Bullet Review: Final Crisis:Legion Of 3 Worlds #5

It finally happened ... Final Crisis:Legion of 3 Worlds #5 was released last week.

I haven't fully reviewed this series here so I won't get too in-depth. As an old-time Legion fan I was interested to see just how the unfortunately clumsy Legion timeline would be stream-lined. It was hard for me to understand exactly why DC allowed Johns to bring 'his Legion' into Action Comics while the 'three-boot' Waid Legion was still being published.

Anyways, I love the idea of the Legion but there hasn't been a version I have really embraced since the 5YL issues (and I know I am in the minority for liking that version).

So Superboy-Prime was revealed as the Time Trapper last issue.


And since he is at the end of time as the Trapper, it would appear he is victorious or at least survives. That is discovered to be false. Instead it is revealed that the Time Trapper is the amalgamation of all possible timeline endings of the Prime character.

With that new hope discovered, the three original Legionnaires from Johns' current version bring in every incarnation of every Legionnaire to their aid. Perez, more than anyone, can pull off a huge group panel like this. It was fun to look it over and see some familiar characters - Beppo, Laurel Kent, Lady Quark, Kono, Tyroc, Streaky ... I could go on for a while.

And who was in that big group, the last incarnation of the pre-Crisis Earth-1 Supergirl ... headband and red shoulders streaking into action!!

What a nice little gift to be given, to see that somewhere that Kara is still kicking around. After all, we remember the last time George Perez drew Supergirl.

And to add a bit of joy, an earlier incarnation of Supergirl, this one looking more like the Maid of Might from the 1960's actually gets to deliver a right cross to Prime's mug.

Too awesome!

A confrontation between the young Prime and the Time Trapper Prime leads to the character de-evolving to pencil sketches and then being shunted back to 'his Earth' which somehow turns out not to be our Earth Prime but another Earth.

With Prime gone, the many Legions disperse themselves throughout the space/time continuum.

And in a very nice scene, we see Conner and Bart's homecoming. Superman assembled the Titans and some friends to welcome the resurrected heroes. Included in that group was Supergirl.

Wouldn't it have been nice to have the colorist get her costume right. I love the red skirt look but that isn't her costume.

The ending of the book has Prime going back to his world where his insanity and killing sprees have been read in comics by his family and friends. Isolated in his basement he turns to the reader and yells. He then goes to pour out his anger and bile on the DC message boards (sounds about right given the animosity on those boards).

Of course this has been done before ... recently in Wanted ... better in Morrison's Animal Man (even the de-volution from pencil sketch to thumbnail was done there).

And while I am glad that a current DCU Legion has been established (one that seems to be built on the adventures of the high times of Paul Levitz run), this series was something of a frenetic jumble which was not helped by the outright criminal delays between issues.

Still, it was nice to see some prior incarnations of Supergirl and her mythos sprinkled throughout the series.

Overall grade (series): C