When it was announced that old school comic book scribe Paul Levitz would be returning to the Legion Of Superheroes the excitement was palpable. Since the fiasco surrounding Jim Shooter’s “departure” from the series and the end of yet another Legion run last year most fans assumed that it would be years before anybody slipped on a Flight Ring. Instead what DC has done is return Levitz to a post Geoff Johns Legion, an interesting idea since most of what Johns wrote drew from the groundwork Levitz had put down years before.
While this umpteenth re-launch doesn’t do away with the complicated and sometimes convoluted history of the Legion, it does allow it to be a bit more user friendly. Any new reader who isn’t steeped in the history but has read the Legion Of Three Worlds mini-series and the Superman and the Legion Of Super-heroes arc (Action Comics #858-863) should be able to jump into this run with little effort.
The basic plot of issue # 1 follows the Legion that emerged victorious from Legion Of Three Worlds as they deal with the fallout from Superman And the Legion Of Super-heroes. Earth is back at the center of the United Planets and the entire anti-alien movement has been destroyed at least for the moment. To help ease tensions as the old ways are reinstated the Legion are forced to bring into their ranks Earth-Man the evil Legion Reject who jump started the turmoil suffered by the team during Johns’ run. It’s a great little plot hook that brings into the story a ready made drama and allows for the former stories to be folded into the new series.
Some who see the cover for Legion Of Super-heroes #1 will be drawn to the whole Green Lantern aspect of the story and while that is compelling it’s not what makes this double sized issue so great. The real joy here is reading Paul Levitz’s work, the way he effortlessly weaves the storylines together and introduces the Legion characters in a style that makes them instantly familiar.
The largest problem with the Legion is, much like Marvel’s X-Men, when handled by writers who can’t juggle multiple characters it becomes muddied and hard to enjoy. Levitz purifies the Legion with this issue and also manages to take the Green Lantern motif that’s been the focus of DC for so long into a new direction, though the “twist” at the end may be easy to see coming you won’t care, Levitz's writing is so good you’ll be too involved to nitpick.
DC has promised this is a new era for the Legion Of Super-heroes and if issue #1 is any indication, readers are in for some really good times. If any man can clean up the mess left by DC’s unending need to screw with the Legion, it's Paul Levitz. If left to his own devices, Levitz could take the Legion from a weird outside-the-box series to a dominant team book in the vein of the Justice League or Justice Society. Let’s hope DC doesn’t screw it up again.
