JL vs. LSH #4

It’s time once again to board our time bubble and journey to the 31st century for another adventure with the Legion of Super-Heroes as they tag-team the formidable Great Darkness in tandem with the Justice League.

Justice League vs. The Legion of Super-Heroes: The Gold Lantern Saga, #4 of 6
Writer: Brian Michael Bendis, Penciller: Scott Godlewski
DC Comics, July 2022

Plot

We pick up the action with various groups of JL-ers and Legionnaires strewn about the time-space continuum by the last Great Darkness tremor:

• Brainiac 5, Mon-El, and Naomi in the apocalyptic future with Kamandi.
• Gold Lantern in 1930s Metropolis where he meets up with the original Green Lantern.
• Colossal Boy, Dawnstar, and Wonder Woman in 1960s Metropolis.
• Cosmic Boy, Lightning Lad, and Saturn Girl in Neo-Gotham with future Batman, Terry McGinnis.
• Dream Girl, Wildfire, Black Adam, and Hawkgirl in an undisclosed time-space location .
• Ultra Boy and Aquaman in the era of dinosaurs.

Another group of JL-ers and Legionnaires, not impacted by the tremor and remaining in 31st-century Metropolis, includes Bouncing Boy, Chameleon Boy, Karate Kid, Shadow Lass, Triplicate Girl, White Witch, Batman, and Black Canary. Rose Forrest emerges for the first time in this series, and as “special United Planets liaison for the LSH,” leads this combined group to the U.P. Council where they futilely petition Madam President R.J. Brande for assistance.

As Brainiac 5 attempts to jerry-rig an escape solution using Mon-El’s flight ring and Naomi’s smart phone, the Legion’s AI member, Computo, devises a “temporal group reversal using the flight rings as a tether.” All of the heroes are then successfully transported en masse to 21st-century Metropolis.

Comments

Over the course of the first four issues of this series, we’ve seen JL-ers and Legionnaires getting strewn about the time-space continuum by Great Darkness tremors and very little else. There wasn’t much in this issue that developed the “Gold Lantern Saga” thread in the storyline as was expected. It was interesting to see some of the “versus” rivalry advertised in the title of this series begin to emerge as the JL-ers angrily suspect the Great Darkness is linked to the Legion’s “abusing the time stream for selfish pursuits.” Bendis has two more installments to put some oomph into this series. I, of course, welcome any new Legion story, but I can imagine other readers are starting to become über frustrated. Our local comic shop stocked many copies of this series’ initial installments, including alternate covers, but that’s declined to just a few copies with this issue.

Blok, Monster Boy, and Green Arrow show up at the conclusion and I’m guessing they were teamed-up in some unspecified time-space zone. Legionnaires missing in action include Dr. Fate, Element Lad, Invisible Kid, Lightning Lass, Matter-Eater Lad, Phantom Girl, Princess Projectra, Shrinking Violet, Star Boy, Sun Boy, Timber Wolf, and X-Ray Girl. It was good to see Rose Forrest finally make an appearance, which leaves Ferro Lad as the only Bendis-era Legionnaire who has yet to be featured in this series. JL-ers MIA were Flash and Superman.