The battle heats up on Utopia, Adventure Comics ends with one of their worst stories, and no one seems to care about anything making sense! We look at Legion of Super-Heroes (Volume 6) #15 & Adventure Comics #529

Legion of Super-Heroes (Volume 6) #15

It's the penultimate issue of volume 6 and one of the shortest Legion series on record. Before we stumble to the finish line, let's recap a little bit. The Legion of Super-Villains are trying to destroy planets so this being called "The Blue Flame" can wreak havoc and end all goodness. There have been fights. Some good. Some bad.

The Legion is now trying to get to Utopia, one of these good planets, so they can save it from destruction. Harmonia Li, who just showed that she has wind powers (and has been alive for a long time), wants to use Star Boy's suit (which is connected to the multiverse) to get there.

"False Victory" is brought to you by writer Paul Levitz and artists Yildiray Cinar and Jonathan Glapion.

We begin with a bunch of Legionnaires floating in space. Harmonia has started speaking like an Oan and Star Boy is blinding trusting that she knows what she's doing. Which leads to a simple question - why are any of the Legionnaires trusting her? She's done nothing but act horrible, act mysterious, and blame herself for everything. Why do they believe she has a clue about what's going on?

As the multiversal energies take over poor Thom's body, Harmonia says that she's the reason for all the bad stuff that's going on. Apparently, when she left Utopia and came to this universe, she caused the Blue Flame monster to emerge. Dawnstar states that after Harmonia looked at the beginning of the universe, which led to the destruction of Titan, that was also what got the Blue Flame moving, which lead to the recruiting of the new LSV.

If this makes no sense to you either, you're not alone. I know Levitz was laying all the foundation for this, and in a very general sense, everything is coming together...

...but it all just seems like it's been thrown together in the most haphazard way. There's no way Dawnstar would know any of this. All of it just seems like coincidence at best and bad logic by our heroes at worst.

The pathway opens... at least I think it does. They say it does but don't show it... which kinda breaks the first rule of comics, right? You know... show, don't tell? Anyway, Harmonia and Thom stay behind to keep it open and the rest of the Legion, including Dream Girl, head off to fight the LSV. I was going to argue that she'd be better served make sure Harmonia and Thom are safe, and she probably wouldn't want to leave his side, but since Levitz has been writing her as the greatest fighter in the Legion, she needs to be in the action.

The battle begins as Sun Killer and Lightning Lord attack the first Legion ship to get through to Utopia. Just as I'm about to write something like, "I don't know how two villains can defeat multiple Legionnaires," we learn that Mekt and Sun Killer have had their powers increased by the Blue Flame.

Dawnstar, instead of actually helping her teammates, flies beside Dyogene (the alien who gave Mon-El the Green Lantern ring) and only wants to find the Blue Flame. But he's not here. So she decides to search for Saturn Queen instead.

Another gripe - DC has made sure that every Legionnaire and villain has a text box explaining who they are and what powers they have. Why not do that for Harmonia and Dyogene? They both are playing very important roles in this story and are delivering critical dialogue, but we're not even getting clunky text explaining why they're here. It's just a strange read. It's like editorial spends every page vacillating between "we have new readers and have to explain everything" and "everyone understands what we're doing so let's just keep going."

Dawnstar flies in, grabs Saturn Queen, and takes off into space. To no one's surprise, and we'll just ignore how insanely fast Dawnstar can fly and I don't think Saturn Queen has protection in outer space so she should be unconscious before she's able to do anything, the villain takes over Dawnstar's mind and stops her mid-air.

So Tellus shows up, attempts to fight her mind-to-mind, and she takes him over, too. Gates arrives, gets his two lines of dialogue, and saves them both. Wow! They remembered he was on the team! And, to be blunt, what was the point of that? For a book that's screaming for exposition to make sense of anything, why are you wasting pages on useless sequences that go no where?

Saturn Queen glides down to the surface, and if anyone knows how she can fly at this point, aside from just "The Blue Flame gave her power," please share in the comments below. She continues calling to the Blue Flame through a fire in a dragon's hand (is this science or magic? Does anyone care any more?)... which makes no sense, because we all know the Blue Flame wants to be there to destroy the planet.

Back on the planet's surface, Sun Killer blasts Timber Wolf, who stops Polar Boy from helping Sun Boy go against the bad guy. Because that's what the Legion is all about - never using your superior numbers to end the threat. Man, they're just getting dumber and dumber.

 

I have the joy of reading the original comic and we take a break now for DC's 8-page Subway ad... starting Laila Ali... and Jared... wow... WOW... if you don't know why Jared from Subway is incredibly...I'll be nice and say problematic, don't look it up. Trust me. Nothing good will come from that Google search.

 

Back to the story! Sun Boy wonders if Brin finally has a good idea, so he throws a bunch of solar energy at Sun Killer... who eats it up since it makes him more powerful. Rather than, you know, stop because it would make sense to not make a villain more powerful, Sun Boy unloads more and more energy into Sun Killer.

And since we're following comic book logic, this results in Sun Killer weakened and skinny.

Polar Boy congratulates Timber Wolf on a good hunch but Brin says he learned this back at the Japan Fusion plant. I guess he was paying attention to the exposition when they rest of us weren't.

Suddenly, there's a big "Thoom" and Orion the Hunter has shown up, riding a large ape-like creature. He's also getting blasted by Tyroc. A green dragon appears (I think they're all native to the planet and Orion is controlling them) and attacks Tyroc.

He uses one sonic scream to take out the animals and then knocks Orion out... pretty easily, actually. I guess his increased Blue Flame power can't handle sonics.

Mon-El puts him into a green cage and they talk about how the villains are more dangerous than before. Considering Tyroc took Orion out in two pages, I'm guessing they're not that powerful.

We get a great two-page spread of Legionnaire versus Super-Villain and a bunch of new villains have arrived... even though we've never seen any of them before in this story. Like Chameleon Chief. And Radiation Roy. And Black Mace (wasn't he arrested in Adventure Comics?) And Spider Girl.

And, of course, Colossal Boy is fighting a dragon. Because he's not important enough to get his own Super-Villain to fight. At least he hasn't been knocked out... yet.

Anyone remember the leader of Utopia's name from last issue? Because they didn't care to include it here and I'm too lazy to look it up... He's being held at gun point by Questor, the evil Coluan. Questor brags about how the planet is going to be destroyed by... the Blue Flame, who has just arrived.

Our main villain tells Saturn Queen that she's still not successful - the planet hasn't been destroyed and there's one more after this. So he won't give her any more power. Why did he come there if he knows they haven't succeeded? Why did she call him if she wasn't done? Why are any of these characters doing anything?

But before we get any answers, we have to focus on a character who literally hasn't appeared once in this issue and isn't identified either.

To quote the Blue Flame: "In a single corrupt soul lies the balance of the Yuga... touch his mind, and make him yours."

Who's the corrupt soul? Earth-Man, of course.

 

I often use the metaphor of "throwing spaghetti at the wall" to talk about stories where there is no thought, no logic, and the creative team is doing anything to grab a reader's attention. This comic feels like the spaghetti is cold, sticky, and inedible.

Nothing makes sense. Nothing works. Characters know things they shouldn't. Characters do stupid things. I always hope that the creative and editorial team care about making good stories, but this one is really testing that theory.

It's also Cinar's last issue on the Legion. They couldn't even get him to handle the final issue of the series - he's heading off to take over Firestorm. Judging by how the artwork has been getting progressively worse, this move is for the best. I'm going to be nice and say that Cinar and Glapion just aren't a good mesh of talents, but I wouldn't be surprised if, as the scripts were getting worse, Cinar was rushing through his pencils just to get to the next assignment.

They also have a great moment that, I think, encapsulates this whole series. One letter writers call out that they screwed up "Atta" and "Akka" in a previous issue. I will give credit to them showing the mistake and owning up to it, but their solution is... to flip the first letters of the editor's and assistant editor's names. Wow...

Fingers are crossed this next issue is better, but I don't have my hopes up. 

 

Adventure Comics #529

I should apologize first for continually mixing up Chemical King and Chemical Kid. The easiest defense I can use is that I'm old and my memory is crap. It could also be because I just don't care to get Chemical Kid's name right and I'd much rather be writing about Chemical King.

It's the final issue of the series and the end of the tales of the Academy. I'll do a postmortem next week (along with my thoughts on Volume 6 of LSH) so let's just focus on this story for now.

To recap, Cosmic King has broken into Legion HQ to, I think, distract the Reservists so they don't go and help the Legion fight the LSV. He's doing Saturn Queen's bidding and spent a lot of last issue arguing with himself.

Duplicate Girl, Bouncing Boy, and Night Girl fly to confront him. He removes all the oxygen in the room so Chuck and Lydda pass out. I don't know where Luornu went to.

And who comes to the rescue? Comet Queen, Dragonwing, and Chemical Kid. 

"The End" was written by Paul Levitz with art by Geraldo Borges and Marlo Alquiza.

We begin where we left off. I guess someone told the creative team that no one knew what happened to Duplicate Girl, so they've drawn her in as well. The trio of teachers are all passed out, dead if you believe Cosmic King. I commented last issue that the cover, which showed Duplicate Girl fighting alone, was on the wrong issue. Nope. It's just completely wrong and doesn't show anything that actually happens in the comic.

Cosmic King gets the great line: "What a pitiful reserve the Legionnaires left to guard their headquarters! It was a waste of time for me to come here. Bouncing Boy... bah... barely worth killing."

Well, it's a waste of my time to read this comic, too, but you don't see me bragging about it.

Comet Queen rushes to the attack, angry that her beloved Chuck might be dead. If one thing has been consistent through this entire run, it's that no one has figured out why team work is a good thing. He blasts her (no idea when he developed that power) and she is on her knees in pain.

Finally, Dragonwing and Chemical Kid join the fight and Cosmic King immediately discounts them as children who aren't worth his time.

Back at the Academy, Variable Lad is just wandering around, wondering where everyone has gone. He thinks this might be another training exercise. He runs into Gravity Kid and they both try to figure out why all the teachers are gone. They turn on the control panel and see Cosmic King blasting Dragonwing.

They grab Glorith, get into a ship, and fly toward Legion HQ. We also learn about Brande's "Legion Law" deal: the S.P.s can't do anything but cordon off the HQ and let the Legion solve their own problems. I've honestly never heard of this before and, to be blunt, it both makes a ton of sense and makes no sense at all.

Variable Lad is nervous, unsure if they can save them. He tries his powers but, since they change every time he uses them and he can't really control them, he's more than a little scared.

Something explodes and the ship crashes to the ground near the HQ. I honestly have no idea what happened. Maybe I'm just dense, or maybe I'm unable to read comics that don't spell everything out for me. Anyway, here are the panels:
 

So I'm guessing the flying blobs with the yellow circles are bombs? Defense systems? Ships? And they shot the ship the students are in? I honestly have no idea.

Let's continue. The fight is still going on in the HQ so Dragonwing spews green fire in Cosmic King's face, who points out that with no oxygen, there's no fire... even though we just saw the fire. And with no oxygen, how are any of them breathing? Or conscious?

He kicks her in the head and then wraps her in something. He says she should reconsider who she's loyal to and her turning evil would actually make this comic interesting.

Instead, she spits acid in his face. It doesn't actually burn him, or do anything other than distract him, so he boots her in the head and knocks her out.

The rest of the students have arrived and, for a moment I wondered how they survived the crash, but then I remembered that neither the creative team nor the editorial team cares if anything makes sense, so why should I?

There's a big silver snake and I'm guessing it's supposed to be Variable Lad... or it's one of Glorith's projections, and in response, Cosmic King shoots sharp rocks at them. Nope, nothing makes sense. But I've stopped caring... so let's just get through this together, okay?

For what seems like the fiftieth time this issue, Cosmic King's face and body change shape due to horrible artwork and he faces off against Glorith. Seriously - it's as if the artist stopped worrying about keeping anything consistent and is drawing different people in each panel.

To save them, the silver snake attacks alone, saying that Cosmic King can't kill his friends. His transmutation powers reflect off the snake's skin and they're both turned to gas. If you're wondering why the snake can reflect super powers, don't. Wow... they killed Variable Lad and Cosmic King to finish off this series... 

Finally, we get an epilogue. Night Girl takes first watch at the HQ in case Saturn Queen attacks again. Bouncing Boy deals with the dead student and handles all the arrangements. Duplicate Girl starts crying as the loss hits her.

Bouncing Boy approaches the students and congratulates them - he thinks they've gotten one step closer to joining the Legion.

But Gravity Kid is leaving the Academy - in his words, "The Science Police have a trailing spouse spot for me on Takron-Galtos..." and he's going to be with Power Boy. Trailing spouse? What?

He walks away, hoping the rest of the team finds their own destinies... and don't end up like Variable Kid.

To be continued in the pages of Legion of Super-Heroes #1!

 

If this comic had come out today, and you told me that it was completely AI-generated, I'd probably believe you. The story made no sense and didn't even try to piece the scenes together. The art was bad on every page and no character was ever drawn the same way.

Why kill off either Cosmic King or Variable Lad? For the former, he's a long-time villain who shows up whenever the LSV arrives and even though his name makes no sense, at least there's a sense of history. For the latter, since you never showed him and gave us no reason to care about him at all, and couldn't even let us know that he was the snake, his death was meaningless. Heck, even killing Chemical Kid would've had greater impact because at least we knew something about him. 

This looked like a book written, drawn, and edited by people who really couldn't be bothered to care anymore...

I've been trying my best to be positive during this run but these two issues killed me...

 

So let's be positive! The latest Long Live the Legion podcast has arrived. It's a spotlight on the original Invisible Kid, Lyle Norg, with special guests Ross & Kirby from STOP! Let's Team Up! Check it out on Podbean, at wherever you get your podcasts, or on YouTube!