Jimmy Akin

This weekend I went to my local comics shop and picked up the books that had accumulated for me in December and January. As a result, last night I read the December and January issues of the Legion of Super-Heroes.

The Legion is, for sentimental reasons, my all-time favorite comic. I started reading it as a boy and fell in love with it.

It’s about a group of young superheroes in the 30th (now 31st) century. It’s also the longest-running super -hero team in existence (having first graced the pages of DC comics in 1957).

It hasn’t always been well-written or well-drawn (and so I haven’t always read it uninterrupted), but hey, it’s a boyhood favorite, and everybody’s entitled to at least one of those.

I’m mentioning it here because I’d like to recommend that comic books fans go out and pick up the two most recent issues.

The reason is that the Legion has just been "rebooted," though they aren’t using the term "reboot" in the industry literature (they’re saying it’s been "re-envisioned").

For those who may not be aware, comic books periodically write themselves into creative corners and the creators decide that the best thing to do is to start over and tell the story afresh, honoring the spirit of what went before while jettisoning all the continuity that has boxed the writers in to a corner creatively. This "do over" is known in the industry as a "reboot."

The biggest reboots in history were the transition from the Golden Age of comics to the Silver Age, which occurred in the 1950s, and the 1988 event Crisis on Infinite Earths, in which the entire DC Universe was rebooted, with the most dramatic changes happening for Superman and Wonder Woman (Batman saw his way through the Crisis relatively unscathed).

Unfortunately, Crisis didn’t do all the work that needed to be done in some corners of the DC Universe, and some titles, like the Legion of Super-Heroes have been rebooted several times since.

The last time the Legion was rebooted, DC went to comic writer wunderkind Mark Waid to do it, and he did a great job. The new Legion was more fun to read than the title had been in some time. Unfortunately, Waid left the book and eventually the writing level declined as subsequent writers boxed themselves in creatively. By the end of that run, I’d basically stopped reading the comics (though I still bought them).

In December, DC brought Waid back to reboot (er . . . "re-envision") the title once again.

After reading the first two issues of the reboot, I’m sold.

Waid has done it once again.

The book is bristling with creativity. There are lots of nods to established Legion tradition, but it’s accessible enough that a new reader can jump in and enjoy it (this being one of the principal goals of a reboot).

The art (by Barry Kitson) is really nice, with a good eye for detail and design that rises well above the pedestrian pencilling that the Legion has suffered from in recent times.

Most important for me, though, are the story and the characters.

As far as the story goes, the Legion is still a super-hero team of about twenty (!) members from different planets and that dwells in the 31st century. What’s different is that it’s now at the center of a youth-movement with more than 75,000 affiliate members. Any kid on any planet who endorses the Legion philosophy can consider himself a legionnaire, even though the core team is still just the twenty-or-so we spend most of our time reading about.

The Legion philosophy is radical for its time. For the last thousand years, humanity has lived in a near-utopian environment with scarcely a breeze to ruffle a bird’s feathers. But it’s a world with a dark side whereby parents have their kids hooked into an invisible Internet that monitors everything they see and hear . . . for their safety, of course.

The opening narration to the Legion explains:

Ours is an age of peace and tranquility. By the dawn of the 31st century, an Earth-based network of worlds has created a rigidly mannered serenity throughout the cosmos–a near-utopia. All we, our parents, and their parents have ever known is security, stability, and order.

We’re so sick of it, we could scream.

The Legion is determined not only to fight bad guys, but to bring back to society a sense of fun, adventure, and excitement.

The first two issues are a good start!

While the story is good (an inter-stellar war is about to start), the characters are also good.

These are important for a long-time fan who has known and loved these character (literally, in my case) for decades.

One of the things that happens each time a title reboots is that the creators adjust the characters in ways they hope will create interesting story potential. Sometimes they are successful; sometimes they are not.

For example, last time the Legion rebooted, one of the most easy-to-look-at legionnaires, the gorgeous Princess Projecta, became a giant snake! (Bad move! My philosophy is: If you want to introduce a legionnaire who is a giant snake, fine, just don’t mess with an established character who is easy to look at.)

In the Legion’s latest incarnation, that hasn’t happened (yet), but other changes, good and not-as-good, have occurred.

I don’t mind the character changes if they serve a conceptual purpose. For example, I was tickled pink by what they did with Colossal Boy.

Originally, Colossal Boy was an Earthling who had invented a serum that allowed him to grow to . . . well . . . colossal proporitions. In the new version, he’s a man from a race of giants who has the ability to shrink himself down to being six feet tall and who wants to be called "Micro Lad" (he doesn’t get his wish).

Ha!

That’s great!

Another creative change centers on Dream Girl, who is from a planet where people have visions of the future, often in their dreams. Dream Girl has always been a hard character for writers to handle, but Waid has broadened the character’s conceptual background immeasurably in the new reboot. In the past she’s been kind of ditzy, but now she spends enough time in the future that she forgets things like . . . we haven’t yet defeated the bad guy in front of us.

Especially nice is the way the second issue plays Dream Girl off the ultra-rational Brainiac 5 (a super-genius from the planet Colu). Brainiac 5 resents here because he spends untold amounts of mental effort deducing the likely outcome of events from gigaquads of seemingly-unrelated data, only to have a precognitive like Dream Girl waltz in and come up with the same conclusion by sheer intuition.

At the end of the second issue, we get this exchange between the two of them regarding Dream Girl’s seemingly infallible predictions:

BRAINIAC 5: All it would take is for one future casualty–just one–to find the will to break the lockstep of destiny. If that happens, all probabilities shift.

The universe is more unpredictable than we give it credit for.

Your predictions don’t have to be infallible.

DREAM GIRL: . . . (pauses) . . .  (smiles) . . .  You’ll feel different when we’re married.

Hah!

Yes!

(Previous Legion continuity has already established that Brainiac 5 has a thing for blonds, and Dream Girl is a blond).

Not all of the character changes are ones I would have made. For example, Star Boy (who has the power to increase an object’s mass) has inexplicably been changed into a black guy for no apparent purpose relating to the story. There are already people in Legion history who could (and should) be introduced to establish adequate black representation on the team: the second Invisible Kid and both of the Kid Quantums, for example. New characters also can be introduced. Unless they have a special story to tell relating to the new Star Boy’s ethnicity, I don’t see the point of the switch.

That being said, I do like the new Star Boy’s character. He looks really cool, and he gets some of the best comedic lines.

In any event, I’d like to recommend the new Legion title for any comic book fans in the audience.

LONG LIVE THE LEGION!

(Saturn Girl had just better not turn into a giant star-nosed mole!)