Review: Superman and the Legion of Superheroes
6 Comments | Posted: August 2nd, 2008 | Filed under: Reviews | Tags: gary frank, geoff johns, legion of super-heroes, superman
1.
Attempting to craft a “new” take on the Legion of Super-Heroes is one of those things that only the truly ambitious or overly continuity-mindful writers attempt. This means, of course, that Geoff Johns was obviously raring to go. However, a lot of credit must go to his efforts here. Novice readers who are only vaguely familiar with the Legion will find this story (in which Superman is flung to the 31st Century to help bring order back to the United Planets) remarkably easy to jump into. While having a little bit of Legion background can help, the author (assisted ably by letterer Rob Leigh) provides brief blurbs to get everyone started as quickly as possible. It’s an approach that’s a bit akin to the JLA character rundown at the beginning of each trade paperback from the 1997 series where everybody got the same sort of description with roughly the same number of words, from Aztek to Batman.
2.
Early on in the story, Johns comes up with a neat way to eliminate the usual “Superman could probably take care of this whole mess in a couple minutes” problem by very deliberately removing his powers. While it’s been done before, it’s always nice to see that Kal-El is still fearless and determined, even when he’s no longer invulnerable and able to shoot high-powered death lasers from his eyes.
3.
Gary Frank’s art starts off a bit rough, particularly on the lead, but he soon asserts himself very well after just saying “Fuck it, I’m going to draw Christopher Reeve as Superman.” He’s always been a very steady sort of artist, without any need for too-fancy layouts or much in the way of forced on-page dynamics, but his work here really breaks out quite a bit. There’s some genuinely pleasing moments that are made downright epic thanks to Frank’s on-page choices. He’ll never be a Kirby or Buscema, but his depictions of action feel very right, and work nicely with The Legion, somewhat sympatico with the Giffen era on the title.
Notice should also be given to the costume redesigns, which are well thought-out and actually a quite bit better than Kitson’s, even if I think the boobhatch for Dawnstar is a bit much. (Yes, I know she’s never been modest, but cleavage that’s exposed for no practical reason is dull after a while.)
4.
I always like it when a superhero comic has moments that make me go a bit fanboy, and this managed to do it several times. Braniac 5′s ego is just this side of outright parody for a key scene, and an important reveal is all the better for it. Similarly, a single sound effect “splok” gave a hilarious action scene just the right bit of kickoff. It’s rare that I get that visceral charge from a superhero comic, and Johns has consistently delivered them in the post-Infinite Crisis material that I’ve read, which includes Superman: Up, Up, and Away, The Sinestro Corps War and this1.
5.
That said, Superman And The Legion Of Super-Heroes does sometimes show where Johns is lacking the touch he brings to superhero mythology. There’s a grating amount of hamfisted xenophobia that makes 80s Claremont look practically restrained, down to Nazi-style armbands, and while the villains are certainly good at doing the “threat and menace” bit, they’re very two-dimensional with the exception of the excruciatingly-named Earth-Man, who has a bit more depth because he actually has something to lose if Superman and his pals win.
5.
One could question the need for yet another version of the Legion, but at this point, it’s sort of a wash. Apparently, there’s some big transdimensional hoo-hah that’s going to happen and considering Johns’s place with the publisher, I suspect this edition of the continually-rebooted superteam will be the new status quo, which is fine by me, the one guy2 who likes the Legion but isn’t obsessive about their continuity.
1 Superman: Last Son was flawed (too derivative of cowriter Donner’s film versions, some awkward art by Kubert) but still kept my interest with its assault of Big Things Happening. It was like a Michael Bay Superman film without the 10,000 microcuts in the action scenes.
2 Yes, I know there’s more of you out there.
This is one of my all-time favourite Superman stories, and the currently-running “Brainiac” story looks to be even better. It is so awesome to see Christopher Reeve’s Superman running around and doing all this cool Superman shit.
But as I understand it, this story does not feature “another” new version of the Legion, but in fact stars the original Pre-Crisis team. I am very much looking forward to Legion of Three Worlds and Superboy-Prime totally killing the shit out of the other versions. Fact: Superboy-Prime is the greatest super-villain created since the Joker.
I wasn’t bothered by the xenophobia commentary at all- I was relieved that Johns had something to say outside of the usual stroke sessions and/or Phyrric Victory, Again stuff.
A pretty good story, all in all.
The problem is that it can’t really be the pre-Zero-Hour Legion unless everything after the late 80s (which would be, I guess, roughly the time of the post-Crisis pocket universe Superboy retcon) is suddenly an imaginary story – meaning, no Five Years Later, no Quiet Darkness, no Legionnaires, no revelation that the Time Trapper is really Cosmic Boy. Which might be their intention?
I agree wholeheartedly, Kevin. This was probably one of Johns’ best arcs of all his work. The ending was probably the weakest part for me, as Superman getting his powers back makes it wrap up too easily and neatly.
Considering that Johns and Busiek had (kind of) recently done Up, Up, And Away, which was about Superman regaining his powers after the 1 Year Later gap and the fact that this story was packaged as a complete story on its own, this decision makes total sense to me.
One thing that has bugged me about this storyline: it takes sunlight about eight and a half minutes to reach Earth from the sun. So, shouldn’t Superman be dead now?