Saturday, March 15, 2008

Legion of Super Heroes #2-10 Review

What Happened That You Have to Know About:

Mordru was starting to throw his weight around on the magical planet of Zarok, so the Legion went and fought him.

Review:

Boy, that was lame. It was a generic fantasy-magic story with a few incidental Legion details. The main character was the annoying little kid from one of the weaker episodes of the first season. Superman-X saves the day by casting a magic spell, of all things. And the fantasy elements of the story were strictly off-the-rack.

There were characters named 'Mordru' and 'the White Witch'. But they weren't characterized... at all, really.

Some of the Legionnaires had some nice moves in the uninteresting fights they had against some magical cannon fodder. That was good, I guess.

I read one comment about the episode to the effect that the White Witch's appearance made the whole episode worth it. My thoughts on that notion are, like hell it did. The White Witch wasn't much more than the artificial female voice that guides you through a phonemail tree; they could have called her Wonder Woman without changing the story at all. As long as Legion fans have such undiscriminating standards--i.e., that they'll accept anything that reproduces a surface detail of the original Legion--then we'll keep having stuff like this episode, or the Lightning Saga, foisted on us.

I mean, my approach for this blog is to look for the good in whatever treatments of the Legion come along. Usually I can find it; sometimes not. But I hope that it takes more than a familiar name or nostalgic costume to win my approval. It was a worthwhile episode because one of the one-half-dimensional semicharacters was named the White Witch? Please.

This has been a good series and it's only got a few episodes left. Let's hope they're more like the rest of the series than they are like this one.

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8 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

The whole of season 2 has been very confusing. The first two episodes started out really strongly; like Kel and Imperiex actually had a purpose, but then, it seems like the writers woke up one morning with amnesia and had to make up the rest. This episode especially felt like a filler (just for the sake of having thirteen episodes).
By the way, what happened to Imperiex? There's nearly eight episodes in a row with him as the focus and now two where he's not even mentioned. Is he still trying to figure out how to unshrink himself?

1:40 AM  
Blogger Matthew E said...

I think they're just saving him for the finale.

9:15 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Perhaps the show has lost one its "good" writers since the writers strike has ended?...

and *WHO* IS that bearded wizard (that "Mordru look-alike" who was also seen in the Child's Play episode) from the council??? The "Mordru look-alike" was believed by many blogs to actually be Mordru since the airing of the Child's Play episode. Can anyone here *please* solve this mystery?

3:56 PM  
Blogger Matthew E said...

The writer's strike didn't affect most animated shows, including this one, so that can't be it.

I think the other wizard was just some guy; they may have had thoughts about having him turn out to be Mordru but just never developed it. Basically the whole magical side of the animated LSH universe has completely failed to capture my imagination.

6:44 PM  
Blogger Baal said...

I understand you focusing on thenegatives concerning Mysa but yoy missed a chance to talk about the real positive of the episode: I have never seen Bouncing Boy look so awesome in combat! If Legion writers would be forced tow atch this ep then BB would cease to be a joke.

12:47 AM  
Blogger Matthew E said...

There were a couple of nice touches in the fight scenes. Not just Bouncing Boy, but Phantom Girl too.

It's not enough.

9:02 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I like a good magic-themed Legion tale,but this wasn't one of them. The only interesting part was Kell-El escorting the kid sorceror,and he had similar duties just 3 episodes ago.Like a witch's cauldron,this was a potboiler.

7:10 PM  
Blogger Matthew E said...

I prefer the Legion light on magic, myself, but it hardly ever gets this bad.

7:42 PM  

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