Review: Fictions of a Feminist Future edited by Kate Macdonald

Hardcover, 305 pages
Published 2013 (contents: 1908-11)

Borrowed from the library

Read January 2015

Political Future Fiction: Speculative and Counter-Factual Politics in Edwardian Fiction, Volume 2: Fictions of a Feminist Future
edited by Kate Macdonald

This books contains two relatively forgotten pieces of Edwardian science fiction: Allan Reeth's Legions of the Dawn (1908) and Una L. Silberrad's The Affairs of John Bolsover (1911). They're not quite "Fictions of a Feminist Future" in a conventional sense: these aren't depictions of futures where women are equal to men. Rather, they explore the nuances of gender in a science fiction context.

Legions of the Dawn is about two men who end up following some hot chicks to their colony in Africa, only to find it is a women-ruled society, where the men are stay-at-home husbands who have been what I guess you might call "feminized." They struggle to adapt themselves to this new world, and throughout the novel we learn something interesting ideas about gender and some repellent ones about race. (Black men do not come away very well.) It's not a story of total reversal: a male alleges that a women tried to rape him (he wants to exploit the accusation for his own benefit), only to learn that part of what makes women superior to men in this society is the knowledge that men commit sexual violence and not women. Mostly it's not very good, but it is a weird snapshot of both Edwardian gender roles and what was considered subversive at the time, too.

The Affairs of John Bolsover is impossible to discuss without spoiling it, so sorry: the "John Bolsover" of the title is in fact "Jean Bolsover," a failed governess who goes into politics under the guise of a man for complicated reasons, and ends up using her keen attention to social detail to be a force for world peace. Like Legions it's not exactly good (lots of the political cases Bolsover solves are dead dull) but what a wacky, fascinating premise.

Faster than a DC Bullet: Project Gotham, Part XXV: Batman: Strange Apparitions

Quick note: read my review of Doctor Who: You Are the Doctor and other stories at Unreality SF. Today!

Comic trade paperback, 175 pages
Published 1999 (contents: 1977-78)
Borrowed from the library
Read November 2015

Batman: Strange Apparitions

Writers: Steve Englehart, Len Wein
Pencillers: Marshall Rogers, Walt Simonson
Inkers: Terry Austin, Al Milgrom, Dick Giordano
Original Colorists: Marshall Rogers, Jerry Serpe
Letterers: Ben Oda, Milton Snapinn, John Workman

Year Eight, November
All of the Batman stories I've read so far (in this project) have been "flashback" tales: they haven't been set in what was the current continuity at their time of publication, but rather have been set in some earlier period. Strange Apparitions marks a first for me, then, in that this is the first Batman story I've read that took place in the "present" when it was published. This is no flashback to the early days of Batman, but simply the next adventure of Batman.

Much has changed of late. The Caped Crusader is fundamentally solo again, as Dick Grayson is off attending Hudson University. He's grown up so fast! In addition, Bruce Wayne has moved from Stately Wayne Manor to the actual city of Gotham; he now resides in a penthouse on the top floor of the new Wayne Foundation tower, beneath which there is, of course, a cave, where he's relocated all his stuff. An secret elevator directly connects his penthouse to the cave. I like this change: if you imagine Gotham as a New York, it strains credulity to anyone who's ever driven anywhere near New York that Batman could effectively police the city from the location where his manor ought to be. I was surprised, though, to learn that the Wayne Foundation was not in the heart of the city, but rather past "the impressive rows of ancient brownstones" in "Gotham's humbler districts, where the Wayne Foundation towers above the lower, leaner skyline."

Strange Apparitions collects the full run of the creative team of Steve Englehart, Marshall Rogers, and Terry Austin on Detective Comics, which despite its significance, was a mere six issues long. It also collects, however, two issues Steve Englehart wrote but someone else drew, and two issues that Marshall Rogers drew, but someone else wrote. I was surprised to read in Englehart's introduction to the collection that while he and Walt Simonson worked from the "Marvel style" (the writer plots, then the artists draw, then the writer does dialogue) and he and Marshall Rogers worked "DC style" (the writer does a full script, the artists draw), and that Englehart actually wrote all six issues without even knowing who would draw them, because Steve Englehart and Marshall Rogers mesh perfectly. Englehart's writing and Rogers's illustrations support each other perfectly to create a moody, atmospheric, but ultimately fun story, whereas the first two issues drawn by the great Walt Simonson are just kinda there (though necessary for Englehart's eight-issue plot).

Strange Apparitions begins with a so-so story about a new Batman villain, one Doctor Phosphorous, a medical doctor who invests his money in a nuclear plant where disaster strikes: "Five million slivers of red-hot sand were driven through my body! But not--hee hee-- ordinary sand! No! Radioactive sand--blasted upward one level on the chemical scale!" I'm sure this is all very scientific. Doctor Phosphorous doesn't appear again, but the two issues do introduce a couple of important characters: Rupert Thorne, chairman of the City Council, and Silver St. Cloud, a socialite with whom Bruce Wayne quickly becomes sexually involved.

Scott McCloud would be proud of this use of the gutter.
Also, get your mind out of it.
from Detective Comics vol. 1 #472 (script by Steve Englehart, art by Marshall Rogers & Terry Austin)

Englehart's story is a tour through a sequence of Batman rogues in a way that I really enjoyed, bringing in one for an issue or two at a time, and then moving on to another one, without feeling contrived or pandering. With the wounds he sustained at the hand of Phosphorous not healing, Bruce Wayne checks himself into a clinic for Gotham elites renowned for its discretion-- only to discover that the clinic manager is actually Hugo Strange in disguise: Batman's very first supervillain opponent, from Batman and the Monster Men. Batman shouts, "Professor Hugo Strange! I thought you were dead!" and indeed, when we last saw Strange in Batman: Prey, he was quite clearly dead, his body having been impaled on a metal pole for several days before it was found. But Strange apparently wasn't really dead, just in Europe. Even though The Monster Men and Prey were written much later, these stories are all of a piece, Strange's obsession with Batman here leading him to actually take over Bruce Wayne's life. (Amazingly, at one point he wears a Batman mask over a Bruce Wayne mask.) The work of Englehart and Rogers is perfectly simpatico here: it's a moody, splashy, nightmarish tale with some great twists and turns. Dick Grayson guest stars to help Bruce reclaim his life, but then leaves for an issue of Teen Titans when Wonder Girl calls.

Everything continues from there. Having deduced Batman's identity, Strange wants to sell it to the highest bidder, but he decides Boss Thorne isn't worthy of it, prompting Thorne to have him killed. (No doubt he'll get better again.) While Strange's ghost heckles Thorne, the Penguin (having lost his bid) decides to carry out a scheme anyway. Batman puts him in jail, where his escape gadget is stolen by Deadshot, who escapes himself to get revenge on Batman for putting him away. Meanwhile, Bruce's romance with Silver has been turning into one of real emotion, and Silver works out that Bruce is Batman-- and when his fight with Deadshot ends up in her place of work (Silver runs a convention center), Batman realizes she knows! Then the Joker turns up with a wacky but deadly plan, and so on. Meanwhile meanwhile, Boss Thorne is trying to eliminate the Batman while being haunted.

Sound effects never looked so good.
from Detective Comics vol. 1 #473 (script by Steve Englehart, art by Marshall Rogers & Terry Austin)

Englehart and Rogers have a handle on each and every one of these villains, not to mention Batman himself, who is clearly a man as much as he is an unstoppable force of the night. The story is moody without being grim in a way that hits the exact tone I want out of a Batman tale: darkly fun.

The book wraps up with a two-issue Clayface story written by Len Wein (in a surprising display of fan pedantry, it is actually titled "The Coming of... Clayface III!", making a fan's numerical bookkeeping part of the actual narrative), that follows on from the events of Englehart's run. I've read and liked other stuff by Wein, but it pales in comparisons to Englehart's work; suddenly Batman is melodramatically shouting his feelings at everyone: "Blast it--it's all going sour!! [...] Alfred, things couldn't be more wrong! I let two punks I tangled with tonight get to me--and that's a luxury I cannot afford!" Still, it comes to a suitably tragic conclusion, and I also noted that the trick Prey pulled with Strange's manikin lover was actually first used here with Clayface III.

On the whole, this is one of the best stories I've read so far on this project, and probably one of the best Batman books I've read full stop. Englehart and Rogers perfectly balance ongoing plots with standalone stories, and character insight with fun adventures in darkness.

Next Week: Out with the old Robin, in with the new Robin, in Second Chances!

Review: Doctor Who: Something Borrowed by Richelle Mead

Mass market paperback, 69 pages
Published 2014 (originally 2013)
Acquired December 2014
Read June 2015

Doctor Who: The Sixth Doctor: Something Borrowed
by Richelle Mead

Probably the best feature of this installment of 12 Doctors, 12 Stories is that it's told in the first person, from the perspective of Peri. This is a pretty rare occurrence in tie-in fiction, and its deployment here is, I suspect, one of the benefits of hiring authors that aren't the usual tie-in suspects to pen this series. Mead captures Peri's voice well, and the story also features a return by 1980s villain the Rani, which evokes the right level of nostalgia for this project. Middle-of-the-road, but solid.

Next Week: The seventh Doctor and Ace face a universe without the Daleks in The Ripple Effect!

Review: Of Love and Other Monsters by Vandana Singh

Trade paperback, 76 pages
Published 2010 (originally 2007)

Acquired December 2015
Read May 2016

Conversation Pieces, Volume 18: Of Love and Other Monsters
by Vandana Singh

This is a slim little volume, less than a hundred pages, written from the perspective of a boy named Arun who wakes up amnesiac after a fire. He has the ability to weave the minds of those around him into a "meta-mind," a group acting as one-- but he can be caught and trapped by minds more powerful than his, and he's also fascinated by the minds he thinks of as solitons, which don't lose their coherence in the presence of a meta-mind. It's a nice little novella: I read my first work by Vandana Singh, The Woman Who Thought She Was a Planet and Other Stories, last year, and like the stories in that book, Of Love and Other Monsters has a compelling otherworldly feel, and a strong sense of voice and character. We follow Arun through a number of intimate relationships, some sexual, some romantic, some both, some neither, as well as a series of geographical relocations, from India to the United States, and beyond.

I enjoyed it, but I think I would have like it more if the "meta-mind" idea had actually mattered: we only see Arun do this once, and exactly what it means in practical terms is nebulous, and its role in the story could have been filled by more typical science fiction-style telepathy. The meta-mind seems like a great idea, so I was disappointed that Singh didn't really explore it. Still, a distinctive story by a unique voice, which is what Aqueduct Press's "Conversation Series" volumes exist to promote.

H. G. Wells, Lego Cities, and Civilization (the game, not the concept): Little Wars

I've been reading H. G. Wells's autobiography over the past week or so (at 600+ pages, it's not a quick read), and in it, he briefly mentions his younger interest in war games. Wells really liked games, I think; in his semiautobiographical novel The New Machiavelli (1910), his narrator discusses building towns of bricks:

I still remember with infinite gratitude the great-uncle to whom I owe my bricks. He must have been one of those rare adults who have not forgotten the chagrins and dreams of childhood. He was a prosperous west of England builder; including my father he had three nephews, and for each of them he caused a box of bricks to be made by an out-of-work carpenter, [...] made out of oak and shaped and smoothed, bricks about five inches by two and a half by one, and half-bricks and quarter-bricks to correspond. There were hundreds of them, many hundreds. I could build six towers as high as myself with them, and there seemed quite enough for every engineering project I could undertake. I could build whole towns with streets and houses and churches and citadels; I could bridge every gap in the oilcloth and make causeways over crumpled spaces (which I feigned to be morasses), and on a keel of whole bricks it was possible to construct ships to push over the high seas to the remotest port in the room. And a disciplined population, that rose at last by sedulous begging on birthdays and all convenient occasions to well over two hundred, of lead sailors and soldiers, horse, foot and artillery, inhabited this world. 

Much of The New Machiavelli is drawn from Wells's actual life (like many of his literary novels, it's about a man who has good reasons for having an affair), but it appears this detail is drawn from his children's lives. In 1911, Wells published a book called Floor Games, about building worlds on the floor out of soldiers, bricks, boards, and railway pieces, based on games he played with his sons. Wells and his kids were given the bricks by a friend, who got them from their parents, who got them from their uncle. The "game" in question is pretty simple: it's basically 'build cities with the bricks.'

Like this guy does.
from Andrew on Flickr

Reading The New Machiavelli and Floor Games, I was struck by how much Wells would have loved having access to Lego. He could have had many more than hundreds of bricks, and built way more than six towers if my childhood basement was any indication. "Sedulous begging" is probably how I acquired many of my Lego, after all, and he could have had a much more diverse population than sailors and soldiers. Indeed, the lack of diversity in figurines is something Wells complains about in Floor Games:

But we want civilians very badly. [...] I wish, indeed, that we could buy boxes of tradesmen: a blue butcher, a white baker with a loaf of standard bread, a merchant or so; boxes of servants, boxes of street traffic, smart sets, and so forth. We could do with a judge and lawyers, or a box of vestrymen. [...] With such boxes of civilians we could have much more fun than with the running, marching, swashbuckling soldiery that pervades us. They drive us to reviews; and it is only emperors, kings, and very silly small boys who can take an undying interest in uniforms and reviews. 

I actually don't think there are any military Lego at all, right? I guess only in an historical or sci-fi/fantasy context: there are knights and Jedi knights and so on. But one of our most prized Lego minifigures when we were children was a pizza baker.

"Paizza, want some paizza?"

It's funny that Wells denigrates those who love uniforms, because two years after Floor Games came Little Wars: A Game for Boys, from Twelve Years of Age to One Hundred and Fifty and for That More Intelligent Sort of Girls Who Like Boys' Games and Books. It's essentially a set of rules for playing with toy soldiers and toy artillery; I imagine one can draw a straight line from it to modern war games, and I know there's a line to be drawn from war games to role-playing games, so I guess we can blame Wells for Dungeons & Dragons and Warhammer 40K.

If Wells was as good a social prophet as he thought he was, he would have seen this coming. And prevented it.

In Little Wars, he praises himself for making war into a more satisfying experience:

Here is a homeopathic remedy for the imaginative strategist. Here is the premeditation, the thrill, the strain of accumulating victory or disaster-- and no smashed nor sanguinary bodies, no shattered fine buildings nor devastated country sides, no petty cruelties, none of that awful universal boredom and embitterment, that tiresome delay or stoppage or embarrassment of every gracious, bold, sweet, and charming thing, that we who are old enough to remember a real modern war know to be the reality of belligerence.

He suggests that monarchs and patriots should all go play Little Wars and let the rest of the world get on in peace. I guess this is the 1910s equivalent to suggesting videogames as a safe release for one's violence; if Napoleon could have just played Civilization, he wouldn't have needed to actually conquer Europe.

A game that could only be improved by being set in space.

I think he ends with a bit of a weird statement: "You only have to play at Little Wars three or four times to realise just what a blundering thing Great War must be." This is weirdly optimistic, both in general and for Wells. Much of Wells's fiction is about how forms of detachment (emotional, like being an intellect vast and cool and unsympathetic, or physical, like riding inside a tank or on an air-ship) make you more likely to commit horrific acts of violence because you don't see or feel the consequences of your actions. In Wells's usual schema, I would think war games would make you more violent, not less, because it would train you to not see the violence of war.

Wells's optimism, it turns out, was dashed by the coming of actual war. This is surprising to me, because usually Wells was the one telling everyone else that the coming European war was not going to be as awesome as they thought; it's all the other guys who thought war was awesome and/or never going to happen again, and thus got disappointed by World War I. In Experiment in Autobiography, when discussing the war fantasies of his 13-year-old self, he says they persisted a date range we can pretty easily see the inspiration behind: "I like to think I grew up out of that stage somewhen between 1916 and 1920 and began to think about war as a responsible adult should." One should note that in 1916, he was 48 years old! And also note that, writing in 1933 or so, he cites Winston Churchill among those who have never grown beyond the Little Wars phase of their mental development.

Far from being the cure, it seems, Little Wars is the disease. Which is what I normally would have expected Wells to say all along.

N.B. One should not confuse Little Wars with Small Wars. Small Wars: Their Principles and Practice (1896) by C. E. Callwell is a guide on how to prevent your blameless colonizing army from being taken down by a nasty native insurgency. Every British home should have a copy of both, of course.

Review: Witches, Midwives & Nurses: A History of Women Healers by Barbara Ehrenreich & Deirdre English

Trade paperback, 108 pages
Published 2010 (originally 1973)

Borrowed from the library

Read January 2015

Witches, Midwives & Nurses: A History of Women Healers

by Barbara Ehrenreich & Deirdre English

The co-writers trace the history of the roles of woman from the distant past to the present. There are times they come across as a little too polemical, but overall it's an interesting and engaging history: as a scholar of the nineteenth century, I found the discussion of the emergence of nursing the most interesting part.

Reading Roundup Wrapup: May 2016

Pick of the month: The Heart of Thomas by Moto Hagio. Every time I read one of Hagio's shōjo manga stories, I love it, and this one was no exception. Unlike most of her other stories, it's not sf/fantasy, just a tale of love, alternately cruel and caring, in an early twentieth-century German boarding school.

All books read:
1. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine #7: Warchild by Esther Friesner
2. Conversation Pieces, Volume 18: Of Love and Other Monsters by Vandana Singh
3. The Heart of Thomas by Moto Hagio
4. Birds of Prey, Volume 2 by Chuck Dixon
5. Legion of Super-Heroes, Volume 1: Hostile World by Paul Levitz with Walter Simonson
6. Legion of Super-Heroes: Teenage Revolution by Mark Waid
7. The Transformers Classics, Vol. 4 by Bob Budiansky with Ralph Macchio
8. Legion of Super-Heroes: Death of a Dream by Mark Waid with Stuart Moore
9. Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes: Strange Visitor From Another Century by Mark Waid
10. Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes: Adult Education by Mark Waid with Tony Bedard and Stuart Moore
11. Prize Fight: The Race and Rivalry to be the First in Science by Morton A. Meyers
12. Birds of Prey, Volume 2: Your Kiss Might Kill by Duane Swierczynski
13. Star Trek: Alien Spotlight, Volume 2 by Arne Schmidt & Andy Schmidt, Keith R.A. DeCandido, Scott Tipton & David Tipton, Ian Edginton, and Stuart Moore
14. Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes: Dominator War by Mark Waid with Tony Bedard
15. The Transformers: Regeneration One, volume I by Simon Furman

All books acquired:
1. Star Trek: The Next Generation: Takedown by John Jackson Miller
2. Doctor Who: The Witch Hunters by Steve Lyons
3. Doctor Who: Dead of Winter by James Goss
4. Sensation Comics featuring Wonder Woman, Volume 1 by Gail Simone, Amanda Deibert, Ivan Cohen, Jason Bischoff, Sean E. Williams, Ollie Masters, Gilbert Hernandez, Neil Kleid, Rob Williams, Corinna Bechko, and Gabriel Hardman
5. The Scientific Secrets of Doctor Who by Simon Guerrier and Dr. Marek Kukula

Books remaining on "To be read" list: 631 (up 1)
Books remaining on "To review" list: 96 (down 3)

Review: Doctor Who: Tip of the Tongue by Patrick Ness

Mass market paperback, 61 pages
Published 2014 (originally 2013)
Acquired December 2014
Read May 2015

Doctor Who: The Fifth Doctor: Tip of the Tongue
by Patrick Ness

Since I read this book, Patrick Ness was announced as the executive producer of the newest television Doctor Who spin-off, Class, which is going to be a YA show with supernatural goings-on. Based on the quality of this book, Class should be very good. Tip of the Tongue is told from the perspective of Jonny, a teenager in Temperance, Maine of 1945, where the newest fad is wearing Truth Tellers, creatures that speak the cruelest truth in social situations that normally no one dares say, like that everyone knows your wife is cheating on you, or that your butt does look big, or that you're gay. The fifth Doctor and Nyssa are minor, but well-depicted parts of this tale of the harsh realities of being a teenager. I really enjoyed it-- probably my favorite of this series thus far-- and it's this book more than anything else that has me looking forward to Class.

Next Week: The sixth Doctor and Peri attend a wedding in Something Borrowed!

Review: Prize Fight: The Race and the Rivalry to be the First in Science by Morton A. Meyers

I'm falling behind on my audio drama reviews again, as always, but I valiantly struggle to keep up. See what I thought of Series Three of the Survivors revival, over at USF.

Trade paperback, 262 pages
Published 2013 (originally 2012)

Acquired December 2013
Read May 2016

Prize Fight: The Race and the Rivalry to be the First in Science
by Morton A. Meyers

This is a book of two parts; I'll start with the second one, which comprises the last two-thirds or so of the book. This covers two instances of fights over credit in the sciences, specifically the medical sciences. These are over streptomycin (an antibiotic, and the first effective treatment for tuberculosis) and MRI. In the former case, a graduate student felt he was not given sufficient credit for the work he did; in the latter, one of two researchers working in the same area felt that the other didn't cite him for what was essentially his breakthrough. In both cases, Meyers provides in-depth research (including archival sources and personal interviews), and creates interesting and compelling narratives. This is where the book really came to life-- though the title is a bit of a misnomer, as it's not about being "first," but about getting credit at all.

The first part of the book reads like an attempt to find some kind of general applicability in these two specific anecdotes; Meyers wants you to see how science's rationality and objectivity is affected by personality and bias. It's a little too simplistic to really work, and comes across mostly as a series of anecdotes than a compelling synthesis. I take issue with some of his engagement with non-scientific disciplines; most museum theorists would disagree with his assertion that art museums don't create a narrative of progress, and I was underwhelmed by his reading of Sinclair Lewis's Arrowsmith. Plus he says Darwin and Wallace independently coined the phrase "survival of the fittest," when in fact it was Herbert Spencer's coinage! I'd rather have seen a third "prize fight" story than this awkward attempt to generalize the concepts of the book.

DC's R.E.B.E.L.S.: An Interesting, But Flawed Experiment

By the time it ended, L.E.G.I.O.N. had run for 70 issues, plus assorted annuals. It featured a large and complex array of characters, and a number of ongoing plots and subplots. Zero Hour provided an opportunity: not to cancel the series outright, but to relaunch it in a way that would make it less impenetrable to newcomers. If nothing else, it would have single-digit issue numbers again, not frightening ones in the 60s and beyond. In these days of DC Rebirth and All-New, All-Different Marvel, a comics publisher probably wouldn't think twice about just starting the book over at #1 with no other changes, but writer Tom "Tennessee" Peyer goes the extra mile.

L.E.G.I.O.N. had been about a corps of space police for hire led by Vril Dox, sometimes called Brainiac 2, scion of the Superman foe, ancestor of Legion of Super-Heroes member Brainiac 5. The last few issues of L.E.G.I.O.N. saw Vril Dox slowly supplanted by his superintelligent infant son, Lyrl Dox; this culminated in Lyrl taking over the organization outright in L.E.G.I.O.N. '94 #70 and Vril Dox going on the run with the "core" team of L.E.G.I.O.N. R.E.B.E.L.S. (1994-96) is the sequel series to L.E.G.I.O.N., picking up right where its predecessor left off, following the attempts of Vril Dox and company to seize control back from Lyrl. (R.E.B.E.L.S. stands for "Revolutionary Elite Brigade to Eradicate L.E.G.I.O.N. Supremacy.")

Gotta get some of that sweet Kyle Rayner crossover action in your second issue to get people to read. (Yes, #1 is the second issue.)
R.E.B.E.L.S. '94 #1 (Nov. 1994, cover by Dave Johnson)

The editorial staff periodically explains the rationale for the name change in the letter column, and it makes sense: if the series name remained L.E.G.I.O.N., you would never buy Lyrl's takeover as anything more than temporary, a short-term shift in the status quo to be overturned after a story arc. But by renaming the book after the goal of resisting L.E.G.I.O.N., it becomes clear that this could go on for a long time. You take the takeover seriously, at least in theory.

But it didn't really work for me. With the series named after the concept of resisting L.E.G.I.O.N., you know exactly when our heroes will finally succeed: the last issue. Now, as someone coming to this series twenty years later, I do know exactly how long the series is (18 issues, including #0), but even without that context, I think there would be a real feeling of wheel-spinning throughout. It never feels like Vril Dox and company get anywhere or accomplish anything; they try something to resist L.E.G.I.O.N., and it fails. Then they try something else, and it fails. And so on, until it succeeds because this time it's the final issue. It doesn't help that the book doesn't draw on the continuity established by L.E.G.I.O.N. enough, sending Vril Dox to planets and people that are supposedly important but somehow never came up in the previous seventy issues of adventures.

For some reason, each issue of R.E.B.E.L.S. had a one- or two-word caption above the title. This one is probably the weirdest of them.
R.E.B.E.L.S. '95 #6 (Apr. 1995, cover by Dave Johnson)

At its best, under Alan Grant and Barry Kitson, L.E.G.I.O.N. balanced a large, diverse ensemble cast with a number of ongoing plots. R.E.B.E.L.S., with everything subordinate to the masterplot of Dox vs. Dox, never recreates that alchemy. Strata, Stealth, Phase, Telepath, and many of the other L.E.G.I.O.N. characters are present, but mostly they just stand there and complain about Dox's plans. Grant and Kitson were good about giving all the characters meaningful contributions to the story, even if Dox does have a tendency to dominate the proceedings, but here the big cast is a chorus of one-dimensional whiners. "Dox, you can't do x! Oh, you did anyway? How terrible yet I shall do nothing to stop you." Most of the series is drawn by Derec Aucoin and Mark Propst, who are serviceable and not prone to the excesses of 1990s comics, but aren't as good at facial expressions or character as Barry Kitson. (But then, few are.)

Many of the threads of the tapestry of L.E.G.I.O.N., like Garryn Bek, his wife Marij'n, and her love for Captain Comet, are completely dropped. Those that R.E.B.E.L.S. introduces on its own, such as the romance between Dox and Stealth, are just strange. (Stealth raped Dox and left him for dead in L.E.G.I.O.N., following a biological imperative of her unusual species. That either could ever love the other seems grossly out of character, and Peyer does nothing to convince the reader of it here.) Without the character dynamics to motivate it, R.E.B.E.L.S. is a barrage of relentless, but uninvolving action.

The slight 3-D shading elements of some of the series' later covers make it look like a cheap videogame.
R.E.B.E.L.S. '96 #16 (Feb. 1996, cover by Derek Aucoin and John Dell)

That's not to say it's without its high points, my favorite probably being when Captain Comet reveals that he solved the problem of being marooned on a pre-industrial planet by elevating them from the Stone Age to the Space Age in six months. Which is made even better by the way Lyrl Dox dismisses his pompousness. And the ending, with Comet taking command of a reincorporated L.E.G.I.O.N. while Vril Dox goes into retirement to garden and raise his son right, is surprisingly sweet. (Though not really followed up on as far as I know; in its Infinite Crisis-era appearances, L.E.G.I.O.N. is led by Dox once again, and Captain Comet has gone freelance by the time of 52 and Mystery in Space.)

I applaud Peyer and company for doing something different... but unfortunately, it didn't really work. I do look forward to seeing what Tony Bedard does with these characters when R.E.B.E.L.S. is brought back in the 2000s, though; he's usually good with character and humor, which is what L.E.G.I.O.N./R.E.B.E.L.S. requires, and his experience (co-)writing Legion of Super-Heroes (during the "threeboot" era) will probably transfer well.