Legion of Super-Heroes v9 #2 Review

What Happened That You Have to Know About: Brainiac One of Five and Tenzil Kem head to Winath to investigate Mekt Ranzz. Mekt recruits Garth into his Legion but they are betrayed to the Persuaders by Ayla. Other characters we think of as Legionnaires are also drawn into webs of evil one way or another by characters we think of as villainous.

Review: One of the things I like best in something I'm reading is a mystery that's set up so that, as I read, I know what is happening but have no idea what's going on. The first chapter of Beau Geste is one example of this. "But how? But why? And what happened to the trumpeter?"

Joshua Williamson has given us something similar but different here: we know what's happening, basically, and we know why, basically, but... but where are we going with this? Where can we go with this? I mean... is there a path from here back to regular futuristic superhero stories?

In a way, Williamson's project is counter to my own tendencies as a Legion fan. I'm more attached to the concept of the team overall than I am to the individual characters. I could enjoy a Legion comic with 100% new Legionnaires. (Assuming the thing was any good.) I think the concept of the Legion, teenage superheroes carrying on Superman's legacy a thousand years from now, is such a golden thing that it overcomes any considerations of just who those superheroes are.

But that's not Williamson's position at all. He's saying that, for his villains, the Legion is a dangerous idea that must be corrupted if not extinguished, and so they do some chronal engineering to accomplish that... but that the villains can be overcome and the future rescued, not by the inextinguishable idea of the Legion itself, but by the irrepressible heroism of the specific people who will insist on being superheroes regardless. And that's a good take on it! It's not inevitable, but it is good.

This issue doesn't advance the story very far in any direction, but the shape of it is coming clear. The villainous forces trying to shape the Legion, and the Legionnaires, the way they want, have selected targets and are trying to groom them for evil: Grimbor for Cosmic Boy; Lightning Lord for Lightning Lad; the Emerald Empress for Saturn Girl; Mano and the Persuaders for Dawnstar, and Lightning Lass, and it looks like Porcupine Pete and Polar Boy while we're at it. Meanwhile, Brainy and Tenzil are still free to operate independently and are trying to get to the bottom of the whole thing, and may be the key to breaking the pattern.

I'm still really enjoying myself with this series. I don't remember the last time months were this long.

Art: 134 panels/20 pages = 6.7 panels/page. One splash page.

Twenty pages? Let's keep an eye on that.

The thing that strikes me most about Hayden Sherman's art this issue is the panel layout. The panels are arranged decoratively, like windowpanes, and suggest illustration rather than motion. This matches the soft colour palette and Sherman's painterly rendering of the characters' faces. It's really nice to look at. It's like if Alphonse Mucha was Barry Kitson.

I'm still fighting Imra's thought-wheel speech balloons to a standstill. Sometimes I'm just guessing at what they're trying to convey. But I'm sticking with it.

Notes:

- the scene where Garth and Mekt bust up the bandits trying to rob the market wasn't particularly sinister or anything. Maybe too focused on the fighty parts to be pure superheroics. But then Mekt had to make it creepy anyway

- on the other hand, Dawnstar--I must assume it's Dawny--instructing Porcupine Pete and Polar Boy to massacre a bunch of witnesses? That might be too dark; I don't know how you come back from that

- Fire Lad may exist in this continuity. I mean, why wouldn't he, but it may be established that he exists

- So I guess Green Lanterns are evil in this future? Willpower! Nobody specified good will!

- I wondered, last issue, why Ayla (and the other Ranzzes) wore lightning bolts all over their clothes if they were trying to conceal their powers. But now that I look at them this issue, I guess that's not exactly what they're doing. They have plausible deniability

Listen to the Voices

Hey! That's me appearing on this week's episode of the Long Live the Legion podcast. We discuss the "Emerald Vi" storyline of the reboot Legion, and I throw in a couple of trivia questions. I recommend this podcast, not just this episode, to all Legion fans; it's a great time. Available at this link: Long Live the Legion: Emerald Violet

Legion of Super-Heroes v9 #1 Review

What Happened That You Have to Know About: The 31st century is a time in which civilization is kind of falling apart. Superheroes have been illegal for a long time. Enforcers called "Persuaders" are throwing their weight around everywhere. And bazillionaire R.J. Brande has just been killed on a public street, with a Legion L symbol painted on the wall above his body. Private detective Brainiac 5 decides to investigate this, assisted by his bodyguard Tenzil Kem. They discover that Brande was researching superpowers, possibly in relation to something called "Legion", and that his killer seems to be a man named Mekt Ranzz. Meanwhile, Mekt's hero-worshipping younger brother Garth is trying to start his superheroic career as Lightning Lad, although his sister Ayla thinks it's a dumb idea. Rokk Krinn is a sports superstar on Braal, but he's having some hard times, and Imra Ardeen is a telepath princess on Titan, uncomfortable with her role and picking up some strange thoughts from somewhere.

Review: One of the things I have come to believe after reviewing these comics for this long is, first issues are easy. I'm not saying you or I could do it, but if you've got a premise or a vision or a pitch for a comic series, the execution is never going to look as good as it does in the first issue and the first story. So I was expecting this comic to be good, and so it is.

Writer Joshua Williamson's approach to this issue is to not try to do too much. He starts us off with only a few Legionnaires. Already that puts him one ahead of Brian Michael Bendis at this same stage: we're spending more time with fewer characters, and getting to know them. Furthermore, the stories that they're part of are small ones. We're working our way up to the big epics, learning the characters and the world while we're at it.

There are plenty of comparisons available to previous versions of the Legion. Williamson's no-superheroes law is similar to the premise of Mark Waid's threeboot setup, only simpler, on the one hand, and more audience-friendly on the other. The gradual introduction of the characters resembles what was done with the reboot Legion early on. None of this is a criticism. There was a lot done right in earlier Legion comics, and it would be a shame not to learn from it. Certainly this comic book doesn't feel like just a retread.

In last month's Superman: 1000 Annual, or whatever its plaguy name was, we saw Brainiac assign Hank Henshaw, the Cyborg Superman, the task of making sure that the Legion didn't become a problem in this world. And in this issue, we have R.J. Brande assassinated by... Mekt Ranzz using the Legion symbol? We can sort of mentally fill in how this might work. Henshaw puts together his own secret "Legion", full of bad actors, to fill the space of a real Legion and prevent them from coming together, and Mekt is one of his recruits. Maybe Henshaw even has Brainiac's knowledge of Legion history to inform his efforts. This suggests that whoever else is in on this with Mekt will be people we've heard of before. Anyway, this is also similar to how the threeboot treated Mekt and his "Wanderers"; an older, lower-profile supergroup with fewer scruples than the Legion. Now that I say it, it's also similar to Mekt in the animated series.

I like the Brainiac 5 we're getting here. Actually they're calling him "Brainiac One of Five", but I'm not going to use that until I know what it means. I miss the blond hair, but I do like that a) he is able to work with Tenzil, and b) he is on task rather than not wanting to be bothered by any of this.

My overall evaluation of the comic book? Well, it's a good start. It's an intriguing read with a lot of nice touches and seems to lay a solid foundation for whatever is to come. I have a qualm about the possibility that this Legion will end up being tangled in continuity with the other Legions, but then, maybe it won't. And, one last thing? I'd like to see a villain in this story. I'd like to see the Legionnaires, once they get their ducks in a row, fighting someone other than "society" or "the Peacemaker force" (but not, please, straight to "Brainiac and the forces of continuity").

See you in a month! I already can't wait.

Art: 142 panels / 30 pages = 4.7 panels/page. Two double-page spreads, one arrangement of 7 panels across 2 pages.

 How many panels are there on page 1? I can't figure it out. Somewhere between 4 and 18. I'll say 10. There are a few pages like this... Hayden Sherman is not making this easy for me. That's good! They're trying stuff.

I'm not sure yet how to characterize Sherman's art. I'll work on it. They render the Legionnaires very much as kids; they look quite young. They're also pretty androgynous, which seems to be a deliberate choice, and it's one I like. Cheerful? Is that the word I want? It's true, anyway. But there's more to it than that. In some ways the characters look more like illustrations than comic-book characters (complimentary).

I don't usually talk about the lettering, but this time I need to. The typeface changes when the characters are shouting, and during Lightning Lad's action scene, and that's an interesting effect... but the way Titanians' telepathy is rendered is beautiful and wonderful! I'm still figuring out how to read it, exactly. Should letterer Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou or Hayden Sherman get the credit for it?

Membership Notes: Well, there's no Legion yet--or, rather, maybe there is, but it's not our Legion if so--but the viewpoint characters we're following around are the kids we recognize as Lightning Lad, Saturn Girl, Cosmic Boy, Brainiac 5, and Matter-Eater Lad. In addition, we see Lightning Lass and Magno (not that I think Magno is more than a walk-on at least at the moment), and get hints that we might be soon meeting Triplicate Girl.

Superman 2026 Annual: Year One Thousand #1 Review

What Happened That You Have to Know About:

I'm writing this paragraph on Monday, July 27th. I haven't seen any of the previews for this comic. But I'm going to make a prediction here, which is that, as far as the fiveboot Legion is concerned, you don't have to know anything about what happens in this issue. We'll see!

Now that I've read it...

No, some of this is going to come into play. After the events of DC KO, Superman has a lot of extra cosmic power. He uses it to set the timestream straight and make it so that all versions of the Legion of Super-Heroes are still possible and still exist, including at least some of Darkseid's Omega Legion, who are now very very sorry for what they've done, but are also captives of Brainiac One Million, who has also captured all of the other Legionful futures. Brainiac 1.0x10^6 also wants to hijack a different future, newly created by Superman somehow. Right now it has no superheroes, and he assigns Cyborg Superman, of all people, to prevent a Legion from forming. One must assume that the new Legion in the upcoming series will have to deal with this.

Review:

Well, it was pretty obvious that this was going to be a comic in which blocks were rearranged. I kind of wish it had been a bit more than that, though.

How is it as a Superman comic? That is the name on the cover, after all. I guess it's good enough. The throughline of the story is that Superman keeps wanting to do one more thing before he finally goes home to Lois and the 21st century, and in the end, as he says, his past saves him from his preoccupation with the future and he does go home. That's a story, contained in this one issue, even if there are lots of competing distractions (the Infinite Man! Pandora! The Hourman with the emphasized jowl lines!) keeping us from seeing it. But it's pretty weak. If I was a Superman fan who didn't care about the Legion, I'd advise myself to skip this one and pick up the storyline in Action #1100.

But, as you all know and as fate would have it, I do care about the Legion, so let's look at that. I think we can conclude that DC will simply never kill off all Legions except for the one they want to move forward with. They didn't during Infinite Crisis, they didn't during Final Crisis, and now they didn't during DC KO. Nor should they! If they did, it would just be a countdown until someone brought 'em back anyway. But I think we would like to see a resolution for some of the issues surrounding all these Legions. I do want Legion comics: I want them to be about futuristic superheroes inspired by Superman, having optimistic science fiction adventures. I don't want them to be about kicking DC continuity around the block one more time. If there must be a reboot, then get it over with and just give us some good comics. Don't linger on the meta stuff. Nobody likes it!

No, for those of us who are fond of all the past versions of the Legion, we got it underlined for us three times that they're still around and not going anywhere. "Long live all the Legions...", "...every version deserved to live...", "all Legions are now possible." It's very nice. I don't know if it's any way to run comic book continuity, but that's their problem.

I was hoping the new Legion would get off to a clean start. And maybe they will. But this comic seems to be suggesting that they won't.

One interesting thing. There's no explanation in this comic of why the Legion of Super-Heroes is such a big deal. The closest anybody gets is Brainiac 1.0x10^6, who says they were inspired by Superman. Are we just supposed to know? Or is Joshua Williamson saving that material for the actual Legion comic? I do think there should have been something about it, though. I have it on good authority that every comic book is someone's first.

As Brian Hyland once said, see you in September! (At the latest. I may post other stuff before that.)

Notes:

We can see some tubes in Brainiac 1.0x10^6's lab with past versions of the Legion in them: Silver Age, Five Years Later, retroboot, reboot, threeboot, and fourboot. And I guess we have to include the Omega Legion too. Will they see any use? Who knows?

How many of us recognized the Infinite Man from his silhouette on page 10? Although I did wonder if it might be Superman himself, with his new hat. But I guess if that had been it they would have tried to match it more exactly.

The Time Trapper has now been a rogue Controller, the personification of entropy, Cosmic Boy, Superboy-Prime, Doomsday, and Superman. I've checked the schedule, and your turn is Tuesday the 18th. Bring snacks.

There's a preview of LSH v9 #1, just the first three pages, and according to the Interlac on the second page, the city we see is "Superlopolis". I wonder if that's correct.

I would like us all to get away from this habit of distinguishing parallel worlds by what superheroes are in them. Are superheroes that important? What about the world with no shrimp, or the world with nothing but shrimp? There must be some other stuff going on.

Art: 175 panels/38 pages = 4.6 panels/page. Two splash pages, five combined pages.

The art is done by Eddy Barrows and Yasmine Putri, but I'm not a hundred percent how it was split up. According to the credits, there are two stories in this comic, but where does one end and the other start? I guess the Barrows one ends when Superman is rescued by the time bubble, and the Putri one starts on the next page with Lightning Lad. They're both pretty good. Putri makes Hourman look kindly, which has got to be a tough assignment. It's a very water-coloury style, which I always like. Barrows also gets paintery with some of his panels, to good effect, although his characters sometimes get a bit Gary Frank around the eyes.

Look, Nah, No Hands

 Recently had an exchange on Bluesky with a chap who said, in relation to the current political situation in the United States, "We need the Legion!" To which my response was, if I remember right, "No, we need the Authority!" Maybe I don't have the Authority analyzed quite right here, but my point was that Donald Trump doesn't make a great Legion of Super-Heroes villain specifically.

It's true that the LSH has brought down corrupt politicians in the past. There was the story in the Baxter run, about Universo's pet president. There was the reboot sequence where Cosmic Boy outsmarts President Chu and ends her regime. Still, I would say that the first is really a story about the Legion versus Universo, and I would say that the second is a long-running subplot.

But! There was a Legion story in which the world faced immense political corruption, violent revolution and even more violent reprisals, isolation from traditional allies, and ecological disaster. This was the Terra Mosaic story in the Five Years Later era (written by Keith Giffen and Tom and Mary Bierbaum). Basically, the Dominion had infiltrated Earth's government and installed its own puppets, to Earth's great detriment, and various Legion-related characters got involved with the resistance to this government in different ways.

When the conflict between the government and resistance boiled over into a full-on war, the United Planets calls in the Legion to go in and help. And the Legion, uncharacteristically, refuses. They say, no, Earth has to win this fight itself. Earth is fighting for its own soul. Of course the Legion could intervene and turn a victory over to the people of Earth, but it was the people of Earth who let the Dominion take over in the first place, who accepted their influence, and now it's the people of Earth who have to throw it off.

This brings to my mind Lex Luthor's complaint about Superman, that Superman's presence makes the Earth dependent on him and unable to achieve the greatness that they otherwise could. I don't think Luthor is correct, because I don't think Superman does make the Earth dependent on him... but if 30th-century Earth slid into brutal tyranny of their own weakness, they would be dependent on the Legion if they needed the Legion to pull them out of it. And, note, most of the Legionnaires at the time were no more Earthlings than Superman is.

Similarly in 2026 reality. It wasn't Universo who inflicted Donald Trump on the world. We, collectively, did that ourselves. I'm as prone as anyone to imagining how the Legion of Super-Heroes, or Superman, or Light Yagami, might use their abilities to bail us out of this widening gyre, but we'd still be the same people at the end of it, and if we got ourselves in trouble once, we'd do it again. We've got to fix it ourselves, and we've got to learn, and we've got to change, and we've got to teach our children wisdom.