Written by STERLING GATES ; Art by MATT CAMP and MARCO RUDY ; Cover by AMY REEDER and RICHARD FRIEND
In a special story that has direct ties to the regular monthly SUPERGIRL series, the Girl of Steel visits The Legion of Super-Heroes on Halloween in the 30th century! But Halloween proves to be just as spooky a holiday a thousand years from now as it is today, because a horrible new threat has awoken thanks to Supergirl’s arrival. And that horrible new threat’s name is — Satan Girl! Brainiac 5 has a plan, but it may come at the cost of shattering his potential romance with Supergirl!
DC has been giving The Legion of Superheroes a larger share of the spotlight ever since the original team was reintroduced in The Lightning Saga, especially after Geoff Johns’ Legion of Three Worlds. I enjoyed how Sterling Gates handled the Legion while working on Last Stand of New Krypton, so follow the cut to see if he delivered just as well with this issue.
The number one thing that this annual had going for it was a great hybrid of old with new. The only drawback with bringing back the original Legion is that they’re a bit dated; in order to make them “work,” you have to embrace this, or else they come off as a bit silly. Gates gets this, and gives the Legion the touch of ridiculousness they deserve, bringing back an obscure character with an incredibly over-the-top name: Satan Girl. Does this make the comic hard to take seriously? Maybe a little bit, but Gates definitely presents his story with the solid modern sensibilities (in terms of storytelling) that he’s been giving us ever since he started writing the title. The issue has a very consistent and comfortable pace, keeping the energy high and never feeling stagnant.
Gates definitely used one “classic” device even better than the classic writers themselves: the story in this issue was tied to events in the ongoing, but you really didn’t need to be familiar with the recent arc to be comfortable with this issue. A lot of older comics did this sort of thing (especially when written by Stan Lee, see the early Fantastic Four), but sometimes it seemed like the beginning of those issues were too loaded with threads from the previous one to really be appealing to a new reader. Gates avoids this pitfall and gives us an issue that can be enjoyed by someone who (sadly) hasn’t read a single issue of his Supergirl, or by a longtime reader who won’t feel like they’re reading a “filler” issue that has no contribution to the overall plot.
Of course, the issue isn’t perfect. I liked both artists – Matt Camp and Marco Rudy — but something about their styles didn’t really gel for me. I think it may have been that the colors that worked for Camp didn’t work for Rudy, but I’m not sure. Also, $4.99 is a hefty price tag in this economy, especially when the cent per page ratio is about half a cent lower than the average comic; on the plus side, though, it’s all story pages — not a pinup to be found. In my opinion, the fun story contained within outweighs the cons.
Final Verdict: 7.1 – Buy it!
