Wally West hates time travel. Something always goes wrong, he says.
He’s not wrong, which may be why I love time travel stories. This one, part of the DC KO nuttiness, but apart from the DC KO nuttiness, is pure pleasure.
We have Impulse, Bart Allen, time tossed to Siberia while trying to stop Darkseid becoming more powerful than ever, and he comes across a mind-meddled version of his mentor Max Mercury.
And Max – here going by Whip Whirlwind – isn’t alone. Cosmic Boy, Saturn Girl and Lightning Lad of Darkseid’s Legion of Super-Heroes are present too, as Bart explains in his inimitable way.
Also dropping in from the 21st century is Bart’s cousin Wally West, the Flash.
When Bart proves faster than this early take on Max, the lackey Legionnaires call on their own speedster.
Bart takes the train, and so the stage is set for a tense tussle between heroes and villains, with dozens of regular Russians trapped in the middle. Can Bart and Wally save the innocents from being killed by the morality-free Legionnaires? Writers Mark Waid and Christopher Cantwell, artist Vasco Georgiev, colourist Matt Herms and letterer Buddy Beaudoin provide the answers in a fast-paced (of course!), great-looking comic book. The well-turned story serves Wally and Bart well, showing their differences as people but similarities as heroes. While Bart is impatient with, well, everything, Wally’s impatience with Bart is just as bad – how many times must Bart prove that doing things his way isn’t necessarily the wrong way?
Max Mercury is the most self-possessed of speedsters, Zen Master of the Speed Force and all that, so it’s especially odd to see him parroting Darkseid Is nonsense.
Speaking of which, Bart asks XS the question nobody ever bothers with in the DC Universe.
The Dark Legion really are stinkers, I’ll be glad to see the back of them when DC KO is done and we get a new Legion series, possibly starring the remnants of the Legions the bad bunch have been killing across the Multiverse. Or better yet, a fresh, yet classic, Legion untouched by mass tragedy.
Vasco Georgiev does a terrific job telling the story visually, with good figurework, and angled panels to emphasise the more frenetic moments. I really enjoyed the background Edwardians, their fashions and reactions. The main characters burst out of panels, which often lack black keylines. Beaudoin does a similar thing with a lot of the word balloons; together, art and lettering bring a feeling that characters are untethered, liable to fall out of reality at any moment.
Matt Herms grounds things a tad with naturalistic colouring, bar on that chibi-style page of Bart thoughts, which favours brights – it’s all very clever.
Dan Mora’s cover, with a very scary Colossal Boy, adds extra excitement to one of the best event tie-ins in a while. How was it for you?
Too Dangerous For a Girl 2 
Dark XS looks great! I was hoping she would make an appearance.
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She does look good, hopefully a version will be in the new Legion book.
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This is a fun book — though I think the colorist is doing a lot of heavy lifting to fill in backgrounds on some pages. But they’re speedsters…maybe it’s all meant to be a blur.
As for the Legion, I’m hoping that when the heroic one rolls around, we see both XS and Gates from the post- Zero Hour Legion on the roster. It was definitely good to see Jenni here, and know she hasn’t been forgotten.
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I was never a big XS fan, I’m not a big booster of legacy characters in the Legion, it starts to feel a bit Justice Leaguey. Gates, though, I would plonk my money down for.
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I really enjoyed this book! It’s nice being able to read a Flash book again.
I’m torn on what Legion I want to see when they return in the spring. I love the idea of seeing a team populated by various versions of all the teams we’ve seen over the years. But like you, I hate the idea that they’ve come together because all the rest of their members have been killed off. That’s too big a bummer for a series that’s supposed to be full of hope.
i do enjoy seeing Impulse back in action. The Kid Flash identity never really worked for me. I think he’s a stronger character as Impulse. He’s always going to be connected to the Flash family. He doesn’t need to have the name attached to him to be an interesting character.
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I’m totally with you on Impulse, I have no idea why Geoff Johns thought pulling away all the elements that made Bart unique was a good idea; thank goodness that was rolled back.
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I have hated very few things in comics as much as Darkseid’s Legion. At least as much as Hal Jordan and Oliver Queen. I wish I trusted Williamson not to muck with the Legion. I did like Bendis’ Legion but would have preferred it not be called Legion, you know? 5YL is as far as I want to go from the source material. One thing I’d like to see is them acknowledging alternate futures rather than putting each Legion on a seperate Earth. Like just because you traveled to see the Classic Legion on Tuesday, because of world events big and small when you make the journey on Friday you wind up with the Archie Legion.
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That makes sense, I’d go for something like that, ‘if it’s Tuesday this must be 5YL’.
And I’d certainly prefer the Legion of Super-Villains to be Darkseid’s servants over any version of the proper Legion.
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