Threeboot Introduction!

Hi everyone - I really apologize for the delay in content here, but a ton of (great) life events happening at once will do that!  

So you have all seen the DnA R/R - I'm now going to do a more in depth R/R of the Threeboot.  Its one era that I've never gone through completely.  I remember reading this monthly when it first came out, even though I was very upset about the cancellation of the reboot, and I very much liked the first year or so of the run.  But I don't remember a whole lot after that, or much at all from the Shooter run.  

So let's get started with the Intro story that appeared at the end of the Legion/Titans special that ended the Reboot. *sob*  Just kidding.  Well only sorta. But Kinetix was out of commission so she never dies in Lo3W. So there. I'll shut up now....

Teen Titans/Legion Special - "Teenage Wonderland"

Released October 6, 2004
DC Comics, Color
8 Pages

Mark Waid - Writer
Barry Kitson - Artist
Chris Blythe - Colors
Stephen Wacker - Editor

Synopsis

Shikari fades into a new reality. We cut to a scenes of adults deriding Legion symbols, comics and their rebellious ideologies. A couple's canoodling in a car awkwardly ends when the boy sees his girlfriend wearing a Super logo shirt.

Elsewhere a boy is writing a letter to his parents, planning to do something.  His parents walk in and confront him with a similar Anti-Legion attitude, but the father is much more aggressive, grounding the son. The world order of the parents is there to protect the kids, but the son is angry about how stifling that world is and insults his father. He gets a slap from his father in return and the parents leave. 

The boy jumps out the window as his note finishes, where he says he just wants to be free. As he falls out the window, he puts on a Legion ring which removes him from his parents' surveillance but also allows him to fly.  He joins the Threeboot Legion waiting for him in the sky above Metropolis. 

Commentary

This comic short is designed for one specific thing - to give readers of the reboot Legion a taste of what the new title will bring, namely a new look and thesis for this team. Given that the story is written by Mark Waid and drawn by Barry Kitson it does it's job extremely well.

The story is presented with the trope that the boy will try to commit suicide, but then ends up with the Legion instead because of his magic ring. It also provides a lot of other interesting tidbits about this run in a very short space:

1.The universe is very stable, to the point where children are almost cocooned in control and constantly monitored by something called the Public Service.  

2.The Legion is a movement of rebellion from that control.

3.The adults hate the Legion.

It's really a master class in comic storytelling where the images tell as much as the dialog - its extremely economically done with panel density compressing into the middle of the story then expanding back out. And Kitson's art - its just great. 

A couple other items:

* Even though he's not named, I've always assumed the boy is Lyle Norg.

* When Lyle joins the Legion at the end, Atom Girl/Shrinking Violet is clearly in the group shot although in the ongoing she's referred to as a myth until months down the line.

* In the first full story page, a parent is shown ripping in half, the issue #0 of the prior LSH run from 10 years prior when the Reboot debuted.  I wonder if Dan DiDio made that call?  ;)  Seriously it wouldn't surprise me if it was Mark Waid as an inside joke.

Grade: A