Saturday – 28 April 2007
“Sundown”

It’s both the name of a Gordon Lightfoot song and today’s episode of Legion of Super Heroes. But, since this is my blog – and it’s a Saturday morning – it’s a fair bet that this post will have very little to do with the song (even though it is a pretty decent song).

This was the first of a two-part episode. It opened strongly, with the Legion taking on the Fatal Five… and getting trounced. While newly-elected leader Bouncing Boy is still reeling from this, an emergency alert is broadcast: The Legion is called to a weapons depot to keep a weapon from being released. No one, not even the guards, know what the weapon is; they just know that it can’t get out. The LSH arrives on the scene and searches for the weapon – which is trying to break free of the facility. Artificial intelligence, go figure. After the weapon goes a couple of rounds with various Legionnaires, Brainiac 5 identifies it: A sun-eater. The sun-eater breaks free and begins a journey towards a nearby star to feed. One problem: It’s a red star, meaning that Superman will be powerless. Undaunted, the LSH pursues and takes on the sun-eater again. The fight was well-choreographed and the characterizations were pretty solid, too. We also got to see Sun Boy in action – for the first time that I’m aware of.

The conclusion airs next week; the previews show a LOT of LSH-related characters engaging the even more-power sun-eater.

As long-time Legion fans know, the sun-eater crisis also involved the death of a Legionnaire: Ferro Lad. In the original comic story, Superboy was going sacrifice himself to detonate a bomb in the sun-eater’s core. He was subdued by Ferro Lad, who carried the bomb to the sun-eater. I will be interested to see if the next episode follows through with this and, if so, how they will treat it.

Long Live the Legion!