Farmer, Mark
AVERAGE REVIEW SCORE:
3 out of 5
(2 books)
TOP PICK:
Superboy's Legion: Book 1 Of 2
Superboy's Legion: Book 1 Of 2
(Art by Alan Davis and Mark Farmer)
An Elseworlds story in which Kal-El's escape ship isn't discovered until the year 2987. Chafing against the restrictive society on Earth of the future, young Superboy sets off to form a team in the style of the 20th Century superheroes. He and his Legion are then faced with their first challenge; an asteroid about to destroy an inhabited world.
I absolutely despise the Legion of Superheroes. Always have. It's a combination of their designs, which manage to be brightly-coloured and bland at the same time, their chirpy pre-teen enthusiasm and their absolutely terrible names. Element Lad. Cosmic Boy. Ugh, pass me the sick bucket. It's safe to say that I wasn't too stoked about this book going in and, for the majority of it, I felt vindicated in my hesitance. All of the Silver Age perkiness (and terrible dialogue) that I've always hated about the Legion was there in spades, made worse by a singularly irritating iteration of Superboy too.
However, I will give the book credit for jumping up a couple of notches in its last act, wherein the perky optimism of the Legion crashes headlong into a group of adult supervillains who are genuinely killers and not afraid to use their powers to that effect. It was a nice dose of harsh reality for the main characters that this book sorely needed.
3 out of 5
Superboy's Legion: Book 2 Of 2
(Art by Alan Davis and Mark Farmer)
The second half of this Elseworlds story opens with the Legion reeling from their defeat at the hands of the Fatal Five. With the team fragmenting, those few willing and able to fight on set off to save Brainiac 5 from the clutches of the evil genius Lex Luthor.
Whilst I continue to hate the Legion of Superheroes (and their stupid names), I've got to give Mark Farmer credit for giving me the first story about them that I didn't loathe. With their childish chirpiness taken down a notch by their brutal defeat at the end of the first book, the characters here are much less insufferable and we get an old fashioned story of a disparate team of underdogs having to find their strength and cohesion to defeat a foe beyond any of them individually.
It's still not great, but it is 'fine', which is something I never thought I'd say about a Legion story.
3 out of 5
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DC Comics (here)