DC Comics reviews 7/28/20 – Batman/Superman #10, Wonder Woman #759

Legion of Super Heroes #7

This latest issue of Legion of Super Heroes as writer Brian Michael Bendis spent a little more time on character development for his massive cast. The trouble is after seven issues their personalities are still so weakly defined that they all largely come off like such blank slates.

Some of the issue is Bendis’ writing style, which favors cheeky, sitcom style back and forth exchanges. That gobbles up pages without contributing much of value and that’s especially evident with this issue. There still feels like the book has a slew of random characters who are just mass members of the Legion that might get one of two lines every other issue with even less focus on their abilities.

Cosmic Boy is questioning his ability to effectively lead the Legion and he’s feeling like Brainiac 5 is casting aspirations on his slot. Bendis also seems to be repeating his playbook from X-Men where the team telepath wants to out a character’s sexuality. That feels like a needless rerun since the future has been portrayed as so enlightened and that doesn’t even make sense given the present(past) DC Universe portrayal of LGBT characters.

And it also seems like Bendis wants to make Saturn Girl and Superboy a couple, a disappointing development since the interracial take on the traditional Lightning Lad/Saturn Girl pairing would have been a fresh take.

Stephen Byrne fills in as artist and his style works very well for the title particularly in a dialogue heavy edition.

Legion should be a better book, but Bendis can’t get out of his own way enough to write compelling, interesting characters and scenarios that put them in any kind of real danger.

Rating: 5 out of 10