February 4, 2009

Quick Look: Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds #3

Category: Reviews — By Kelson @ 7:53 pm

This will be less of a full review and more of a first reaction to the issue.

I’m sure some people won’t believe this, but I actually felt more lost reading the first half of this book than I did reading Final Crisis itself. It’s been months since the last issue came out, and I’ve never been very familiar with the three incarnations of the Legion of Super-Heroes. The only time I read them on a monthly basis was the “Five Years Later” period that started around 1989 or so — and it’s not represented in this story! I have read the occasional issue of other series, particularly the “Reboot” Legion with its connections to Impulse. After a while I just went with it.

That settled out later in the issue, especially as it began to focus on XS and the various lightning-powered Legionnaires as they learned about the legacy of Barry Allen’s brief sojourn in the 30th Century. Geoff Johns attempted to clear up some of the questions of whether Bart Allen was from an alternate universe, and while I think the answer ended up being more complicated than was necessary (since they had already established that sometimes time travelers will end up in an alternate universe), I suspect it’s in the service of setting up threads that will tie into either Flash: Rebirth or the inevitable Flash ongoing that spins out of it.

And speaking as a Flash fan, the conclusion of this issue was fantastic.

Spoilers after the cut:

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SPOILERS!

Bart’s back! Woo-hoo!

*ahem* now that I’ve got that out of my system. It was great that Jenni was so critical to the process of bringing him back. Despite being separated by a thousand years for most of their lives, the cousins bonded solidly when she was stranded in the past (see Flash: Dead Heat), so it was very appropriate for her to be integral to bringing him back. And I think Geoff Johns has finally found Bart’s voice. In just a few lines, he sounded more like the Bart Allen that Mark Waid wrote than he has in any of Johns’ Flash or Teen Titans issues.

Plus there’s hope that even if the Reboot Legion gets shoved to the side again, XS could, in theory, stick around in whatever Legion survives this miniseries.

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