STAR TREK/LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES HC

This is a comic book that started with a fan, and most definetly is done by fans and for fans.

Back in the seventies, the Legion of Super-heroes was an almost forgotten, lackluster propierty that only was remembered and cherised by the most loyal fans.

One of them, Dave Cockrum, would rise to the occassion of designing their look and the look fo their future world for that new era. A deed eclipsed by his historic next assigment, relaunching another failed franchise at Marvel, the Uncanny X-Men.

But the Legion shcolars know better and realice that, not only Cockrum, but Claremont too, took the very best of their ideas for X-Men from the Legion series. And I don't mean the Imperial Guard, or Wolverine's hairdo. X-Men, with all his success is but a "glorified spin-off" of Cockrum's Legion.

But Cockrum wasn't only a Legion fan, but a Star Trek fan -who wasn't?, back in those days-, who used many of the designs and ideas of the legendary sci-fi tv series for his vision of the XXX Century supergroup, its members, enemies, races, ships and alien worlds.

There are several proofs of his love for Star Trek, like this Shi'ar version of the Enterprise crew from one of the X-Men issues.

So the sci-fi worlds of the Legion and that of Star Trek has "collided" before in many ways.

Flashforward to present day, when, to celebrate that legacy of cross-fertility Chris Roberson, made popular by a handful of Superman stories that concluded JMS's truncated run with the character, has been rightly choosen to bring together both groups in an adventure that only true fans can appreciate.

And I know cause, sadly, my treekie knowlenge falls a bit short to fully taste his perfect combination of stories and references.

The plot starts the classic Enterprise crew teaming up with some very carefully chosen Legion equivalents from some moment after the Great Darkness Saga, the zenith of the original supergroup's adventures.

So next to Kirk we get the leadership of Cosmic Boy. Brainiac-5 can test his intellect with the emotionless deductive abilities of Mister Spock. Chameleon Boy shares pointed ears withour favourite vulcanian and, without doubt, Cockrum was inspired by the sexy looks of Uhura when he redesigned Shadow Lass. Doctor McCoy and Chejov are not as close as a couple as Lighting Lad and Saturn Girl, the final Legion founders who can't miss this event.

The plot finds both groups lost in time and into an "amalgamated" reality where both timelines and universes seem to have collapsed.

After the due fights between future heroes and space explorers, they quickly team up trying to discover what has happened and who is the power behind a new, ruthless, stellar empire.

Roberson uses his deep knowlenge of DC and Star Trek continuity and chooses and immortal character from the three year mission series, Flint, who allegedly adopted several famous historical identities.

And don't need to be a continuity geek to know which immortal from the DC Universe ends being some kind of alternate copy of Flint.

Let's just say that Roberson knows that the best Legion stories are the ones that bring elements from the present DC Universe into the future, and plays accordingly.

And as a sample of the amalgamated universe, where alien races and nemesis appear in new but familiar ways, here are this very special Fatal Five, no-prize to the knowlegable trekkie that tell us the name of the homaged space characters.

The adventure is everything a fan can wish, with a simple but efective and balanced plot, every scene we can imagine for that event, and lots of hidden "easter eggs" for the true fan to find.

On the artwork side, the penciller can't be chosen with better taste and oportunity: Jeffrey Moy not only became one of the best artist of the post-Zero Hour Legion, but he has worked on Star Trek comics too, and is a fan of the series himself. So we definetly get BEST OF BOTH ARTISTIC WORLDS.

Certeanly very few artist can rise to the task of a labor of love like this, and his pages makes us lament that he hans't been present in the mainstream comic industry since too long ago.

Now, we have to mention that the inks by Philip Moy (his brother I guess) hardly do any justice to his beautiful pencilled pages that can be found in his own blog. Probably they work together and very closely but sometimes the best lies "beyond the final frontier"...

Let's not forget the beautiful alternate covers by a selection of Legion's artists, including Phil Jiménez, whose Adventure Comics run promised a rebirth of the franchise that was, sadly, abandoned with the New 52 Reboot.

Is a very proper but bitter symbol of the current state of the industry and of DC Comics that IDW can make better Legion Comics than DC.

Chris Roberson, head creator of what I call "THE DC IN EXILE", knows it very well, it happened before, when Moore's Supreme ended being the very best Superman run ever written (with Weisinger's permission).

In a better world, characters like the Legion would be owned by a more ethycal company, we agree with Chris.

But even in that world, would be hard to find a more suitable writer for the Legionnaires than Mr. Roberson himself!

Long Live the Legion! May they last longer than their unethycal current owners!