Jim Shooter! Francis Manapul! Money problems! We take a look at Legion of Super-Heroes #37 & 38

Legion of Super-Heroes #37

And now, I'm going to embarrass myself.

Ever since I started rereading the reboot Legion, I've been reading digital versions of the issues. I had kinda fallen out with the book once Keith Giffen left the 5YL Legion and I never got back into it.

Until this issue.

Yes, the news that Jim Shooter was coming back to the Legion was enough for me to start buying the book again. Not the reboot. Not Abnett and Lanning and Olivier Coipel. Not Mark Waid and Barry Kitson. Jim... Shooter...

What had he been doing before his third term on the Legion? Defiant Comics. Valiant Comics. Broadway Comics. He had tried to start his own comic company again and again and had either been forced out or the company just didn't work out.

Let's see if you can go home again... again...

We also have a brand new artist - Francis Manapul. He had previously done a nice run on Witchblade but this was his first work for either DC or Marvel. Once again, the Legion is used as a training ground for an up-and-coming artist. And, once again, that artist would go on to much bigger and better things...

I should also mention our new inker is Livesay, John Livesay, although I don't think he ever uses his first name in the credits. And I just looked this up after years wondering what was his first name. Or if Livesay was a pen name. 

Our story: Evil Adventus. Part 1: Conflict

We begin at a mining colony, where Karate Kid is protecting an unconscious Triplicate Girl from some sort of monster. He kills the beast (judging from all the blood) as Phantom Girl arrives through a transmatter gate. His arm is broken (yes, he punched the monster with a broken arm) but he still helps Tinya get their teammate back to Legion HQ. We also get the first sense that Lightning Lad is not quite the leader Cosmic Boy was. He sent Luornu out on a dangerous mission, alone, when he should have sent a more powerful Legionnaire.

Or, just a thought, maybe two or three Legionnaires? Since, you know, they're a Legion?

Continuing with the "Garth isn't a good leader" story, we go back to HQ and watch him struggle with the job. They're being sued, he's juggling important phone calls, and even Light Lass doesn't help him. I guess he really can't count on anyone, right?

At a ski resort on the planet of Triton, Star Boy, Invisible Kid, Saturn Girl, and Timber Wolf are investigating an attack and they're already running into problems - the resort won't close down on their authority so Imra calls her mom, the U.P. delegate. Have we forgotten that the Legion have the same authority as the Science Police?

Back to the HQ, where Lightning Lad is still dealing with bureaucratic stress and finds out the president is sending over pre-approved candidates for the team. Karate Kid has undergone a personality transplant, so he destroys a machine and tells Garth to pay attention to who he's sending where. And collapses... so Garth calls Phantom Girl to come and take Val to the infirmary. Why Phantom Girl, especially as she's already taken off her uniform and is doing her makeup in her underwear... wow... really subtle... Is there no one else?

Once again, Garth tries to figure out where he sent everyone and realizes his teams don't make a lot of sense.

Back on Triton, Invisible Kid has spotted a snowboarder and he's smitten. The head of the resort calls her an anomaly and a bully but Lyle can't stop staring at her. She's got extreme metabolic control and can do amazing things as long as she has energy. But she burns it quickly and then, I guess, collapses.

The alarm goes off, they shut everything down, and the beings enjoying the ski resort are forced into the foyer. This new snowboarder is being ogled and criticized by others and, since this is a comic book, gets attacked by them too. For a short time she's able to fight back against the group, but she soon runs out of energy and things don't look good for her.

Invisible Kid steps in, invisibly of course, gets rid of the attackers and gives her a drink and a flower. Yep, more Shooter subtlety!

In the City Square, the other three Legionnaires are attacked by a bunch of evil aliens. Different from the first part with Karate Kid, but still evil aliens. Timber Wolf starts attacking with a great ferocity, stronger than before, but he no longer looks like a Wolverine rip-off. Continuity is not a concern, I guess.

Saturn Girl watches Brin and Star Boy kill a bunch of the monsters before she's almost killed again. Lyle saves her and he's figured out that they can sense life force. 

Imra calls for back up but Lightning Lad can't send anyone - the government has shut down their transmatter account so they can't pay for the service. Garth calls Projectra, hoping she can solve this.

As she's in a meeting with the U.P. Secretary of Diplomacy, she ignores the call and finds out that, because Orando is no longer a planet, she no longer has any citizenship and is no longer a princess. She's rudely escorted out by the security detail so she turns her powers on them, calling them "ignorant peasants." Hmmm... this can't be good.

Back on Triton, Invisible Kid is pretty injured and realizing that everything's going badly. He finds a dead girl just before he's spotted by a creature. There's a huge blast of energy...

Back on Earth, Projectra lets Garth know that she no longer has any diplomatic power and she can't help them. So the team on Triton is on their own.

Just when you think it couldn't get any worse, the pre-approved candidates have arrived...

Oh, and Saturn Girl and Star Boy are unconscious so Timber Wolf is fighting alone...

To be continued!

 

 

Legion of Super-Heroes #38

I didn't mention it last issue, but can I just say I'm digging the new logo? It calls back to the old 70's logo but is updated nicely.

Also, these covers are already looking better than anything we've seen in a while. I think this Manapul guy is going to go far...

We begin on Triton, in Cryogeyser (frozen geyser??) City, the ski resort that was attacked last issue. The snowboarder Invisible Kid is smitten with lies frozen, close to death, in the wreckage. Then she kinda buzzes...

Part 2: Cataclysm 

But enough about our new Legionnaire - let's get back to the action!  

Timber Wolf and Saturn Girl are fighting off the alien destroyers and she uses her telepathy to "wake up" Star Boy and get him back into action. No concern for the probable concussion, of course. It is also very bizarre to see Saturn Girl shooting a gun at these villains.

The snowboarder (nope, no name yet) jumps into action, fighting like a "combat ballerina." Wow, Shooter was 17 years early on that concept.

Saturn Girl hands the girl a police officer's respirator because she doesn't need it anymore and we finally learn the new fighter's name: Giselle. I guess we're just moving past all the death because this version of the Legion really doesn't care about loss of life, does it?

The aliens start adapting, changing to defeat the Legion and Saturn Girl telepathically links them up so they can communicate better. They ready for the next wave of attacks...

Meanwhile, back at Legion HQ, Lightning Lad is worried about Saturn Girl and hates the fact that they can't use the transmatter gate because their account has been suspended... so they have no money... Neither Light Lass or Phantom Girl seem too concerned about their teammates so they spend a bit of time talking about other teleportation methods. Then the new recruits arrive.

Back to Triton, where Saturn Girl has activated the Legion Flight Ring recorder function so she can make sure there's a record of what happened for other Legionnaires. Just so I can make sense of this, the ring can record her thoughts? Does that mean it can record everyone's thoughts? Or is she able to communicate with the ring in a different way than the others? Or if the ring can record them, can the ring also send those thoughts to others? So they're not communicating by speaking, but by thinking?

Yes, that is the rabbit hole my mind goes down when things don't make sense.

Star Boy gets slammed to the ground and Giselle suddenly refuses to help protect the others - after all, they don't care about her so why would she care about them? So why was she fighting before?

Back at the HQ, Lightning Lad asks the most important question - can any of these new recruits, who were personally selected by the U.P. President, teleport people? To no shock, none can.

But we get our first open Legion tryouts:

• Fruit Boy, who can cause fruit to ripen - rejected
• Sludge, who can make any surface slimy, mucky, etc. - rejected even though his dad is the Vice Chancellor of Antares
• Virus, who can make anyone sick, but can't really control her power - rejected
• Spy, who has super-acute senses and a little ESP... he notices that Sludge is thinking really hard about Light Lass'... something - rejected
• Sonar, who can hear well under water - rejected
• Voice, who can compel stupid people to do what she says - rejected

Light Lass tries to get everyone out calmly and says that they'll consider everyone, but Lightning Lad loses his temper and starts shooting electricity everywhere.

Of course the recruits, and the politician who brought them there, rush out. And Light Lass yells at Garth, reminding him that if they accepted them, they might get their transmatter gates back.

Just when you think things couldn't get worse, the last tryout arrives - M'rissey. He's a genius at applied operational Calculus. And other math-related things. Lightning Lad has had enough, so he just leaves the young kid in the command room.

Back to Triton, and just as they're about to lose, the Legion are saved by the Science Police. The battle is over. The S.P.s land and start killing every alien they can.

Star Boy rescues Invisible Kid, who was stuck under some rubble, and Lyle talks about Giselle again. 

Speaking of Giselle, Saturn Girl offers her Legion training and she rejects it, saying that the Legion is just another part of the U.P.

More good news - the four Legionnaires are going to take commercial transport and be back on Earth in a day. I guess they can afford that.

Everyone's ready to go to sleep but Lightning Lad says he's gotta check something before.

Light Lass watches as her brother breaks down, crying and she knows he's in over his head.

 

I wonder what the first story meeting was like after they hired Jim Shooter to write this book...

"Okay, so the Legion is now a bunch of teenagers where anyone can be a member and they've got Legionnaires everywhere. There's no training and they don't have tryouts anymore."

"Yeah, I'm not doing that."

"In fact, Waid and Kitson changed the whole basic concepts of the Legion."

"No, I'm gonna go back to what I did before."

"The Legion kills now."

"I'm down with that!" 

"Okay... Karate Kid is a peaceful, gentle type who wants to get along with everyone."

"I created Karate Kid. And no."

"The rest of the Legion are jerks."

"Hmmm... maybe..."

 

On one hand, I'm kinda liking this new direction and this "feels" a little more like the Legion of old. We're already getting more teamwork, we've already seen some tenets of the old version (like the tryouts), and I think we've also seen more Saturn Girl and Phantom Girl than the previous 36 issues.

But I wouldn't be sad if they dropped all of the financial problems. I don't care about government bureaucracy in my Legion comics. It just kinda slows everything down and prevents Lightning Lad from actually moving forward as a leader. I'm also wondering if Shooter was having some severe financial problems at the time and those bled into his work.

Artistically, all I can say is wow. Manapul's pencils really leap off the page and Livesay is the perfect inker. They've got a great sense of the characters, the future, and they brings an energy and enthusiasm that we really haven't seen in a long time.

 

 

Action Comics #1087

I know I've been ripping into Mark Waid a lot over these past few months but I wanted to call out this new Superboy story. It's books like this that really showcase how amazingly good of a writer Waid is. He shows a new story from Superboy's past, gives us a sense of how he became a hero, and does everything in a compelling and emotional way.

Oh, and Superman mentions flight rings... so you know that that means...

 

Our next Legionnaire in the spotlight... Kid Quantum 2!! 

 

 

 

When making a list of Legionnaires who were saved and made far more interesting by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning, Kid Quantum II is at the top of the list. She was originally introduced to the Legion as the younger sister of the Legion's first casualty and was pretty antagonistic.

Eventually, she became a Legionnaire and started to realize that the team wasn't responsible for her brother's death. But she still kinda just floated around, helped in some fights, but spent more of her time in the background.

Legion Lost showed her to be a compelling character and a powerhouse. Her ability to control quantum fields, especially space and time, were shown to be greater than we originally thought and there were more than a few moments when she was referred to as possibly the most powerful member of the team.

In The Legion, Jazmin Cullen became the team leader and DnA want out of their way to show you just how capable she was. We also got a nice little romance with Cosmic Boy. She was becoming a keystone of the Legion and a key member.

So, of course, the book gets cancelled and she disappears for a long, long time.

Look, if you want to criticize DnA for over-using Kid Quantum II (and I have) and making it very, very obvious that she's one of their favorites, that's a fair criticism. But you can't deny that she was an amazing addition to the team, her look and style stood out on a page, and she brought some more diversity to the squad. Having another legacy Legionnaire helped too. She was multi-faceted and elevated many of the stories she was in.

I swear I could just copy and paste this last paragraph as I've said much of the same things every time I write about reboot Legionnaires. I don't know why she's not a central figure of any Legion reboot. I don't know why she never showed in either Threeboot or Retroboot. I would think she'd be an important part of any relaunch.

Fingers crossed we see her again this year.

 

Thoughts? Do you agree with my take on the new Shooter/Manapul Legion? Did you like or dislike Kid Quantum II? Please share either here on or the Reddit boards and we'll see you next week!