Review: Legion of Super-Heroes v5 #1

[dvandom]

Due out next week. Spoilers, so hidden behind cut.

Dave's Legion Rant

     Legion of Super-Heroes v5 #1

     Okay, DC doesn't put volume numbers on their books when they restart
with #1, and there's a lot of arguments for and against different versionings
of this book (v6, continuity 3, various insulting nicknames), but I'm gonna
stick with v5.
     This review is based on reading an advance copy that was part of the
First Looks packet DC sells to stores, and I'm working from memory here.  If
I notice any serious errors once I own the book, I'll edit this file and
repost.  
     I will be including spoilers here, but I have enough non-spoiler stuff
to say up front that spoiler space shouldn't be necessary.  However, I will
not be doing a plot summary...in part because I *don't* have the book in
front of me as I type this, but also because I figure there will be enough of
those soon anyway.

     Okay, let's start with the setting as revealed in the 8 page preview in
Teen Titans/LSH, as well as some of the pages released online.
     What we have here is an alternate future, starting the 30C setting fresh
(although Shikari from the previous continuity ended up in it).  What we're
presented with is a sort of utopia, where the galaxy is at peace, there's no
poverty or disease...and it's deadly dull as far as teenagers are concerned.
Essentially an idealized 1950s America with spaceships.  The Legion of
Super-Heroes are a rallying point for bored and rebellious teens, like a
cross between the Justice League and the Beatles, with a lot of Society of
Creative Anachronism thrown in.  Except, of course, instead of playing at
being lords and ladies and knights, these kids look to their own "millennium
ago" and play at being superheroes.  They're a Bad Influence, but there's
hints that an invasion may be coming, and they're the ones who will be saving
the galaxy.  
     Expand into some of the preview pages, and we see that the adults are
all very bureaucratic and blinkered, far more concerned with proper forms
than doing the right thing.  There's a clever gag early on that I won't spoil
here, except to say that it starts off looking like a lettering goof.  :)
However, it only reinforces the idea that this might be a hamfisted allegory,
young versus old.  
     Needless to say, I wasn't the only one worried that this was going to
suck hard.

     Now we enter spoiler territory, by the way.

     Things improve a LOT, as far as I'm concerned, after a weak beginning.
In a way, the opening stuff just gives us the public face of the team and the
very surface of the society they live in.  But it's made clear that the
appearances are, as they say, deceiving.
     The "utopia" is apparently like an ancient oak tree, looking strong on
the outside but rotten on the inside.  The first real storm to come along
will shatter it, and Brainiac 5 has made Seldon-like calculations predicting
a galactic war that will shatter the United Planets and all their member
worlds.  The Legion has two hidden purposes, therefore, as far as I can
tell.  The first is to try to manipulate events behind the scenes to prevent
the fall, or make it happen in such a way as to be more easily recovered from
(again, shades of Asimov's Foundation).  The second is to wake people up,
starting with the younger generation, so that they SEE the impending doom and
can save themselves.  In the scenes inside the HQ, it's clear that the core
members of the team know that all the fighting runaway robots, stopping bank
robbers, etc, stuff is just the fun part, but that there's real work to do as
well.  
     The core conflict in #1 is Cosmic Boy's.  It's established that he's
been knee deep in the plan for months, trying to play politics and get things
done within the system, aided by Brainy's psychohistorical calculations.  The
others have noticed how he's changed, and he's getting more and more
frustrated with the politics.  Then he has to choose between doing what's
politically effective and what's morally right...between the long term and
the short term.  There's two ways of looking at his choice, too, which could
take the series in radically different directions depending on which view
Waid has taken.
     One, it could be seen as a positive decision.  You can't build a better
future by compromising your principles, you have to do what's right, even if
it's the harder road.  And when Cos has his moment of crisis, he chooses
right over expedient.  The backlash will be terrible, but by sticking to his
principles he makes it so that any victory will be real.
     Two, it could be seen as a tragic error.  Saving the galaxy will require
sacrifices, and he knows that going in.  But when the reality of the cost
hits him in the face, he backs down and refuses to pay the price.  And by
doing so, while he does good in the short term, he may have doomed the galaxy
to civil war.  Heck, he might have had a hand in the first shot of that war
being fired.
     I'd prefer option one, mind you.  I think that optimism is one of the
core values of a proper Legion story, with the Arthurian "might in the
service of right" ideal being another.  Both options could lead to the same
plot points, but it's a matter of tone.  The first looks forward with hope,
the second looks backwards with recriminations.

     Big plot points aside, the tone of the other scenes agrees with me.
There's a running gag with the new Star Boy that got several chuckles out of
me, and some good points made about the crowds gathered around the HQ (which
does look vaguely like an upside down rocketship).  And while the Legion
battle cry of "Eat it, grandpa!" (ascribed to Garth) is on the goofy side, it
actually gets used to very good effect at the climax of the issue.
Seriously, it does.

   Dave Van Domelen, "IT. DIDN'T. LOOK. LIKE. A. BOMB." - Star Boy