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Legion of Super-Heroes #5 - One Day, A Thousand Years From Now...

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Legendary artist Walt Simonson joins the pages of Legion in order to inject some old-school flavour to the book. However, this book suffers from the same problems many other Legion books face, and doesn't look to be fixing them.

The Good

While I have issues with the implementation of the storyline, the characters all seem very genuine in contrast with the amount of space they're given; they're clearly defined with personalities, instead of just having different costumes and a "______ Lad/Lass" nickname. When you have that many characters, you have to write and I'll have to give it to the writer, he did that well.

The Bad

I had issues with this book because Walt Simonson's art, while legendary, didn't seem to fit the "reboot" atmosphere that DC really needs to be hitting with a new series of the Legion. I still maintain that bringing the team back to the "old" iteration was a terrible move, as it fails to actually evoke any interest from me.

The cover advertises Ultra Boy "taken to his limit", but the actual story involves him throwing self-dissolving space-oranges into a wall. Really fast. He is then jumped by Phantom Girl and told to take a shower before sex. Taken to his limit indeed.

Continuing this, the issue seemed to be a never-ending stream of the Legionnaires getting busy with each other. There was at least three 2-3 page storylines about dating, flirting or full-on casual sex. While team mates shouldn't be expected to be celibate, but shouldn't the Legion be doing something? Don't they have cities to save? Planets to liberate? Taxes to pay?

The Verdict

I just didn't get the point to the issue, as the multitude of small stories just reiterated my main problem with Legion books: a large portion of the book's pages are taken up with introductions and reminding the readers who the people are and what they're doing.

This is a problem, because when you have to refresh 5+ storylines every issue or two, there isn't a lot of room for anything else. The story isn't absolutely terrible, but it's terribly mediocre. Regardless of a legendary artist, this issue felt more like a first or second issue more than a fifth, and should be much better than this.

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