Legion of Super-Heroes 01 Thoughts

Writer: Paul Levitz
Artist: Francis Portela

Okay, I'll say it. This is just the next issue of Legion of Super-Heroes from the last volume. I say this as a fan of Paul Levitz who was enjoying the series but dropped it a month or so before the reboot due to being a little too busy. This was a comic by a guy who may have got the memo that DC was doing a line-wide reboot to attract new readers, but really didn't care.

Unlike Green Lantern (which was actually a follow-up to a crossover arc), this book is dripping with leftover references from the last arc Levitz wrote, and feels like the aftermath issue for that crossover. The trouble here is, rather than simply write it like your normal epilogue issue and allow readers to at least piece together some idea of what happened before and perhaps give us a clue of where the book is headed, Levitz leaves things vague, perhaps with the intention of making new readers feel like they aren't reading issue 16 instead of issue 1. The end result is that even someone who read his book last volume but maybe didn't finish the last two issues or so is completely lost.

We're shown at least a dozen and a half members of this team, some new members, some old, and we're never really given time to understand who these characters are because the book never slows down long enough to tell us. Say what you will about Justice League, but I knew who Batman and Green Lantern were and what their interpersonal dynamic was before I put down the book. Here, there's too much for a Legion fan to follow, nevermind a new person. The little boxes telling you who they are and what powers they have are there, but it just feels like a token gesture with everything else going on in the comic.

The art's...well, it's nothing particularly stand out. I enjoyed it, but there's nothing there that would make me call him the next fan-favorite artist. (Or my favorite artist, for that matter.) Still, I imagine as he gets used to the title he'll improve, and I look forward to that.

In the meantime, it's sad to say that the second issue is probably only going to get read because it's The Legion of Super-Heroes. Hopefully it'll pull me in though. I'm interested in seeing the "larger 30th century universe" that Levitz wants to show us, so that's one good thing about it.