Every so often in my sporadic DVD purchasing, I see the set for the complete
Legends of Tomorrow, which for a good stretch was my favorite show on TV! (Aside: I can't remember the last time I watched a regular-broadcast, first-run show on old-school network TV! Possibly towards the end of the CW's DC shows.) It's mildly annoying, since the first season was only OK, and I have the second season set already: the episode "
Raiders of the Lost Art" with George Lucas is where it takes off! Then again, I know I had this issue already, but for a buck I couldn't leave it in the cheap boxes. From 2016,
Legends of Tomorrow #5, featuring stories by Len Wein, Keith Giffen, Gerry Conway, and Aaron Lopresti; with art by Aaron Lopresti, Eduardo Pansica, Bilquis Evely, Yildiray Cinar, and more.
This was the penultimate issue of this mini-series, which was three-quarters meat-and-potatoes superhero stuff, and one relaunch that felt like an oddball but might've been a bigger swing: Sugar & Spike by Giffen and Bilquis Evely. They had a
long-running series as babies; and here they were young adults, private investigators specializing in superhero weirdness, who could still speak their secret baby-talk to each other if needed. This chapter, Spike recaps their breakout case, where they took down D-list Flash villain Colonel Computron. His tech support friend Bernie isn't especially helpful, and maybe wonders if there isn't sexual tension between the two, with a comment I'm pretty sure put creator
Sheldon Mayer spinning in his grave. (I also don't know if it's sexual tension, as much as that Sugar has basically been the boss of Spike, since they were toddlers.)
Also this issue: the traditional Metal Men vs. new Metal Men fight, as the originals face new ones like Ziconium, Silicon, and Copper. Not the old
Cooper--er, Copper--but while she seems to be the most stable and mature of the new bunch; Platinum swears she looks familiar, like her creator, Dr. Lace. Copper denies that, but the two teams are probably going to have to work together, as Chemo returns! Doc Magnus is somehow surprised by that; continuity reboots or not, Chemo
always comes back, c'mon. Also, Magnus is way younger seeming in this version, and has goggles instead of his pipe!
Firestorm gears up for a final battle with Multiplex, as a bunch of personal stuff hangs over his head--Ronnie was high school age again, and wondering if he should stick with his team, or take a scholarship at a better school; while Jason was having health issues, and the Professor seems particularly boring? Like, more than usual? There's a solid page of him microwaving breakfast before work at his lab! Still, that could be to establish how Professor Stein was isolated and alone and needed the guys and Firestorm nonsense in his life. And in Metamorpho's feature, Sapphire has stolen the Orb of Ra, which later communicates with her, telling her she knows what she was doing was wrong; but god she could be a daddy's girl sometimes. The cliffhanger has Java ready to kill Rex; maybe he had been built up as threatening the rest of this series, but I can't buy it. You'd be better off with the current
Metamorpho series there!
Technically, this might be a 100-pager, but it actually has 80 comic pages! I like the package, I like the idea; it's just not my favorite version of some of the characters.
3 comments:
The Sugar & Spice feature definitely had potential as an ongoing, well, a miniseries more than likely, or if nothing else, a steady gig as a regular backup feature.
Anyhoo, why is this series called Legends of Tomorrow when it doesn’t have anything really to do with the team from the show?
It's a stretch, but Firestorm was on the show...although, he wasn't used much as Firestorm. Stein was eventually killed off at some point.
I could swear it was a miniseries or a backup for some other Giffen series around then. There were a surprising amount of those, especially considering they weren’t really in the more humor-focused style he’s known for now (what was the last one of those anyway, JL3K?).
The original Sugar and Spike had the kiddie version of sexual tension, as far as what I’ve read of it. No cooties or crushes or anything, but Sugar definitely likes having him around and Dollboy is a cute nickname for him.
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