Legion of Super-Heroes: Before the Darkness, Volume Two by Gerry Conway, Roy Thomas, Paul Levitz, Steve Ditko, Frank Chiaramonte, Bruce Patterson, Carmine Infantino, et al.

Legion of Super-Heroes: Before the Darkness, Volume Two

Collection published: 2022
Contents originally published: 1980-82
Acquired: February 2022
Read: October 2023

Writers: Gerry Conway, Roy Thomas, Paul Levitz

Artists: Jim Janes, Steve Ditko, Frank Chiaramonte, Bruce Patterson, Carmine Infantino, José Luis García-López, Dick Giordano, Howard Bender, Rodin Rodriguez

Containing Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 2 #272-83, this collection fills in the last part of the gap between the last of the Legion of Super-Heroes Archives and The Great Darkness Saga deluxe edition, meaning that DC has collected a full run of the Legion from 1958's Adventure Comics #247 to 1984's Legion of Super-Heroes #313, which is quite frankly astounding. (Now all I have to do is track down the last four archives I need...) As a friend of mine has pointed out, there's no series other than the Legion where DC kept going once the archives sputtered out.

What is less astounding is the actual stories collected here. While volume one had a certain madcap old-school sci-fi charm, thanks to that volume's main scripter Gerry Conway, this one was much more the typical pedestrian Legion of the 1970s. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of the typical Legion melodramatics here, including an extended storyline where Ultra Boy seemingly dies but actually loses his memory and becomes a space pirate. But I found it hard to care, you know? The characters seemed to lack the solid grounding that makes the best Legion stories sing. I found it really hard to care about Reflecto or the Time Trapper here. Perhaps part of the issue is that none of the regular artists are among the Legion greats, even when they've done good work elsewhere.

I always enjoy some Blok.
from Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 2 #272 (script by Gerry Conway, art by Steve Ditko & Frank Chiaramonte)

The one thing you can say in favor of this saga is that it does also explain away Brainiac 5's turn into villainy and murder way back in Superboy and the Legion volume two. Perhaps we'd have been better off ignoring that, to be honest, but I guess it's good for one of our heroes to not be murdering women in squalid apartments, even when insane. This volume has a lot of the slow-simmering background plotlines that would be perfected during the Levitz and Giffen era, but they aren't so effective here; eventually I started to wonder if there would ever be any movement on the "Colossal Boy's mother is president of Earth" and "maybe Timber Wolf is going to leave the team" threads that never seemed to go anywhere.

It works well to find out Wildfire's bluster is balanced out by deep-set self-loathing.
from Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 2 #283 (script by Roy Thomas, art by Howard Bender & Bruce Patterson)

My favorite story was a small one, and surprisingly the work of Roy Thomas. I mean, I enjoyed Roy's work on DC's Earth-Two stuff, but I don't feel like he has a particular aptitude for the Legion. But he gives a solid and keen look into the origin of Wildfire, showing the insecurities of the Legion's most blustering member. Nice stuff.

I read a Legion of Super-Heroes collection every six months. Next up in sequence: Five Years Later Omnibus, Volume 2