The Legion of Super-Heroes #11 – Review

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

The Story: It’s like playing Where’s Waldo?, only with several dozen super-powered criminals across interplanetary space.  That’s fun, right?

The Review: It’s a common issue in comics that once you take a step back from the flashy action sequences and charged emotional scenes, you realize there’s really nothing happening beneath it all.  There’s nothing inherently wrong with the decompressed story arc, but unless the writer can pack each issue with enough compelling material to make it worthwhile, the whole thing can seem like a needlessly dragged out plot.

If you read Legion of Super-Villains, you quickly realize Saturn Queen is not only in complete control, but she also has all the answers to their long-term plans and goals.  Essentially, she’s the only villain we’re interested in, since all her subordinates act only to serve her.  That leaves little depth or motivation to the goons the Legion tackles in this issue; their only purpose seems to be vying with each other to gain Saturn Queen’s favor, and there’s little fun in that.

With such narrow-minded minions, it’s no wonder they come across so goofy—take Sun Emperor’s confrontation with Timber Wolf: “One dead Legionnaire will surely put me back in the queen’s good graces…two or three would be a surfeit of offerings!”

The Legionnaires don’t fare much better, since their action dialogue still induces uncontrollable cringing from you.  It’s as if Levitz feels they have to banter, so he injects these silly, forced riffs while they’re in action: “Now let the boys collect them.”  “Let’s not be sexist—that’s centuries out of style.”  “They didn’t mean anything, Ayla.”  “It’s called teamwork.  Get over it.”  When they act this nonchalant, it’s hard to take their battles seriously.

Legion of Super-Heroes Annual #1 – Review

By: Paul Levitz & Keith Giffen (writer/artist), John Dell & Scott Koblish (inkers), Hi-Fi (colorist)

The Story: If you’re down on your luck, there are worse pals than a giant eyeball that grants wishes.  Plus—flying monkeys!

The Review: The annual poses an interesting challenge to comic book writers.  The added page count gives a lot more narrative freedom, but at the same time, readers can’t be depended upon to buy the thing with its bigger price point, so the stories can’t really be game-changers.  Most of the time you get a bunch of short features with varying degrees of quality; rarely does anyone attempt to stretch a feature across the whole thing.

Paul Levitz and Keith Giffen, however, are not men to shy away from a challenge, considering how long they’ve been in the biz.  Unfortunately, for all the ambition and buzz going into this issue, their tale of the Emerald Empress’s return only somewhat succeeds in validating the five bucks you’ll have to fork over for it.

The length of the issue demands a plot of fairly grand scale.  You can’t expect an epic, but there should be more than four Legionnaires getting tossed around by a temporarily revamped villain.  The actual events of the issue don’t have much meat to them, so the space is mostly filled with exposition, told with ever so much melodrama: “I felt a wave of energy from Orando minutes ago, and a strange shift—as though everything I had seen on the planet for weeks had been false, and a curtain was being pulled away.”

And when you don’t get big doses of exposition, you get treated to the uninspired, repetitive dialogue.  Most irritating is how frequently they spend whole slews of panels commenting on how this version of the Empress is different from the last one.  And for all the talk going on, you don’t really get a good sense of the characters’ personalities.  They all have the same aggressive, sarcastic voice, offering as little interest to their conversation as the action.

The Empress can’t be taken seriously as a threat because so much of her supposedly dastardly deeds are taken for granted.  The Legionnaires say a great deal about her corrupting the planet, but other than some weird plants and a medieval theme, you’re not sure what’s being corrupted.  Maybe if you get to see what Orando is like before the Empress mucks around with it, you’d have a better idea of her craziness, but for all appearances, Orando has always had a feudal society (check out the crossbows and girl-lusting lord).  It would also help to know more about the current girl held in the Eye of Ekron’s thrall other than she’s crazy.

The Legion of Super-Heroes #3 – Review

by Paul Levitz (writer), Yildiray Cinar (pencils), Francis Portela (pencils & inks), Wayne Faucher (inks), Hi-Fi (colors), and Sal Cipriano (letters)

The Story: Earth-Man is forced to go on his first mission as a Green Lantern and the Legion finds itself pitted against Saturn Queen.

What’s Good: I absolutely love Earth-Man under Levitz’s hand.  He adds a really fun dynamic to the team, his dialogue is consistently dickish, and Levitz continues to tease new developments for the character.  I’ve really enjoyed Levitz’s placing Niedrigh in increasingly uncomfortable positions, and when, this month, he’s forced to save the lives of some tiny lifeforms on a far away planet, it’s really amusing in a “fish out of water” sort of way. Earth-Man’s constant tone of dismissive disgust is fun, but I’m starting to become increasingly interested in a possible redemption further down the road for the character, which may very well be the route Levitz is taking him.  It’s promising stuff and honestly, the more Earth-Man I get from Levitz the better.

Beyond this, much of what has made this Legion relaunch so successful this month recurs.  The large cast is handled aptly with all the characters feeling natural and in possession of their own unique voices.  Furthermore, by modern comic standards, this is another issue that is packed with content; a lot of narrative movement occurs.  While it’s not quite as ridiculously crammed as the last two issues, it’s still heftier than most comics and feels a bit more settled.

The Legion of Super-Heroes #2 – Review

by Paul Levitz (writer), Yildiray Cinar & Francis Portela (pencils), Wayne Faucher & Francis Portela (inks), Hi-Fi (colors), and Sal Cipriano (letters)

The Story: Earth-Man joins his first mission with the Legion as the Legionnaires deal with the fall of Titan.  Meanwhile, Saturn Queen returns to wreak havoc.

What’s Good: In his return to writing duties, it’s clear that no one gave Levitz the memo about decompression.  Thank goodness for that because the result is that the Legion reads like no other book on the stands right now.  This book is thick.  It’s a 30 page story, but that doesn’t do justice to how dense it is.  Levitz somehow manages to perfectly balance the Legion’s notoriously large cast with around four to five sub-plots.  Much like last month’s debut, it’s mind blowing how much actually happens this month as well as how many scene changes there are.  This issue is so ridiculously packed with content and story that were it $2.99, I’d feel like I was short-changing DC.

What’s particularly remarkable is that Levitz never loses control.  Things never feel scattered.  More remarkable still is that Levitz finds time for a good amount of characterization.  All of the many characters carry distinct voices.  Braniac 5 in particular remains a total blast under Levitz’s pen.

Much like Levitz wonderfully manages his multitude of characters, he also is able to make every single of his sub-plots engaging.  Every plot strand left me wanting to know more and left me wanting next month’s issue.  What the heck is going on with Saturn Girl’s kids?  What’s Saturn Queen up to?  What’s going to happen to Titan’s refugees?  Individually, each of these plots is standard fare, I suppose, but when weaved together, the result is overwhelming.  It’s really fun to find so many corners of interest in a single comic.

I also enjoyed Levitz’s use of Earth-Man even more than last month.  Indeed, Earth-Man, for me, is the most intriguing of Levitz’s many threads, if only because so many questions abound, particularly regarding his Green Lantern ring and what he’ll end up doing with it.  Levitz is quickly fashioning Earth-Man into a fully realized, three dimensional character who is showing the potential to be more than a simple, xenophobic asshole.

I have nothing negative to say about Cinar’s work on this book.  It’s clear that he was the right choice for the Legion and he manages the book deftly, with a good mix of modern sleekness and the old school vibe that’s a necessity for a sci fi book like the Legion.  It’s nothing overly fancy, but it also remains friendly throughout.