Week of 20 March 2013

Two Legion appearances this week.

Legion of Super-Heroes 18 (2013/05)

Wow, someone agreed that Keith Giffen's art is ugly, so they had Scott Kolins and Tom Derenick do a Keith Giffen impersonation. They tried their best to make everyone and everything look ugly, but couldn't quite pull it off. There are an awful lot of gritted teeth and scowls. Ah, well, at least they varied the grid of panels quite a bit.

All tech based on quarks (which seems to be just about everything modern) has stopped working, all across the United Planets. Brainy, of course, can get things working with pre-quark technology.

This is all the fault of the newly-upgraded Tharok, who seems to be everywhere. The result is a world in which technology fails, economies collapse, Legionnaires quarrel amongst themselves and abandon their teammates, and they call one another by first names rather than codenames. You can just see them ditching their costumes and going to utilitarian grey jackets with lots of pockets as the unvierse collapses and the Legion, wracked by tragedy, becomes irrelevant.

Oh, wait, been-there-done-that.

Seriously, what does Keith Giffen contribute to these collaborations? Deciding which Legionnaires to casually kill off? Coming up with new ways to justify technological and economic collapse? Creating smirking characters and angry mobs who suddenly turn against the Legion? Gritting his teeth and scowling a lot?

I still have faith in Paul Levitz. I'm hoping that the collaboration went this way: Giffen thought of some really terrible things to do the Legion, then Levitz figured out how to make it a coherent story (and tell it in less than 25 issues) that comes to a satisfactory ending.

Action Comics 18 (2013/05)

Okay, I have admitted that I'm too stupid to understand what Grant Morrison does. So take this with a grain of salt.

Superman's fighting with Mxyzptlk's son(?) through all of space and time (?). He get the upper hand by having everyone in the universe (?) say their names backwards, which somehow turns the bad guy into a big stone statue (?), which Superman then throws into the moon.

The Legionnaires, having traveled through time in order to save Superman, stand around in a hospital with the dying Myxyzptlk (?) until a guy arrives who is "a damaged edge" of the bad guy (?). They attempt to get him into their time bubble in order to...do something (?)...but right about then they all join the crowd saying their names backwards (except Imra's last name is back to Ardeen instead of Ranzz, so maybe she forgot she and Garth were married, or maybe they got divorced, or who know what) and that takes care of everything -- without the Legionnaires having to lift a finger -- so why were they part of this story to begin with?

There's also a group of weird guys who apparently have (or will have) their own comic, who decided to come aboard for the publicity, because they certainly don'thave anything to do with the story either.

At the end, presumably, Universo no longer takes over the United Planets in the 31st cenury...or maybe this whole alternate Legion ceases to exist...because we never get to see any resolution of that whole thing, not even an attempt to explain why this Legion looks so different from the one in Legion of Super-Heroes (Jeckie's a snake named Sensor, Shady's called Umbra, Chameleon Boy grows up to be just Chameleon, Gim is alive and called Colossal Boy rather than Leviathan, Chuck is Bouncing Boy...in general it's a has of classic Legion and the Legion of Earth-247.)

One would almost think that this whole story was penned by someone who's so convinced he's a Great Talent that he sees no reason to respect the creations of others, follow any kind of continuity, tell a coherent story, or make the slightest bit of sense.

Nah, that couldn't be. Everyone assures me that Emperor Morrison is wearing a magnificently beautiful suit of clothes.