After going to the used bookstore, I next went over
to Zia Comics. I’d gone looking specifically
for this 100-page Robin anniversary
comic. I am a big fan of Dick Grayson
and Tim Drake (the others, not so much).
I was not disappointed with the Grayson material. There were four stories featuring him. I didn’t think much of the Jason Todd/Red
Hood story. There were two Drake
stories, one of which was okay. The
Stephanie Brown story was your basic “Girl Power” story. Lastly, there were two Damian Wayne
stories. One was a team up with the new
Superboy, Superman’s kid. What? When did this happen? Hasn’t Lois read Man of Steel/Women of Kleenex?
The last story ties into Batman’s current storyline (I guess). Damian has a master plan for dealing with
Gotham’s villains once and for all. Dad
might not like it. Unfortunately, no
explanation was forthcoming. It was a
tease.
The question is: Was this worth $10? Probably not.
The stories were too short to be satisfying. The artwork was all over the place in quality
and style, some really good, some average, some bad. Overall, this was a missed opportunity. What would have made it great would have been
an overarching story that spanned all the Robins and the way they individually dealt
with the conflict, perhaps joining forces at the end. There still could have been different writers
and artists working on it. Ah, this kind
coordination would have required a good editor, a kind of person DC and Marvel
don’t seem to have any interest in employing.
What? Why did I buy
this? What was I thinking? I know it’s the Legion of Superheroes, one of
my very favorite superhero groups, but there’s no G-D cover on this thing!
Okay, inside the outer cover, there was a normal cover
with artwork, but I couldn’t have known that until I bought it and opened
it. (I know. The blank cover is for going to a convention
and commissioning an artist to draw something.
As if anybody, much less me, is going to be doing that any time
soon.) This then brings up another
issue: Why am I buying yet another LSH reboot?
I’ve lost count of the number of do-overs since Crisis on Infinite Earths indirectly did away with Superboy (with
John Byrne’s Superman reboot), thus invalidating the Legion’s entire
history. Since then, it’s never been
quite right and sometimes it’s been very wrong.
(And ironically, there’s been a successful “Superboy” TV series, Smallville, in the meantime.)
I’ve attempted to suffer through a couple of the
reboots. Much like the many recent
versions of Supergirl in the comics, the original version was always the
best. Oh, I wish I’d never bothered
buying any of those dumb new Supergirl comics even more than the Legion
reboots (9-30-18). This new LSH #1 is
unfortunately no different than the rest, if not worse.
The story starts and ends in the same manner:
incomprehensible. For being a #1 issue,
clearly this comic calls back to some other recent comics for its
foundation. It didn’t list them, not
that I’d care to track them down anyway.
There’s no actual story. It’s the
new Superboy (him again?) being introduced to the Legion along with some setup
for a scary new villain threat.
Whatever. They even brought back
the artificial earth nonsense and made it worse. Lightning Lad is also now randomly
black. I guess this is so he can have a
racially diverse relationship with Saturn Girl just like any given prime time
TV commercial or CW show.
Hey, but the issue was not a total loss. The artwork was good. It didn’t help tell the story, what there was
of it, but it looked nice. No, the
highlights were these throwback ads. Disco
70’s Dick Grayson is too cool. Then
there’s Svengoolie meeting Wonder Woman and the Joker. I watch him on the weekends sometimes. These were truly a delight to find in this
otherwise crummy comic. It’s almost like
they were written for me, in which case, why wasn’t the rest of the comic written
that way.
Bottom line: There is no escape from the Legion! No wait, that’s from a French Foreign Legion
movie. Take two. There is no fixing the Legion at this
point. Even long-time Legion writer Paul
Levitz couldn’t do it when he came back to it.
Please let this dumb version die quickly like the others and just leave
it dead, until generations from now in the 31-st century when they can do a
Legion of Superheroes comic properly.
Isn’t this a nice J. Scott Campbell cover? Spider-Woman’s in her classic costume and
everything. Oh, this is another #1
issue, sure to be a collector’s item.
(Is “collector’s item” even a term even still applied to comic
books?) Inside, she’s mostly wearing
another suit. It’s not a bad look. It’s just not iconic like the original and
makes her look like yet another knockoff Spider-Man.
For a story, she beats up some random armed goons and a
helpless teenage boy. The difference
between the opponents is that she really enjoyed taking it out on the
teen. It was like it was almost personal
. . . for the woman writing the comic.
It was like she was working out some issues on paper like I am with this
blog.
In the second story, there’s a flashback of what I came
for (is that a double entendre?), Spider-Woman in the correct suit with better
artwork. (Is that Wesley Snipes there in
the frame? It’s like when they ripped
off Samuel L. Jackson’s likeness as Nick Fury years before the Avengers movies,
but this time in reverse.) Jessica Drew
also had to take a cab home from the battle, because she couldn’t afford the
fare because she’s a hard luck loser . . . just like Peter Parker.
Why has Marvel basically ruined one of their most valuable
properties, Spider-Man, by constantly copying him on to other spider-ish
characters? Do you want an enumerated
list? Can you figure it out for yourself? In any case, this comic was just dumb. The only thing dumber was me buying it based
on the cover, especially when I could likely be sure it was going to suck
because it’s a new Marvel comic. You
can’t spell Marvel without using the letters SWJ. You people can’t create; you can only destroy
and call it “stunning and brave.”
No comments:
Post a Comment