Supergirl and the Legion of Super Heroes v5 #18 - Who's the Boss?

Released May 24, 2006
DC Comics, Color
23 Pages

Who's the Boss?

Mark Waid - Writer
Barry Kitson - Layouts
Adam DeKraker - Pencils
Mick Gray & Drew Geraci - Inkers
Nathan Eyring - Colorist
Stephen Wacker - Editor

Synopsis

Our intro scene takes us into the Metropolis underworld and we learn about a centuries old AI civilization that humans created that is connected to the current robot uprising. SP Officers scramble from their HQ including an officer Daggle who transforms into Cham and flies away.

In Brainy's lab, Brainiac 5 is using Imskians to mine Lemnos' power of forgetfulness to help him save Dream Girl. Timber Wolf arrives with a package and discovers that Brainy has Nura's body.

Meanwhile, the Naltorians want Nura's remains, which catches the Legion by surprise.  Saturn Girl tries to probe Supergirl's mind, along with Cosmic Boy, but Kara is unable to remember how she got there. She starts playing with her new flight ring and changes appearances thanks to Invisible Kid. She rushes out after hearing something.

Star Boy goes to visit Projectra, who is creating illusions of her dead parents. The Legion follows Supergirl through the city before diving into the underworld to assist the SPs fighting the robots. Saturn Girl discovers Cham's SP moonlighting as the battle goes on. Ultra Boy tries to show off and gets clocked by a robot. As they clean up the battle, the SPs tell the Legion that the robots were fueling a giant robot with a unique powder.  Kara sees Atom Girl take some as a sample and take it back to Brainy. The rest of the Legion follows and bursts into Brainy's lab and find both Lemnos and Nura.  He is trying to reconstruct Nura's soul. Supergirl has Nura's old ring. The argument is interrupted by Rol Purtha - Dream Boy.

Commentary

Starting with the art - A lot of times when we have seen a Layout/penciller combo it seems to go alright, but this pairing seemed a little off in this issue.  I think it was that it wasn't quite as consistent from page to page, and even there it wasn't as good at it has been.  All that said it wasn't that bad - just not as good as we've been used to in the art department. 

The plot for this issue is OK but nothing special. It's basically a robot bashup with a few character breadcrumbs.  The neat thing that is here, in my opinion, is the concept of the UP/Earth underworld just below the surface of the "perfect" world.  It seems to me that the papering over of the underbelly of society wouldn't work very well without a significant amount of problems manifesting themselves in a much more overt fashion than we've been told, but it does provide a new avenue for stories, which is a good thing. So the worldbuilding is wildly inconsistent, but I don't mind it in this case due to the broader canvas for stories.  The Robot AI storyline is now starting to get fleshed out, so we get a little background on the Earth's past, and all that is mildly interesting. 

Let's talk about this roll-call page for a minute.  Waid literally spent ISSUES telling us how the Imskian member is called ATOM GIRL.  Then, just after her official intro, her roll call name is listed as Shrinking Violet?  Now I don't mind, as I prefer the historical Violet name for Salu, but can we get some consistency here??

The little bits of character moments were pretty good as well - Projectra's was quite sad, and Rokk reacted predictably to hearing about Dream Girl's body. Dream Boy?  I dunno. I guess we'll see. But nice touch with Cham raising his antennae when he shows up.

Chameleon needs to work on his OpSec skills. Using Reep Daggle kind of stands out, but then again, I don't think we've ever heard him addressed by anything other than his codename. 

The pages with Supergirl getting scanned and acclimated were interesting.  We get a page of her with several 21st century heroes, then her playing with her flight ring and changing into variations of her past Danvers incarnations.  It's still a bit inconsistent about what the ring does in terms of changing appearances, although I'm sure this scene was more of an easter egg than anything else.

Interesting how Brainiac 5 himself seems to be against the Boy/Girl code names. I'm also curious to see if they go further into the Colu/Imsk connections. 

"Shut up and enjoy the view," Jo says while flying behind Kara. Someone really needs to Giffen that jerk, but I'll settle for cheering when the robot clocked him good. Good joke on his expense too about Kara not seeing anything in his head. 

Rokk: "So we follow."  Garth: "Spoken like a true leader." Darkly amusing, I guess.

Grade - B-.  Everything is a step above average here.