Legion of Super-Villains – Review

By: Paul Levitz (writer), Francis Portela (artist), Javier Mena (colorist)

The Story: Sworn to protect the universe from threats throughout the cosmos, these courageous heroes—oh no, wait—that’s the other Legion.  This is the one that wants to kill you.

The Review: Writing the villains always entails some risk because obviously, it’s an uphill battle trying to sell their criminal motivations.  Considering most comic-book villains also tend to be on the just plain crazy side, it can also be tricky giving them personality beyond their mad ravings.  It takes some subtlety or irony to make these unsavory folks fully-realized characters.

Saturn Queen definitely falls in the deranged category, but thankfully Levitz writes her twistedness with a palpable sense of how sinister she really is.  Her condescension to everyone, even her fellow villains, mixed with her now-amplified telepathy show that she just gets off on controlling people.  The way she turns her dissenters into groveling pawns (love her emasculating breakdown of Lightning Lord’s confidence) certainly lives up to the queen in her name.

In fact, she hogs so much of the spotlight, the other characters never get much opportunity to shine at all.  It’s a pity Levitz takes the trouble to assemble a fairly formidable team of antagonists then gives them nothing to do all issue except follow Saturn Queen’s orders—which includes a bumbling course through an interplanetary storm (only to change their minds at the last second) and a perplexed attempt to destroy the Rock of Eternity.

It’s pretty astonishing that for an oversized one-shot, almost nothing significant happens.  You get introduced to the premise and figures of note for a storyline that’ll no doubt play out in Legion of Super-Heroes, but otherwise the plotting and character work remain light.  Besides Saturn Queen and Lightning Lord, the other villains are new (?) and you get no handle on what dangers they pose, which seems a waste of a whole issue centered on villains.

One nice touch about Saturn Queen’s current plan to throw the entire universe into chaos (which, grand as it sounds, still seems pointless) is it ties into the force that destroyed Titan, a plot thread which seemed all but forgotten till now.  It also seems that Saturn Queen acts on behalf of even greater, mysterious power, and considering the huge scale of her mission, this may be the start of a whole new epic storyline for the Legion, which they sorely need.

Adventure Comics #2 – Review

By Geoff Johns and Michael Shoemaker (writers), Francis Manapul and Clayton Henry (artists), Brian Buccellato and Brian Reber (colorists)

The Stories: Johns opens the book on a squadron of military helicopters searching for Brainiac and Luthor, who have both just escaped. Brainiac and Luthor are in cahoots and nothing good is going to come of this. Flash forward to Conner getting ready for Cassie to come over for supper. They each have issues to struggle through. The second story is about the Legion of Superheroes. Mekt Ranzz (Lightning Lord) will tell the Legion where all the supervillain safehouses are if Lightning Lad will talk to him in prison. Seems easy, right? Wrong!

What’s Good: Johns did some very solid character work on the Superboy story. Connor  is wound up, worrying about how he looks, and he’s hopelessly transparent, yet perfectly believable. I also really like the clever use of Conner’s obsessive little lists. What did Superman do? What did Luthor do? The amount of time he spends looking at those two columns and comparing himself to them show how worried he is about who he is. Johns also did really deft work on Cassie and Conner catching up. That year apart put a lot of space between them. This character work sounds like it would be dull, but it’s exactly the opposite because both characters are so likable with their desires so obvious.

Johns and Shoemaker pulled some more fine writing out of their hats for the Legion story. It’s been a while since I’ve been able to follow the Legion, so I don’t remember Garth being so spun up, but Johns sets up the characters so even a long-absent fan like me can understand everything. The human supremacy movement was an interesting touch (not original, but interesting), as were the words that Garth and Mekt shared. I didn’t see that surprise coming.

Manapul’s art was brilliantly page-slowing for me. I’d be done with the words, but reluctant to turn the page, because I wanted to keep admiring the art. The double splash page opening the book was awesome and I loved the realism combined with the rough, almost old-school pencil lines that Manapul left for strategic shading. Brainiac sitting in his control chair, wires sprouting from his head, Luthor standing in prison browns with smears of blood on his wrists… All memorable and awesome…Also Manapul’s and Buccellato’s work on Cassie and Conner under a pink, starry sky was just great.

What’s Not So Good: I had no complaints whatsoever about the Superboy story. However, I wasn’t wowed by Clayton Henry’s pencils on the Legion back-up story, nor was it easy on my suspension of disbelief to see super-powered prisoners manacled in their cells in costume.

Conclusion: This issue is worth buying just for the Superboy story. Little action on the outside, but lots of action on the inside. Buy this book.

Rating: B

-DS Arsenault