Comics! Timber Wolf in the Legion!

In yesterday's stack of comics was "Legion of Super-Heroes" #11, written by the legendary Paul Levitz and drawn by someone (something?) called Daniel HDR. It's called "False Start," and it's one of the early chapters in what's promising to be an epic return of the Legion of Super-Villains (only a promise, at this point - DC could always decide to fire Levitz precipitously in mid-story, or else he himself could decide to get himself fired in mid-story), and as you can tell from the cover, the centerpiece of the issue is a fight between the solar-powered Sun Emperor and the super-feral Legionnaire Timber Wolf.

So: the sort of thing that'll be incomprehensible to outsiders and catnip to Legion fans, who've loved Timber Wolf since his original appearance forty years ago (he was doing the whole savage-good-guy-with-claws-who-heals-real-fast a long time before Wolverine showed up over at Marvel). The match is also drastically uneven on its face: Sun Emperor is a 'big' villain, and typically in Legion history 'big' villains are fought by many team mates acting in concert. When that doesn't happen - when a writer intentionally sends out a hero alone against a villain who outclasses him - it tends to bode ill for the hero (one thinks of Chemical King, the original Invisible Kid, the original Karate Kid), so when I saw that wonderful cover, I wondered if Levitz was going to start off this big Legion of Super-Villains story with first blood going to the bad guys.

The mis-match comes from the fact that Timber Wolf isn't a 'big' Legionnaire. He's one of those above-the-middle superheroes without whom no team can function and be interesting (over at Marvel, think of how the Vision held the Avengers together for so many issues), but he's never been a Legion heavy-hitter on the level of Mon-el or Ultra Boy or Element Lad. Timber Wolf his mid-range super strength and agility, and he's got a bad temper. None of that should prevent a villain like Sun Emperor from melting his eyes and ending the fight in about five seconds.

But Levitz is a canny writer (and here he's very ably assisted by the pencils of this mysterious Daniel HDR-bot - this is some very good artwork, and it shows every sign of becoming fan-favorite classic stuff in about five more years of steady pencilling), and Timber Wolf is too popular with Legion fanatics to simply kill - this issue has something else in mind: reclaiming the character a bit. Timber Wolf faces off against Sun Emperor in Japan and simply refuses to let the fact that he's getting char-broiled stop him from beating the stuffing out of his foe (who has, I belatedly realized as I was reading, only normal human strength underneath all those flames). Levitz' scripting always has a curiously enjoyable bare-bones quality about it - in his "Legion," the universe is a tough place where bad things happen, and the good guys are always understaffed and overcommitted - and he enjoys a little poking around inside his readers' preconceptions, as when he has a defiant Timber Wolf object when Sun Emperor calls him an "animal" (always a touchy spot with this particular Legionnaire). "I'm not an animal," he says, "I'm human" - but he says it while he's charging, fangs bared, wild-eyed, whole head on fire, playfully subverting the moment.

This issue isn't meant to be big shakes - we're still in classic Levitz-style 'prelude' issues as his big storyline gears up - but even so it has half a dozen sub-plots percolating along, so there's something for virtually every picky Legion fan, and a real treat at the center for Timber Wolf fans. And the rest of us (what can I say? It's tough to get excited about 'feral' characters when you were one for the first third of your life) can take pleasure in the feel of a big story playing out so confidently - and in the HDR-bot's really good artwork (especially the fun background characters, in time-honored Steve Rude fasion).

Comics! Manflesh, Manhug, Mangog!

A varied and astoundingly good haul of comics this week, from "Book of the Skull," the prologue to Marvel's upcoming "Fear Itself" crossover event (the prologue has some great gritty moments and also boasts the week's best cover) to some fantastic scripting on "Thunderbolts" and "Spider-Man" and especially "Avengers Academy" to the artwork of the always-amazing Alan Davis on "Young Avengers." But even with such an outstanding batch of comics, every reader will have his, er, preoccupations (there's a less kind word that's often used with comics fans, but we need not sling it around here) - certainly I found that to be true.

Naturally, I found myself concentrating on the Legion, for instance. Not the ongoing "Legion of Super-Heroes," but the concurrent ongoing "Adventure Comics," which also features the Legion (those of you who are now rolling your eyes can instead count your blessings - as often as I've written how overjoyed I am that the Legion is appearing in two monthly titles, I've spoken about it far, far more often, to those poor unfortunate souls close enough to hear me - you're getting it easy, here at Stevereads).

This current run in "Adventure Comics" is written by the great Paul Levitz and features the Legion Academy, where brash new potential recruits are taught the basics of being super-heroes in the 31st century. Artist Phil Jimenez gives us some finely-detailed panels of these youngsters in action - getting their overly-ambitious tails kicked in a very satisfactory manner by an amped-up bad guy only Legion fans will remember.

But the part of the issue I found most interesting (Levitz always has many balls in the air, except when he's writing one of his firing-on-all-cylinders mega-epics, which he most definitely has my permission to do sometime soon) was one scene taking place back at the Academy on Montauk Point, where Cosmic Boy and Duplicate Girl are talking with four potential recruits - Lamprey, Nightwind, Crystal Kid, and Power Boy (the latter being both purple and, in classic Jimenez fashion, easy on the eyes; the Legion should always have a purple member on principle, so he gets my vote) - about what happens when the selection process is over. "You've got options," Duplicate Girl tells them. "We've prepared you well, so after the finals, you might get the opportunity to try out for the Legion, or join the Science Police, or even go solo on an outerworld." Cosmic Boy makes it even plainer: "Don't lock in too much on Legion membership. It's not for everyone. The risks are high, the tension incredible, and even if you don't get killed, you have to give up your life to the team." I submit that only a Legion writer as experienced as Levitz (Keith Giffen, say, or the mighty Jim Shooter) could have given one of the team's founding members such a sharp, knowing assessment to make. Although even I'm just a little confused: these kids spend years in Legion Academy for the chance to try out for the team? Isn't that like spending a whole hitch at West Point for the chance to graduate?

Even more iconic goings-on over in "Superman," a title that's been ailing in the excitement department for quite some time now - despite writer J. Michael Straczynski pursuing a potentially great story-line: in the wake of losing an entire planet-full of Kryptonians, Superman, feeling mighty depressed, decides to forego his iconic flying and walk across America. What could have been a really good device for looking inside the character's head turned rather quickly into an entire comic book about the kind of douchey guy who constantly talks on his cellphone while he's walking down the street.

I would have avoided the latest issue of this run, #709, completely, but my attention was drawn by the nifty John Cassaday cover (the genius stroke of having it set against a starry night instead of bright daylight is the thing that does it for me), so I read it. The main plot is just about the dumbest thing I've ever seen this writer come up with - and that's saying something - but the interstitial moments in and around that plot were worth the cover price. At one point, in order to stop a Flash who's running out of control, Superman super-hugs him, which was funny (one can only speculate how much more ... intense ... Jiminez would have made the payoff panel), and at another point Superman tells the Flash a story of his boyhood in Smallville, a story in which a young Clark Kent shares detention with a young Lex Luthor - only Straczynski never has Superman identify Lex to the Flash, making me wonder if in this present state of DC continuity the other heroes don't know that the world's greatest hero and the world's greatest villain went to high school together. I'll have to remember to toodle on over to the relevant Wikipedia pages and see what I can learn about that.

My final, um, preoccupation this time around was the fourth issue of the five-issue "Thunderstrike" mini-series, in which Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz wonderfully revisit their signature joint creation, the Thor-knockoff character Thunderstrike. Only it's not Eric Masterson, who was their original Thunderstrike and died, but rather his teenage son, who's now trying to wield his father's enchanted hammer and perhaps become a superhero in his own right. DeFalco and Frenz have quite pointedly made this series both dramatic and funny - there are quick quips in every issue worthy of Stan Lee himself (in this latest issue, the funniest ones involve some clueless motorists who mistake the series villain for Iron Man, until he starts ranting about killing people, at which point we get: "You know, I don't think that is Iron Man" ... hee). The 'dramatic' part is taken one enchanted hammer too far, however, in this issue, in which the old Thor super-villain Mangog returns, swiftly (and rather unhygienically) deals with the series villain, and then goes on his own rampage into the heart of New York City, looking for Thor.

Thor fans (of which I count myself among the foremost, alas) will recognize Mangog as the H-bomb of Thor villains - not Thor's defining villain (that would be Loki, his evil half-brother), but his ultimate villain, the Galactus to his Fantastic Four, the Morlun to his Spider-Man, the Destiny to his Doctor Strange. Mangog is an artificial creation imbued with - as he himself was originally fond of saying every ten seconds - the strength of a billion billion beings: i.e. physically unstoppable, even physically unchallengeable. When Stan Lee introduced him back in the late '60s, Mangog was meant to represent a foe Thor had no chance whatsoever of defeating.

So hauling him onstage to validate the revamping of a new teen hero is probably a bad idea. DeFalco doesn't usually have bad ideas, so I'm willing to wait and see how the fifth and final issue of the mini-series plays out, but this issue's concluding two-page spread, in which Punkerstrike - or Kid Thor, if you will - shows up with the Avengers and makes some bad-ass comment designed to raise expectations for a massive fight in the next instalment - doesn't exactly make me hopeful. If this is the real Mangog, he once trashed the entire realm of Asgard - including Thor - without breaking a sweat. This current team of Avengers are pretty much pantywaists (I don't even see Iron Man in that two-page spread) and should be smeared like tapioca on Page 1 of the next issue. I'm hoping it ends up not being the real Mangog - or that some Ultimate Nullifier is pulled out of a hat on the last page.

No matter what, I'll be reading! Comics this good will always get me to come back.

Comics! Eye Love the Legion!

[caption id="attachment_2257" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="not the Open Letters Montly logo, but pleasingly close"][/caption]

Sometimes, right there in the middle of a sleet-storm, smack-dab in the center of a pile of the week's comics handed over by one's petulant houseboy, there'll be a shining gem, something so odd and wonderful that it just plain makes your day. The pile of comics I read this week had just such a gem in its innards: Legion of Super-Heroes Annual #1, written by Paul Levitz and drawn by Keith Giffen.

Let's repeat that last part again, shall we? Written by Paul Levitz and drawn by Keith Giffen.

Aaaaaaah. Suddenly, the sloppy day outside feels cold and clear like an overcast afternoon on Prince Edward Island.

Paul Levitz, as some of you may know, is one of the all-time great Legion of Super-Heroes writers. And Keith Giffen, as some of you may know, might very well be the best Legion of Super-Heroes artist (I say "may" only because I retain a soft spot in my heart for Curt Swan - a soft spot I know perfectly well is irrational). These two creators are responsible for some of the best moments, issues, story-arcs, and title-runs in all of Legion history, and they haven't worked together on a Legion issue in about twenty years. Plenty of talented creators have worked on the team in that time (rumor has it, in fact, that one or two of the very best stretches are coming to reprint form sometime soon - expect hosannas here, if that happens), but there's no matching the sheer history involved when giants return to the title. I thought the same thing when Jim Shooter briefly returned to the book he made famous, and hoo-boy, I'm thinking it now, after reading this fantastic issue.

The plot Levitz dreams up is fairly simple: a poor peasant girl on the medieval world of Orando (home to the Legion member Princess Projectra, who's currently using the code-name Sensor Girl) stumbles upon a decaying temple and discovers the fabled eye of Ekron - a mysterious floating eye about the size of a beach ball that bestows immense power upon the woman who bonds with it. Legion fans will know the rest: Sarya of Venegar took possession of the eye (and it of her) and became the Emerald Empress, one of the heavy-hitters of the Fatal Five, a group of villains who've been bent on the Legion's destruction for about fifty years. Some years ago, Sensor Girl pulled a neat trick: she used her perception-altering powers to blind the eye, severing the link between it and Sarya, who by that point had had enough of her connection to the thing and just wanted to die. A lot of shamefully messy continuity has flown under the bridge since that great sequence, and in this issue Levitz takes the perfect approach to it: he simply ignores it. The eye of Ekron is buried in a ruined castle on Orando? Great!

It possesses that poor peasant girl - who's happy to have the power and doesn't notice that it's made her insane - and she promptly snags a passing Legion cruiser out of orbit and slams it into the planet. The cruiser contains Legion friends (with benefits?) Lightning Lass and Shrinking Violet, who were intending to be on vacation and now wake up in the Empress' fetid cells, which can't hold either one of them - Vi because she can shrink to sub-molecular size at will, and Lightning Lass because she possesses lightning-wielding powers that Giffen has always delighted in drawing.

The two quickly run afoul of the new Empress, and as comics-friendly readers will already have noted, Giffen really unleashes his inner Jack Kirby in this issue. It's a delight to watch, and it's a relief from the ongoing Legion monthly title, where these same Legionnaires always look tired, strung out, and fifty. Note to the DC powers that be: in the current continuity, the Legion are no longer teenagers - which means they're adults, the same kind of super-hero adult as, say, Batman or Superman - characters who'll never look older than about their very early 30s. Artists don't need to make each member look like Willie Nelson to underscore their grown-up status; instead, they can look like, well, super-heroes - like they do in this issue.

As I've said before, the key to a good Legion story is to control the roster. If you have twenty Legionnaires show up in response to the appearance of a new Emerald Empress, she gets defeated in about fourteen minutes, and you don't have an issue. This time around, only three team members are able to respond to the plight of Lightning Lass and Shrinking Violet: Sun Boy, Gates the team transporter ... and Sensor Girl, who's fairly urgent to get to her homeworld right away and see what the trouble is. This of course leads to page after page of supreme Keith Giffen fight-scenes (several of which are single-panel splash-pages, which might cause Caleb over at Every Day Is Like Wednesday to grumble about the $5 cost of the thing, but that's only because he's a talented artist himself and so a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to what might be considered lazy storytelling - and he might have a point, but me? I'm no artist, and I just loved the big, self-indulgent feel of it all).

In the end, the new Empress is defeated and Princess Projectra decides to stay on Orando and help repair the damage that deranged peasant girl did. It's a self-contained issue in the best tradition of that dying breed, and the annual's back-up features are light and entertaining (including a hilarious Legion History Board Game that's so quick and informative it  should be a standard feature in every Legion book, with only one small change: surely a Legion board-game must mention Spaceopoly Lad?). There were plenty of other comics in the pile this week, but oh, this one was my own little Miracle Machine!

Comics addendum! The ongoing Legion!

Just a quick note here to sing the praises of the new Legion of Super-Heroes monthly comic written by the great Paul Levitz and drawn by Yildiray Cinar (who is, apparently, one of the High Elves of Eregion - which at least means we'll be seeing his work for a long time!). Issue #9 of the comic features the 'iconic' covers that are running throughout all DC comics this month - a wonderful gimmick that underscores the fact that many of DC's 'intellectual properties' are quite venerable and have been followed by fans through many decades.

No fans more dedicated - nor many titles through more decades - than the Legion! And yet, despite that rich, convoluted history (or maybe the history made it inevitable), the Legion's publication history has been plagued regularly with .... well, crap. Crappy writers. Crappy re-boots. Crappy artists - oh sweet lordie, the crappy artists ....

So it's always a relief when a really good reboot or arc comes along. We got just such a really good spell with industry (and real life) giant Jim Shooter's recent truncated run on the book, and we're getting one again with veteran Legion writer Paul Levitz doing what he does so well: unfolding several plots simultaneously without ever dropping the ball on any one of them. And he's got good artwork serving his words - this High Elf really knows what he's doing, and his inking by Wayne Faucher (presumably human) supplies just the level of control and refinement I suspect he needs.



The combination of that artwork and Levitz at the writing helm is almost reconciling me to the whole idea of following the adventures of an adult Legion. The more I think about the concept, the more I realize that it was the only one that would really work to keep such an old franchise vital, but Legion fans accept change only grudgingly. Levitz's presence certainly helps - and some gigantic, epic story of the type that's always worked so well with the Legion ... well, that would help too, if the powers that be at DC could arrange it.

Comics! A Grand Old Time!

As the new year begins, the dust settles in the company continuities of both Marvel and DC, and the editors of their super-hero comics evidently decide (or were ordered by their masters, now newly sensitized to the lure of Hollywood money?) to put away the dark backdrops of the past few years and embrace a somewhat simpler, somewhat brighter outlook.

Of course this will appeal to me, although I'm the first to admit some good stories came out of all that darkness. At DC, there were several back-to-back 'dark' events - most recently the "Darkest Night" mini-series that started with lots of superheroes getting violently killed but ended with lots of superheroes getting brought back to life. And at Marvel, the storyline in which villainous Norman Osborn gained political ascendancy in America and drove all the heroes into hiding (or into maximum security prison cells) led to some fantastic comics; I griped about it at the time, but the fact is, having evil win a big round led to a lot of great stories and great moments - and of course the ultimate pay-off, the story in which Osborn finally gets his comeuppance.

Both those story-arcs are over now (well, "Blackest Night" continues to limp forward as "Brightest Day," but although it's better than it seems, its ultimate worth remains to be seen - right now, its main purpose seems to be to re-introduce DC readers to the 'classic' Aquaman and invent a supporting cast of friends and enemies for him, perhaps as prelude to giving him a comic of his own again), and both companies are free to return to straight-up superhero stories, which is fine by me. A major beneficiary at Marvel is Spider-Man, whose comic is at a high point it hasn't reached in years.

But like I said, I'm also a beneficiary! For instance, I'm back in time 50 years, back to getting Adventure Comics and Superboy every month. True, things have changed - the Legion of Super-Heroes I'm reading in Adventure Comics is now a group of adults, not perky teens, but writer Paul Levitz and artist Geraldo Borges are making it all great anyway (and DC's got another Legion title for stories from the group's youth, so I really can't complain); and the Superboy I'm reading about isn't Clark Kent when he was a teenager, it's Connor Kent, a dreamy hunk-clone of Superman (with a little of Lex Luthor spliced in - yes, this Superboy has two daddies) - but I confess, despite the weird artwork (everybody has such eeensy-weeensy facial features)(but alas, Humberto Ramos can't draw everything), this title is growing on me.

And DC is at least partially acknowledging their bright new day with a series of  covers designed to highlight the iconic nature of their characters, which is neat. Superboy's cover features him flying straight at the reader, followed by his faithful companion Krypto the super-dog, and the cover of Adventure features the Legion logo (which bears a very encouraging resemblance to the logo of a certain literary magazine...) and five grim, anorexic stick-figures who, I guess, are supposed to represent several of the sexy women of the Legion. I mostly concentrated on that wonderful logo.

Over at Marvel, there's considerably more darkness to overcome. It's not just the year-long power-grab of Norman Osborn - that power-grab was only made possible by the events of Marvel's 'Civil War,' in which Tony Stark/Iron Man spearheaded a government initiative to register every super-hero, pay them a government wage, and dictate what they do with their super-powers. Captain America died at the climax of that story, which is about as dark as dark gets, and eventually Osborn chased Tony Stark from power and took over himself - so once the 'big three' of Marvel's super-team the Avengers, Thor, Captain America, and Iron Man - were reunited, you'd expect lots of hard feelings all around.

Writer Brian Michael Bendis obviously decided the big three needed a private adventure in which they could heal their fractured relationship, and in the five-part mini-series "Avengers Prime" he cooked up a doozy, an epic story in which our heroes are suddenly transported to the mystic realm formerly occupied by Asgard, a mystic realm now in chaos and being taken over by Hela, the goddess of death. Our heroes are separated, and much sound and fury ensues, and eventually they come together and face off against the forces of Hela - artist Alan Davis has never done better work than in this series, and in this final issue he presents us with a truly wonderful two-page spread of what death's army might look like if it were run through a Wagner-filter:



I admit, I pay much more attention to visuals than to writing in comics, but even so, this issue also has a perfect little moment of character-work. It comes at the end, when an abashed Tony Stark is trying to apologize to Captain America for everything - the superhero registration business, the 'Civil War,' all of it: "All of those things ... all the things I said, and did ...I'm ... I'm so, so sorry. I know that's not enough, but I hope you will allow me the chance to earn your friendship  back. I don't deserve it ... I just hope you let me. I'm not half as good at ... at anything as I am when I'm doing it next to you." It's trite, but somehow it works - a line that effectively summarizes Bendis' entire writing career.

And if the events of the "Civil War" cast a dark shadow on the future of Marvel Comics, that's nothing compared to the events that sprang from the mini-series "House of M" (which I praised here despite the objections of Kevin the Noted Comic Book Snob!), in which the tormented hero Scarlet Witch used her reality-altering powers to wipe out nine-tenths of all the mutants in the Marvel Universe. In her agony to make everything simpler, she speaks three fateful words, "No more mutants" - and suddenly the Marvel continuity contains just a handful of mutants struggling to survive as a species. That was years ago, and again, many very good stories have come out of that premise - but there was always going to come some kind of reckoning, and it's looking like Marvel's fantastic mini-series "Children's Crusade" will be that reckoning.

The series is written with acute sensitivity by Allan Heinberg and drawn with eye-popping virtuosity by the great Jim Cheung (in a perfect Steve-world, he would be drawing the teenaged-Legion every month, but I'll take what I can get), and it tells the story of what would happen if two young heroes named Wiccan and Speed - a shy (and gay) sorcerer and a brash young super-speedster - became convinced that a) somehow the Scarlet Witch was their mother, and b) that she was alive somewhere and they should find her. This naturally aligns forces against them - mainly the Avengers, who don't want these kids to blunder into a cataclysm - and forces in their favor, mainly their fellow teen allies on the Young Avengers, but also joined by Quicksilver, the Scarlet Witch's brother, and Magneto, the father of Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch. Their search eventually takes them to Latveria and a confrontation with none other than Doctor Doom - a confrontation that prompts Cheung to give us a wonderful double-page spread of his own:



In this issue, part 4 of a 9-part story, this series finally comes into its own as the premiere slam-bang event of the entire Marvel line in 2011. The Scarlet Witch has no memory of the terrible things she did in her previous life - she believes she's simple Latverian gypsy girl Wanda Maximoff, and Heinberg has added the perfect Stan Lee-style twist: Doctor Doom, the monarch of Latveria, has fallen in love with her ("Given my history," he wryly tells Wiccan, "even I find it difficult to believe"). He thinks its sheer lunacy for Wiccan to want to revive her memories - and with them her devastating powers - but the decision might be taken out of his hands anyway, since shortly after Wiccan shows up to 'rescue' his 'mother,' both the Young Avengers (with Quicksilver and Magneto) show up and the Avengers, who are determined to prevent another 'House of M' style catastrophe.

This issue is full of great moments, but for my money, the best of them is the confrontation between Wolverine (who is, for reasons known only to the Marvel Accounting Department, now an Avenger) and poor befuddled Wanda. Wolverine has always had only one simple solution in mind for the whole problem of what the Scarlet Witch did to her fellow mutants: kill her before she can do anything worse - and in the longshot hope that her death will restore the reality she changed - and for one more reason: out of simple revenge for a nearly-successful genocide. Wiccan can't understand such a mentality:

"What is wrong with you? You're supposed to be one of the good guys."

"So was she. Until she slaughtered her friends and wiped out an entire species with three little words ... 'no more mutants,' right Wanda? Well, you got your wish, sweetheart. Thanks to you, there's only a few of us left. And now, thanks to me, there's about to be one less."

Needless to say, he's stopped from killing her, and the issue provides a cliffhanger ending, and the story keeps barreling along. I know I shouldn't be allowing myself to enjoy it as much as I am - probably issue #9 will take a year to ship - but I can't help it! If this series continues as it's going, it'll be the best thing Marvel's done in years. I'll keep you posted.