"With the sleekness of a jungle beast, the Prince of Wakanda stalks both the concrete of the city and the undergrowth of the veldt, for when danger lurks he dons the garb of the savage cat from which he gains his name! The BLACK PANTHER!"

from Black Panther vol. 1 #3
(script & pencils by Jack Kirby, inks by Mike Royer)

With the cancellation of Jungle Action, the Black Panther was available for Jack Kirby to take over upon his return to Marvel in the late 1970s, giving the character his first self-titled series. Black Panther vol. 1 lasted fifteen issues from 1977 to 1979. It's not clear to me reading it if Kirby even really knew what had been done with the character he co-created after him; there are some footnotes pointing the reader to information from the Black Panther's appearances in Avengers, but in the Kirby-written issues I didn't notice a single reference to anything written by Don McGregor.

This run is much-derided but to be honest, even weak Kirby is still great stuff. It is a bit of a jarring transition to go, as I did, straight from Jungle Action vol. 2 #24 to Black Panther vol. 1 #1: one minute, T'Challa is being beat up by white supremacists in the American Deep South, the next minutes, he is travelling in the company of a monocled dwarf adventurer named Abner Little in search of a frog statue than can send people through time. Abner is one of a group of collectors of rare artifacts, and T'Challa must work with him—despite Abner's own ruthlessness—to stop other collectors, especially Princess Zanda, from exploiting the frog... and to send a hyper-evolved human being from the year six million back to its own time!

from Black Panther vol. 1 #2
(script & pencils by Jack Kirby, inks by Mike Royer)

In the first issue, I was faintly baffled; by the second, I was on board. Sure, this wasn't nothing like the dark poetry of Don McGregor... but one of the big reasons I love superhero comics is how they can constantly reinvent themselves. Kirby is the king of weirdness and the continuing strange turns of the collectors story arc (issues #1-7) are a delight: soon T'Challa and Abner are infiltrating a hidden enclave of immortal samurai! Like, why not? This isn't peak Kirby, but like I said, even middling Kirby is fun to read. (This must have seemed so old-fashioned in 1977-78, though.)

The second story arc shifts the action back to Wakanda; T'Challa mentions he's been gone a long time, so presumably he hasn't been home since before the "Panther vs. the Klan" story arc that began in Jungle Action #19. A regent named N'Gassi has been ruling in the Panther's absence, but General Jakarra, T'Challa's half-brother, has begun a coup. With T'Challa still away, N'Gassi summons distant members of the ruling family from around the globe: a medical student, a racecar driver, and so on.

from Black Panther vol. 1 #12
(script & pencils by Jack Kirby, inks by Mike Royer)

Again, people seem to deride this, but I kind of liked it. The idea of T'Challa having an estranged half-brother is a good one... though admittedly not much is done with it, and nothing carries over from  McGregor's vision of Wakandan politics to Kirby's. But the idea of these pretty ordinary people having to learn how to work together to defeat a vibranium-mutated Jakarra is a great one. (Unfortunately, however, they dub themselves "the Black Musketeers.") Meanwhile, T'Challa keeps encountering delay after delay in reaching Wakanda. One or two of these would have been fine, but they do pile up to beggar belief. I did, however, love the one where he ends up trapped by a science fiction film shooting in the Sudanese desert: a very topical reference to Star Wars.

The last few issues of Kirby's run are a bit of a fizzle, as with Jakarra defeated, a new villain is introduced, who sucks the life force from people. And then, I guess, Kirby must have abruptly left the title, as issue #13 wraps up that storyline, but is by a totally different creative team in a totally different style: Jim Shooter, Ed Hannigan, Jerry Bingham, and Gene Day. I didn't like how they had the Black Panther fail to rescue most of the people the villain had captured.

from Black Panther vol. 1 #14
(script by Ed Hannigan, art by Jerry Bingham & Gene Day)

The new creative team (minus Shooter) continues on for the series's last two issues, which abruptly change the set-up. Now T'Challa is setting up an embassy in the United States to bring an end to Wakandan isolationism, and he ends up working with the Avengers to battle the villain from his very first appearance, the Klaw. I didn't feel like the Klaw's plan made a lot of sense even by supervillain standards, and it was very jarring to me for T'Challa to be palling around with the Avengers. (I know he'd appeared in a lot of issues of Avengers by this point, but I haven't read most of those.) I get that Klaw is Black Panther's first villain, but... he kind of sucks, right?

Hannigan does bring back a couple characters from McGregor's run: Monica, Kevin, and Windeagle cameo, foreshadowing a much-deferred resolution to the Klan storyline. Unfortunately, issue #15 was the last of Black Panther vol. 1. This storyline would eventually appear in three issues of Marvel Premiere, but those weren't in the comiXology sale I got all my Black Panther comics from and don't appear in any of the collections available on Hoopla, so I won't be reading them. (Other reviewers, however, have not been kind. It does seem pretty baffling that Marvel actually tied up a three-year-old storyline from a series cancelled for low sales!)

ACCESS AN INDEX OF ALL POSTS IN THIS SERIES HERE

Review: Legion of Super-Heroes Archives, Volume 7 by Jim Shooter, Curt Swan, George Klein, et al.

Comic hardcover, 238 pages
Published 1997 (contents: 1967-68)
Acquired June 2015
Read August 2018

Legion of Super-Heroes Archives, Volume 7

Writer and Layouts: Jim Shooter

Pencillers: Curt Swan, Jim Mooney, Pete Costanza
Inkers: George Klein, Jim Mooney, Pete Costanza, Sheldon Moldoff
Letterers: Milton Snapinn, Shelly Leferman, Morris Waldinger, Gaspar Saladino, Ray Holloway

For the 1960s Legion, this is actually pretty decent. You can see that Shooter is a fan, and it has a positive effect on his writing, in that he's interested in who the Legionnaires are as characters. This volume often delves into their backgrounds, with home planets and parents putting in appearances.

What, characterization, in a Legion comic? Too bad it will have no impact on the story.
from Adventure Comics vol. 1 #362 (art by Pete Costanza)

We also get milestones like the first appearance of the Dominators; I was amused to notice they're introduced just like Star Trek's Cardassians, in that a never-before-mentioned war with them is just coming to an end. Pretty tough war if our heroes devoted to the United Planets literally have nothing to do with it. Jerks!

Of course you don't think he's so bad, you've never even heard of these guys before!
from Adventure Comics vol. 1 #361 (art by Jim Mooney)

I mean, a lot of it is still silly and/or dumb. There's a story where they Legionnaires travel to another dimension as a shortcut to escort a peace mission (a technology never mentioned before or since) and get attacked by descendants of Lee Harvey Oswald, Brutus, Cassius, and John Wilkes Booth who have been given superpowers and altered to resemble their ancestors. Why is this considered a good plan by the bad guys? Who knows. Also 30th-century education must be pretty impressive, given the Legionnaires recognize all four historical assassins at a glance. Actually, flipping back through the book, a lot of the plots are silly and/or dumb. I could go the rest of my life without another Legion of Super-Pets story.

This doesn't really relate to anything I discuss in my review; I just thought it had some badass writing for Shadow Lass with good art to match.
from Adventure Comics vol. 1 #365 (art by Curt Swan & George Klein)

Also the Miracle Machine turns up for the first time, which shows up to wrap up an adventure, a never-before-mentioned piece of technology with the amazing power of doing literally anything! At least the Legion finally get their new, better HQ.

Next Week: Jumping ahead-- new costumes in Archives, Volume 10!

Review: Legion of Super-Heroes Archives, Volume 6 by Jim Shooter, Curt Swan, George Klein, et al.

Comic hardcover, 221 pages
Published 1997 (contents: 1966-67)
Acquired March 2016
Read December 2017

Legion of Super-Heroes Archives, Volume 6

Writers: E. Nelson Bridwell, Jim Shooter, Otto Binder

Pencillers: Curt Swan, George Papp
Inkers: George Klein, George Papp
Letterer: Milton Snapinn

This volume sees one of the first attempts at an ongoing story for the Legion. The Fatal Five are introduced as deadly enemies for the Legion, recruited in a Suicide Squad-esque thingy where the Legion needs the help of the worst of the worst to defeat a Sun-Eater on its way to the Earth. Famously, it kills Ferro Lad; I might have cared if Ferro Lad had every done anything other than get killed. Unfortunately, he was introduced in volume 5, which I don't have, so he seems pretty much like a nobody here. The Fatal Five is potentially interesting, but like a lot of 1960s Legion concepts, I think later writers will do more with it than its originators do themselves.

Outside of Ferro Lad, it's the usual stupid Legion hijinks. The famous "adult Legion" story comes in this volume, which should really be famous for Cosmic Boy's hairline, and the fact that apparently the marker of adulthood in the 1960s was pipe-smoking:

Cosmic Man's hair loss is matched only by my scan's gutter loss.
from Adventure Comics vol. 1 #354 (script & layouts by Jim Shooter, art by Curt Swan & George Klein)

There's also a story where five of the Legionnaires end up as babies, who get adopted by parents from a planet with sterile inhabitants. Even by Legion standards, it's contrived.

But of course!
from Adventure Comics vol. 1 #356 (script by E. Nelson Bridwell, art by Curt Swan & George Klein)

I don't really get how Jim Shooter got a reputation as a great Legion writer based on this stuff. I mean, it's great for a thirteen-year-old, and it's okay for the 1960s Legion, but that doesn't mean I'd hire him at age 57 in 2008 to make a new, more appealing version of the Legion, yet DC did so for some reason. Curt Swan and George Klein draw the hell out of the Legion, though, especially its pretty ladies, so there's that.

Dream Girl, Insect Girl, Princess Projectra, and the Emerald Empress. (The last is not a Legionnaire, I know.)
from Adventure Comics vol. 1 #355, 352, and 353 (scripts by Otto Binder and Jim Shooter, art by Curt Swan & George Klein)

Next Week: More of the Legion, in Archives, Volume 7!

Return to the Threeboot: A Review of Legion of Super-Heroes: Enemy Manifest

Yours truly has a commentary up on the Torchwood 10th anniversary special over at USF this weekend. Every Torchwood character you loved, plus ones you didn't even remember!

Comic hardcover, 141 pages
Published 2009 (contents: 2008-09) 
Acquired and read September 2016

Legion of Super-Heroes: Enemy Manifest

​

Writer: Jim Shooter

Pencillers: Francis Manapul with Rick Leonardi and Ramon Bachs
Inkers: Livesay with Dan Green and Mark McKenna
Colorists: JD Smith
Letterer: Steve Wands

It's not like the Legion of Super-Heroes run of Jim Shooter, Francis Manapul, and Livesay is terrible or anything. It's a competently made superhero comic book. But it just doesn't hold a candle to what Mark Waid and Barry Kitson did before it. Waid and Kitson's run felt like it was bursting with ideas-- too many ideas, sometimes, because the title often felt like it wasn't giving all the ideas the focus they deserved. Shooter and company don't really capitalize on any of these ideas (the backstories ascribed to Sun Boy, Element Lad, Triplicate Girl, and Phantom Girl are never brought up), and many of them they outright contradict (Brainiac 5 says time travel isn't possible even though he arranged for Supergirl to travel to the past in The Quest For Cosmic Boy, and he gave her a message designed to save the life of his ancestor according to R.E.B.E.L.S.; the massive camp of Legion followers that defined the tone of the Waid/Kitson stories never turn up in this story, and then all of a sudden tons of superpowered underagers are auditioning for the United Planets Young Heroes, which doesn't really make any sense to me at all*). Shooter does at least remember that the Legion used to read 20th-century DC comics in this volume; Phantom Girl reads Princess Projectra an issue of Action Comics about the original Brainiac.

I wasn't always won over by the Legion's new uniforms either, especially given they were supposedly designed by some twelve-year-old kid. Apparently a twelve year old who loves cleavage and side panels.
from Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 5 #46 (art by Francis Manapul and Livesay & Mark McKenna)

As I read more superhero comics, my growing hypothesis is that you can get away with this kind of thing if what you do is the same level of interesting (or, even better, more interesting) than what you supplant, but Shooter and co. fail this test. This volume sees Princess Projectra suddenly become a villain, and then moves into weird freaky-deaky incomprehensible mind stuff as she battles Brainiac inside his own mind-- the plotline alternates between farfetched and banal. The big overarching story that's driven this whole run, about mysterious aliens being deposited from across the universe, who are then followed by a whole planet, never really has the hooks to be interesting. It's a bunch of faceless goons, which is one of the least interesting kind of comic book villains. There's also some relationship melodrama, but because these characters don't really feel like the Waid/Kitson characters, it's difficult for me to invest in who Saturn Girl should be in love with. (Plus, Saturn Girl is portrayed as a bit of a sad sack, not the strong version of her I loved in the classic days of the Legion or in Abnett and Lanning's Legion Lost.) And I don't really care for M'rissey, the Legion's "business manager" who solves all the main characters' problems for them.†

Shooter's version of Saturn Girl sort of rapidly alternates between unlikable hard-as-nails invasive telepath, and unlikable spineless sobber.
from Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 5 #46 (art by Francis Manapul and Livesay & Mark McKenna)

Francis Manapul is a decent artist, but still developing-- I like the later work I've seen from him on The Flash a lot more than this very anime style. And the way the script but especially the art insists on sexualizing these underage characters is a little uncomfortable. Like, there's nothing wrong with the Legionnaires being sexy, but here it mostly comes across as crude.

I know Invisible Kid was one of the younger Legionnaires, but I didn't think he was meant to be eight.
from Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 5 #50 (art by Ramon Bachs & Livesay)

Shooter's run was curtailed; the last issue here resolves many things far too easily (the massive threat of the past dozen issues is defeated with nine seconds of hacking from Brainiac) and leaves others entirely unaddressed (we never learn what happened to Cosmic Boy or the other Legionnaires who traveled through the time portals to the 41st century). If I had invested in the ongoing stories of this era, I'd be angry, but as it was, I was just kind of relieved. I am angry that the "threeboot" was dumped in favor of the "deboot," however, probably the most retrograde and harmful move in the long history of the Legion of Super-Heroes, and one that I would argue that leads directly to the fact that it's no longer published today, for the first time in five decades.

* Like, wouldn't people like this already be in the Legion? And surely they wouldn't want to work for the man!
† Actually, isn't a bit weird that Shooter introduces a slew of new Legionnaires here but ignores the new ones introduced by Waid and Kitson, like Dream Boy? I never really got the point of Gazelle.

Return to the Threeboot: A Review of Legion of Super-Heroes: Enemy Rising

Comic hardcover, 192 pages
Published 2008 (contents: 2008) 
Acquired and read August 2016

Legion of Super-Heroes: Enemy Rising

​

Writer: Jim Shooter

Pencillers: Francis Manapul with Aaron Lopresti, Sanford Greene
Inkers: Livesay with Matt Ryan, Nathan Massengill
Colorists: JD Smith with Nathan Eyring
Letterer: Steve Wands

With Supergirl gone, the "threeboot" Legion returns to its original title, though it gains a new (less attractive) logo in the process. It's always odd when a new creative team takes over a title with a very distinctive voice, especially if that new creative team doesn't have any interest in aping what came before. Jim Shooter's writing is not really like Mark Waid's at all, nor is Francis Manapul and Livesay's art anything like Barry Kitson's. Though you might argue that the Waid/Kitson Legion never lived up to its potential-- the revolutionary idea was downplayed more and more as the series went on, and they seeded so much character stuff in the first twelve issues that they never came back to as Supergirl and the Dominator plot took over the focus-- I'm not convinced the solution was to basically throw all that out. The idea of the Legion as an inspiration to the youth of the galaxy, and the face of a wider moment, is completely gone here: we never see the crowds outside Legion H.Q. anymore. Even the DC Comics spinner racks are gone from H.Q.; when we do briefly see Phantom Girl with some comics, they're drawn as generic books, not as recognizable issues of DC Comics as they would have been during the Waid/Kitson run.

Ah, yes, I too really enjoyed the classic book Comics.
from Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 5 #43 (art by Francis Manapul & Livesay)

Plus Shooter introduces future space cursing to the title, which is... terrible, to put it mildly. I don't remember anyone using any of that stuff during the Waid/Kitson run, other than "grife," which works because it's basically "grief." But under Shooter, suddenly everyone is saying "florg." People are "florged" and bad guys are "florgging." It's a desperately terrible word that needs to go; it throws me out of the story every time I read it. Florg florg florg florg florg. It's not real! It doesn't even sound like it could be real!

Like, how can I take dialogue like this seriously?
from Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 5 #38 (art by Francis Manapul & Livesay)

Putting aside all my change-of-creative-team kvetching, how was Enemy Rising, which collects the first half of Jim Shooter's run, before the "threeboot" was inceremoniously dumped for the "deboot"? Basically, it's okay. Shooter has the Legion being overstressed with crises popping up across the solar system and the galaxy, while Lightning Lad-- the new leader-- struggles with United Planets bureaucracy. The bureaucracy was fun at first, but the longer it goes on, the more irritating it gets, because it's the same thing again and again, as Lightning Lad gets more calls than he can handle, pisses someone off, and the Legion gets a new restriction slapped on it, repeat ad nauseam. I kinda felt like he deserved a better portrayal of his leadership than he got, and based on the way this subplot is seemingly resolved at the end of the book, I don't think it was worth the eight issues spent on it. (Plus, does it make sense that the United Planets would be anti-Legion again in the wake of the Dominator War?)

Other than that, the Legion is fighting mindless aliens that are popping up across the galaxy. Brainiac sets up a minor mystery about them, but other than that, they're not very compelling foes. The minor enemies the Legion encounters, like Science Police officers, aren't very interesting either. And was it really necessary to have a group of space pirates turn up to threaten our teenage heroes with sexual coercion? Ick. His Legionnaires seem more bickering than Waid's, too. Not that Waid's didn't argue, but it usually seemed to come from principled beliefs; these guys are just mean to each other a little bit too much.

The whole premise of this series is that she's underage, you know.
from Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 5 #37 (art by Francis Manapul & Livesay)

I liked Francis Manapul's later work on The Flash, but here he doesn't do a ton for me. It's not bad, but the sort of anime-influenced style he uses is a little generic. I really liked Aaron Lopresti's fill-in, on the other hand-- his characters were very expressive, and I loved the playful stuff he did with Chameleon throughout the issue.

If I was a shapeshifter, I'd be making my fingers into miniature people when I was bored, too.
from Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 5 #41 (art by Aaron Lopresti & Matt Ryan)

I guess I'll see where this all goes, but for now it comes across as a sort of action-adventure epilogue tacked onto the Waid/Kitson run. Nothing wrong with it on its own, but I felt that Waid and Kitson were reinventing these characters and concepts, whereas Shooter is just using them somewhat generically in a widescreen story.

Review: Legion of Super-Heroes: 1,050 Years of the Future edited by Anton Kawasaki

Comic trade paperback, 223 pages
Published 2008 (contents: 1958-2002)
Acquired December 2012
Read May 2015

Legion of Super-Heroes: 1,050 Years of the Future
edited by Anton Kawasaki

Writers: Otto Binder, Jerry Siegel, Edmund Hamilton, Jim Shooter, Paul Levitz & Keith Giffen, Mark Waid & Tom McCraw, Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning

Artists: Al Plastino, John Forte, Curt Swan & George Klein, Mike Grell, James Sherman & Jack Abel, Keith Giffen & Larry Mahlstedt (with Kurt Schaffenberger, Howard Bender & Frank Giacoia, Dan Adkins, Dave Cockrum, and Joe Staton & Dick Giordano), Stuart Immonen & Ron Boyd & George Freeman, Olivier Coipel & Andy Lanning

This collection came out in 2008 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Legion of Super-Heroes. As a result, it contains stories spanning (most of) the full history of the Legion, from their first adventure to the first reboot. There are some weird omissions, though: nothing from the Five Years Later version (1989-94), nor anything but a cover from the "threeboot" (2004-09). That's a full fifth of Legion history not represented, and some key parts of it to boot. I've never read anything from either version, so just for my personal edification, it would have been nice to have.

Focusing on what is here, though, there's some good stuff. Of course, there's the first Legion story... which on reading it, I don't think I'd ever read the whole thing before, just synopses and excerpts. There's a lot of Silver Age goofiness here, of course, and though what I like about the Legion is nascent in that, I'm starting to realize that what I really like about the Legion doesn't really click until the Levitz/Giffen run, when the Legionnaires are finally written as real people, and not Silver Age assholes pranking each other. But I did enjoy seeing Saturn Girl, possibly my favorite Legionnaire, lay the smackdown on all the others in "The Stolen Super-Powers!"

It was also nice to see a number of historically important, oft-referenced stories, like the death and resurrection of Lightning Lad, or Superman's trip into the future of the future to meet the "Adult Legion" (Cosmic Boy's receding hairline is hilarious). The inclusion of "The Future Is Forever!" (which I already read in The Curse: The Deluxe Edition), on the other hand, is just dreadfully confusing out of context. To be fair, I'm not totally sure I got it in context; it seems to have been written for the hardcore Legion fan who's been there since Day One. A hard-hitting standalone like "The Day after Darkseid" seems like it would have been a better choice to represent the Levitz/Giffen era. On the other hand, to a parliamentarian like myself, getting to read the Legion charter is totally fascinating!

I also really enjoyed my peeks into the reboot Legion, who've I've previously encountered only in Legion of the Damned and the excellent Legion Lost. Here are three of their tales: their very first issue (which I really liked), a short story of the Legionnaires reflecting on Superman (it felt very Elliot S! Maggin to me), and a glimpse of the Legion's reunification after Legion Lost. These were all really solid comics that seem to make the Legion work for an audience of newbies and oldies alike; I look forward to reading more from this era someday.

So overall, a decent primer on Legion history, with only one "bad" inclusion. Swap out the overly-long "The Future Is Forever!" for a different Levitz/Giffen tale, a 5YL tale, and a threeboot tale, and this book would have been perfect.

Next Week: I begin a new project: one novel from every season of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine!

Review: Legion of Super-Heroes Archives, Volume 13 by Paul Levitz, Jack Abel, et al.

Every six months, I read another volume of the Legion of Super-Heroes, and now it's time to catch up:

Comic hardcover, 251 pages
Published 2012 (contents: 1977)
Acquired November 2013
Read September 2014

Legion of Super-Heroes Archives, Volume 13

Writers: James Shooter, Paul Levitz, Gerry Conway

Pencils: Mike Grell, James T. Sherman, Mike Nasser, Joe Staton, Arvell Jones, Ric Estrada
Inks: Bob Wiacek, Jack Abel, Bob Layton

This feels like a transitional set of Legion tales: these come from Paul Levitz's first run, and are definitely mostly weird throwaways in the 1970s style, rather than the complex, character-driven plots he would perfect with Keith Giffen later on. Mike Grell also eases out of the title during this volume, and no one artist really takes over for him, though Jack Abel does ink a lot. As a result, neither the writing nor the art are very consistent. Flipping back through the volume to write this review, nothing really stands out for me, though Saturn Girl and Dream Girl remain my favorite Legionnaires, and Wildfire is a nice addition to the team-- he breaks up the cliquishness of the longtime members.

Next Week: Back to the beginning of the Legion of the Super-Heroes, with a celebration of 1,050 Years of the Future!

Review: Legion of Super-Heroes Archives, Volume 12

Comic hardcover, 239 pages
Published 2003 (contents: 1975-77)
Acquired November 2012
Read March 2014

Legion of Super-Heroes Archives, Volume 12

Writer: Jim Shooter, Cary Bates, Paul Levitz

Pencils: Mike Grell, Ric Estrada, Mike Nasser
Inks: Mike Grell, Bill Draut, Joe Staton, Bob Wiacek, Bob Layton

I enjoyed this more than volume 11 of Legion of Super-Heroes; the plots felt less insubstantial, the characters more rounded. I mean, some of these are just really not good (one of the stories is resolved via a machine that lets our heroes win by wishing they win, which they then just hide away; another is one of those aggravating stories where the Legion deceives a (potential) member for no good reason; and then there's the infamous one that "explains" the lack of black characters in this 1950s future by revealing the world's blacks all live on one isolationist island), but when it hits, it hits!

I particularly enjoyed "The Hero Who Wouldn't Fight!" (Cosmic Boy is the only member of the Legion available on a day where the people of his planet are forbidden from using their magnetic powers), "The Private Lives of Bouncing Boy and Duo Damsel" (that Mike Grell art is probably illegal), "The Super Soldiers of the Slave-Maker" (the Legion tries to save a planet of slaves who don't want to be saved, requiring quick-thinking and heroism from Superboy and especially Phantom Girl), and "We Can't Escape the Trap in Time!" (which has some cool panel transitions). More of the stories in this volume seem to have involved real thought to write, which makes a nice change over volume 11. Nothing amazing perhaps (those days are yet to come), but good outer-space adventure.

Review: Legion of Super-Heroes Archives, Volume 11

Comic hardcover, 218 pages
Published 2001 (contents: 1974-75)
Acquired March 2013
Read August 2013

Legion of Super-Heroes Archives, Volume 11

Writers: Cary Bates, Mike Grell, E. Nelson Bridwell, Jim Shooter
Artists: Mike Grell, Dave Cockrum, Curt Swan/George Klein
Letterers: Ben Oda, Joe Letterese

I was introduced to (and fell in love with) the Legion of Super-Heroes via later collections like The Great Darkness Saga, The Curse, and Legion Lost. This caused me to want to dip further back and see the Legion's earlier adventures... well, hopefully some of the others are better, because this stuff is the Silver Age at its goofiest. Tons of characters, developed in piecemeal and arbitrary fashion, weird out-there plots. I know I love these characters from their later appearance, but they're largely interchangeable exposition-spouters here; it's like reading a Gardner Fox Justice League of America story. I want Saturn Girl to be awesome, damnit! Lots of potential, but Cary Bates and Jim Shooter aren't Paul Levitz, apparently. Mike Grell's art is fantastic, though, even if I feel a little skeevy looking at all these very well-developed teenage girls.