A thousand years from today and detective duo Brainiac 1 of 5 and Tenzil Ken have arrived at a murder scene. They’ve not been hired to learn who killed power broker RJ Brande, but Brainiac is intrigued. He uses his talents to tap into secret Science Police channels.
Across the galaxy, on the world of Winath, a young man named Garth Ranzz pursues his dreams of being a superhero, coming down hard on a trio of car thieves.
Back home, his twin sister, Ayla, comes down hard on him.
On the planet Braal, young sports star Rokk Krinn takes unorthodox action against cheating opponents in the game of Magnoball.
While on Titan, a moon of Saturn, a young woman named Imra Ardeen explores.
It’s fair to say there’s been a lot of anticipation for this issue. It’s the first issue of DC’s latest attempt to make the Legion of Super-Heroes a hit again. The challenge is to capture readers who aren’t Legion fans, who weren’t around in the glory days of the Eighties, while snagging the built-in audience of veteran readers such as myself.
Well, DC has me. This is one of the best first issues I’ve read in a long time, with the future Lightning Lad, Lightning Lass, Saturn Girl, Cosmic Boy, Brainiac 5 and Matter-Eater Lad fresh, yet familiar. The twist on the classic idea of RJ Brande bringing the team together is clever, and I can’t see writer Joshua Williamson making this change for the sake of it – if his Superman run has shown us anything, it’s that he’s a planner.
I never imagined Brainy and Tenzil – I wrote ‘Matter-Eater Lad’ above but I’m not 100 per cent on that, and it’s fine either way – as sci-fi gumshoes, but they’ve a lot of charm. Brainy’s different brain powers are interesting, while the nervousness Tenzil causes bad guys is new and fun.
Garth as homemade superhero in a galaxy where they’re outlawed while Ayla advises caution makes for an intriguing dynamic, while Rokk reacting so aggressively on the sports court makes sense, he’s a serious athlete. As for Imra, she has no dialogue in the conventional sense, a terrific surprise.
Williamson doles out the information organically, teasing with such things as a reference to ‘nostalgia laws‘. And we do get a very intriguing link to previous Legion continuities that may be explored, or could be happily left as is. Alternate worlds Legion, got it.
Oh, and there’s an unashamed nod to the beginning of the famous 5YL run which made me smile.
The 30pp story looks spectacular. Artist Hayden Sherman adds clever touches such as the differing panel borders depending upon setting – Titan evokes mental waviness, Winath borders are lightning-spiky and Braal’s magnetically circular.
The character – no, universe – designs are superb. Earth capital Superlopolis has presence and depth, and it’s populated, heavily, by all kinds of life forms, with humans in the minority. In most versions of the Legion Metropolis is mostly empty… Sherman is really putting the work in here.
Also, robot dogs.
Our teenage heroes show personality in facial expressions and body language, and resemble previous versions enough for them to feel comfortable… with one exception, Brainy looks a lot like his pointy-headed villainous forebear in his earliest Fifties appearances. Give him hair!
The action moments are outstanding in their punch, their dynamism.
As for the fashions, the most striking are the beetle-chic of Titan, I wonder how that began.
And those ‘mental discs’ for communication are beautiful. I don’t know if they’re the work of Sherman or the issue’s letterer, Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou, but I imagine it’s the former.
Not that Otsmane-Elhaou isn’t doing excellent work here, there are some appealing fonts in this issue, helping the storytelling. With one exception – the scene-setting font is awful and difficult to read, trying far too hard by occasionally capitalising the letter ‘L’ within words. And on one occasion, the meaning of said tough-to-read words is opaque, to say the least.
‘An usual’? ‘Unborn as twins’? Either the script got garbled or Williamson is trying something and it’s over my head.
Always excellent colourist Tamra Bonvillain may be doing career-best work here. Black and white previews of Sherman’s pages looked pleasant, but ‘fluffy’, more YA than I’d like. It seems Sherman was leaving room for Bonvillain to bring her own art to the table. She brings power to the pages, adding depth, shade, directing the eyes to the important information while never swathing the backgrounds in monotone. She’s the perfect partner for Sherman.
There’s no credit for the DC Production Department, but I assume they were heavily involved with a sequence showing Garth’s Superboy fandom; and if I’m wrong, Sherman deserves even more kudos than I’ve given him.
Let’s give him more credit for the double-sized cover image, which encompasses a lot of story business. The logo, though, is massively dull – too many DC mastheads these days are flat, almost apologetic – let’s have some oomph!
For the first time since the Nineties a Legion reboot has grabbed me immediately. I can’t wait to read more – and I can’t wait to hear what you think.
Too Dangerous For a Girl 2 
I think I know what happened with that weird Winath caption. I think there’s an editorial mistake: someone intended “usual” to be “unusual,” but the “un” was mistakenly put in front of born instead. So the caption should actually read “an unusual home [on a planet] where everyone is born as twins.” Which, since Mekt is a single birth, makes their home unusual. (I’m just guessing that they took out the words “on a planet” – possibly for space – but those words would make the intention so much clearer.)
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Thank you, that makes some kind of sense… honestly though, how come no one spotted it in the office, it tripped me up immediately?
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Oh, man. I knew this was coming in September, but I didn’t realize it was the first week (I also can’t believe it’s September already). I was hoping for something cool based on the previews, but this blew me away.
I loved it.
This is what I have been waiting for with a Legion comic since 2011 (at least). The visuals are stunning, the story is intriguing, and the characters are already in interesting places. This is a lived-in universe, but not just a carbon-copy of a previous one.
A few nice little nods I noticed:
On the double-pages spread, the Interlac in the bottom right says Levitz and Giffen.
I’m assuming that is the Daily Planet building with the news of Brande’s death plastered all over it.
The Science Police are using their already-established logo, but the uniforms are definitely new.
As Garth is sneaking in, his hand is over Absolute Wonder Woman #300. Let’s hope!
We never hear Rokk say a word. Everyone talks for him or at him.
Rokk’s namechecked magnoball opponent is Dyrk Magz, who was Magno in the Reboot Legion (until he lost his powers).
I love that Brainiac doesn’t seem to be obnoxious in his mental superiority. The emotionless genius trope needs to die (studies have repeatedly shown that those with higher intelligence tend to have higher empathy).
Bismollians aren’t a joke? That is an interesting take, and I like it.
By far the most fantastic revelation for me was the Titans’ thought bubbles. That is just amazing. I think I am already spotting patterns and have a rough idea of what they are thinking to each other. I think.
There is no doubt this will be a highlight each month. I am stoked.
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Thanks so much for the excellent comments. I was trying to work out the Titan thought discs but got no further than ‘what a lovely set of plates these would make’.
Great spot of Cos’ lack of speech, I hope that’s because he’s a tad emotionally crushed rather than naturally or electively mute.
I spotted Dyrk Magz, he always jumps out as I interviewed his namesake, Dirk Maggs, back in the early Nineties when he was making Superman adaptations for BBC Radio 4 and I was editing the UK Superman reprint book. Lovely fella, fun times.
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(that’s me, Rob, making this guess. I’ll have more to say in a bit!)
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Cheers Rob, until your return…
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