Review: Adventure Comics #8 (511)

You might think that covering the 5YL Legion would be my most arduous task here at the Legion of Super-Bloggers.

Or maybe you thought covering the off-putting Jim Shooter issues at the end of the Threeboot.

But you would be wrong.

Try covering the Legion parts of the Adventure Comics reboot, all enmeshed in the then event of New Krypton. These are tiny pieces of a bigger puzzle. As such, it will be hard to cover these as stand-alones. But I'll try. If you are feeling daring, know that I covered all the New Krypton stuff over at my Supergirl site. Fortune favors the bold!

Adventure Comics #8 was a prologue of The Last Stand of New Krypton, an arc within the New Krypton bigger plotline. It contained three short stories written by Sterling Gates, James Robinson and Eric Trautmann. The issue did a good job of aligning some of the disparate parts readers had seen floating through the super-titles, getting the pieces in the right place for this arc.

And it was all wrapped up in an Aaron Lopresti cover. I loved Lopresti on Wonder Woman. His art is so slick. Everything about that Lightning Lass is perfect ... the hair, the face, the body language. That is Ayla Ranzz.

So settle in. I can only hope this makes some sense.




The Legion part of the book, written by Sterling Gates and drawn by Travis Moore, takes place in the future as the LSH deals with some chronal rifts ripped into space.

Some back story of Brainiac 5 is given, including the history around the title 'Brainiac'. Seem Brainiac was vilified even among the Coluans. The term Brainiac became one associated with evil. The Dox family began to use the term Brainiac again as a way to reclaim it, make it associated with good instead. It is a nice little nugget of history that fleshes out Brainiac 5.

I liked this shot of a young Dox researching his ancestor. Look at the list of planets Brainiac destroyed in the past! Imsk (Shrinking Violet)! Rimbor (Ultra Boy)! Lexor (the planet Luthor ruled over in the Silver Age)! I assumed that some cities Kal freed from Brainiac's ship would end up being replanted on a planet, recreating them. I guess this seals that deal.

But Lexor! Does that mean sometime in the future Lexor comes back into continuity only to be destroyed by Brainiac??

The chronal rifts are continuing to grow and the Legion can't contain them. Things look grim. Soon the rifts will swallow the whole universe.

The origin of these anomalies seems to be from the past.

Somehow Brainiac, while in our time, is trying to change history by killing Superman. If the Legion doesn't stop this plot, the universe is doomed.

It's a nice panel with Brainiac looming over an impaled Superman.

So, at least now we know the threat which has brought so many Legionnaires to the past. It also looks like we are going to get a Brainiac vs. Brainiac 5 encounter.

And that means  seeing this Brainy meet Supergirl.


The next story picks up a Superboy/Mon-El conversation which occurred in the Superman title from around this time. Superboy brings Mon-El to Smallville to meet all the Espionage Squad members and hear their plea to join the fight.

The Legionnaires talk about how they were each sent back in time by RJ Brande to stop the temporal threat the future Legionnaires are fighting. In hopes of not upsetting the timeline that much, Brande told each of them their small part of the plan but did not share the grand plan with all of them. So Cham alone knew that he had to go to Metropolis and help Mon-El. Element Lad knew to go to Smallville but none of the others did.

But it is clear that there is a threat to the future. Specifically this threat emperils the Legion. Something in the past might stop the Legion from ever being formed.

Mon-El and Superboy eagerly agree to help out. After all, what superhero doesn't want to save the future? The threat is shown to be on New Krypton.

I enjoyed this part of the story as well. The opening scene of this piece is Element Lad revealing himself to Superboy and was executed well. James Robinson showed a good feel for each character with their dialogue. Javier Lopez' art fits right in with the current look of the Superman titles at that time. And, of course, we finally saw all the time-displaced Legionnaires that had been hinted at in the super-books now out in the open.