4-Part Book of Doom: Part 3
Legion of Super-Heroes #40

I would’ve dropped Legion of Super-Heroes this month if not for the 4-Part Book of Doom. I really liked it during Mark Waid’s run. Tony Bedard’s was hit and miss with me. It seemed like it was leading to something great, then just kind of fizzled away. But Jim Shooter’s run downright stinks.

Last month’s issue was a whole lot of nothing — hunting down vermin and … I think that was it. Then this month, it’s a whole lot of puking, looking for the remains of vermin and … yeah, I think that’s it. Well, and there was arguing, too.

You see, apparently the best Jim Shooter could come up with for a Character-Defining Leadership Moment™ for Lightning Lad was to settle the dispute between Saturn Girl and Timber Wolf, in which Saturn Girl dared to control Timber Wolf’s mind so that he wouldn’t kill people, including herself. And she got in trouble for that!

That showed his tough side, because Saturn Girl is his sweetie, and he was willing to discipline her — FOR PREVENTING ONE OF THEIR TEAMMATES FROM KILLING PEOPLE, INCLUDING HER!! Man, that was stupid. Timber Wolf’s punishment? “Don’t try to kill your teammates anymore, or we’re gonna kick you out of the club.” They should start calling him Lightning Balls with brave discipline like that!

The whole rest of the issue was basically Brainiac, now cast as an annoying attention-hungry dork, rather than a cold, calculating egomaniac, trying to get Lightning Balls to care about the alien invasion. But Lightning Balls is just too much of a smooth, even flow to get ripples in his creek. He wants to sit back on a 31st Century Sofa and sip some coffee, man.

You know what, the odds are pretty dang good that when I was a teenager, I was an idiot. I’m sure of it, in fact. However, that does not mean that I want to pay $2.99 to read about a book of idiots, even if they are supposed to be teenagers. They’re SUPER teenagers! At least let one of their powers be something like the ability to not be an insufferable moron.

I hope they’re so busy sipping coffee and taking naked nutrient baths that the alien invasion comes and kills them all and the series ends at issue #41. It’s clear that DC likes the old Legion better, anyway.

Let’s see if Fin Fang Doom liked it any more than I did.

Fin Fang Doom:

I just don’t like Legion of Superheroes anymore.

I originally picked up the book during the One Year Later stunt, as I did quite a few DC books. When Mark Waid and Barry Kitson were on the title, it was one of the best ones on the rack.

Then Kitson signed an exclusive with Marvel, and Waid decided to leave the title to work on the Brave and the Bold, leaving Tony Bedard behind to clean up the “Supergirl in the future” mess.

I’ve liked Bedard’s work in the past (he had a great run on Exiles before Claremont destroyed that book), but his LOSH just didn’t do it for me. But since I considered his run an extension of Waid’s run, I stuck around to see how everything played out.

But now Jim Shooter and Francis Manapul are in control of the book, Supergirl’s back in the present, and there’s barely any semblance of the book I grew to enjoy after OYL. Now it’s just teenage superheroes in the future in space, and quite frankly that’s boring to me.