Dave-El's Spinner Rack: Legion of Super Heroes#1

DC Comics is giving this another go.

Legion of Super Heroes#1

I guess I'm giving this another go as well.

But I have been burned by this sort of thing before.

This Legion of Super Heroes#1 does not have an actual "Legion".  Not  yet.

Set a thousand years in the future where the very idea of "Super Heroes" is against the law, this issue is about world building.

And what a complex and intriguing world being built by writer Joshua Williamson and artist Hayden Sherman (with the always brilliant coloring by Tamra Bonvillain, perhaps my favorite colorists working in comics today).   

In most tellings of the LSH origin, the story sets up the idea of the Legion with 3 super powered teens saving the life of R. J. Brande, the richest man in the universe. 

In this tale, Brande is already dead and 2 super powered teens are investigating his murder.

• Querl Dox (in past comics was known as Braniac 5, here he's called Braniac 1 of 5) 
• Tenzil Kem (who in the classic comics was Matter Eater Lad)

Querl and Tenzil could leave things to the quasi-fascist government and their masked police force but who trusts them to get to the truth. 

Williamson knows the toys in the Legion toy box but he's playing with them differently.  Querl and Tenzil may be different from the versions I've known in past versions of the Legion but they're also imminently recognizable.  

In addition to Querl Dox and Tenzil Kim doing a cool "buddy cop" routine as they probe Brande's murder, we check in elsewhere on some characters who have been the fundamental foundation of previous incarnations of the Legion and may well be again.  

Telepathic Imra Ardeen on Titan, a moon of  Saturn.

Rokk Krinn whose magnetic powers are employed in athletics to keep his family out of the harsh mines of his homeworld and out of poverty.  

Garth Ranzz has electrical powers and like a lot of kids imagine, super powers means being a super hero.  With a shrine at home to history's greatest hero, Superman, Garth dons a mask and costume to go out and fight crime. It's not going well.

If one comes to Legion of Super Heroes#1 expecting to see the Legion of Super Heroes, well, this issue may be a bit of a disappointment.  But crafting a wall built story with gorgeous art goes a lot way to belying any such concerns.

I'm willing to give this a shot and I like what I see coming out of the gate but I remain cautious: I have been burned before.

Wow! It's been seven years (Seven?!?) since Marvel's golden boy Brian Michael Bendis came to DC with a grand plan to revitalize and restore the Legion of Super Heroes to prominence once more.  

After about 2 years, the Bendis Legion sputtered to a close, ending not with a bang but a whimper.  Dreams of the LSH restored to glory dying in ignominy.  

That was a hard one to take.  

• I first came to the Legion of Super Heroes in August 1974 in the pages of Superboy#205.
• I was there in the heady days of the Levitz/Giffen "Great Darkness" saga that began in the summer of 1982.  
• I was there in the descent into madness that was the "5 Years Later"/Post Crisis time jump of the 1990's. 
• I was there in 2010 when Paul Levitz returned to recapture the glory years of the Legion only to see it fizzle out by August 2013.

I've been lifted up by the exploits of the Legion and I have been burned.

But I'm still hoping...

I'm trusting Joshua Williamson to do better by my beloved Legion.  

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Next week is Comic Book Retro 50. What comic books did a young Dave-El buy in October 1976? That trip down memory lane will happen in 7 days.