Long Live the Legion

Action Comics #887   Welcome back to the second part of my continued look at the Last Stand of New Krypton. What did we learn last week? There were over 80 stories that came before this, so I'm going into this huge crossover with a ton of questions. New Krypton is a planetoid on the other side of Sol where the citizens of Kandor now live. Brainiac and Luthor have teamed up and Brainiac's ship is flying over New Krypton while his robots are killing Kryptonians with red sun energy. General Zod is heading the New Krypton defences and has some huge new plan that he's gotten Supergirl's mother, Alura and also the leader of the planetoid, to sign off on with a promise she won't do anything to stop him. And the most important characters for me, the Legion of Super-Heroes, have been arrested by Zod (along with Superboy) and taken into custody. They were trying to convince them to not destroy Brainiac's ship because it contains bottle cities of worlds that need to be bro...

Adventure Comics #8 or #511 We've now reached the Last Stand of New Krypton story. It works its way through the Superman titles and results in... something, I guess. I've never read this before, so this will be all new for me. Hope you enjoy my take and I hope I'm able to find all the separate issues. This cover makes me a little sad in a... what might have been... nostalgic sense. Artist Francis Manapul had a nice little run on the Threeboot Legion, made the book look really good, even when the stories weren't matching his work, and if only they could've gotten him back at this time, when he was firing on all cylinders, we might've seen more readers for the Legion. Speaking of readership, here's what Adventure Comics did post-Legion of 3 Worlds: Adventure Comics #1 - ranked 30th with 56,646 in sales Adventure Comics #2 - ranked 44th at 47,256 Adventure Comics #3 - ranked 40th at 44,404 Adventure Comics #4 - ranked 6th at 85,106 Why so high? This month, DC i...

Adventure Comics #3 or #506 We're going to be jumping around a little bit this week, moving from the backups in Adventure Comics to yet another retelling of the first time Clark met the Legion in Superman: Secret Origin. Hope there's no whiplash as I'm trying to cover these in (kinda) publishing order. This 10-page Legion tale was written by Geoff Johns and Michael Shoemaker and drawn by Clayton Henry. We're on Tharr this issue, Polar Boy's home world, and also the hottest planet in the universe. People are lounging by a pool, at what appears to be a resort, and Sun Boy is being Sun Boy. Which means, of course, that he's hitting on a couple of women. Sun Boy pulls Polar Boy into his efforts and the two women sitting at the bar immediately start ripping poor Brek apart. They ask him if he started the "Legion of Rejects" and wonder if he's subbing for someone right now. Polar Boy is more than a little upset. After all, he not only joined the Legion, ...

Adventure Comics #0 Fresh off the success of Legion of 3 Worlds, even if it didn't really make a lick of sense, the Legion move into Adventure Comics. Much like some parts of the 60s and 70s, the Legion are the back up feature for all new tales of the recently resurrected Superboy. For these reviews, I'll be rereading the Legion stories only. It's not that I don't care about Superboy. It's that there are only so many hours in a day. For reasons that, to be honest, I don't really understand, DC has decided to reprint Adventure Comics #247, the very first appearance of the Legion of Super-Heroes, in Adventure Comics #0. Because there is no better way to entice a younger audience to care about old characters than to print a story that is, at the time of publishing, 51 years old. You would think they could've picked something from the 70s or 80s, something with artwork and writing similar to what they're used to. You would think they'd pick something by ...