Legion of Super-Heroes #1
Written by: Paul Levitz
Art by: Francis Portela
Lettering by: Pat Brosseau
Colored by: Javier Mena
Published by: DC
Cover Price: $2.99
Note 1: This review is for the digital version of the comic available from DC Comics on Comixology
Note 2:A close friend of mine has been suffering through cancer for the past two years. It seems he is taking a turn for the worse, so this has been a very difficult week for me. My prayers and wishes go out to his family.
I did not want to let Nexus or the readers down, so I am doing my reviews for this week, but I am not adding my usually “summaries” or images from the books. I will make every effort to get those edited into these reviews early next week. Thank you for understanding.
Last week, in my review of Legion Lost, I gave Niceiza a lot of credit for making Legion Lost into a very accessible book. Legion Lost worked hard to get rid of people’s conception of Legion being impossible to get in to. Unfortunately, DC went completely back on that in Legion of Super-Heroes.
I was a Legion fan for a long time, and even I found this issue hard to follow. I’m not even sure where these cadets came from, or why we should care about them. We find out that Colossal Boy quit the Legion, but we really don’t know what led to this decision. I wasn’t even sure what the Legion was doing spying on Panoptes.
Legion Lost had a lot of mystery, but made me really care to learn the answers. Legion of Super-Heroes didn’t manage that. I genuinely learned more about what was going on in this comic from the solicit on Comixology’s website than I did from reading this comic.
Levitz seems to miss the whole point of Relaunch. This book picked right up from the last Legion series, which could be fine if it was made accessible. Green Lantern did the same, but I still think new readers could catch up pretty easily. This wasn’t the case in Legion of Super-Heroes #1.
This book won’t be easy for new readers to dive right in, and it’s not something that would convince a lapsed Legion fan to rejoin the fold. I’m usually a huge Levitz fan, but I find it very difficult to recommend this book to anyone except those who have been reading Legion all along.
Don’t get me wrong, the book was well written. I loved the little characterization moments scattered throughout, and Levitz did do a great job giving everyone something to do. But I spent more time trying to figure out what was going on than actually enjoying the book. And it’s not like DC has much of a Legion library available digitally for me to catch up on what’s been going on with Legion over the last few years.
When you search for Legion on Comixology, all you get is:
DC might want to consider a massive Legion 101 sale, or else I don’t see this book doing all that well.
As for the art, Francis Portela did a terrific job here. It was actually the highlight of the book for me. I especially liked the look of Dragonwing. I usually don’t call out colorists on their work, but Javier Mena really made those wings look beautiful and distinctive. A few times the wings drifted into panels the character wasn’t there, and they really stood out.
I really don’t want to dissuade anyone from buying this book, but until Levitz makes it more accessible, it is hard for me to recommend it to new readers or those who haven’t followed Legion for a while. I do plan on continuing to review this book, so hopefully we will see improvements in the next few issues.
Final Score: 7.0 This wasn’t really a bad book, but Levitz makes no effort to really help catch the reader up to who these characters are or why we should care. If you only have room in your budget for one Legion book, go with Legion Lost over Legion of Super-Heroes.
