Final Crisis: Legion Of 3 Worlds by Geoff Johns, George Pérez and Scott Koblish (graphic novel review).
It was only from reading Back Issue # 68 last month that prompted me to locate a copy of the combined 5-part ‘Final Crisis: Legion Of 3 Worlds’ graphic novel to read the disclosure of who the Time Trapper was. A constant foe of the 31st century Legion Of Super-Heroes in all their realities, his head was always hidden and no one, lest of all the reader, ever really speculated on who he was until writer Geoff Johns put this story together. Well, except for the time it was revealed he was a rogue Controller and then proved he was a fake when the real one returned.
Therefore, it should come as no surprise that even when a team as big as the Legion Of Super-Heroes, including Superman, is out-numbered by both the Superboy-Prime and the super-villains they had imprisoned escaped that Brainiac 5 draws the two sets of counter-parts from other realities to the fray before locating a couple of other useful super-powered individuals to help. A clue to one of them comes from looking at the powers the LSH has. Although several of them can achieve super-speeds, especially in flight, none of them are actually pure ground-runners, something which divides them from the 20th/21st century Justice League and Titans.
In many respects, having that many characters together in one story is going to turn many of the Legionnaires into brief cameos but you’re going to have fun with the costumes and doing a who’s who recognition test for who and when. There aren’t many comicbook artists who enjoy drawing so many characters but George Pérez would have been my choice for this book as well. It’s a good thing that the Green Lantern Corps was only down to one member or he’d have had to add even more characters. I do wonder if having so many characters was one of the contributing factors as to why the LSH fell out of favour with new fans and possible illustrators who would clearly have had to learn the different designs and body languages had they not been brought up on them.
Whatever, this does tend to make for an epic battle and actually has some characterisation bits on the side as well. I’m having to be careful quite what I say simply because there are so many spoilers and I already hinted on one above. If you love your Legion big, then you’ll love it. Even better, you can even read it without knowing a blessed thing about the other ‘Infinite Crisis’ stories.
GF Willmetts
May 2015
(pub: DC Comics, 2009. 176 page softcover graphic novel. Price: about £ 4.30 (UK) if you know where to look. ISBN: 978-1-4012-2325-0)
check out website: www.dccomics.com
