The Brave and the Bold #5 - The Lords of Luck! Batman and the Legion!

Released July 18, 2007
DC Comics, Color
23 Pages

The Lords of Luck, Chapter 5 - The Batman of Tomorrow

Mark Waid & George Perez - Storytellers
Bob Wiacek - Inks
Tom Smith - Colors
Rob Leigh - Letters
Stephanie Buscema - Asst. Editor
Joey Cavalieri - Editor

Synopsis

A merged Batman/Tharok wakes with the Batman half disoriented while the Tharok half explains that they are in the hands of the Legion of Super Heroes in the 31st century. Brainiac 5 is working to separate the two into their own bodies and explains the utopia of the 31st century to Batman - they have the amazing power to do anything with one exception: Time Travel.

Invisible Kid fanboys all over Batman and asks how he came to the 31st century with the Fatal Five (where they were found by the Legion in issue #4). Batman does a one panel flashback explaining the device called the Haruspex not only merged him with Tharok (in issue #3) but then also transported them to the 31st century. Chameleon is running diagnostics on the Haruspex while Brainy detects chronal energy surges on Batman.  

Out of nowhere, a squad of robots appears and attacks the Legion and Batman. Lightning Lad and Light Lass handle the robots, anachronistic AI bots from the past, while another portal opens and extinct Rimborian Razor birds attack.  Cham handles the birds while Batman, Lightning Lad and Light Lass handle the robots.  Invisible Kid takes down a robot while the melee spreads out among all the participants.  It appears that Batman being out of time is like a magnet drawing anachronistic creatures through time to attack him.  Batman commands Brainiac 5 to use the Haruspex on him but nothing happens as the battle ends. 

Batman has had enough. He whaps Brainy and Garth then uses smoke tablets to escape with the Haruspex leaving the five Legionnaires in the lab. The Legionnaires fly away to track Batman, except for Brainy.  It turns out that Batman stole his flight ring!

We then shift to Rann in the 21st century to check in on Supergirl,Green Lantern and Adam Strange for the other part of the overall story arc. Supergirl pulls the other two out of a battle with Thanagarians and get a quick story update from Hal & Adam. Hal is chasing after a Rannian underground agent who stole the Book of Fate to help in the battle of the Rannians versus the Thanagarians.  The trio goes into a jungle to talk to the new Rannian general, who happens to be the book thief. He's using the Book of Fate to combat the Thanagarian Absorbascon spy technology. But it appears that the Luck Lords have found the heroes and the book.

Back in the 31st century, even the Science Police are looking for Batman, but he's invisible to the monitoring tech of the 31st due to the stolen flight ring.  Colossal Boy, Triplicate Girl and Shrinking Violet (yes, you read that right) are on his trail. Batman ties Triplicate Girl up together, blocking her from merging. Vi is in pursuit but then is taken down by a Bat-spitball.  The rest of the team keeps tracking Batman in pairs.

Batman takes out an invisible Invisible Kid by hearing his breathing but that was all a diversion for Karate Kid. The two spar in the air until another beastie appears through a time rift and attacks. Batman gets away in the confusion.

Phantom Girl and Star Boy are next up. They track the flight ring and find it in an underground station sitting on top of the Haruspex in plain sight. Of course, its a trap. Star Boy is zapped unconscious as soon as he picks up the ring and Batman appears. Tinya picks up the Haruspex and threatens to use it when another rift opens.  This time, Dream Girl steps out of the rift, who Tinya is surprised to see since Nura's dead. 

The rest of the Legionnaries charge to Phantom Girl's location when Saturn Girl (tracking with Element Lad) telepathically commands the team to stop. Batman is trying to SAVE the 31st century. He pulled in Dream Girl to this point specifically to help Tinya. Nura sees only chaos if Tinya does nothing and urges her to fire the weapon.  She does so and... nothing seems to happen.  

Except for the Luck Lord who appears with the Book of Fate and the Haruspex.....

TO BE CONTINUED

Commentary

When I first began this Threeboot project, I was aware of the Brave and the Bold appearance, but I wanted to make sure that I did the entire Threeboot run sequentially rather than including it in its chronological order, which should be between v5 #31 and #32.  Perhaps not so coincidentally, this is after Mark Waid had left the Supergirl and the Legion title, reportedly due to the shenanigans with the Lightning Saga in the JSA/JLA titles at the time.  But this book (and the Lords of Luck story overall) begins in January of 2007, so its reasonable to assume that Waid had written a decent amount of this story arc, which included "his" Legion as part of the story well before his departure from the Legion title itself.

This is interesting in two ways.  Brave and the Bold is very much like a World's Finest book where you have a couple central protagonists from the main universe paired up (sometimes more than two) so that readers can be introduced to a new title.  The story here in Brave and the Bold 5, set during the Threeboot continuity 31st century, hits a few beats about the utopian paradise that has borderline totalitarian state monitoring where the Legion flight ring is a means of hiding from it. That specific beat, which is the least interesting window dressing of this particular universe in my opinion, is pretty much tossed out the window at this point in time of the Bedard transition era before Shooter takes over.  

The second interesting things is the intro splash page. The image of the Earth is re-oriented to have North America be in the equatorial region (and therefore Australia be in an arctic region) as mentioned early on in the LSH v5 series.  Also, the lineup of the Legion members includes Dream Girl (who is "dead"), Dream Boy, Supergirl and Mon-El (back in the Phantom Zone), all of which were part of the main Legion story at the time this was likely written.  

Finally, on the timing note - this was published a few months after Waid's final LSH issue, and the editor's note on Page 4 (digital) says that this is PRIOR to the events of the Lightning Saga, which featured the OG/Retro "Johns" Legion.  Its very telling that the editors here needed to make a statement about where this story took place in a continuity that was not that of the team in the Legion title that was actually running. Huge examples of DC just not understanding how to handle the Legion as a property. 

Now on to the story itself.  This brings together two of my favorite things in comics - Batman and the Legion.  Its a good continuation of the overall Lords of Luck story arc and moves at a pretty good clip with the main points being that Brainy is an ass and that the Legion, despite being from a millennium in the future, is no match for Batman, as he outsmarts them at every single turn.  The Karate Kid face-off was well done, with Batman basically telling Val to focus better, but I was kind of disappointed by the appearance of Dream Girl.  Her appearance felt very "check the box" as she is considered a "core Legionnaire" but had been killed off. 

That said, I'll be tuning in to the next issue as I want to see how this all wraps up.  As one would expect of Waid, he's handling an entire Legion, plus Batman, Tharok, Adam Strange, Supergirl and Green Lantern, and most characters, visually and/or in dialogue, comes across with a fairly distinct voice.

One other odd thing that really jumped out - Shrinking Violet is referred to as just that, and not the "Atom Girl" that we had been hit over the head with for a few years at this point.  A very odd decision and one that reinforces my thinking that the Dream Girl aspect was a "check the box" exercise.  Atom Girl would have confused a new reader. 

The detour to Rann was fun for me, as I am currently also reading through the Adam Strange Silver Age omnibus, so having him along for the ride on this story is fun. 

The Perez art was just great to look at, although I felt that the inks were just a bit too heavy, but nothing overly distracting. 

Grade: B.  A page-turning read with a lot of my favorite characters.