Book One
Geoff Johns – Writer
George Pérez – Pencils
Scott Koblish – Inker
Hi-Fi – Colorist
Nick Napolitano – Letters
Adam Schlagman – Asst. Editor
Eddie Berganza – Editor
Cover: George Pérez & Dave McCaig
Silver Cover: George Pérez & Hi-Fi
Just like the Rogues' Revenge miniseries, the main covers here will focus on just one character. But where Scott Kolins went with a more stylized look, Pérez tried a more realistic look, which comes off rather odd. Lightning Lad's face just looks a little off. But I do like the detail of the other two Lightning Lads in the ball of lightning.
I don't know why DC calls this the "silver cover" — there's nothing silver about it. I just know this as the variant cover nobody wanted. When I picked up this series from my local comic shop a few years ago, they only had this variant cover for four of the five issues. Besides the major drawback of the massive red stripes on the sides, this cover isn't too bad. Superboy-Prime is back. Angry as ever, wearing his Anti-Monitor armor again, and no longer looking like a Superman-Prime.
Our story begins at the end. The end of time, that is. We see a figure wrapped in bandages and shrouded by a purple cloak, known as the Time Trapper. He laments his inability to kill the Legionnaires, comparing them to the cockroaches inhabiting his floating city. The Time Trapper decides to reach into time stream to pull out Superboy-Prime and put him in position to destroy the Legion.
Superboy-Prime crash lands into a farmer's field in Smallville in the year 3008. The xenophobic farmers believe this to be another alien trespassing on their property, so they attempt to kill him like they have killed many others. The massive blast from the laser gun destroys all of Prime's clothes — except for a small rag that conveniently covers his genitals. The farmers recognize him as Superboy, but Prime immediately kills them with a blast of heat vision, saying he's Superman.
Prime flies into town, finding the streets empty except for a robot walking dogs. He disdainfully realizes he's in the future, and quickly locates a Superman Museum. The museum isn't open yet, but Prime lets himself in and is greeted by a hologram of Jimmy Olsen to act as his personal tour guide. Prime is quite bored and disgusted by the whole museum, until he comes to the Hall of Villains. Using his x-ray vision, Prime is horrified to find the statue of himself has been buried in the back storage. The Jimmy Olsen hologram explains they're moving the Sepberboy-Prime statue to make way for Neutron, which was being repainted. He says Superboy-Prime was a loser barely worth mentioning, calling him a Clark Kent from a parallel Earth long dead, who was always whining about how our Earth wasn't as "perfect" as his. He then briefly recounts how Superboy-Prime was beaten by Kid Flash, Superboy and Sodam Yat.
Prime begins stuttering at the Kid Flash part, saying Bart Allen cheated by having all the Flashes gang up on him. He also becomes enraged by the museum's portrayal of his other two major battles, claiming "This isn't how anything happened!" He begins destroying all the statues of the villains, saying he's more significant than all of them. By the time he moves on to tearing apart the Teen Titans statues, the security guards catch up to him. But Prime kills them all with his freeze breath.
Prime then begins working on the statues of the Legionnaires, while the Jimmy Olsen hologram tells him all about the Legion of Super-Villains. This catches Prime's attention, so he has the hologram teach him that all those villains are currently on the prison planet of Takron-Galtos. So Prime puts on the clothes his mannequin wore (apparently the Anti-Monitor armor works) and he flies off to that prison planet. He easily fights through the guards and frees Lightning Lord, Saturn Queen and Cosmic King. To Prime's surprise, these three not only recognize him, but praise him as their inspiration and guide. They gladly agree to help him, believing he'll lead them to their final victory.
The Legion of Super-Heroes learn of this, so they call in Superman from the present day. Brainiac 5's message comes from Superman's concealed Legion ring on his finger, asking him to help. When Superman says "yes" the ring becomes a "rip cord" pulling him to the 31st century. When Superman arrives in the future, he sees a monitor showing the prison planet covered in massive fires in the shape of the Superman "S" shield. The Legionnaires explain that a young man that looks like Superman was seen destroying the Superman Museum and all of Smallville, before releasing all the prisoners of Takron-Galtos and destroying that entire planet.
Superman is able to identify Superboy-Prime, saying the last he heard of him, Prime disappeared after killing one of the guardians of the universe. Brainiac 5 says since they're up against a super-powered brat from a parallel world, their solution is obvious. He puts up images of the two other Legions on the monitors and says they need to fight fire with fire. Superman warns the Legionnaires of Prime's rage, saying he won't ever stop ... not unless they do something drastic. Lightning Lad assumes this means killing Prime, but Superman says that's probably not even possible anymore. Instead, he suggests they try to reach out to Prime, to find the boy who helped save the universe during the Crisis on Infinite Earths. In short, Superman says they need to redeem Superboy-Prime.
This is the beginning of a huge, sprawling epic. It's Johns at his finest, teaming up with one of the few artists who could pull off such a feat. To DC's credit, they insisted on allowing Pérez draw each issue of this five-part miniseries. Unfortunately, this task would prove too daunting for even Pérez to meet a monthly deadline. Think about it. Each Legion has more than 20 members, and Pérez has to draw three different versions of all those characters. Not to mention the 20-plus members in the Legion of Super-Villains and any other fun little extras Pérez wants to put in the background. Needless to say, this is a beautiful, well-done series, but it did suffer from some publication delays.
The story itself has a very strong premise. Superboy-Prime is back and angrier than ever. And now he has a whole army behind him. But, he's still the same, insecure whiney brat, who is terrified of Bart Allen. And that puts a smile on my face. The only part I didn't like is Johns' insistence that every single artifact we see in any museum is the authentic thing. It makes no sense for a museum 1,000 years in the future to put real Anti-Monitor armor on a mannequin. It's just an annoying plot convenience. Still a fun story, though. We'll return to this series, but not for a little bit. Until then, let's check out the ads:
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In the DC Nation page, Dan DiDio announces a deal he made with Dwayne McDuffie to bring some Milestone characters over to DC.
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What's within your soul? Soul Calibur IV for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
Next time, we'll wrap up the Rogues' Revenge miniseries and learn the final fate of poor old Thaddeus Thawne.
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