Saturday – 10 March 2007
I finally did it.

I finally watched KidsWB’s Legion of Super-Heroes cartoon.

And, I liked it.

I’ve been a Legion fan for nearly 30 years. It may have been one of the – if not the – first comics that I collected regularly; I’m a little dodgy on the details, it was either LSH or reprints of 60s X-Men. But, it’s probably the one series that I’ve been the most diligent about collecting.  When I first read about the show, I was curious, but dubious – there had been rumours and whispers about trying an LSH show in the… late 80s or early 90s, I think.  So, I waited… and when I saw that his show had been greenlighted, I was expectant.  Then I saw the character shots and was a little disappointed.
The animation style  isn’t exactly what I would have chosen; I would have preferred a style closer to Bruce Timm’s, as seen in Batman: The Animated Series, Superman: The Animated Series and Justice League/Justice League Unlimited. I will say that it is similarly “distracting” as the animation style used for Teen Titans was… but not as much. I think that this is mainly because LSH doesn’t try to go for the “cheap laugh” by breaking into chibi animation to lighten up some moments. Actually, I just noticed that the style seems like a blending of the Timm style and the style used on Batman Beyond.

Today’s episode was “Lightning Storm,” featuring a team known as the Light Speed Vanguard, whom canny Legion readers will recognize as a thinly-veiled Legion of Super-Villains. One of the members of the LSV was Lightning Lord, Mekt Ranzz… older brother of Legionnaire Lightning Lad. They did a brief “how they got their powers” flashback and showed the sibling rivalry that has been portrayed many times over in the LSH print titles. In an interesting side story, the Legion was holding tryouts back on Earth – something that hasn’t been seen in the print titles in a long time. Astute viewers could see members of the Legion of Substitute Heroes as well as Jacques Foccart, the second Invisible Kid.

The writing was good. The dialogue was pretty snappy. The characterizations were good. And, well… it was just fun. I’ll have to pay more attention to this in… the… future. Wow, I didn’t think about the pun in that until after I had typed it. But, I’m sticking with it anyway.

And, , There is an Interlac TrueType font available for Windows and MacOS.