Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds #5 (of 5) (DC – Johns / Perez / Koblish)
This is it! The time-stopping finale to this FINAL CRISIS tie-in arrives as Superman, Cosmic Boy, Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl battle Time Trapper while Prime and the Legion of Super-Villains engage in an all-out war with the Legions! Leading into the all-new ADVENTURE COMICS #1!
In my opinion, Legion of Three Worlds is what Final Crisis should have been… and what was Grant Morrison’s bizarre Final Crisis, should have been left on the brainstorming room floor. Geoff Johns is an exponentially better story teller than Grant Morrison and so having him and the legendary George Perez on the book, this should have been the grand slam hit of 2009… and in many ways it was until this issue.
warning – spoilers below!
So this concludes the grand battle of the Time Trapper against the Legion of… well, as it turns out way more than three worlds. And in the last issue we found out the great Legion nemesis (Time Trapper) was really a future alternate timeline version of Superboy-Prime… very cool! Maybe a tad underwhelming for long term Legion fans, but nevertheless pretty cool!
This issue Brainiac pits Time Trapper against Superboy-Prime and they beat each other out of existence. Yet again, pretty neat… but here’s the problem. SP (Superboy-Prime) gets “re-booted” back on Earth-Prime (which was re-created) and he is now powerless, still an evil mego-maniac, and put back right in front of his parents house. Well, his parents and ex-girlfriend Lori have been following what he has been doing through reading DC Comics (Infinite Crisis, Final Crisis, Sinestro Corps, Legion of Three Worlds, etc.) and they are aghast at his behavior and Lori runs off. They are aghast at his behavior, but not aghast that their lives are the plot of a comic book… hmmmmmm. We find out later he did something dastardly to Lori (even without super powers he apparently can still kill a farm girl type) and his threatening his parents into obeying his every whim. Pretty weak… dad, get a gun and put this kid down. And then on top of that SP is reading Legion of Three Worlds issue #5 and then he turns and starts yelling at us the readers (thus breaking the fourth wall), claiming he isn’t going away and we think he is powerless but he will return. Then he turns around and goes to the DCU website “They’ll never get rid of me, I’ll always survive” he claims as the issue closes. WTH? Inter-dimensional Internet? reality-altering wikipedia powers? Evil fan-fiction? who knows… a very lame Morrison-like ending for a great Johns series.
issue grade: A-
series grade: A
