By: Paul Levitz (writer), Yildiray Cinar & Wayne Faucher (artists), Francis Portela (back-up artist)
The Story: Cosmic Boy, Timber Wolf, Ultra Boy, and Tyroc investigate the murder of a United Planets councilor, leading them to confront the assassins and prevent further government deaths. Meanwhile, Sun Boy considers Legion leadership, and Mon-El and Earth-Man have words over Shadow Lass, Mon-El’s ex and Earth-Man’s current flame. In the back-up story, Brainiac 5 and Chameleon Boy travel to Naltor, world of seers, where Chameleon Boy receives a disturbing vision of his future and Brainiac 5 interrogates Harmonia Li, a mystery from the past.
The Review: Part of what turns off many readers from Legion is the astonishing amount of baggage it’s packaged with. When Geoff Johns revived the team in his “Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes” story, he brought back the original Legionnaires with all their complex histories intact. The result is a team that is somewhat wiser and more experienced, but also one that feels like most of its biggest adventures has already passed.
Paul Levitz is now responsible for crafting the great Legion stories to come, if there are any more to be had. The first six issues of this series focused on establishing the current tone and dynamic of the team. This newest issue should be the start of higher-stakes conflicts for the Legionnaires, but so far, there is little happening to generate much excitement. The A-story in this issue—assassination attempts on UP councilors—seems slightly drab, since Levitz takes little time to show why we should care about whether these councilors die or not. No one, least of all the Legionnaires, seems very distressed by what’s happening.
The low-key B and C-stories don’t help to shore up the weak primary plotline. Mon-El and Earth-Man’s confrontation is so short, it doesn’t gain momentum, and happens almost out of nowhere. Shadow Lass is a foxy girl, no doubt, but the brief exchange between her former and present lovers offers no reason why they’re fighting over her. The even shorter discussion of Legion leadership doesn’t really move that plotline anywhere, and comes across as a pointless distraction to the other stories. It would have made sense to cut the Brainiac back-up to develop the A-story more, or perhaps integrate the two altogether. It just seems that with Levitz trying to advance four different plots simultaneously, the pace slows to a crawl as each plot moves an inch forward at a time.
I remain unimpressed with Levitz’s melodramatic flair for dialogue. Consider this UP councilor’s exclamation as he’s under attack: “Is that what killed Alb? Are they going to kill me too?” The Legionnaires’ exchanges aren’t much better; they constantly highlight what is happening without adding anything to it. Levitz characterizes the team well; their personalities are bold and are pretty much the saving grace of the issue. Cinar, Faucher, and Portela’s art works fine, and ramps up in energy during the action scenes, but is otherwise flat; for a sci-fi series, I don’t see the artists having much fun in designing the tech or planetary ambience. In one scene, Polar Boy and Sun Boy are playing some kind of holographic RPG, which has so much potential for spectacular imagery, but we’re given a small, flat-screen image of a galaxy—albeit a floating image, the only thing indicating its future tech.
Conclusion: I was introduced to the Legion during its “Three-boot,” when Jim Shooter held the writing reins. I admired that Legion for its youth and energy, and for how its conflicts covered the gamut of messy inter-Legion relationships, bureaucratic tensions with the United Planets, and cosmic threats. All of these elements have parallels in the Levitz Legion. The present Legion has its own share of romantic entanglements and government intrigue, but ultimately I’m less impressed with the execution of these storylines than I was during the Three-boot Legion, especially considering the lack of a credible threat to a galactic force of justice.
Grade: C
–Minhquan Nguyen
Grade
Conclusion