Legion of Super-Heroes #5

[lordultimus]

Comments

[scorntx]

There are some writers who tend to stick to certain grooves, just writing the same type of characters in the same type of story, over and over.
That's not necessarily a bad thing, but all the same, it's good for a writer to try and break out of habits and try for something different.

Except for when they're not good at it.
And that's Bendis with cosmic stuff.

The man loves lengthy monologues, and insufferably arrogant geniuses, which with a character like Brainiac 5 would (one would think) be the perfect combination.
Should be the perfect combination.
And yet here we are.

Brainiac 5, supposedly smarter than the entire planet Earth, talking exactly the same as Bendis writes damn near everyone else.


-"like those poor watchmen"-
*shakes head*


... also, that costume of Brainiac's looks like... well, it looks like he's just wearing his jammies.
The others caught him just before he had time to change, and he's just winging it.

If I was feeling fair, the whole "no-one has ever tried anything this clever!" bit might get a pass, but... nah. It's just the inverted version of when you get a Legion of Doom standing around doing the exact same thing.

(oooh, free soapbox!)

[zachbeacon]

-"like those poor watchmen"-
*shakes head*

To each their own. I think there are a lot of things you can take from Watchmen but I also think there are WRONG takes; believing that the violent bigoted hobo or the mass murdering billionaire are the hero, for example.I appreciate any joke at the expense of fans (and movie directors) who look at that world and say "isn't this kewl?".

[scorntx]

It's more the unsubtlety of the reference, rather than the reference itself.

[zachbeacon]

I mean his favorite running gag when he was at Marvel was showing people dressed as super people rant about unrelated storylines while being arrested. Subtle really isn't one of his strengths either.

[strejdaking]

Honestly, I think we are waaaay past that point.

We really should start making jokes and critiques of people who think the problem with Watchmen was suggesting something is wrong, ever, and that it was DARK, instead of affirming to people everything is fine and needs to stay the same forever.

[arilou_skiff]

I mean, i think the entire point of Watchmen was the ambiguity? That each of the characters had their heroism and their flaws, and everything (including how things "ended") is ultimately up to the reader.

There are definite points in Watchmen, but it is also left deliberately unresolved and without a finishing statement, (which is where all the sequel shit goes wrong immediately, be it the TV series or Doomsday Clock or whatever, in that it tries to tie off something that was left deliberately untied)

[zachbeacon]

Yeah, ultimately it's up to the readers to decide what it means but ...

(a) that's resulted in some wildly tonally inconsistent sequels, prequels, adaptions, and self proclaimed "spiritual successors"

(b) Alan Moore has said he's bothered by the people who see Rorschach as the hero and when you creep THAT guy out you must be really out there.

[strejdaking]

I disagree. Why do you think the whole point was the ambiguity? I think if it was, the story would be far worse and meaningless.

[icon_uk]

I've always felt the point of Watchmen was that it was a commentary of what was, not an indication of what everything should be.

[zachbeacon]

I actually kinda like this.

...but it seems like something you do in first issue, not a fifth.

I haven't read the actual comic yet since I mostly just wait for digital sales these days but did they really have four issues (plus a two issue prelude) without a mission statement beyond "hey look, nostalgia"?

[beyondthefringe]

I wanted to like this series.
But I feel like Bendis on Legion is a colossal misfire. It's unfocused, uninspiring, incoherent, messy, and after 5 or 6 issues, I don't feel like I even know what it's supposed to be about. I don't have a feel for the characters (who, for the most part, look and sound off-model), Jon Kent is wasted here, the entire Damian subplot was a waste of time...

Say what you want about previous versions, but at least the Legion had a cohesive and coherent identity. I still feel like the post Zero Hour reboot, which started from scratch, was one of the best runs.

We really need a writer who's good with science fiction and large casts.

[tcampbell1000]

Yeah.

The heck of it is, I feel like Bendis wants to give me the Legion I'd like to see, a candy-colored crowd scene that never ends. The best thing I can say about this version is that it's faithful to the optimism that at least in the far, far future, we can overcome the problems of the world today and at least start in on some new ones. The size and proud multiculturalism of the Legion are themselves statements about that optimism. And Bendis gets that, he really does.

But you can't just have a bunch of characters telling you what an awesome idea the Legion is and call that a series. It's especially fan-wanky to hear such talk from Brainy, whose whole deal is that he's much smarter than we are but who goggles at the concept of a superhero house of representatives like he's just discovered fire.

And THEN you realize Bendis is just using Brainy's "ascension" as a convenient shortcut to push past all the parts of the story he thinks are boring. "We're going to be fast friends, so let's just act as if we already are" is kinda cute. "I've foreseen how the Legion is going to develop, so let's just skip ahead and immediately launch it in its most developed form" is an eye-roll at best. And I've griped about this before, but by now I'm really, REALLY sick of being told how important my own era is with no qualifications or pushback from anybody. Nobody in the 24th century left any heroic legacy worth remembering? 27th? 22nd? Maybe Camelot, or the 4,000,000 BCE Green Lanterns? No? Hell, even Jason Aaron's prehistoric Avengers would be an improvement, and that is saying something.

(Shortcutting through Legion history would at least play better if Brainy here was the irritable misanthrope he was in his funniest incarnation. "Somehow you gorillas have come up with a halfway decent idea, but it needs improvement, OBVIOUSLY. Here's a fifty-eight-point plan to get you the Legion you need. DON'T GET CREATIVE WITH IT. I'll be in my lab when you have my flight ring and membership card ready.")

If I were reading this one scene in isolation, I might view it as a statement about the emptiness of nostalgia. At least that'd justify the jaw-dropping attempt, here and in Doomsday Clock, to recontextualize Watchmen as a story about people who tried to be Superman and just didn't get it. As if the reason "the Watchmen" (never a team name they actually used, but who cares) never really got along was because Alan Moore wasn't smart enough to fathom the interpersonal dynamics of the Justice League.

[agent8]

Thank you beyondthefringe, those are almost exactly my feelings as well.
Full disclosure: I do not like the character of Jon Kent, have never liked him and probably never will. But I can tolerate him in small doses. Having said that, on top of what beyondthefringe mentioned, I did not eagerly await a new LSH series just to have it turn into a Jon Kent wank-fest. I want Legion stories, not the adventures of Jon Kent in the 31st century stories.

It's looking more and more like I'll be dropping this book.

[icon_uk]

Yes, I'm usually a fan of the Legion (Grew up with Silver Age seguing into the first Levitz/Giffen run, but always loved the post Zero Hour in particular, which knew to resist the obvious urge and to start fairly small, then swell the ranks and be sure to include new characters), but there's just nothing about this title which makes me care about them,

[thanekos]

Two posts after an Eltingville Club one, an idiosyncratic creator's take on a classic superhero property, and the comments section therein.

Art.

[lordultimus]

I feel that's a little unfair? Like, people here are just voicing complaints about stories we don't like, not wishing death on the writer.

[beyondthefringe]

I'm pretty sure there's a difference between a civilized discussion about how and why this take on the Legion doesn't work for us, and um... the frothing insanity that was Eltingville.

Especially since I think most of us -like- Brian Michael Bendis, we just wish that he had a better handle on the Legion as a concept, and the characters.

[lordultimus]

I'm surprised more people aren't talking about the "Jon Kent, the one true Superman" thing.

[zachbeacon]

I'm okay with it but DC has burned us so many times with legacy heroes like Batgirl and the Flash that we all know even if they follow through with it, the status quo will reset to the 1960s anyway. I mean they can talk about Kyle being the Torchbearer or Jessica's destiny all they want but they keep going back to the worst GL.

(Also I'd think Clark would be proud. Aren't parents supposed to want better for their kids?)

[icon_uk]

Personally, because I just sort of eye-rolled at that. We know Bendis wasn't keen as Jon as a kid, so aged him up, to little obvious benefit (and some not good commentary on Clark and Lois as parents) that I've seen, and now he's "The one true Superman"?

[mastermahan]

It's dumb, but I just ignored it since it's obviously never going to go anywhere outside of Bendis's own books.

[beyondthefringe]

It ain't happenin' so why even worry about it.
I don't think anyone besides Bendis is seriously going to try and sell us on the one true Superman being anyone other than the original Clark Kent. (Kal-El, though I'll also allow Kal-L in a pinch as long as he's clearly the 1939 version.)

[silverhammerman]

I was actually just about to comment that I think that's a fun idiosyncrasy.

It fits with some of the stuff that Bendis seems to have been doing and it's refreshingly unusual as a departure from typical "Superman legacy" stuff, which tends to position Clark Kent as a perfect paternal figure. Positioning Clark Kent as instead an imperfect prototype lets Bendis get out from under some of the weight of that legacy and gives him more room to maneuver.

It's also pretty much a given that we'll never actually see Jon Kent live up to that status as the one, true Superman, but that is what it is. It would be interesting to see the idea stick around in some capacity, since it could continue to give Superman writers some room to play around and keep Jon Kent around, but I sort of doubt that'll happen much beyond Bendis' own work. We might see it referenced by other writers for the duration of his run, and then maybe 20 years later some continuity nerd writer will dig the idea up, but that's about all I'd expect. I do kind of wonder if that line might have been written with an eye to the now cancelled 5G stuff, which presumably could have seen Jon Kent actually taking over as legacy version of Superman. I hope that at some point someone involved spills the beans on that whole cancelled initiative.

[bruinsfan]

Aside from the obvious meta issue about the "one true" Superman, there's the in-setting wrinkle that it's apparently entirely possible Superman is immortal. We've had multiple versions of him living into the far future, at least 80,000 years in one of them (and becoming a god for all intents and purposes). There's not the same pressure to retire him and make way for future generations the way there is for future setting stories about purely human characters.

[teresa_rollins]

I am a long time LSH fan. I've read all the incarnations and liked them to various degrees.
This LSH has some great ideas and hopefully there will be less talking and more doing, eventually.
I do like that this version is more diverse and not a complete rehash of the original LSH.
However, I have one big concern.
Intertwining the LSH with Jon Kent is not wise.
When DC inevitably reboots the Superman Family, the LSH will be mortally wounded again.The patchwork job they did to eliminate Superboy from the LSH ranks was excruciating and fatal to the setting.