Daryl Tay.net

Superman And The Legion Of Super-Heroes

After a slow start with Last Son and a stronger arc with Escape From Bizarro World, Geoff Johns and Gary Frank unite to metaphorically blow my mind with Superman and the Legion Of Super-Heroes. A cocktail of my love for team books, a fond affection for the Legion of Super-Heroes, Geoff John’s masterful understanding of the characters and Gary Frank’s amazing art results in one of my favourite Superman and Legion stories of all time.

The story in this arc is pretty intriguing. Superman’s legacy is being tarnished in the 31^st century (where the Legion reside) and a distress call is sent back in time to our time to ask for Superman’s help. However, Superman quickly finds out that in this future, the sun is red, which means his powers don’t work. Luckily he has a whole host of super-powered friends in the Legion to help him out.

If you have some precursor knowledge of the Legion of Super-Heroes (either from the comics or the criminally short-lived cartoon series), you’d know their roster is incredibly huge and can be unwieldy. In addition, Johns has chosen to use a version of the Legion that many modern-era readers (like me) are totally unfamiliar with. However, neither of those proved to be a problem because while Johns utilises practically the whole Legion (including the Substitutes, which was one of my favourite moments), he also focuses on a very core group including Polar Boy, Colossal Boy, Brainy, Dawnstar, among others, to make it a truly accessible story with distinguished characters, even if you have no idea who the Legion of Super-Heroes are.

Removing Superman’s powers – in the hands of any other writer – could be a cheap ploy to demonstrate how “heroic” he is, even without them. Of course Johns does demonstrate this, but not in a forced way. The danger he’s faced with is very real, and it’s much easier to relate to a Superman that isn’t 99.9% invulnerable. He also has one moment which has to be my favourite Superman moment ever where he says “I stand for everyone” because the humans think he’s anti-alien and only stands for humanity. Fantastic!

Gary Frank has always been a favourite artist of mine. From Midnight Nation to Supreme Power and Birds of Prey, I’ve liked his distinctive style, even if it took me awhile to get used to his faces initially. I just need to say he can draw the heck out of the Legion, and Superman as well.

If you’re curious about Superman from all my previous reviews and might be hesitant about spending $30 to pick up one of these (especially with Escape From Bizarro World’s terrible format), I would suggest picking up Superman and the Legion of Heroes and diving straight into Geoff John’s run from here. There are virtually no threads from the previous two story arcs that continue into this, so you don’t have to worry about not being able to follow the story. In fact, even if you’re not interested in John’s stint on Superman and just want a really good story, you could do worse than Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes.

[Image credits: Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes]