Legion of Super-Heroes #10 – Review

By: Paul Levitz (writer), Yildiray Cinar & Wayne Faucher (artists), Hi-Fi (colorist)

The Story: Family, the ties that bind…and gag.  Chameleon Boy finds to his regret that having a rich aunt isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

The Review: Before I get to the specifics of this issue, I think it’s important I stake my claim as to why I think this series generally has been so unsatisfying to me so far.

I’m not a longtime Legion reader.  I started when Jim Shooter, a veteran Legion writer, took over the “Three”-boot Legion.  After I fell in love with the series, I read some of the biggest stories from past Legions, just to get myself up to speed.  Those stories were great, but they only made me happier to read the new adventures of a fresh Legion.  I was disappointed when DC chose to bring back the Silver Age team, but since I considered myself a Legion fan, I gave it a shot.

To me, the current Levitz legion reads much far too much like his run from the eighties.  It has all the stylistic qualities of overemotional, explicit dialogue and exposition that may have been the rage back then, but now just seem outdated and exaggerated.  Now, you have to remember that Shooter wrote and worked in the same period as Levitz, but his “Three”-boot scripts read as fresh and contemporary as any other title on the stands at the time.

Of course, the problem doesn’t lie entirely with Levitz’s writing.  You have to consider that this Legion is no longer a team of fresh-faced youths.  They aren’t so much the Teen Titans of the future anymore, but the Justice League—but considering how the current Justice League has so many young’uns on the team, this Legion feels even older than that.  I wrote in my first review of this series that it feels like the bulk of this Legion’s great tales have already passed; I have no reason to change that opinion.

Legion of Super-Heroes #9 – Review

By: Paul Levitz (writer), Yildiray Cinar & Wayne Faucher (artists), Hi-Fi (colorist)

The Story: Brainiac 5 and Chameleon Boy hit up Durla for some new leads to the assassinations on the United Planets Council, while Tyroc and Timber Wolf try to prevent more deaths.

The Review: The Legion’s massive cast tends to pose a lot of difficulties for writers.  For one thing, it takes a lot of effort to give each Legionnaire a fair chance in the spotlight.  For another, keeping track of all their different personalities and backgrounds in the context of whatever storyline they’re caught up in can be a taxing juggling act.  Then there’s the obstacle of dreaming up a mission/opponent big enough to challenge for the two dozen or so members.

Paul Levitz has the expertise to handle all three of these problems, but he doesn’t do so with much inspiration.  This Durlan plot to assassinate the UP council just doesn’t have much teeth to it.  Some of the missing bite comes from how unthreatening the assassins have been portrayed so far.  They’re quite lousy at assassinating people; across three issues, they’ve only managed to kill off two individuals, one of which had almost no importance attached whatsoever.  If there’s a bigger mastermind behind all this, let’s hope he or she (or it—we’re dealing with Durlans here, after all) shows up soon, because the henchmen aren’t really selling.

There’s little reason to hope more formidable opponents will pop up anytime soon, considering the sluggish pace Legion has now.  By the end of the issue, all you’re left looking forward to is a visit to Chameleon Boy’s aunt, who may or may not be directly or indirectly connected to the Durlan conspiracy.  That’s the kind of stakes the Legion deals with now.  Like Timber Wolf says, “We’re Legionnaires—not nursemaids!”  Quite right—shouldn’t they be out preventing galactic war, or trying to stop an invasive species of hyper-flies from eating the time-space continuum, instead of mostly waiting around for an opportunity to thwart some raging shapeshifters for the umpteenth time?

The Legion of Super-Heroes #8 – Review

By: Paul Levitz (writer), Yildiray Cinar & Daniel HDR (pencillers), Wayne Faucher & Bob Wiacek (inkers), Hi-Fi (colorist)

The Story: The Durlan assassination attempts continue, this time targeting their own people and the Legionnaires themselves.  As the team spreads even thinner to face the growing number of threats, they can only hope the newly elected Legion leader is up to the job.

The Review: If you ever become a fiction writer, in any medium, you’ll learn there aren’t many rules in the business, but here are two that are essential to the success of any story: whatever you’re writing, it must constantly be accomplishing one or both of two things—building character, or advancing the story.  This issue of Legion does none of the former and just a smidgeon of the latter.

In a way, it’s an achievement in itself how an entire issue can go by without accomplishing much of anything.  A new Legion leader is elected, but with no fanfare and without that leader (I’ll resist from spoiling even the leader’s gender) even present in the issue.  The Legionnaires fight several battles with more Durlan assassins and yet no new information about their mission or motivation really comes to light.  Well, except for Tellus’ telepathic probing of one of the murderous Durlans, which results in the following: “Even if only one of us lives, the United Planets Council will die.”  Dire as it sounds, it’s pretty much what the Durlans have been attempting to do the past couple issues without much success.

It’s really troubling how the characters show almost no personality in this issue.  Part of the problem is so much of their dialogue is expository, and that exposition only reiterates what’s already happening.  Their voices have so little character that you could pretty much replace any of the Legionnaires with any of the others and the story would hardly be affected at all.  All the dialogue has the same straightforward, urgent tone that lends well to melodramatically stating the obvious (“You are powerful, human—but you are not a true changer!”  “I can do anything you can, Durlan—and better.”)  I hate to use this word, but sometimes the characters simply sound stupid, as if despite the ten-century jump, their brains are as dry as croutons.