Book of Doom: Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds #2 (of 5)
This post is a couple days late, obviously, but hopefully you can forgive its tardiness on account of 24 Hour Comic Day and the effects that event had on my sleep schedule.
While I’m not exactly sure how this can possibly tie in with Final Crisis, I’m still entertained by what’s going on in this miniseries, written by Geoff Johns and illustrated by George Perez. My main reaction to this issue, though, is rather simple: What a busy frickin’ issue.
There is just so much packed into this thing that I’d be hard-pressed to properly review it after just reading through it for the first time. This issue deserves to be pored over. The inclusion of Sodam Yat at the conclusion seems like a natural progression of that character, and I’m looking forward to his confrontation with Superboy-Prime. Those two haven’t locked horns since the Sinestro Corps War, and the prospects for that fight intrigue me greatly. I wonder if the Daxamite still has the powers of Ion at his disposal. If only he didn’t have a mohawk. That’s really dumb.
Otherwise, the main thing I’m looking forward to in this series is the reveal of what’s in that lightning rod Brainy’s been carrying around since the end of the Lightning Saga. That just has to be something super duper cool.
For a counterpoint, allow me to turn things over to Jim Doom for his reaction:
I didn’t enjoy this as much as I enjoyed the first part.
Issue #2 ended with the assembly of the three Legions, which is not too much beyond where #1 ended. Pretty much all that happened in between was that the Evil Legion killed the last Green Lantern and the Brainiacs of 3 Worlds argued, resulting in an obnoxious argument to stall all progress.
I was actually kind of hoping that Superboy and the Evil Legion would kill those stranded Legionnaires and get over how evil they are, rather than killing that last Green Lantern, who really didn’t matter. Not that I wanted anyone good to die — and that Green Lantern had a good last stand — but the combined forces of Superboy Prime, the evil Legion, evil Justice League, Morddru and the Fatal Five should really have more than one superhero victim by this point.
I don’t know what it was about it, but the first punches between the displaced Superman and Superboy Prime should have been a big deal, but it just didn’t feel like it. These guys haven’t crossed paths since the close to Infinite Crisis, but they just kind of reacted to each other like any other advancing villain and protecting hero would. Superboy Prime didn’t even act surprised that Superman was there.
Also, the inclusion of Sodam Yat and the evil Justice League felt less like the culmination of years of buildup and more like “Well hey, I guess I could include these people too…”
Geoff Johns is one of those writers I trust to do a good job, so I’m not considering dropping this or anything (although the way he writes teenagers bugs me here as it bugged me in the relaunched JSA). This issue just felt pretty underwhelming, and maybe that’s simply a result of this being the second issue in a five-part series. Groundwork must be laid, and some stuff just has to happen before other stuff. But if this series were some kind of athletic contest, this issue was the “Make sure you stretch really well” phase.
I’m pretty sure the Legion mentioned the “Legion of 3 Worlds” battle during the Lightning Saga, which would mean this crossover happens before that did.
Then why was he holding the lightning rod in this issue? He pulls it out of his jacket and somebody says, “And then what?” and he holds it up and responds, “We show the entire universe how smart I really am.”
I don’t see why having the Lightning Rod in this issue means anything regarding which came first. He clearly has the lightning rod in both, so why does that somehow mean that this is coming after the Lightning Saga?
I looked it up again, though, and it was actually Superman who mentioned the Legion of 3 Worlds in JSA #6. So apparently, a few years ago, our present Superman had already gone through what he’s going through now. Either that, or the Legion had told him about having gone through what they’re all going through now. Either way, Geoff Johns has written characters to indicate that this incident in the future happened before the future events the present Earth characters are aware of.
And this is why time travel is stupid. Our future descendants will hopefully read our science fiction and just say to themselves “Let’s not bother.”
I don’t want to think too hard about this, but one of the only cool things about the Lightning Saga is that, at the end, after Wally West came back, it was insinuated that somebody else came back, too, and that’s how the story ends, with Brainiac holding the Lightning Rod, which is glowing with the power of whoever else returned.
So, if this is taking place after that return, then we can expect somebody cool to be stored up in that Lightning Rod. That’s the only reason I thought the Lightning Rod in this issue was foreshadowing something cool to come.
That’s as hard as I’m going to think about it, though. My brain just officially shut off.