The Good

A solid show that illuminates a little more about Clark Kent for us.

The Bad

There’s only 4 episodes and there’s not much in the way of features.

Featuring an all star cast of superheroes like Superman, Bouncing Boy, Brainiac 5 and others, Legion of the Superheroes, Vol. 1 is a 4 episode set that is sure to pique the interest of comic book fans and cartoon watchers the world over. The episodes in this set are:

  • Man of Tomorrow

  • Timber Wolf

  • Legacy

  • Phantoms

The crux of this show is that the aforementioned Superheroes must go back in time and convince Clark Kent of his destiny. As you can guess, being one of the saviors of the world is a daunting proposition for just about anybody. Clark’s life is made more complicated because he’s younger here, so he has to deal with a host of other issues that come along with adolescence. Whether this Superhero Legion is battling mad scientists, phantoms with powers greater than their own or the evil Fatal Five, Legion of the Superheroes, Vol. 1 always manages to keep the dialogue sparse and the on-screen action both interesting and exciting.

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Features

We Are Legion

Taking a look at this show from its beginnings as a comic book to the animated series that it eventually became in 2006, Paul Levitz of DC press talks about how they had a lot to draw from from to create this show as the comics dealing with these characters began in 1958. Also discussed is how this Legion became the template for teen superheroes, and how every few years new writers come in and put their spin on these characters and the genre in general. Lastly, they also wisely touch upon the idea that these things focus on Clark’s story as opposed to mainly Superman’s.

Video

Standard Version. Presented in a format preserving the aspect ratio of its original television exhibition. The compression on this release was pretty darn stellar. While I am not 100% sure of what you would call the animation style, I liked the sharp lines and minimalist approach that this release had. There wasn’t a ton of detail but sometimes simplicity in presentation is precisely what you want so you can follow the stories going on. This was certainly the case here.

Audio

Dolby Digital. English and French Dolby Surround Stereo. The audio for this release was decent. I was a bit surprised when I saw how loud I needed to turn things up, but once I got things leveled on my small TV everything played about as well as I thought it might. There wasn’t too much happening with the sound but I don’t know that anyone interested in this DVD is going to care about that. There was the requisite music to let us know who were the good guys and who were the bad guys, sound effects underscored the action scenes, and overall things played pretty typically.

Package

The front of this colorful DVD features Superman along with the other members of the Legion. I really like the way the characters have been rendered as in some ways they are disproportioned and this plays into the idea of them being young, awkward teenagers. The back cover gives us a shot of Superman flying through the air, some images from the various episodes, a description of what this DVD is about, episode listings, Special Features and system specs.

Final Word

This was a very well done show. While I think that people sometimes make too much of a big deal about Superheroes, comics and those kinds of things in general, all in all I liked Legion of the Superheroes, Vol. 1’s light touch. This isn’t to say that the genre shouldn’t be taken seriously, (maybe we are having too much of a Superhero renaissance now?), but I find that the characters in these stories be it Superman, Batman, Wolverine, etc. all seem to somewhat be the same. Then it seems like these characters get overanalyzed to the point that anything that may have been interesting about them is lost. Here I didn’t find that to be a problem. The subjects in the Special Feature all seem to know where they wanted to go with these stories, but I never felt like any of the motives or actions displayed were entering the aforementioned, over-analytical territory.

Legion of the Superheroes, Vol. 1 is yet another solid release from our friends at Warner Bros. The animation is well conceived, the execution flawlessly put across and overall this is one of the stand out, smaller Superhero releases that I have had the pleasure of reviewing.

Legion of Super-Heroes was released .