DC Comics Presents #80 (2024 Comic Book & Graphic Novel Reading Challenge)

With over a hundred members to have been active with the Legion of Super-Heroes at one time or another, if you could select a team of 5, who would you select? Logic might dictate picking the original big 3- Cosmic Boy, Saturn Girl and Lightning Lad. You'd also want to add Superboy to the mix. However, for the sake of this time travel team-up involving Superman, let's omit both him and his cousin Supergirl. #4 needs to be have some brain power. Who better than Brainiac 5 to fill that slot. That still leaves a 5th Legionnaire to choose. Do you go with the rotund Bouncing Boy? The ravenous Matter Eater Lad? How about the heavenly Dawnstar or the master of Martial Arts, the Karate Kid?

If you're the creative team for DC Comics Presents #80, you go totally rogue and select members that only the staunchest of Legionnaire fans might know. Paul Kupperberg and Curt Swan join forces to pit Ultra Boy, Chameleon Boy, Shrinking Violent, Phantom Girl and Element Lad against a legion of Superman robots!

Returning from a mission, this handful of Legionnaires emerge from a stargate straight into the void of space! Thanks to some quick work by Element Lad, the heroes survive the lack of oxygen. The planet Earth of the year 3000 is gone. In it's place is a floating replica of Metropolis circa 1985. The Legionnaires arrive on the planetoid to find it filled with countless androids of steel intent on destroying the heroes! 

We soon learn that the Legionnaires are stuck in a pocket dimension of the newly upgraded Brainiac. Recent events have resulted in the robot villain needing to run computations before he goes back up against the Master Programmer and his angel of death (Superman). Brainiac has pulled the Legionnaires from the timeline into his simulation in order to perfect it when the time comes to confront Superman. However, the cries of these futuristic heroes actually cross dimensions, bringing the true Man of Steel to the rescue. Only, the Legionnaires think he's another Superman robot!

The oddball selection of heroes is a tale-tell sign that this is a Paul Kupperberg story. Over his long career, Kupperberg has had a devotion to the lesser tiered characters of the DC Universe. We're talking C-listers and lower and yet the fans love it. 

As for knowing this is a Curt Swan penciled work, there are ways you can tell. All of the male humanoid characters have that slightly puffy forehead indicating a receding hairline. Superman looks less muscular and more beefy, like that of actor George Reeves. Plus, when the Man of Tomorrow flies straight ahead, Swan typically poses Superman with his arms spread far apart and his legs separated in a V shape. Only Superman isn't keeping up appearances using a glider like he does on the cover of Superman #229.

An interesting read that requires reading of several issues of Action Comics, #544-546, in order to truly understand the background behind Brainiac's intentions. It's one of the more unlikely line-ups of the Legion of Super-Heroes. Yet, based on the situations Paul Kupperberg puts the heroes into, it actually works.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.

Completing this review completes Task #48 (A Team-Up) of the 2024 Comic Book and Graphic Novel Reading Challenge.