Adventure Comics 519 (December 2010) 

Legion of Super-Heroes – Writer – Paul Levitz and Artist – Eduardo Pansica 

The Atom – Writer – Jeff Lemire and Artist – Mahmud Asrar 

Remember a few reviews ago where I said I was reading comics from a random short box in alphabetical order? Well, I decided to start at the beginning of the box and here is A for Adventure Comics! 

DC Comics tried to hold the line at $2.99 for as long as they could before bumping the cover price up to $3.99. To justify the price increase, they started having a main story and a Second Feature which wasn’t too bad of an idea. That is, unless you didn’t have an interest in the back-up story and wished that DC just had a super-sized issue of one title every month. Or you didn’t like any of the pairings matched up at all and that title sat on the comic rack until it was relegated to the dollar bin. 

In this issue, Paul Levitz shares a tale of the Legion’s past featuring the Legion Espionage Squad trying to thwart the plans of evil warlord Zaryan and Cosmic Boy, Saturn Girl, Lightning Lad, and Brainiac 5 traveling to the past to spend the day with Superboy in Smallville. In the Second Feature, The Atom battles the evil scientific group The Colony and is rescued by…his uncle Dave? Uncle Dave reveals the origin of the Colony, how he was part of it back in the day, and why they have an interest in Ray Palmer in the present. 

I can’t remember if this was a random buy at a local magazine shop or if I had it on my pull list. I might have been on a LOSH kick back in 2010. The LOSH is full of action both in the present and the past and I liked the reason Brainiac 5 and company travel back to visit Superboy instead of the Kid of Steel traveling to the future. The surprising part of the Atom story was seeing that Jeff Lemire wrote it. This totally caught me off guard but now I can let people know that he wrote this short story and blow their minds! I liked how The Atom has to fend off The Colony as both hero and villain are smart and formidable in their own right. Exploring Ray Palmer’s familial history is a nice touch because there isn’t a lot known about his private life outside his friendship with Hawkman and his relationship with Jean Loring. 

DC Comics has reintroduced the backup feature in their new releases but I’m not entirely sure they learned their lesson from way back when. Some backup stories are still hit or miss except now the comics are up to $4.99/$5.99. Hopefully DC Comics can find a new and different way to justify the increased price of comics to ensure ALL of the comic is read and enjoyed by their readers far and wide.