Legion of Super-Heroes: The Choice collects issues #1-6 of Legion of Super-Heroes, originally published in 2010. Like other recent DC hardcovers, production quality is poor: unfinished boards, medium-gloss paper, and a sloppy glue job (in my copy a few of the pages were stuck together). Unlike their recent graphic novels, however, DC has finally kept the original copy detailing each issue's creative team; it is thus now possible to tell who contributed what to each issue. DC has also included what is for them a surprising number of extras: variant covers (and a brief explanation of their conception), try-out pages for Yildiray Cinar, and character studies and designs.
The story, by Paul Levitz, picks up a number of plot threads left over from Geoff Johns's excellent Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes and Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds. While hatred for aliens continues to bubble on Earth, political maneuvering by Earthgov requires the Legion to induct the xenophobic Earth-Man as their newest member. Meanwhile, a new Time Institute on Titan unwittingly unleashes a cosmic-level catastrophe that has the secondary effect of producing a new Green Lantern. If this weren't enough, Levitz also stirs into the mix a scheming group of Durlans, an evil cult on Avalon, and (at the end) a new roster of Legion recruits. This is phenomenally good writing with characters who develop and change as the story progresses and a world as sophisticated and imaginative as anything you'll find in a super hero comic today. The artists--Yildiray Cinar, Wayne Faucher, Franics Portela, and (for a brief segment) Phil Jimenez and Soctt Koblish--do a fantastic job bringing the plot to life. Their work is heavily in the super hero tradition (their layouts, for instance, lack any weirdness or notable experimentation), but unusual care and attention has been given to rendering the many characters, especially their facial expressions.
The one big problem with this graphic novel is editorial: the editors have provided no background or context to help newer readers enter into the storyline. Would it have been too difficult for DC to provide a 1-2 page summary of the events of Johns's recent work on the Legion? Marvel provides such summaries in most of their graphic novels--and even in their monthly books. Without a summary or primer, The Choice will be hard going for new readers on account of its giant cast of characters and its dependence on events taken place in other series. Of course, if you've been following Legion of Super-Heroes for the past few years, you'll have no problem jumping into this book. More casual readers, however, are probably better off starting with Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes or even Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes: The Early Years or the timeless Legion of Super-Heroes: The Great Darkness Saga (Deluxe Edition).
