“Our chances went from zero to seven percent” and with Vril Dox at the helm, that’s essentially a guaranteed success.
What They Say
The legacy of the Legion of Super-Heroes lives on in this first collection of a new DC series. Brainiac 2, former member of the Legion, is now a hunted man. His cosmic police force safeguarded over 80 worlds until a mysterious adversary suddenly seized control. Now he must recruit a new team to win back his command and free countless billions. And this time, he’s basing his new group on the greatest heroes and villains of the 31st Century! But can Brainiac assemble his team fast enough to stop Starro and his horde from conquering a universe?
The Review:
The DC Universe has always held a fascination with the galactic setting that it created and it has continually built upon it. Though often we see it mostly through various large scale crossover events, the last few years has seen a continued steady growth of interest in it due to the Green Lantern franchise and its Corps book which spent almost all of its time out in space. Add in a few miniseries and the Rann/Thanagar war, Adam Strange and the trips that Superman takes out there and it’s a wide and varied field that can be played with. DC has built up an impressive diverse set of worlds and cultures over the decades. What has defined a lot of it isn’t in the present but rather the future as the Legion of Super-Heroes worked through a lot of it when it comes to the relationships of the planets. Those who write for the modern DC books extrapolated that to the past and have found a huge amount of material they can mine.
Through the 90’s we saw a fair bit of action on this front stemming from the Invasion series which gave us the Dominators front and central and that led into the creation of the L.E.G.I.O.N series which renamed itself each year by the year of publication. That book, along with Lobo at the time, played fast and loose with the galactic stage by giving us a Coluan named Vril Dox, aka Braniac 2, who set about to create a precursor to the Legion of Super-Heroes a thousand years from now. Vril ran it a bit differently though as it was more of a police force that gained dozens of client worlds over the years through which he used automated peacekeepers to help maintain. The group of ‘heroes’ he worked with changed over time until the whole thing essentially disbanded as a ‘hero’ group. L.E.G.I.O.N. continued on though and we’d see him pop up in various space based series here and there as a background character or a useful deus ex machina because of his brilliance.
With the resurgent interest in the space arena, and a lack of an actual Legion of Super-Heroes formal title, bringing this group back was certainly an intriguing idea. Keeping in mind with how the book used to run though, series writer Tony Bedard changed it up a bit by re-introducing it to audiences by having L.E.G.I.O.N.’s entire operated stolen from Vril Dox right from the outset. On the run and hunted by his own organization, Vril has taken the route of doing what it takes to get it back or destroy it so that his client worlds aren’t in danger. As much of a self serving Coluan as he is, there is something of a sense of responsibility in there with him though it tends to go more to the idea that doing things right now could aid him in his larger overall goals in the future.
And that responsibility has him gathering a new force that he strategically knows is needed in order to secure his headquarters from Silica, the AI that he created to run the day to day operations that has been co-opted. Where his plans take an unexpected course for him is that he finds himself instructed to seek out Supergirl and activate a mnemonic trigger within her which in turn causes him to download something completely unexpected into his mind ‘” a virtual representation of Braniac 5 from the 31st century. Vril is unable to actually vocalize this occurrence to anyone else through a trick by Braniac 5 but he does learn of the significance of his organization and the implications for the future. It’s useful information to him but it sets him to a battle within himself that plays out in front of others at times that takes away some of his cool, calm demeanor and has him looking like a nut.
Much of these first six issues within this graphic novel revolve around him acquiring the team he needs to go to Maltus where Silica is. His ultimate foe isn’t known until late into the book but it’s fun watching him grow his team, from the super strong Tribulus to Wildstar from Starhaven who is actually an early precursor to what the race will become in a thousand years. There are callbacks to the original series as well as Strata is sought out and Vril has to deal with the Khundian he used to employ in Amon Hakk who has been ridiculed on Khund as an example of what went wrong with the species.
R.E.B.E.L.S. moves fast over this run as Vril is continually working towards his goal. There are several sidetracks along the way that serve the greater good and bring old characters back into play as well as introducing new ones. Nods towards other worlds are regular as it keeps to the Legion style of outlining their basics and the Encyclopedia Galactica is trotted out often to explain the diverse worlds and key elements related to the moment. This pacing is really good, though it does get a bit busy at times, as the flow holds over well when reading it in trade format like this. There’s a lot of information brought out here, things that are familiar to those that dabble in the galactic tales of the DC Universe, but it’s a good refresher for those as well as a very good primer for newer readers unfamiliar with it all.
What continues to draw me to this particular part of the DC Universe is Vril Dox himself. I don’t classify him as an anti-hero or a hero. He’s someone who is acting out of his own self interest that often has heroic things happen as well as things that aren’t for the good of some. He’s cold and calculating as he serves as a bridge to the different kind of Braniac’s that we’ve seen over the decades. I love that he’s actually something of a businessman and looks at things coolly and calmly throughout as well as the way that he discards things he no longer needs, which we see a couple of times in this story. But it’s also good to see his responsible side, even if it’s more about his reputation, as he does things like refusing to leave his client worlds under the control of whatever it is that’s taken over his organization.
I’ve never been a huge fan of Tony Bedard’s writing though I liked some of his work on Exiles. With this series, because of the nature of the characters and the way they’re intended to be contrary to each other and often feeling like they’re resigned to working for Dox, his style works pretty well. I also think it helps that he’s not as constricted by things since it’s out in space playing with places that haven’t been dealt with in awhile. He’s able to use the Dominators, a favorite of mine, as they try to deal with changes their society has gone through. There’s some touching upon the Coluans with their changes and other races as well. So much of the galactic stage has undergone changes in the last decade that there’s a lot of room to really define where things go for the future and this title is ideal for playing through the politics of it all since it’s not really a super-hero book with costumes like Green Lantern.
The artwork style of R.E.B.E.L.S. does feel like it’s trying to bring back a bit of what Barry Kitson made so unique with the original series in the late 80’s. The first half of the book is penciled and inked by Andy Clarke while the second half is done by Claude St. Aubin and Scott Hana. The two do have a similar style but the first half of the book has a better look to it but part of that is that it isn’t as large scale. The second half of the book spends more of its time in space and almost entirely off of Earth so it has to deal with larger crowds, more varied planets and a lot of unique material. St. Aubin certainly has a similar style to Clarke but hopefully he’ll break out more into his own as he settles into the series.
In Summary:
I’ve always felt that the original L.E.G.I.O.N. book was underrated as a lot of people saw it purely as a vehicle for Lobo. I loved his role in the book because of how Dox controlled him but it kept the book from standing on its own for many. R.E.B.E.L.S. doesn’t have any big characters in it that are tied to other things and there’s a push for original characters as well as reviving others from the past that allows it to build its own new mythos. In the end, Vril Dox is the main man here and watching someone smart, calculating and usually sure of himself dealing with a new Starro invasion that does not play by the rules of previous Starro’s has R.E.B.E.L.S. set to make its own history. I’ve long wanted this character and this part of the universe to be played with again and the opening salvo of this series has given me everything I wanted. An understanding of the past, a utilization of the present a laying of the foundation for the future while not being constricted by it. Now if only someone could utilize the Darkstars again….
Grade: B+