Paul Levitz

The first six issues are more or less saved by Sonny Liew's art and Lee Loughridge's colors. There are at least a couple of moments in the story where Khalid seems posed to jump into action, but page-jumps to an entirely different scene acting like the world wasn't resting on his shoulders two seconds ago - no thought bubble exposition, no nothing. Which is a shame, because a fresh start for the Helmet of Fate and charms of Khalid's family (including Egyptian parents) should add up to DC's show more equivalent of Ms. Marvel. And yet I can feel the corners cut in this story that otherwise has a lot of cool concepts going for it. A fun experiment, but one that I hope gets its act straight as it continues. show less

I haven't read much of the so-called "deboot" era of Legion of Super-Heroes, when the continuity was reset to be as it was in the 1980s because nothing screams "teenagers of the future" like "making it like it was thirty years ago." Whenever I do read something from this era, I am kinda baffled. Never bad... but always pointless.

This, I think, is supposed to recap the Legion's origin for new readers but also fill in some background for old readers. Unfortunately, none of it is interesting. show more The origin we've seen a million times by now, and Levitz tries to make it interesting by putting it in the background while putting the machinations of the United Planets' secret police and the Time Trapper in the foreground. It doesn't work. The origin is such a background element that one doesn't really get a sense of why anyone would care about the Legion; it has nice roles for Phantom Girl and (less so) Brainiac Five, but the rest of the characters feel like they are barely there.

What is put into the foreground is even less interesting; I never cared about any of the new(?) characters, and there's less a plot and more bits of a plot arbitrarily strung together with some foreshadowing. It's deadly dull stuff, and the story never takes off.

The idea of this kind of way of doing a Legion origin is okay—the Bierbaums, Giffen, and Al Gordon did a great one during the "Five Years Later" era by focusing on Marla Latham—but the execution makes it clear that these were "secrets" no one needed to know about.

The best part of the book is the damning-with-faint-praise back cover blurb someone at DC picked for the back cover: "...the perfect introduction to the 'Legion of Super-Heroes' in general. It feels like some characters are introduced with the understanding you already know who they are and while it's still quite entertaining, it's not the ground zero I'd expected early on." It explicitly says it doesn't give good background to the characters, but they slapped it on the cover anyway! Note that in the actual review, the first sentence is "I'm not 100% convinced 'Legion: Secret Origin' would be the perfect introduction to the 'Legion of Super-Heroes' in general." so it's a pretty unethical use of ellipses as well. But given the quality of the book, this is probably the best blurb they could find. It's not even so bad it's good, it's the kind of thing you'll forget about a few days after reading it. show less

This is the first proper volume of the "deboot" Legion I've read-- by "proper," I mean stories that don't cross the Legion over with present-day DC characters, like in Superman and the Legion or Legion of 3 Worlds. It's confusing. It's dull. It's terrible. Levitz throws tons of characters at you, but gives you no reason to care about any of them. I've been reading the Legion for years now, and I don't give a shit about these people. How on Earth is a new reader supposed to? The extent to show more which the deboot Legion deviates from the core premise of the Legion is staggeringly misguided. Like, it's supposed to br about teenagers in the future, yet in this version they're all adults. What's going on? Who thought this was a good idea? I don't care for Francis Portela's stiff and posed artwork, but not even an issue drawn by Walt Simonson can get me involved. Is the deboot Legion a lost cause from its very inception? show less

Access a version of the below that includes illustrations on my blog.

For some reason, I ordered The Curse before I'd even read The Great Darkness Saga, so it's a good thing I turned out to like The Great Darkness Saga so much. Even better, I liked The Curse even more than I liked the previous volume. I don't know if this is because Paul Levitz and Keith Giffen really hit their stride, or maybe I finally hit my stride, absorbing enough Legion backstory for everything to hang together at last. show more Though The Curse contains no standout epics like The Great Darkness Saga does, it is more consistently successful, offering up a series of excellent character-based twists and turns as the Legion chugs ever dutifully into the future.

Unfortunately, The Curse opens with a rare misfire, when Cosmic Boy learns that his family was attacked in a firebombing at the end of the previous volume. This in itself is fine, but after this one story, it never seems to have a substantial effect on Cos's characterization (inasmuch as he seems to have any). On the other hand, Giffen's artwork really shines here, with a number of great panels showcasing Cos's grief and anger and powers.

From there, things unfold pretty interestingly. As some of the Legion fights revenge-seeking Khunds, Element Lad and Shvaughn Erin investigate the strange behavior of one of the Legion's own, and Invisible Kid is stranded in a strange dimension where he encounters both his predecessor (driven mad!) and Wildfire. Wildfire was, of course, transformed into a being of antimatter energy by a strange accident, but in this dimension, he has physical form again. There are some great moments as Invisible Kid forces Wildfire to come back with him. And also Chamelon Boy goes on a quest to his homeworld to regain his shapeshifting powers, finally reconciling with his estranged father. Phew! Life in the Legion is never boring, especially as Levitz and Giffen masterfully run all these plots alongside one another, making sure to always be starting and ending them at the same time, to continuously pull you through the book. Other highlights include the story where Weber's World (the United Planets' bureaucratic headquarters) is taken over, and Brainiac must work with his old crush Supergirl to stop it from colliding with another planet.

Indications of my emotional attachment to these characters began to appear with the subplot about Wildfire's relationship with Dawnstar. Without a physical form, Wildfire can never touch the woman he loves-- and her people must go into space when they turn eighteen to discover their husbands. There's a great bit where he's so upset over this, he purposefully explodes his containment suit. Ouch! Another great subplot is the discovery that one of the Legion was replaced by an impostor... especially when it's clear that the replacement happened before the impostor entered into a relationship with another Legionnaire. Ouch again!

One of my complaints about the previous volume was the group of characters I never figured out who they were, but that was alleviated in part by a recurring subplot about Star Boy, lover of Legion leader Dream Girl. That Star Boy is not front-and-center turns out to be an integral part of this characterization; he feels neglected by Dream Girl, but is too quiet to say anything about it. There's a great issue where, during a Legion election, he and Wildfire sit on the roof of Legion HQ under the stars watching the results come in, and Star Boy recounts his exceedingly unlucky past. It's nicely done, giving some depth, but also some awesomeness, to a Legionnaire who needs it.

I didn't much care for the four-part story about the Omen and the Prophet or whatever it was-- it never really made a lot of sense, and Giffen's art was unusually confusing when he got too creative with his layouts-- but even this had some nice subplots, such as when Colossal Boy takes his new wife home to meet his mother in a very cute story.

Finally, there's a tense multipart story about a traitor within the Science Police itself, giving some focus to these perennial side characters, and showing that events don't have to be enormously cosmic to be dangerous to our heroes. The fact that I love Shvaughn Erin probably helps keep me interested! The book wraps up with a short coda about a new birth in the Legion and an attempt to resurrect the sorcerer Mordru. This was okay, but the final two pages-- where we learn what the curse Darkseid placed on the Legion at the end of The Great Darkness Saga actually was-- made it all worth it.

On the whole, this was an excellent book of comics, and great value. I'd happily pick up more of these Legion of Super-Heroes deluxe editions if they were released. Are you listening, DC? show less