At Last: Legion Of 3 Worlds!

This is the part of Final Crisis that I've been looking forward to the most, and the first issue (which arrived yesterday) certainly didn't disappoint!

In this day and age, a regular comic book usually represents about five minutes of reading pleasure, if you're lucky. That figure has gone down in each of the last several decades, with the current predilection for decompression driving it to the current, ridiculous extremes. Happily, Geoff Johns isn't one of the writers given to work that way, and thus pairing him with detail-oriented, can-draw-as-many-panels-as-you-can-describe George Perez was inspired for this series! I read the debut issue of Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds in bed last night, and had to keep telling Vicki "I'm almost done..." as the minutes ticked by and she was ready for lights out. There's a lot to be found in this setup issue, and almost all of it works.

The story starts with the Time Trapper, a longtime Legion of Super-Heroes baddie who operates outside of time. He (if indeed TT is a "he") sends Superboy-Prime, DC's favourite gonzo villain these days, a thousand years into the boy's future, to wreak havoc on the LSH (who live in the 31st century). After the Bad Boy of Steel murders several tens of thousands of futurama inhabitants, the Legion uses their time-o-phone to call their old friend, Superman (who of course spends most of his time in the 21st century, like you and I), and whisk him through the misty barriers of time to help them. Once Kal-El identifies this strange, murderous lad as a parallel universe doppleganger of his, and they all collectively realize that Superboy-Prim is busy putting together his own Legion of Super-Villains, Brainiac-5 intuits that the best plan of attack involves them finding a couple other versions of the Legion in the Multiverse, in order to bulk up the good guys' side. Like I said: pretty much all setup, but very interesting and entertaining, nonetheless.

It's not without its flaws, of course. An important character from the Legion's origin just happens to show up when a bunch of government officials are voting on whether to shut the Legion down, and then that character's longtime rival also just happens to be there, all ready to assassinate the other (even though he couldn't possibly have known to expect him there). And as cool as it's going to be to have three different versions of the Legion in subsequent issues - representing the 50-year history of the team, which has been rife with reboots and retcons - it seems a bit convenient that the main group's knowing about the other teams, and bringing them into their universe, are going to prove to be about as complicated as ordering a pizza. And finally, I've yet to figure out exactly why this is a Final Crisis series. There doesn't seem to be any tie to the events of the main series, even tangentially (like having Superman be plucked from some Final Crisis moment). Right now it smells like more of a marketing move than a story-driven one.

Having said that... this series is a fanboy's wet dream! From the writer, who loves these characters, to the artist, who can draw dozens of costumed characters without ever making any of them look like each other or even just appear rushed, the creative team is perfect. I just hope DC can use this mini-series to finally establish the various versions of the LSH, since the idea of each parallel Earth having its own unique Legion is quite exciting. For example, I think it'd be pretty cool if one of them were from the future of Earth-2, where Superman debuted in the 1930s and truly was the first superhero.

This was a great start to what I hope is going to be the series of 2008!