Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Justice League vs. The Legion of Super-Heroes #1 - Preview and Spoilers

Naomi's the only one you could argue was actually popular because David Walker co-wrote her series, but every appearance she's had afterwards was solely Bendis.

It did feel quick, didn't it? I went back through and I guess I appreciate how much time was given to the Legion compared to the JL since a number of JL readers that pick this up may not be familiar with the Legion.

Counting the pages, before the teams meet - Legion 31C has 5 single pages and 3 double page spreads, JL 21C has 2 single pages and 1 double page spread. After they meet we have a double page with the top half a single panel and the bottom a few separate panels, one double page spread of the group either nerding out (understandably from the Legion's viewpoint) or seriously discussing how little they know about what is happening, followed by a normal single page and then two full single pages to emphasise the "event" happening and one of its consequences.

So the Legion gets a lot more pages than the JL in this issue. I guess providing an introduction is the purpose of Gold Lanterns opening dialogue (whoever it is to).

Regarding Naomi, yes she is a Bendis creation. She joined the JL a few issues back so her presence here makes sense (and is not surprising since Bendis is also writing JL - in fact the storyline where she joined also involved his 21C UP and a Superman antagonist he created).

A few other thoughts:

So yes this is all setup, introducing the Legion to those not familiar with it, bringing in the "Great Darkness" at least as a name of something happening, placing the spotlight on Gold Lantern, and setting up the team meeting and unexplained event. What happens next is anyone's guess. I have no idea but I am intrigued and will be following.

As for the art it's not bad, better than a lot. Not sure if I am a big fan of it but it is attractive to some extent and does a fairly good job of portraying the story and the action and characters' reactions.

Has anyone done a Legionnaire checklist? As Ayla said "Is anyone else missing?" So far I am missing Star Boy (although I feel sure I saw him in one panel but now can't find him), Invisible Kid (of course), and Ferro Lad. I think everyone else makes an appearance.

BTW that spaceship that the Legion are fighting near (rescuing I guess) that we get a view of at the bottom of page 4 looks a bit familiar to me. I seem to be remembering a ship shaped like an Omega symbol or something similar. Does that ring bells with anyone?

I just found Star Boy on the cover but I still can't see him inside.

There are six legionnaires on the cover: the founding trio (makes sense), Gold Lantern (who it seems will play a critical role in this story), Mon-El, and Star Boy. No idea why the last two. Mon-El is reasonably well known I think but Star Boy? I guess the post-Infinite Crisis version had that exposure in JSA a few years back but this one? Even we Legion readers have hardly seen any of him.

As for the JL we have the big three, Hawkgirl, Black Adam and Naomi. This is not too surprising since having Black Adam and Naomi join are both Bendis additions, although who knows with Hawkgirl.

Oh and another interesting choice on the cover. The Superman shown is Kal-El judging by the outfit, not Jon, but only Jon appears in the story (which makes sense since his dad is rather busy at the moment on Warworld, which is a great story ongoing in Action Comics and I recommend it). Mistake? Probably.

I had forgotten about David Walker. Thanks for pointing that out.

Well I have to say I really enjoyed the first issue of this team-up mini series. I guess I am excited to have the Legion back on the landscape, plus I'm hoping this will bring about a new and fresh Legion monthly series.

Some great moments for me were: Naomi telling Lightning Lad that he reminded her of Black Lightning! I always said that right from the start !!! (I guess Bendis was secretly giving me a nod LOL). I also liked the Triplicate Girl/Magenta mystery .... I wonder if Magenta will become youthful again when she is returned to the future? We'll see I guess. Monster Boy seems a bit uncertain about his power and potential. Could his power be new to him I wonder? Can't wait to know more about him, plus the others that didn't get to speak this issue.

Could this Darkness be related to Darkseid somehow???

The new Dream Girl look still bothers me. Hey Mr. Bendis, if you're out there reading this how about keeping Nura looking like her classic normal self when she's not using her power, and only looking the way we've seen her recently in her "sandy" look when she's powering up or about to receive a premonition?

Regardless, I'm buckled in and ready to enjoy this ride! Cannot wait for issue #2 to come out.

Justice League vs Legion of Super Heroes #1

Pros
Plot seed: Hint to a fall from grace for the GLC, that Gold Lantern has a chance of restoring.


Lu is put center of the (in)action in the first scene, which hints at her prominence in the issue. Lu is interesting throughout.


The growing threat is more effective here, than it was in the sub-par foreshadowing that went through the regular title. Darkness related tremors throughout the galaxy is more coherent here.


In fairness to general interchangeable characters, Lu and Wonder Woman come across a little differently. Batman's busy schedule was a nice dig at the number of books he's in. Having everyone on CowlDial shows how connected he is to super- contingency resources.



Cons

There's not much plot momentum in the issue. There's the large cast. But Bendis has to have them all share a sentence as often as possible. That leads to a fair number of double page spreads. Not a lot happens, and it's a quick read.


The Legion seem unable to travel anywhere in less than massive numbers. Bendis takes the name too literally, and has probably updated the Legion HQ toilets so they can all fit in at the same time. The first one *is* led into by the opening page, giving it a pass. But it's a Bendis trend.


That leaves the book looking as though the instruction was "draw me a massive group, and Ill drop in completely interchangeable dialogue fragments, to make it look as though I'm giving each character a voice."


The Legion face of against a random threat, placed there simply to get to the next plot point. From what we're shown, they defeat it by telling it how good they are. Instead of showing us a threat, Bendis hints that it's a scary monster because Reep's mom used to tell stories about it.


We've not really had decent, plot building foreshadowing in the main book to be calling this The Great Darkness. Far too much of a gap between what we got and what Bendis wants it to be remembered as.


Lu being transported through a portal between centuries, in an isolated event, becomes a great darkness threatening two times simultaneously. Again, there's too big a gap between what we see and what the cast (writer) tell us the implications are.


Fine having GL be the back up to Brainy. "So we can solve this before the darkness...becomes too great." Came across as a bit thick. It had already been called "The Great Darkness", so there's not even points for getting "Great" and "Darkness" in the sentence.


Daxamian (stand in Daxamites?) ambassador points out that the Legion were supposed to be focusing on being heroic, rather than...um...saving the galaxy. IQs have sadly dropped rather sharply in the future. Poor guy is made to look an idiot so Bendis can make a Heroic Age link to the JLA.


We meet the JLA just after they have beaten some villains. It might be a follow on form their own series, but having Green Arrow say "that may have been our best moment" ever, rather than actually showing us anything, has become a Bendis hallmark.


As is having another group shot, with each of the cast having interchangeable dialogue. They share the same dialogue as the Legion. Normally, it's a bit of cliched writing to show parallels. But with Bendis, they really could all be the same character, sharing a full sentence across a dozen people. It becomes a little creepy, in a body snatchers way, after a while.

Jon putting the Lu and the Legion through prolonged anguish, rather than just tell them what was going on was odd. Another forced plot jump to get them back to the 20th century. Could easily have been done just by having Brainy go back with Lu and an investigative team. They'd just agreed to investigate it to the UP a few pages back.



Plot
While defeating ACME creature, one of Lu's bodies is abducted.

The Legion report this, and dark tremors growing throughout the galaxy.

Lu's missing body appears in the 20th century (no "Boom!" noise in this dark tunnel transfer), but she has been aged.

Superboy is contacted, and travels to the 30th century to bring back Lu and crossover team.

On meeting, there are a few broad hints about how the future views the JLA cast.

Black Adam might be about to shed some light on events, when both teams vanish, leaving Gold Lantern alone in the Hall of Justice.

That's it for plot.



Panel Hogging...Or Gold Lantern and Naomi presents...'
Both are prominent on the cover. There's the risk that the book is less about telling a good story about two of DC's biggest teams, and more about promoting 2 pet favorite characters the writer happened to create, and has enough DC clout to be allowed to run with it.


The opening scene is straight in with Gold Lantern, and then introduces the Legion. We'll possibly get some more on his origin throughout this. Used as a point of view character, this is fine. Having an arc for him too, may even help.


The head of the UP turns to Gold Lantern for comment along with Brainy. That's more of a role than I recall for him, in the main book. But for a new reader, knowing the Lantern heritage, it doesn't seem out of the ordinary.

Something has the power to transport Lu across centuries, and abduct both teams. Yet, it leaves Gold Lantern.


Conclusion
There's not a great deal of story for your pennies here. Decompression, and with Bendis at the helm, means that this will read like a full issue after over half of this mini series has been complete. It's one that looks likely to be a better read as a trade.

The story doesn't really do any great service to the Legion, JLA and certainly not The Great Darkness I. It's not terrible, just shallow based on so little going on, and the lack of any character voices. That should hopefully improve a bit, as we get into the core of the series. That's assuming the story actually ends in this series and doesn't seep away into follow ups.

Great points, thoth. One thing that I keep going back to in my head is that the book wasn't cheap and didn't have a lot of content. I'm really hoping this changes.

I'm honestly surprised at the amount of "A" grades that this is getting around the intertubes.


I also thought it curious that this ambassador looked more like "Classic" RJ Brande with the Bendis Brande on the facing page. That had to be the artists' choice, as he's said that Bendis doesn't script the layout that specifically.

Not much to add, a bit of a quick read but happy to have it. When you're tired of the Legion, you're tired of life (from a time-traveling Samuel Johnson).

Looking good for your age, Magenta! Triplicate Girl has been one of the more successful characters in this series for me and I enjoyed having some of the story focus on her. What is "Douro" that Yellow calls out?
Another Legionnaire, Lightning Lad, has written a doctoral thesis. They're an advanced educated lot - maybe a PhD is a Legion requirement now.

Splash pages annoy me, since they seldom seem to deliver enough to merit two pages, or even one page, with nothing else going on, but that Great Darkness spread was pretty impressive.

and

A disapointing plot beast. It's supposedly scary, but we don't see why, or see any real effort on the Legion's part in defeating it. Antyhting would have helped. While, you don't want to devote too much time to something that's an intro to the team, a couple more panels per page, fewer splash pages helps. It reads as though Bendis wasn't bothered, just keen to skip through the plot points.

It did remind me of sun eater/ solaris type thing. The Great Darkness page reminded me a bit of a galactic sun eater, or the cover from that Black Cloud book (on whuch the sun eater was based, I read a while ago)





This sums up a lot of points. If you feel Bendis' writing quirks detract from the book, then a lot of them are on show here.



Every panel is precious in the face of The Bendis Decompression (more sapping to the economy than the Darkness related things we've seen here so far)



Good point. I can add that onto the pros for the issue. Bendis hinted at some characterfutures. But, obviously was very broad and never let any of them get followed up on in any conversation between the two. But the Legion's goal, reinforced by the ambassador in the same issue for writer points, was to usher in a new age of heroes, based on the JLA's age. So this was preferable to "um..records were lost because one of the Atomic Knight's dogs ate them or was it the apes from Kamandi's time destryed them just before we got sued by Planet of the Apes rights holders." It would be nice if one of the future characters thinks so highly of one of the JLA that they drop too specific a hint that changes that character's choices.

Good spot on "core" I read it as meaning the centre of the Lanterns' Big Power Battery on Oa, but makes more sense as a typo.



Good point too. A plus is that the Leigon certanly weren't short changed in this issue. This may be due to Gold Lantern having to start in their era, but still.


Thsi could get a few plus poits in later issues. We didn't get the old habit of the teams not recognising each other, or fighting each other right from the start. So Bendis is going to have to plot the change.


Yeah, the art was decent. It didn;t get in the way and dealt with a very large cast.



There's not enough plot to really make an issue here, so it's going to be a more enjoyable read as a trade. There's only surface character notes, with Lu being the more interesting. If I wasn't particularly bothered with either the League of the Legion, it wouldn't be making my pull list.
Rating: 3.25


I'd give Bendis points, if he built up to Darkseid, only to have it be lined to Talok or The Shade.


I'm glad it's got fans. I'll be picking up the rest of the series, because I want to see a Legion book. At ?3.19, it's not cheap (and that's digital). I'm buying very few titles at the moment. I don't know if that means I shouldn't mind so much, or the price really stands out as high because I'm focusing in on it. Comixology ruined me with the Marvel Masterworks sales. ?1.50 each, and the opening volumes went for ?0.79.


Agreed. The Darkness page and possibly the first one with the Leigon worked. The latter because GL had built up to it. I don;t recall feeling that there was that Darkness sweeping the galaxy form the regular series though. A tale of missed opportunities from that series.

So on a complete lark, and since we have an extra month until issue 2 comes out, I gave my iPad to my 16-year old daughter and asked her to read issue 1 to see what she thought,

For context, she is more into Anime then mainstream comics, although she is familiar with most DC characters via the movies and video games from the last 10 years. She doesn't know much at all about the Legion.

She had some interesting comments - basically she mirrored a lot of my reaction to the issue in that it was OK as a start and found Triplicate Girl the most compelling, but we'll have to see as the series progresses. Of note:

She thought the Legion Code Names were odd. Also funnily enough, she kept on referring to Triplicate Girl as "That Triad girl."

She was NOT a fan of the intro Gold Lantern dialogue. Her comments around the dialogue in general were that it seemed to try too hard to be relevant in the beginning but it got better towards the end.

She enjoyed the Justice League, especially Black Canary, probably because they share the same vocabulary, and definitely noted the recurring theme of the darkness pulling characters away.

She did NOT like the two page spread where the characters came together. She found it hard to figure out what to focus on and it gave her a headache.

All that said, she was curious as to what happens next.

Anyway, I thought some outside perspective would be interesting.

I have never heard of this book or knew that the Sun-Eater was based on a book at all...cool! I just looked it up on goodreads and chucked it on my list to read, thanks thoth!

Thnaks for the different perspective GL.


I have a post somewhere with more details on it. But it undoubtedly has spoilers, so read the book first.

Given that it seems like my kids' age group are where they are trying to aim at, I figured it would be interesting to hear that viewpoint.

I also gave it to my older (19 y.o.) daughter, and she thought it was OK for a first issue, but she prefers to read collected stories, so I'll have to get her opinion again sometime in 2023 at this rate.