in other continuity

Creator Key:

AG = Al Gordon
AP = Al Plastino
BK = Barry Kitson
CB = Cary Bates
CS1 = Curt Swan
CS2 = Chris Sprouse
DC = Dave Cockrum
DnA = Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning
DW = David A. Williams
EB = E. Nelson Bridwell
EH = Edmond Hamilton
FM = Francis Manapul
GC = Gerry Conway
GL = Greg Larocque
GP = George Papp
JF = John Forte
JG = Jeff Greenberg
JM1 = Jim Mooney
JM2 = Jeff Moy
JO = Jerry Ordway
JS1 = Jerry Siegel
JS3 = Jim Shooter
JS2 = Joe Shuster
JS4 = Joe Staton
JT = Jim Tillery
KG = Keith Giffen
KK = Karl Kesel
LM = Lee Moder
MG = Mike Grell
MJ = a team of TV animators and writers led by Michael Jelenic
MM = Mike Manley
MW = Mark Waid
OB = Otto Binder
OC = Olivier Coipel
PJ = Phil Jimenez
PL = Paul Levitz
RB = Robert Bernstein
RC = Robert Cohen
RH = Rob Harris
RS = Roger Stern
SD = Steve Ditko
SI = Stuart Immonen
SK = Scott Kolins
SL = Steve Lightle
SM = Sheldon Moldoff
TG = Tom Grummett
TM = Tom McCraw
TMB = Tom and Mary Bierbaum
TP = Tom Peyer

Legion of Super-Heroes #4 Review

2010-08-26T00:26:00.000-04:00

What Happened That You Have to Know About:

Turns out Graym and Garridan have been kidnapped by a Darkseid cult on Avalon. The cult has some kind of sacrifice in mind. Lightning Lad, Lightning Lass, and Saturn Girl raid the temple and succeed in getting the twins back.

Meanwhile, Earth-Man hasn't entirely cut all ties with the xenophobic faction on Earth, but it's unclear what exactly his plans are. Dyogene and Sodam Yat manage to take a break from feeling sorry for themselves long enough to start one more search for another Green Lantern. And Brainy still has some secrets about Earth-Man's flight ring.

Review:

From one of my comments attached to last issue's review:

I could certainly imagine the Avalonians starting up a Darkseid cult

Therefore I win.

We certainly got our money's worth this time around. Garth, Ayla, and Imra stage an old-school D&D-style dungeon crawl into Darkseid's personal Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan, and the fight against Zeemith and the EHP was a nifty one. I'd like a little more insight into just why the Darkseidians had to import kids from Titan instead of sacrificing domestic twins, but maybe that'll come.

It sort of feels like Levitz was trying to clear this plot out of the way. It may seem weird for me to say that, given the way I like each issue to finish a story, but I thought this particular one would take longer to play out. (Although, given next month's solicit, maybe it hasn't been resolved.)

I had a lot more to talk about when I reviewed issue 4 of the threeboot. That's because there were a lot of questions about just what Waid and Kitson were up to--who all was in this Legion, and how did they get to be the Legion, and how did they go about being superheroes, and what have you. This isn't a complaint, but the same questions just don't exist for Paul Levitz. His take on the Legion is a more conventional and uncontroversial one, and as such there are a lot of things we just don't need to think about.

I'm curious to see how the first TPB of this series is marketed. What's the title going to be? How is the overall arc going to be described? See, I don't know if there's a lot of unity to this story, as one story. Is there one plot-thread that's going to tie it all together? The Darkseid one could have done that, maybe; the Earth-Man or the Titan one... not sure. Can't wait for issue #5, to find out!

Particularly strong art this month, although it's not as densely packed as it usually is. I like the way Cinar gives each setting a different feel; Naltor especially looked good. And check out panel 3 of page 13! That's really cool. I also find that Jeckie's new costume, while it looks bizarre and off-putting with the mask, looks excellent without the mask. So maybe she can just do that. Panel Count: 125/30 pages = 4.2 panels/page. 4 single-panel pages.

Notes:
- Levitz continues to not quite get Gates's voice. He's got the attitude, but he doesn't have the politics
- those speculating about Earth-Man and Shadow Lass getting together certainly didn't see anything to change their minds in this issue
- putting the Titanians and the Time Institute on Naltor makes a lot of sense. But the possible unintended consequences make the mind reel
- Ayla's reference to breaking the Legion code on killing is, as I recall, another old Levitz standard. Anybody making a drinking game for the retroboot? This should be on it

Membership Notes:

Levitz does us a solid this issue and gives us a definitive membership count: 26. (That's after Matter-Eater Lad goes back to Bismoll.) So, best I can figure it, here are our 26 current Legionnaires:

Bouncing Boy, Brainiac 5, Chameleon Boy, Chameleon Girl, Colossal Boy, Cosmic Boy, Dawnstar, Dream Girl, Duplicate Damsel, Earth-Man, Element Lad, Gates, Invisible Kid, Lightning Lad, Lightning Lass, Mon-El, Night Girl, Phantom Girl, Polar Boy, Quislet, Saturn Girl, Sensor Girl, Shadow Lass, Shrinking Violet, Starman, Sun Boy, Tellus, Timber Wolf, Tyroc, Ultra Boy, Wildfire, XS... okay, that's 32. Which are the extra six? Looking at the Mission Monitor Board when Cosmic Boy mentions the 26 Legionnaires, I can see 26 squares. So that must be what he's talking about. In order, starting from the top left:

unknown, Chameleon Boy, Colossal Boy, Cosmic Boy, Earth-Man, Phantom Girl, is that Chameleon Girl? Or who? No, we're going alphabetically, and this is everyone who's present at HQ, so it's Quislet, Sensor Girl, Shadow Lass, Shrinking Violet, Sun Boy, must be Tellus, Timber Wolf, Ultra Boy. Next row, Dawnstar, Dream Girl, and a blank space that must be Gates; Lightning Lad, Lightning Lass, and Saturn Girl; Mon-El and Polar Boy (I don't know why they're associated); looks like Element Lad, unknown, Tyroc, and Wildfire. The first unknown must be Brainy, because it's alphabetical and he's right there; the second one must be Invisible Kid because we know damn well he's a Legionnaire and where else could he be?

That leaves Bouncing Boy, Chameleon Girl, Duplicate Damsel, Night Girl, Starman, and XS as, apparently, not Legionnaires. Not surprised about Chuck and Luornu; Levitz likes having them be in charge of the Academy and so do I. I also prefer Yera as a supporting character. But what about Night Girl, Starman, and XS? Did they not officially join/rejoin or something? (Is Starman still in the 21st century and I missed it?)

Adventure Comics #517 Review

2010-08-11T22:35:00.001-04:00

What Happened That You Have to Know About:

It's a story of the Legion's early days, when it was just the three founders trying to figure out how to be the first costumed crimefighters in centuries. They do some training, and they get involved in a Science Police effort to stop Zaryan's robot raiders from stealing a bunch of tech. They have mixed success at this, and in the aftermath of one battle, Saturn Girl and Cosmic Boy get drunk and sleep together. Saturn Girl regrets this the next morning, and wipes out Cosmic Boy's memory of the event.

Review:

Now that's more like it!

For one thing, there's some real superhero content in this issue, and it's good stuff: the Legionnaires are admirable and heroic, but clearly in over their heads; the villains aren't unreasonably scaled; there's some characterization that we haven't seen before but we know we should have.

I don't mean Saturn Girl mourning over the dead SP, saying in a story featuring Zaryan that she never wanted anyone to die in her place again. That's... well, Levitz might as well throw it in there, but any payoff he gets out of it in future issues is a pretty cheap-and-easy one.

No, what I meant was Saturn Girl's determination to not just be the girl. You have to understand why that's great.

See, we've seen the inexperienced-rookie-Legionnaire thing before, briefly, in the early days of the reboot. And that was fine. But the reboot Legionnaires were '90s characters, the whole point of them was that they were '90s characters. The Legionnaires in this story, though, were (originally) '50s/early '60s characters, and in the '50s and '60s, there were a lot of characters who were just the girl. The awesome thing about Saturn Girl, though, is that she was never just the girl. Paul Levitz is showing us what that was like then, only now. If the reboot writers had tried this, it wouldn't have worked nearly as well.

It's a wonderful issue for Saturn Girl. I said before that what made Imra such a great character is how she makes mistakes and crosses the line and yet remains herself mostly untarnished, and she does it again here, with the Cosmic Boy mindwipe. It's not at all a defensible thing for her to do, but it is clearly the kind of thing she would do.

Cosmic Boy and Lightning Lad are not neglected either. Levitz deftly picks up on Johns's concept of the two of them as Rokk-the-serious-one and Garth-the-talented-screwoff, and also gives us a couple of nice moments with Rokk struggling to use his powers effectively. It's done well, too; we understand that Rokk does know what he's doing, but that using his powers in combat is a whole new thing that he's not used to yet.

I also liked the part on page one, where Imra is commenting on how much more in-shape Garth and Rokk are. Imra obviously takes her physical condition seriously--she's a conscientious SP-candidate, after all--so for them to be so far ahead of her says something about them. And it should be like that! These three founded the freaking Legion of Super-Heroes, after all, first superhero team of the Silver Age out-of-story and first one in a bunch of centuries in-story. They should be exceptional.

The credits page doesn't tell us how the art is broken down between Kevin Sharpe and Marlo Alquiza (is Alquiza the inker? co-penciller?), but it's a little better than it has been in places. Some pages, I look at them and say, oh yeah, that's Sharpe all right, but others I look at and go, I'm not sure who drew that, it seems a little different. Pages 15 and 20, for instance. Panel Count: 91/20 = 4.55, 1 single-panel page.

I still like LSHv6 better than this title, but this issue closed up most of the gap. I prefer the future of the future to the past of the future, for one thing, and a different artist might also help, but if Levitz has more stories like this on the way I really won't have anything to complain about.

Legion of Super-Heroes #3 Review

2010-07-21T23:11:00.001-04:00

What Happened That You Have to Know About:

The Green Lantern ring hauls Earth-Man off to another planet in sector 2814 to save some aliens. A Legion team follows him and helps out, but Earth-Man doesn't care for the whole experience so, afterwards, he throws the ring away and returns with the Legion. Phantom Girl leads a Legion team back out to the ruins of Titan to bring Saturn Queen in. Lightning Lad and Lightning Lass catch up with Saturn Girl and they arrive at the planet where they think the kids are (Avalon); there's a big statue of Darkseid there. A bunch of R.J.-Brande-worshiping Durlans are on Earth, looking for revenge against someone.

Review:

The main problem with this issue is that the main stories didn't feature much opposition. Earth-Man's mission was a pretty low-tension one, swamp monster or no swamp monster, and as formidable as Saturn Queen is, I never had any doubt that a prepared team of Legionnaires could take her down quick. There's progress on all the other subplots, but the underwhelming adversaries in the A-plots give the comic book a popcorn quality. (Also I'd like to know if there's anything more to Saturn Queen's actions than we've already heard about.)

The other thing is this, and I'm not sure if it's a problem, exactly, but I know if I was writing a comic book I wouldn't want this: some of the individual plots aren't very cliffhangery. For instance: at the end of last issue, I kinda had the idea we were done with Saturn Queen for now. Like she showed up to see what happened to Titan, messed with some Legionnaires, and that was the end of it. There was nothing there that suggested that we'd see more of her this issue, or that she was keeping Brainy and Tyroc as puppets, or anything. Similarly: it's obvious that there's more to say about Dyogene and the Green Lantern Corps, but without a hint of what more, there's no pressure to tune in next month to see it. (Now, the subplot with the Ranzz kids... that one's percolating nicely.) For a serial comic book to be satisfying, you need two things: a complete story with a real payoff, and something to make you intrigued about next month's issue (or, I suppose, the knowledge that this is the last issue).

I noticed something in the first panel of page 4: Earth-Man and Cosmic Boy have the same colour scheme on their costumes, but (sort of) reversed. This makes sense; Earth-Man was the leader of a group who opposed the values of Cosmic Boy's group, and even their superhero names reflect this difference. I guess this was Gary Frank's contribution...

One thing I liked about Earth-Man's mission: it was an example of a GLC mission in sector 2814, but not on Earth. I'm not a Green Lantern reader, but I get the idea that Hal, John, Guy, and Kyle don't go on a lot of such missions (that we ever see). And yet it should be the biggest part of their jobs.

What else can I say about Cinar's art? It's as good as it was the last couple of issues. Panel Count: 131 panels/30 pages = 4.4. 3 single-panel pages.

It was an all-right issue. Next couple of months should be better.

Notes:
- it's not obvious to me why we're still interested in Professor Li and the Titanians
- seems like Earth-Man's xenophobia also extends to anti-Semitism. This is certainly a reasonable choice, but it is a choice; I could see a 31st century where prejudice among humans has been replaced by prejudice against aliens
- this issue brings us the return of one of Paul Levitz's favourite Legion themes: Stretched Too Thin. Levitz's last run on the title showed a constant preoccupation with who was on what mission, how many Legionnaires there were to spare, and how they really needed more people on the team to be able to cover all their responsibilities. I like it, actually
- which was the Avalon story? Was that Lord Romdur's Castle?
- I didn't notice the letter P before on Tinya's costume. How long's it been there?
- anybody know the goose-girl story well enough to comment on its use here?
- not sure about Sensor Girl's line after finishing off Saturn Queen. It's a Jeckie thing to say, but not really a Sensor Girl thing to say

Adventure Comics #516 Review

2010-07-14T22:45:00.000-04:00

What Happened That You Have to Know About: R.J. Brande's will is read. The will includes the story of Brande's early years and how he came to start the Legion. Nothing radically different from what we already knew.

Review:

Look, are we just supposed to be grateful to have a comic called Adventure Comics? Is that it? I haven't read every issue (I spared myself one or two of the Superboy-Prime-centric ones that had no Legion content), but the ones I did get have been pretty light on content. It's the fluffiest damn comic I know of. Of all things, I was not expecting this from Paul Levitz.

Still Kevin Sharpe on art. Is he improving? He might be. The story looked pretty good at times. There was still the odd panel that made me wince, but Sharpe may be finding the range. Panel Count: 97 panels / 20 pages = 4.9 panels/page. One 1-panel page.

I have to assume that the point of this story is to introduce the Legion's origins to new readers. It's a worthwhile goal. I think the story has been told better than it is here, but then I've read it so many different times in so many different versions that I could just be jaded.

There were a couple of interesting hints of things here... for one thing, Brainy seems to have a preoccupation with trying to kill roaches. Ever since Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds, roaches have been a symbol of the Time Trapper. So that's intriguing. (Although Circadia Senius is also compared to a cockroach in this issue. I'm inclined to view that as a coincidence.)

(Of course, Levitz has also said in a recent interview that almost nothing DC has published about the Legion since the Magic Wars is in continuity as far as he's concerned. Including not all of Geoff Johns's stuff--possibly including FC:L3W! It's like another little reboot that got sneaked in there. A ghostboot.)

Another pair of details that caught my notice, and I can't help but wonder if they're connected. First, Pheebes, Brande's private secretary, with his four arms and his French accent. Pheebes is a little too well-detailed to be a throwaway character; I imagine we'll be seeing more of him. Second, Brande's new accent. In Levitz's run back in the '80s, Brande had a kind of old-school Irish (or maybe German?) tone to his English, but he was much more proficient in the language. Now, his English is much more broken. I don't know why Levitz would have made this change, but I have a suspicion that Pheebes is Brande in disguise. Brande recovers his Durlan powers sometime during the lost years, fakes his death at McCauley's hands, drops one false accent and puts on another, and shapechanges into Pheebes' form. That works, right?

I should say that it threw me a bit to see the contemporary-future Legionnaires going back in time to bring young-Superman Superboy to this meeting. But it was just that somebody thought Superboy, not Superman, should be at the will reading.

I am not looking forward to the next issue. Saturn Girl and the eternal triangle? Pfui. I had more of that stuff than I wanted in the reboot.

The Legionnaires: Bouncing Boy

2010-07-06T17:04:00.006-04:00

Bouncing Boy, aka Chuck Taine of Earth, aka Charles Foster Taine. Created by Jerry Siegel and Jim Mooney.

Quick synopsis: Chuck Taine, while slacking off from work one day, accidentally drank an experimental formula that allowed him to turn himself into a giant bouncing ball whenever he wanted. He parlayed this dubious blessing into a Legion membership that was interrupted by the loss of his powers several times, and eventually married and retired to run the Legion Academy. In the reboot he didn't have any powers but became a full-fledged Legionnaire anyway as the team's resident engineer.

Mark Waid gets Bouncing Boy. He once said something like, "I think a big fat 250 lb. guy hurtling at you at a hundred miles an hour is a damn cool superpower." Of course it is! You don't want to fight Bouncing Boy; he'll clean you right up. Not much compared to Mon-El and the White Witch, maybe, but it's a perfectly effective street-level superpower.

It has been said many times that the great thing about Bouncing Boy is that he got to marry Triplicate Girl (well, Duo Damsel, anyway). I don't have anything interesting to say about that, but I know that if I didn't mention it, somebody else would.

What I like about him is that he's got one of the few superpowers that would actually be fun to use. Most superpowers, you could do fun things with them, maybe, but they aren't fun themselves. (Flight would be another one.) Seriously. Wouldn't you like to ricochet all over the place if you knew you couldn't get hurt? Sure you would.

Bouncing Boy became an instructor at the Legion Academy after retiring from the Legion early in the Levitz run. Consider these two scenes. In the first one, from LSHv2 #304, Bouncing Boy is leading three Academy students plus new Legionnaires Invisible Kid and the White Witch to capture some escaped zoo animals.

In the second one (my pick as Chuck's signature moment), from deep in 5YL territory (LSHv4 #17), Bouncing Boy and some others are trying to survive the Khundish invasion of Xolnar.

This is what's so great about comic book continuity. The second scene works just fine by itself, but you get a lot more from it if you've read the first scene too. I don't even know for sure if Giffen and the Bierbaums had the first scene in mind when they came up with the second scene (but I figure they probably did), but I do when I read it, and it resonates.

The Legionnaires: Misses

2010-07-02T17:40:00.003-04:00

Kinetix, aka Zoe Saugin of Aleph. Created by Tom McCraw, Mark Waid, and Lee Moder.

Thunder, aka CeCe Beck (or Cecebeck) of Binderaan. Created by Jerry Ordway and Mike Manley.

I group these two together because, to me, they have a lot in common. They're

a) powerful female Legionnaires
b) from the reboot
c) with a lot of potential
d) that was never realized.

Try to come up with signature moments for either of these two. I was totally stumped. Thunder didn't get much time onstage at all as a Legionnaire. Kinetix was used much more, and some of the stories were okay, but as prominently featured as she may have been it didn't help to show off why her character worked. I know Kinetix has a lot of fans out there, and maybe one of them can set me straight on this, but I don't think anyone ever really managed to get the maximum out of Kinetix. I want to like both Kinetix and Thunder, but I don't have a lot to go on.

Kinetix had a well-known character trait: she was hungry for power. She was only ever going to use such power in the service of good, of course, but she still wanted it. It's the kind of thing that I can imagine someone thinking. "Why don't we come up with a superhero who wants power?" Perfectly reasonable idea. But just because you have such a character doesn't mean anything interesting is going on with her. And Kinetix in particular was always going through losing her powers (a kind of molecular control) and gaining them back and having them changed and going through this or that weird metamorphosis, and that didn't help either. And then Geoff Johns decided she was a wizard and killed her off in Legion of 3 Worlds.

Thunder was a member of the Marvel Family from even further into the future than the Legion. While with the Legion, she spent her spare moments tracking down fragments of the Rock of Eternity so she could put it back together. Then after the Blight attacked she decided she just wanted to go home.

I'd be surprised if we saw either character again in Legion comics. Not soon, anyway. It's a shame; they both deserve a chance for someone to get them right.

Legion of Super-Heroes #2 Review

2010-06-23T23:22:00.000-04:00

What Happened That You Have to Know About:

A bunch of Legionnaires are cleaning up the debris from Titan's destruction, when a curious Saturn Queen shows up. She mind-controls Ultra Boy to beat up his teammates and go to Earth and smash Legion HQ, seemingly just out of malice. Meanwhile, Lightning Lad abandons his search for Mekt's twin to start trying to find Saturn Girl and their kids, while Saturn Girl is making progress in the time bubble. Xenophobic earthlings start a riot protesting the arrival of refugees from Titan, and Earth-Man gets his first assignment as a Legionnaire, assisting in keeping the peace. He also learns how to use his Green Lantern ring, and uses it to deactivate the safety on his flight ring.

Review:

The machine continues to operate.

This issue, the focus seems to be on the consequences of Titan's destruction, what with the refugees and the live-action game of Asteroids the Legionnaires get to play, and all. Anybody disappointed in this issue? Shouldn't be; it's about exactly what one should have expected out of a second issue by Paul Levitz. None of the plots or subplots are ready to end yet, so we have to be satisfied with the resolution of Ultra Boy's mind-control as all the closure we're going to get.

I wonder if Levitz has long-term plans for Saturn Queen, or if this was just a one-off appearance. Not enough time has passed yet for us to have perspective on just what exactly Geoff Johns did for the Legion, but I'll mention one positive contribution he made right here: he turned Saturn Queen into a dashed interesting character. I may not like her as much as I did when she was Tenzil Kem's blushing bride, but she's a pretty good supervillain now, and I would not always have said that.

I'm sure there will be much talk about the breakup of the longstanding Mon-El/Shadow Lass couple. Here's my take on it: if you need your Legion comics to satisfy your nostalgia, Paul Levitz is not the writer for you. He doesn't cater to any of that stuff. Paul Levitz doesn't want anybody to get comfortable.

Also good to see that Earth-Man's trajectory is still unclear at this stage. It looks like he can be a ... viable? ... Legionnaire, at least, if not any nicer of a guy. I mean, I still don't like the guy, or want him on the team, much, but Levitz has found the one thing to do with him that makes him interesting, and that's to not let him be what he wants to be, and as long as that's unresolved, he's worth watching. So let's string that out as long as we reasonably can.

Cinar's art is strong again this issue. Maybe not quite as good as in #1... that happened with Manapul, too. I think there's a general second-issue-letdown effect that applies to comics. I particularly liked panel 2 of page 26. Panel Count 4.5 panels/page over 30 pages, one single-panel page.

Anyway, I say it's another clean single up the middle, and I'm looking forward to next issue.

Notes:
- just what's so hard about spelling "Brainiac", anyway? I swear I see it misspelled more than just about any other Legion-related word
- more than "Vyrga", for instance. This is not the way to impress me, Sal Cipriano, Sean Ryan, and Brian Cunningham!
- somebody check me on this... is Dream Girl's mole on the correct side of her mouth?
- Saturn Queen's costume kinda reminds me of the original Saturn Girl costume from Adventure #247. I think it's the combination of her coloring with the dark colors of the costume

Membership Notes:

Tyroc is apparently a Legionnaire in good standing, as he's part of the team cleaning up debris around Titan. And Earth-Man seems to be officially a Legionnaire.

Look, an Interview with Paul Levitz

2010-06-21T22:08:00.002-04:00

Tim Callahan interviews Levitz here. Highly recommended; some of this is stuff that I was wondering about. Go read it!

Adventure Comics #12 Review

2010-06-05T23:28:00.001-04:00

What Happened That You Have to Know About: Not a lot. Superboy spends some time with the Legion, doing superhero stuff and teenage stuff.

Review:

Kevin Sharpe is the penciller this issue. I didn't care for his work filling in for Barry Kitson in LSHv5, but his stuff looks a bit better here. Not great; he has a habit, for instance, of underdetailing figures that are supposed to be in the distance, and it can look pretty bad (for instance, see page 7). Sometimes his renderings work and sometimes they don't; compare Saturn Girl in the last panel of page 4 (good) with Saturn Girl on page 5 (not so good). Overall I'd give Sharpe a passing grade for this issue, but I don't think he's destined to become one of my favourites. Panel Count: 138/30 = 4.6 panels per page, over 30 pages. One single-panel page.

As for the story... I don't know. Maybe Levitz has something in mind for what he's going to do with this early-adventures-of-Superboy-and-the-Legion stuff. And maybe there's a demand for it; I see all kinds of people on message boards saying that they just can't figure out the Legion. My problem is that I've seen all this stuff before. On Smallville, in the Legion cartoon, in the Johns/Manapul issues of Adventure... it feels like very well-trodden ground.

But it doesn't feel like a Paul Levitz comic book, which is interesting in itself, because it clearly is a Paul Levitz comic book. Levitz, in other words, is stretching himself, which is all to the good. I just hope that there's something on its way that's more than background for the main Legion title. This was a pleasant read but not a compelling one. I'm sure I'll enjoy the next issue, but I'm not looking forward to it the way I'm looking forward to LSHv6 #2.

Notes:
- R.J. Brande's voice is way different from how we're used to him sounding under Levitz. Maybe he's supposed to sound more Durlan here? By damn!
- I'll give Sharpe the benefit of the doubt and say that it's the Legionnaires who have no idea where they're supposed to stand on a baseball field. Why isn't Luornu triplicated? They've got nine positions to cover!
- If I never see the Involuntary Heat Vision of Orgasm again, it'll be too soon
- I did kinda like seeing the Legion at a specific stage of their membership. No Ultra Boy, Mon-El, Shrinking Violet, or Sun Boy yet. Sometimes I wish we could see an adventure of one of the weirdo Legion rosters from the Five Year Gap, like when the team consisted of Colossal Boy, Invisible Kid II, Nightwind, and Polar Boy

The Legionnaires: The Substitute Commandos

2010-05-27T17:23:00.003-04:00

Chlorophyll Kid, aka Ral Benem of Mardru, aka Plant Lad. Created by Edmond Hamilton and John Forte.
Color Kid, aka Ulu Vakk of Lupra, aka Color Queen. Created by Edmond Hamilton, Curt Swan, and Jeff Greenberg.
Fire Lad, aka Staq Mavlen of Shwar. Created by Edmond Hamilton and John Forte.

Keith Giffen has admitted that he's put the Substitute Heroes through some ups and downs. Up until the (second) Levitz era, they were straightforward second-stringers, nothing more. Then the famous issue of DC Comics Presents that featured Superman and the Subs versus Ambush Bug turned the Subs into a joke team: enthusiastic but underpowered and not quite competent. This image of them persisted and largely remains today (see also the portrayal of the Subs in the animated series and the upcoming take on them in the pages of Straczynski's The Brave and the Bold. Geoff Johns's use of them in his Legion arc in Action Comics is not the same thing; Johns found a handle on the Subs that was both respectful and amusing, and I hope Paul Levitz picks up on it), despite Giffen's subsequent rehabilitation of the characters.

In the Five Years Later era, Earth has been secretly taken over by the Dominion, and a resistance movement has formed to fight them. The core of this movement is the Legion of Substitute Heroes. As the stakes rise in this struggle, a commando team raids one of the Dominion's underground facilities, and three longtime Substitute Heroes get to show us what they're made of.

(These three heroes, like most of the other Subs, were Legionnaires during the Five Year Gap, and their tenure with the Legion has been essentially unrecorded. In the retroboot Legion, Fire Lad and Chlorophyll Kid are still hanging in there with the Subs, but Color Kid was blinded by Earth-Man's "Justice League".)

Legion of Super-Heroes #1 Review

2010-05-19T22:49:00.001-04:00

What Happened That You Have to Know About:

Earthgov's agreement with the United Planets and the Legion has some conditions: the Time Institute moves off of Earth to Titan; the Legion gets to stay on Earth; Earth-Man becomes a Legionnaire (with a specially rigged flight ring to keep him in line) to appease the xenophobic sector of Earth's population. Meanwhile, Saturn Girl and her kids are vacationing on Titan.

All of this goes spectacularly wrong; some scientists at the Time Institute perform the same experiment that Krona did and manage to reproduce his results to the extent that Titan is destroyed; the Legion manages to evacuate some of the population, including Saturn Girl, but in the middle of the chaos someone kidnaps her kids. So she steals a time bubble to try to get them back. The experiment also wakes up some kind of entity on Oa who starts going around handing out Green Lantern rings, and the first one goes to Earth-Man.

Review:

Well, that feels better.

Seems like forever since we've had a real Legion comic. More than 20 years, according to some, but by my count it's more like 15 months, so either I'm not paying enough attention or they're not.

Not only that, it's a pretty good Legion comic. Let's start with the art: Yildiray Cinar seems to be a keeper. In particular I like his faces: Saturn Girl on page 4 and Brainiac 5 on page 14, for instance. One of the things you have to do when you're the Legion artist is draw future stuff well, and Cinar's 31st century looks fine, but I'm not sure he's really put his mark on it the way, say, Giffen or Coipel did. Still early, though. Panel Count: 4.8 panels/page, over 39 pages. 3 single-panel pages.

One thing I liked was how Paul Levitz took a single factor from Geoff Johns's... well, I can't call it a run... from Geoff Johns's interregnum, the political situation on Earth, and spun several subplots out of it that interacted with each other in interesting ways. There's craft in there; that doesn't happen randomly.

Levitz doesn't seem constrained by his own earlier portrayals of the Legionnaires. His Brainiac 5 was never this cranky, for one thing. I like it that the stories he's starting off seem calculated not to appeal to some barometer of awesomeness, but to make things challenging and awkward for the Legion. Earth-Man as an unwilling and unwelcome Legionnaire--that's a Legion story I've never read before. (I guess Gates was kind of comparable, but it's really not at all the same thing.) I've been waiting for Legion stories I've never read before!

I mean, I don't like Earth-Man. After the Action Comics story, I never wanted to see him again. I don't like his powers, I don't like his attitude, and I don't think he deserves to be a Legionnaire. But I'm looking forward to the rest of this story. Such a simple trick--what's the worst thing that can happen to the Legion, and how can it be made even worse?

I hope the destruction of Titan is explored in ways beyond its effect on Saturn Girl. The attention to detail in this one issue seems to be of such a high level that it'd be a shame for an important event like that to be treated like a throwaway.

Hands, hands... I've got a giant blogpost about hands that's been brewing up in me for years now, and this issue may provide more material for it. There's a hand on the cover: Earth-Man's hand. In the DC Universe, the hand is also the symbol of the birth of the universe, and this of course plays an important role in this issue. I don't know. Both hands are dangerous, especially if Earth-Man has a flight ring and a Green Lantern ring, and that's without taking his powers into account. Is that the limit of the comparison? I could run through the issue and find lots of other depictions of hands gesturing meaningfully in this or that way, but there's really no reason to build any kind of analysis on that. The only panel that makes me pause a little is the Polar Boy one: he's missing a hand, famously, but we can't see that. Probably not significant...

Normally this is where I'd warn everyone about the dangers of reading too much into a first issue, about how it's easy to do a first issue or a first arc, and it's what comes after that that gives you an idea of the quality of comic book you're reading. I don't know if that's necessary this time, though. First, it didn't really seem like a first issue; it seemed like a middle issue that didn't happen to have any storylines that we were already in the midst of. Second, Levitz's style is to play the long game in which his titles don't break down easily into distinct arcs; his Legion will simmer for a long time before he lets it boil over. It can get frustrating, because you want closure and he won't give it to you, but if you look past that you'll see that a lot of interesting stuff is happening.

Notes:
- Chief Cusimano. Did we already know that? I forget. Anyway, good for her.
- Bouncing Boy and Duplicate Damsel are still instructors at the Academy; it's nice to have that established.
- Polar Boy is not alone.
- What's with the third eyes on the Coluans?
- Nice circularity, with the apparent meaning of the title and the real meaning of the title.
- Prediction: next issue, something important will happen involving a Legionnaire who didn't appear in this issue, something that has nothing to do with anything that happened ithis issue.

Membership Notes:

It is implied that Earth-Man joins the Legion this issue. I'm not going to put him on the roster page yet; we'll see how it plays out.

Brainiac and the Legion of Super-Heroes, Part 2 Review

2010-05-12T22:51:00.001-04:00

Adventure Comics #10
Supergirl #52
Superman #699
Superman: Last Stand of New Krypton #3
Adventure Comics #11

What Happened That You Need to Know About:

The fighting against Brainiac continues. It's kind of hard to follow all the different parts and stages of the fight; you've got various groups of Legionnaires and Kryptonians, plus Luthor, all after different things. It turns out Supergirl does have some kind of relationship with the retroboot Legion. Unsurprisingly, Brainiac is defeated and Superman doesn't die. The Legionnaires seed various planets with the bottled cities Brainiac stole, return Mon-El to the Phantom Zone, and head back to the future.

Review:

I don't remember the last time I had this little to say in a comic book review.

I didn't like the second half as much as I liked the first. The art seemed less consistent and the story wasn't too much more than connecting some dots that we already knew were there. A lot of this story was setup for the new Legion series and for "War of the Supermen". You know what it's like? It's like DC has adopted Dr. Manhattan's philosophy with regard to their stories. "Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends."

Not that there were no decent moments; there were. I have no problems with the details. It's the broad strokes that put me off. I guess, from a Legion point of view, I wanted this story to do more than clear the decks for Paul Levitz. I dunno. What did you think of it? Maybe we can get some better analysis going in the comments.

The Legionnaires: Element Lad

2010-04-28T16:46:00.003-04:00

Element Lad aka Jan Arrah of Trom, aka Alchemist, the Progenitor. Created by Edmond Hamilton and John Forte.

I became a regular Legion reader at around the same time Paul Levitz's second run started. Element Lad quickly became one of my favourites. He had an interesting, versatile superpower (the power to change any chemical element into any other chemical element, if you're new here), and he was a quiet, intelligent guy who seemed underappreciated by those around him. Anyway, that's why I liked him, so far as I can reproduce my thinking.

Legion writers have tended to follow Paul Levitz's lead and portray Jan as the spiritual Legionnaire. Only one problem with that: it doesn't work. Levitz (and, later, Giffen and the Bierbaums) made it work because the character had already been around for a while and had been established as being a thoughtful kind of guy, and it made sense to give him a dash of spirituality. Reboot and threeboot Jan, though, had SPIRITUAL stamped on their foreheads right from day one, and were therefore kind of caricatures.

My signature moment for Jan is in LSHv4 #34, the famous ProFem issue, but for a reason that's probably not obvious to most. But let me take the long way around.

LSHv4 #34 is the issue in which we learn that Element Lad's former girlfriend, Science Police officer Shvaughn Erin, is actually Sean Erin, who took a drug called ProFem to become the woman he thought Element Lad wanted. Element Lad responds by telling Sean that he hadn't had to do that; Jan would have felt the same way about him anyway. And there's a whole lot of stuff that lies behind that.

For quite a while, the Legion has had a lot of gay fans. Quite understandably, many of them (and many straight fans, too) have, over the years, mused about the possibility of this Legionnaire or that one being gay. And Element Lad was one guy who came in for a lot of speculation. Part of that (not all of it) comes from the Silver Age issue where the girl Legionnaires turn evil and Light Lass seduces Element Lad, and he says that he's "out of his element" when it comes to girls. Now, obviously, one can (now!) read that and wonder if Jan said that because he's into guys instead. But things weren't quite so simple back in the Silver Age.

You used to get characters who weren't interested in sex and love. Not so much anymore. Who's a famous one... Jughead Jones, in the Archie comics. Jug was interested in hamburgers first and second and girls were not on the board at all. (I understand they've changed that about him in recent years. But this is all in the news now anyway, because the Archie comics are introducing an actual gay guy and people are coming out of the woodwork saying, not entirely as a joke, that Jughead was gay long before this new guy.) Here's what I think happened, and I must first state that I'm coming up with all of this out of my own head and I've done no research at all; if I'm talking through my hat please let me know: I think that all these characters, these contented bachelors and spinsters, appeared in stories because there were real-life bachelors and spinsters who said that they were happier that way because secretly they were gay, but couldn't say so in the repressive society of the time.

But now we've had the sexual revolution, and gay people can get openly married in many places, and what have you, and people don't need to live like that anymore. Quite so much. And, accordingly, we don't need characters like that anymore. Except here's the thing: fiction is not real life, and just because a guy in real life says he's not interested in women because he's really interested in men, a guy in a book can still be not interested in women because he isn't. Jughead isn't necessarily gay, is what I'm saying. But his act doesn't play anymore. If you ran into someone, in a book or in real life, who claimed that he or she had no interest in having a love life of any kind, ever, would you believe him or her? Or would you suspect he or she was covering something up?

I miss those characters, a little bit. I think it's great that gay people can see themselves reflected in characters in popular culture, and I think DC has been dragging its feet for too long about having one or more openly gay Legionnaires. But isn't there also some room for fictional characters who don't get involved in romance because they're too weird to want that kind of human connection? Even if (or, in the case of the Legion, especially since) there are no people like that in real life?

Or are there?

We tend to assume that romantic love and sex are basic motivators for everyone. I don't know of a reason why there couldn't be a few people for whom that's not true, though. I don't mean people who've been traumatized in some way, or people who (like, say, Catholic priests) deliberately put that aspect of themselves aside in order to concentrate on something else. I mean people who just aren't interested in the whole deal, with anybody. Is that possible? I don't see why not. (And if there are people like that in real life, and if any of them read this, I don't think they're weird, despite what I wrote two paragraphs up, and they have my sympathy for having to put up with what must be considerable societal pressure to be something they're not.)

Anyway, Element Lad. Nobody is saying Element Lad is such a character; he's into it when Light Lass kisses him, and he gets involved with Shvaughn later on. All his "out of my element" statement really meant is that he was shy around girls. (None of which invalidates Jan's later statement that he would have loved Sean just as much, if not more, than Shvaughn. You could publish stuff in '90s comics you wouldn't even consider in the '60s.) This didn't used to be such a rare thing, but maybe it's becoming so, now.

LSHv4 #34 became quite notorious and ticked off a lot of people, including Element Lad fans who didn't want their favourite character to be gay, Shvaughn fans who liked him/her better as a woman, Legion fans who didn't like radical changes, socially conservative comic-book fans who didn't like the thought of anybody being gay, and gay and trans fans who thought that #34 was a weak and/or ham-fisted treatment of issues that were important to them. (Me? As with many other wild events to happen in the 5YL era, the revelation that Shvaughn was Sean elicited a reaction of, basically, "Oh no! This is great!" from me. You have to give the 5YL creators credit for one thing at least: they left everything on the field.)

Here's my favourite part of the issue. With all the turmoil on Earth, Shvaughn is cut off from her ProFem supply, and has asked Jan to go raid a pharmacy for some other drugs that'll do something nonspecifically helpful. Jan is thinking about the situation.

That's what I like to see. Expertise. "I could probably do that." Jan understands chemistry well enough that he can afford to be casual about his capabilities. Chemistry is cool*, and Jan's ability to manipulate it is even cooler. He can look at something printed on the side of a pill bottle that I can't pronounce, and say, "I could probably do that." Element Lad is great.

* No, it is. Haven't you ever spent about a half hour just checking out the periodic table, with all the different symbols and relationships and stuff? You should.

Brainiac and the Legion of Super-Heroes, Part 1 Review

2010-04-11T18:30:00.001-04:00

Adventure Comics #8
Superman: Last Stand of New Krypton #1
Supergirl #51
Superman #698
Adventure Comics #9
Superman: Last Stand of New Krypton #2

I was planning on putting up a review of this arc before now, but I found that I really don't have a lot to say about it. I haven't been following the Superman titles, and so there's a lot of this stuff that I really don't know or care about. Kryptonian politics? Yawn. But I might as well get to it.

What Happened That You Need to Know About

Uh, a lot of stuff. Apparently there's something called New Krypton now, ruled by General Zod, and Superman lives there, and Brainiac is threatening the place, and Superman and Mon-El and Supergirl and Superboy and all the Legionnaires in the 21st century are trying to fight him. Brainiac is on track to win this fight and kill Superman, which will throw off history and is creating rifts all over the 31st century, so Brainiac 5 comes back to do what he can to prevent that.

Review:

It's a perfectly acceptable crossover so far, with a good villain, a reasonable premise, passable art, complex and competing motivations for the heroes... the ingredients are all here. I'm happy with it.

As a Legion story, though...

It's like pretty much every other appearance of the retroboot Legion, really (especially Legion of 3 Worlds); the Legionnaires are definitely not the stars of the show here. I don't mind that in the sense that anything that increases the visibility of the Legion in preparation for their return to starring status in their own books is welcome, but it doesn't make these issues any better as Legion comics.

Having said that, Tellus's efforts to unite the competing guilds of Kryptonians is a very Legion kind of thing to happen in any story; they're not just there as wallpaper. (Compare the way that FC:L3W turned out to be pretty much a Legion story in the end.)

Notes:
- am I being too much of a purist or traditionalist or whatever if I say that Robinson and Gates really don't get how Quislet talks?
- all the stuff that was set up in the Adventure backups? R.J. Brande's will, and Element Lad as a chemistry teacher, and all that? The payoff on it could not possibly have been weaker.
- I count at least three Legionnaires who are on the scene who could basically defeat Brainiac all by themselves: Element Lad, Quislet, and Sensor Girl. In fact, the end of S:LSoNK #2 could be a big Sensor Girl ruse.

It's pretty good; it'll probably read well when it's all collected. I look forward to the rest of it, and I'll kick in another review when it's over.

The Legionnaires: And the Rest

2010-03-16T17:16:00.004-04:00

Let's face it. Some of these people were just names on a list, and maybe the best thing to do would be to get 'em all out of the way now.

Echo aka Myke-4 Astor of Khundish Calish-Aetia. Created by Jim Shooter and Curt Swan.
Crystal Kid aka Bobb Kohan of Earth. Created by Gerry Conway, Steve Ditko, and Robert Cohen.
Storm Boy aka Myke Chypurz of Earth. Created by Jerry Siegel and John Forte.
Porcupine Pete aka Peter Dursin of Earth. Created by Cary Bates and Dave Cockrum.

All four of these guys were Legionnaires during the Five Year Gap, and their tenure with the team has been almost completely undocumented. They each had some history outside of their Legion membership, too: Crystal Kid was a longtime Academy student, Storm Boy was a Silver Age reject, Echo was a villain in the Adult Legion story, and Porcupine Pete was a Sub. They also got a little bit of play in the 5YL era, but nothing to excite anyone's imagination. Oh: Echo and Storm Boy were also brought back as villains by Geoff Johns, and Porcupine Pete was the leader of the Subs in the animated series.

There's nothing wrong with any of these characters. I'm sure a good writer could make something of any or all of them. As it hasn't happened yet, I say that we move on.

Raining Soup

2010-03-10T17:01:00.000-05:00

Do you ever borrow comic books from the library?

If you don't, you may want to look into it. It's a great way of trying out stuff you've always wanted to read but never did. I've gotten into all kinds of things thanks to the library, and some of it I've made a point of hunting down and buying my own copy later on. (Some of it, I read and said to myself, "Wow, I'm glad I didn't pay anything for that.")

To give you some idea, here's a partial list of some compilations and collections and serieses I first read thanks to the library:

New Frontier
All-Star Superman
Tom Strong
Marvel: 1602
Marvels
JSA: Golden Age
Transmetropolitan
Top Ten
Naruto
One Piece
Planetes
Bleach
Jack Staff
Shutterbug Follies
Invincible
Love and Rockets
Fables
Jack of Fables
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Kingdom Come
Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane
It's a Good Life If You Don't Weaken
Wimbledon Green
Robinson's Starman
Kirby's Fourth World
the recentish Shazam! and the Monster Society of Evil miniseries
Identity Crisis
JLA: Earth 2
JLA/Avengers
Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E.
Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth
Pride of Baghdad
Louis Riel
Nexus
Agents of Atlas
Batman: the Dark Knight Returns

The library can be a waterfall of comics! Go stick a bucket underneath!

The Legionnaires: Thanks for Playing

2010-03-07T11:43:00.001-05:00

And then there were these yutzes who showed up just in time to get killed.

Firefist of Khundia. Created by Tom and Mary Bierbaum and Stuart Immonen.

Blood Claw of Khundia. Created by Tom and Mary Bierbaum and Stuart Immonen.

Late in the Five Years Later era, Mordru started causing trouble by resurrecting the dead and turning them loose on the universe. Things got so desperate that the Khunds made common cause with the United Planets, and, as a gesture of cooperation, sent four of their best people to become Legionnaires. Firefist and Blood Claw were two of them.

One might expect Khundish superheroes to be jerks, and in the case of these two guys, one would be right. They were obnoxious macho fighting machines. Firefist was some kind of cyborg, and Blood Claw had these claws. Neither of them came to a good end; Blood Claw was killed in battle (and became a zombie himself), and Firefist had the poor judgment to pick a fight with Devlin O'Ryan, despite Devlin's reluctance and warnings that it couldn't end well.

Sometimes you look at these short-term Legionnaires and think that they were worthwhile characters and isn't it a shame that we didn't see more of them. This isn't one of those times (although we actually did get a bit more of Firefist: the Khundish government managed to get his systems restarted in between his first death and Zero Hour. He wasn't any more interesting the second time around).

The Legionnaires: Lightning Lass

2010-02-28T11:53:00.003-05:00

Lightning Lass, aka Ayla Ranzz of Winath, aka Light Lass, Gossamer, Pulse, Spark. Created by Edmond Hamilton and John Forte.

Ayla has a long history as a Legionnaire, of course. She's Lightning Lad's twin sister, and joined the Legion to replace him after his death back in the Silver Age, remaining on the team after his resurrection. Since then there have only been brief periods of Legion history in which she has not featured prominently. Usually she has lightning powers, like her brother, but every now and then something weird will happen to give her gravity-reduction powers instead.

It's Ayla's love life that has been the most notable thing about her characterization over the years. In the Silver Age, she and Timber Wolf fell in love, and that lasted up until the Great Darkness Saga, when they broke up for some basically good reasons. After that, she grew closer to Shrinking Violet, which made her a little unsure of herself, and she tried to deny her feelings by coming on to Magnetic Kid, who was completely squicked out at the idea of being cradlerobbed by someone his brother's age. Eventually, in the Five Years Later era, she and Vi do start a romantic relationship which lasts until Zero Hour. This was, I guess, controversial at the time; I hope it would be less so now. (Unfortunately, Geoff Johns seems to have turned back the clock so that Ayla and Timber Wolf are together again. This is the part where we roll our eyes.) In the reboot, she had a mutual crush going on with Chameleon, but really nobody got much action in the reboot.

In the threeboot, Mark Waid decided that the key to Ayla's character was that she was warm and affectionate. And I liked that; I thought that threeboot Ayla was the best portrayal of the character I had seen. (Waid also gave her some opportunities to really cut loose with her null-gravity powers, too, something that had stymied previous writers.) One of the ways that this manifested itself was that she had a lot of boyfriends. It was stated, or implied, that at some point she had gone out with Timber Wolf, Ultra Boy, Element Lad, and Sun Boy, possibly among others. (Once Jim Shooter got his hands on the book, he tried to continue this characterization of Ayla, but while his portrayal of her wasn't incompatible with Waid's, it did seem to have a different tone, and one that didn't work as well.)

I recall at the time there was some criticism of Ayla for this (mixed in with all the other criticism of the threeboot Legion for their attitudes et cetera). I think. The idea was that she was too promiscuous for a Legionnaire. It was assumed that she had been sleeping with all these guys (which is not a radical interpretation of the text) and that superheroes shouldn't do that. Which...

...well, why shouldn't she? As I write this, the Olympics are going on, and every time there's an Olympics, we see the same story in the papers: they need a truckload of condoms to stock the Olympic Village every day because of all the sex the athletes are having. I think Legionnaires are a good comparison for Olympians: they're a large elite group of young athletic people engaged in physically intense activity and living in close quarters. Of course there's going to be a lot of sex; what does anyone expect? And, good for them: I can hardly imagine a better way for them to be spending their spare time.

Ayla may have been created before the sexual revolution of the '60s and '70s, but that was a long time ago, and it's much longer ago from the setting of Legion comics. Presumably she's not burdened with the idea that sex is something that people do because they're bad. Any notion that she goes to bed with people out of low self-esteem can be dispelled by a quick search for any evidence that Ayla is actually suffering from low self-esteem. She likes people, she's affectionate, and sometimes she expresses her affection. I say she's fine the way she is, and, given that she spends her time saving people and fighting bad guys, maybe her critics should get off her case. Also, maybe it's time that superhero-comic morality caught up with actual-human-beings morality.

One subplot in the mid-threeboot was Ayla's friendship with Supergirl, which was the perfect showcase for Ayla's generous nature precisely because it got off to such a rocky start. It was actually pretty funny (recall that when Supergirl first showed up in the 31st century, nobody was sure if she was real, and she herself thought that she was hallucinating). Page from LSH v5 #17:

The Legionnaires: Tyroc

2010-02-28T11:51:00.001-05:00

Tyroc, aka Troy Stewart of Earth (specifically, Marzal). Created by Cary Bates and Mike Grell.

And then sometimes you do everything wrong and it works anyway.

Tyroc has a name and origin born out of some ridiculously condescending racial attitudes. He's got a silly costume. He has some astonishingly poorly-thought-out superpowers (he can scream nonsense syllables and make absolutely anything happen!). He's only appeared in a handful of stories, because Legion writers (understandably!) didn't know what to do with him and figured that it'd be better to do nothing with him. By rights he should be a train wreck of a character, and more to be scorned than pitied.

But...

If you read the stories with Tyroc in them, he actually comes across as an interesting, likable guy. There's something about his personality that works. (I'm sure that the art helps.) It wouldn't be hard to fix him at all: put him in a decent costume, hammer his powers into something that works in the comic-book medium and doesn't make him omnipotent, mop out some of the racial-separatist junk he was originally saddled with, and you're all set. You don't even have to change his name: as unfortunate as it was, it's not as bad as "Matter-Eater Lad". After all, this is a guy who has reached heights only attained by a couple of other Legionnaires:

If You Want a Flight Ring, Ask for a Flight Ring

2010-02-27T12:20:00.000-05:00

So some people are calling for DC to give away Legion flight rings like they've done with Green Lantern rings and Flash rings and what have you. It's not a bad idea; click here for more details. (The Legion Abstract principle that applies to this issue, as always, is, "Be careful what you don't ask for; you might not get it.")

I'd like a flight ring or two. (Ideally I'd like an operational flight ring, but these things are, like politics, the art of the possible.) But I could live without it. If I was going to ask DC for anything, I'd ask for a third monthly Legion series to go along with the upcoming Legion of Super-Heroes v6 and Adventure Comics. (The Legion Abstract principle that applies to this issue is, "More is better.")

When would I give the flight ring away, if I was DC? Maybe with LSHv6 #3. You have to imagine that #1 will sell okay no matter what. So if #1 is a big attraction, and #3 is a big attraction, then it'd be stupid not to get #2 also, right? And if you've got the first three issues, well, why not just keep going with the series?

I'm always thinking.