Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Adventure Comics #2/#505 Preview/Discussion (SPOLIERS)

That was it? 8 pages to say Mekt < supposedly > has a twin? Decompression has reached a new level.

Superboy was okay, but Francis is too good to be true and makes it much more interesting that what it was: a passable reunion story.

And people complained about Mark Waid...

I never read Shooter saying Francis was ineffectual: he said something like he was growing/developing as a storyteller, but wasn't there yet. Which was true. We must also consider that Johns decompressed plots allow artists to "stretch" much more. See the amount of "splash" pages. Shooter gave more meat for your bucks, which does take more from the artist as a storyboarders. And that's why you need a Giffen or a Pérez for TELLING A MEATY story.

yes i do pay 3.99 for 10 pages....but i'm ok with that.

is that wrong? i could do with more legion though especially to replace the wierdo preview of rebels annual!

I didn't even read the main superboy story...i feel a bit naughty.

I think Johns is making Levitz transition much easier this way. In fact, since nothing happened since The Lightning Saga (and even that had nothing), Levitz can start from Crisis onwards without a problem.

Why was Storm Boy behind bars? We haven't seen bars since Curt Swan. And the idea that Storm Boy's cell would be next to where the discussions were held was lame.

And then Mekt having to stand on that dias would be considered torture today never mind the C31.

This isn't the UP/SP/Takron-Galtos we have come to know.

BTW, I wasn't complaining about Francis' story telling ability.

He did a great job with Johns' measly plot that got stretched from a subplot in a normal, well-written comic to a full story in this one.

Every time I read a Legion Johns book - I think about Steve Lightle explaining why he drew Umbra climb a mountain instead of use her flight ring after she makes a speech about being a Legionnaire with a focus on said ring. He says that he drew what he was told to draw or something to that effect.

Like I said...Paul save us from all of this! My eyes weep for a decent 31st Century Legion story!

Legion of Three Worlds was "nothing"?

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I haven't read issue #2 yet but I'm kinda dreading it now. Decompressed comics are the bane of my habit.

I'm sorry, but was Luthor reading a headline that said "Teen Titans Loses Another Member?" Bayside News needs a new copy editor. (Of course since it's their 10th Dead Titan story of the month I suppose a little sloppiness is going to creep in.)

L3W was nothing on my book. It was everything but a Legion book. And from L3W #1 to L3W #5, pretty much nothing new was established (Black Witch only) since we knew that the "Levitz" team was alive before that. We still don't know when Johns decided to "cut" through the timeline to separate things, we don't know where are characters that didn't retrofit his ideas... It was a hammerfisted story about Superboy, Flash and GL. That's it.

D-Boy

You should read the lead story as they have been dropping the occasional legionnaire in there... like Tellus in the first issue and Jan Arrah in the 1st and 2nd issue.

I'm enjoying the series more than I thought I would but I agree with the above concerns. I'm wondering how long I'll have to wait to see Duplicate Damsel use her new power.

I just read it.

First off I have no problem with the big panels. They look great and it's not like there isn't any word balloons in them. There are many words in those balloons.

Did anything happen? Well not much but since there was lots of character moments and character interaction I didn't mind it. Also following a big event like Legion of Three Worlds I don't mind the slow story.

Ofcourse there are things I don't like. Kon in Smallville for instance. Hope that doesn't last but it seems it will. Hope he gets tempted more often to keep it interesting.

Garth still acting like a 16 year old hot head. I know the current situation of the UP has him riled up...and I'm seeing it much like Green Arrow being a hot head instead of a teenager being a hot head so that helps.

I seem to be way off on the Mekt's twin. Even in 2009 they continue to show that HORRIBLE Lightning Lord costume don't they.

Bars in Tarkon Galtos? Yeah right.

Still this has my interest. I am enjoying it. Don't exactly agree with Johns versions of these characters and can't wait for Levitz!

I just realized something. Possibly subtle, maybe not. When Cassie said Conner was trying to live his life like Superman's, and when he said his best friends were "you, Bart, and Tim", it's another parallel to Superman's life, but not a very strong one.

Tim = Rokk
Bart = Garth
Cassie = Imra

I say it's not so strong because Superman didn't have feelings for Saturn Girl, although Supergirl did see Saturn Woman has a suitable romantic interest for him, if not for her marriage.

With both LoTW and Adventure, Geoff seems to be setting up Paul for his multi splot thread type of story telling.

I hope this becomes Adventure Comics Starring Superboy and the Legion of Super Heroes very soon...or at least giving both features half the book to work with.

So what? How did that detract from the story?

We do "know" when in the timeline he decided to separate things anyway. Somewhere around the time of the first Crisis. He has said so in interviews.

As for the whereabouts of characters that "didn't retrofit his ideas..." - what did you want? A print-out at the end of the series listing every single pre-Crisis Legion character and whether or not they were still in-continuity?

I think it's fairly obvious that pretty much every single pre-Crisis Legion character can be considered in-continuity (except Supergirl obviously) until we hear otherwise. The only big exception being the mysteriously undetermined fate of Magnetic Kid.

New developments established during Legion of Three Worlds (off the top of my head) -

* White Witch becomes the Black Witch.
* Dozens and dozens of characters (too many to list in one post) are established as still in continuity.
* Rond Vidar is revealed to have a son.
* Rond Vidar is killed.
* Gates and XS join the Pre-boot team.
* The Reboot team are given a new objective as the conga-line refugee hunters of their universe.
* The Threeboot team are revealed to be from Earth Prime.
* Sun Boy and Element Lad of the Threeboot are killed.
* The true identity(ies)/nature of the Time Trapper is revealed.
* Sun Boy 1 returns to the Preboot team.
* Duo Damsel reveals her new identity and power-set as Duplicate Damsel.
* Duplicate Damsel and Bouncing Boy return to the Preboot team.
* Kinetix is killed.
* RJ Brande returns after many years away.
* RJ Brande is killed.
* Mon-el is rescued from the Phantom Zone.
* Blok is seriously injured.
* Karate Kid II is revealed as having joined the Legion at some point.
* Karate Kid II is killed.
* Cosmic Boy and Night Girl are revealed to have broken up.
... and so on and so on...

(Before someone jumps in with the point that the deaths of certain characters means the end of story development rather than the beginning of it I would say yes, for those specific characters, but for the characters that survived, their friends/teammates' deaths will have opened whole new avenues of story development.)

And I'd say that's a whole long list of new developments for a book that was always much more about celebrating the long, convoluted history of the Legion of Super-Heroes than it was about breaking any new ground anyway. That's what the new ongoing is for.

Green Lantern Sodam Yat appeared on one page at the end of issue #2 (I think) and then was a background character for the rest of the series. If he had overshadowed the headlining team in this book you would have heard about it from me, trust me (I hate him).

Kid Flash similarly had a couple of pages devoted to his return and then played a background bit-part for the rest of the tale. One could argue that he is a Legion supporting character by virtue of his cousin and his guest appearances in the main book anyway.

Superboy is the only one of the three that you could argue took too much attention from the Legion away at certain points but as much as I'd like to forget it there's one point we need to remember - he IS a Legion member.

Despite all that though, the tale was never "about" any one of those three. You could say they made guest appearances sure but at the end of the day Legion of Three Worlds was and always is a Legion of Super-Heroes story starring Legion of Super-Heroes characters fighting Legion of Super-Heroes villains in a Legion of Super-Heroes setting and setting up hints and developments for a new Legion of Super-Heroes ongoing (which happens to be called Adventure Comics).

Garth & Mekt got w i d e bottoms!

The guidelines pre-printed on most original art pages for comics allow for six panels, three rows of two, the refault for much of the Golden and Silver Ages.

Julie Schwartz once had a rule of no more than 40 words per balloon. These days, we're luck to get 40 words on an entire page.

Will Eisner routinely did it in seven

Where are these previews of which you speak. I'd love to eyeball them.

With the closes comics shop 90-minute (one way) drive away, I get my comics via mail order. I just got Adventure #504 on Friday.

Right here on Legion World. There is a thread in this forum titled something like Adventure#2/505 Preview. Last I checked it was about half way down the first page.

Now merged.

First story: nicely done I thought. The number of splashes slowed it up a bit but I enjoyed Manapul's choices so much, it didn't deter for me.

Major pluses were the addressing of the clone's less than steller personality (and haircut) in a humorous fashion and Ma Kent (finally?) addressing her loss. This second part was so well done.

With that done, I think it's also important that Ma has opportunity to confront Braniac. This will allow the writers to finally show that secret laboratory she has been hiding under the kitchen. Bwa ha ha.


Second story. Eh, I like the idea behind it, but thought execution failed a bit. Why would Garth take Mekt's unsupported word for such a thing. Not even Mekt displayed reason for his belief. If not that, I would be more anticipatory of the next installment if there had been a one panel shot of the supposed sibling, not to mention addressing how this was to lead to a massive war to end all wars as indicated in the solicits.

they're getting older. lol

After reading observations of others...

For a romance story about characters that I really do not know (two strikes against), I thought there was good use of the characters I do know (Luthor, Krypto and Martha Kent) to keep the story moving for me and that Johns FINALLY wrote a story that gave me reason to care for Conner.

Essentially, Conner is the child of divorced and adversarial parents (Supes and Luthor) with perhaps instinct to love both against his own best senses. He left home for a long time and now has returned after a tragic experience. This is a story that resonates with many these days I think.

Conner is wondering what parts of who he is are due to nature, which to nurture, and which are due to his unique experiences. These are things the character of Conner is exploring and perhaps at this time, give him more concern than joy.

Personally, I think he is overlooking the effects of the brand of test-tube, but perhaps they'll get to that.

I stopped reading after "so what" so I'm not sure what the rest of that post was about but I do know that an important part of Ricardo's post that you left out of the quote was, "L3W was nothing on my book."

He expresses an OPINION, not a mandate on you or anyone else and I as well as enough other long term fans and intelligent posters have expressed similar opinion to the point that there no doubt in my mind, there is validity in both extremes.

There wasn't much delivered that I was looking for in L3W. Things happened, some of interest, many not but its most important failing was that it didn't "resolve" a thing to MY satisfaction and apparently not to the satisfaction of many.

However, detail of those thoughts were addressed in the appropriate thread so no need to reiterate in detail here.

As regards, L3W and issue #2 of Adventure, other than the explanation of the reappearance of Superboy, everything else seemed to follow, as Ricardo stated, from the Lightning Saga story of a couple years ago, didn't it?

"bars on the cell." Not the strongest Sci Fi team on the Legion story, not that I was upset by the bars or the "torture" but still....

"Shooter and Manapul:" a bit of a heisenberg here as we really do not know how Manapul would have told this story without his experiences with Shooter nor is this the type of story (romance) I would normally associate with Shooter.

I think that Conner knows that he's not 100% Superman. He's got some Luthor in him.

So it's increasingly important for him to find *something* redeemable about Luthor, because he's unwilling to turn his back on that part of himself, and forever be in fear of / have contempt for his own self. If he gives up on Luthor, the way Superman appears to have, he gives up on his own potential to transcend that legacy.

Luthor being Luthor will likely horribly betray Conner's search for something worth saving within him, and Conner could end up trapped in a cycle of self-loathing.

Or, yanno, not. I like to overanalyze.