Review: Adventure Comics #2

I’m getting to this book a week late, but I still wanted to go ahead and give it a full write-up as it’s an issue I have been looking forward to for some time.

I’m a long-time fan of this incarnation of Superboy.  No one was happier to see him resurrected than me.  There have been stumbling blocks to be sure.  The lateness of Legion of Three Worlds made Conner and Bart’s return to the DCU something less than seemless.  They appeared in minor roles in some books with little to no explanation.  As a reader, I kept waiting to see Superboy and Kid Flash reunited with their Teen Titans teammates.

The most anticipated reunion was definitely Conner and Cassie.  These two had a long history together before Conner’s death in Infinite Crisis.  Frankly, no one has known what to do with Wonder Girl since Conner’s death.  She’s been written as the dumbest blonde in the DCU for a long time now.  (And given the way DC writes women these days, that’s saying something.)

But as much as I was looking forward to seeing Cassie reunited with Conner, I was also dreading it a little.  An entire issue dedicated to the reunion seemed like a recipe for disaster.  Geoff Johns had a tendency to overdo the “teen angst” stuff when he wrote these characters in Teen Titans.  I didn’t want to read an issue of “Dawson’s Creek” in spandex.

The actual issue exceeded my expectations in some ways while living down to them in others.  Johns definitely wallows in the teen angst as I feared he would.  The dialogue is syrupy enough for they cheesiest daytime soap.  But the rest of the issue more than made up for that in my book.

Francis Manapul’s stellar artwork put me in a forgiving mood.  I mean look at Cassie:

Manapul’s Wonder Girl is just too adorable for words.  So of course I want to see the two of them go out for a cuddly little moonlight picnic.  And of course I want to see Krypto light candles with his heat vision.  I even want to see the two of them floating with a picnic table in front of the moon ET style – even if that makes no sense at all.  It’s just so adorably cute.  And we’ve waited a long time for this.

Yeah, the cynical part of me thought the whole thing was over the top sugary sweet.  It was an indulgence.  But after waiting so long, I was ready to indulge.  Even if it meant dialogue that makes “You complete me” sound fresh by comparisson.  Frankly, after the over-the-top grimness of Blackest Night, I was ready for the sugar overload that is this issue.

The issue also includes a Legion back-up story.  As I’ve said before, I’m far from a Legion fan.  But for the most part, I’ve enjoyed Johns’ take on the Legion.  Like most Johns books, you have to read everything he’s written and forget anything written by anyone else.  But since I’ve read very little of the Legion outside of Johns’ work, that’s very easy for me to do.

I found the back-up feature enjoyable.  Johns is clearly setting up a story he will follow up on either in this book or some other.  That’s what Johns does.  I wouldn’t buy the book for the back-up Legion stories, but I didn’t feel cheated by having paid for this one.

On the whole, this issue was another solid outing for Adventure Comics.  It’s been announced that Johns and Manapul will eventually leave this book to work on the Flash and I have to admit I’m bummed.  I’m really enjoying their work here.  I’m not sure I’ll stick around for Levitz’s take on the Legion.  But that’s a worry for another day.

For now, I’m enjoying one of the few upbeat superhero comics DC is offering these days.

Adventure Comics #1

read/RANT

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