As someone who’s neither a fan of Superman stories, in general, or of anything relating to The Legion Of Etc. Etc., I feared that my relationship with this comic would be similar to my relationship with Johns’s Flash run.  I enjoyed it at first, but very quickly remembered that I had no rapport with the character, and, ultimately, wasn’t interested, no matter how well it was written.

I tuned out in issue #2 of Flash, but read 3 in hopes that I would reconnect.  But, in that title Johns was focusing on reestablishing a history.  Reminding people who this lost character was.  Putting him in a modern context.  I’m going to pick up his Flash #1, because, to me, Rebirth appears to be more of a historical perspective: here is this out of time adjusting to now.  Here is his history.  I suspect that, beginning with Flash #1, the now reestablished Flash will be less about history, and more about just telling good stories with a character.  I’m not saying Flash Rebirth is badly written.  I’m saying its focus is something I’m not interested in, and involves a character I’m not connected to.

Technically, that’s what’s going on in Adventure Comics.  Superboy has been dead for a year of continuity, and now he needs to readjust to this world.  A world where he is a clone of a beloved superhero and his rival.  A world where he has hurt and betrayed a good chunk of his friends.

Having no history with Superboy (aside from his involvement in all the big Crisises that I’ve read) hasn’t hindered me the way I felt hindered by The Flash.  For me, the Superboy part of this series is a page one for the character.  Yes, he has history, but it’s a backstory that’s being revealed.  I don’t need to know the details of how he betrayed The Titans.  The way he talks about it, you know that it’s something that hurt him, and he’s trying to atone for.  And that’s all the reader needs to know.

Johns’s ability to write an established character as though they are someone entirely new: a creation of his own that happens to have fifty or sixty years of backstory, is what makes him one of the best writers in comics right now.  And I really look forward to the Superboy portions of this comic, and how they’ll evolve.

Francis Manapul’s art is also really engrossing to me.  The perspective on Wonder Girl on the title page seems really odd to me, the legs are at a strange angle, and the shoes look like something Liefeld might have thrown in, but I didn’t notice it on the first read through.  And that’s really my only complaint about his art.  It’s otherwise lush.  I love his background details, the wrinkles on Krypto’s cape, the craters on the moon, his use of shadow, all of it.

My reviews on the art and story for this issue, though, only apply to the Superboy portion.  I’ve heard that the Legion story will become a part of the Superboy story, and I don’t look forward to that.  Not because I don’t like the story or the art; I’m not reading it.  And, before you chastise me for “missing out”, here’s my reason: I don’t care about The Legion.  I’m sure there’s a team you don’t care about: The X-Men, The JSA, Youngbloods, WILDcats, The League Of Extraordinary Gentleman.  Some group with a lot of characters that you just don’t feel like you have the time to get involved with.  Maybe there’s a great story about them at the moment, but you know you’re going to get sucked in and keep reading them even when they, invevitably hit a mediocre period, and branch out into X-Force and Generation X and then there’s all the Wolverine series, and my god Cable & Deadpool, plus….sorry, I just blacked out for a second, there.

Yea, so I’m not reading The Legion story because I don’t want to.  It’s nothing against Johns, Shoemaker or any of the artists (except you, Sal Cipriano, oh, I’ll get you for what you did to my dog with your tiny, tiny vowels!), it just doesn’t interest me.