Review: REBELS: Sons of Brainiac trade paperback (DC Comics)

With REBELS: Sons of Brainiac, writer Tony Bedard presents two stories, one focused firmly on REBEL's driving force Vril "Don't call him Brainic 2" Dox, and the other purportedly on REBEL's supporting cast. The former is a pulse-pounding story that continues to forward the book's themes of family and emotion-among-the-emotionless; the latter, however, falls relatively flat, and as such reveals some of the flaws of this (unfortunately already cancelled) title.

[Contains spoilers]

The seemingly non-Dox "What Happens in Vega" story wastes an entire issue bringing former Titan Starfire from Earth to LEGION headquarters, and then another issue on the same fight between Starfire and her sister Blackfire that we're seen numerous times in New Titans and the Rann/Thanagar War books. In the third chapter, Dox returns to broker the peace, rendering all the other LEGIONnaires moot. Bedard would seem to be focusing here on characters other than Dox, but to give the already well-established Starfire, Captain Comet, and Adam Strange center stage, while newer characters like Ciji, Xyon, and Wildstar languish behind the scenes. The character Bounder gets one line in the entire book, I believe, and we still don't really know who he is or why he's with the team.

Clearly, Vril Dox leads the LEGION, but he also leads the book. I much prefer Wildstar and Bounder, the characters Bedard started with in REBELS: The Coming of Starro, to characters like Comet and Starfire whose stories have already been told -- but if Bounder or Xyon no longer have a place in the book, I wouldn't mind Bedard formally jettisoning them. Let REBELS (if the title were surviving) be Dox's book, maybe in charge of a robot LEGION again, and let Comet and Starfire and such be supporting cast members with whom Dox interacts -- all the better so as not to have to mark time with "supporting cast" stories like "Vega" that don't amount to much.

I say all this, mind you, as a fan of the REBELS title. The "Sons of Brainiac" story that follows is just the kind of emotionally-intense story that I've come to enjoy Bedard's REBELS for. The high concept is that Brainiac 3 tries to kidnap the original Brainiac from Dox and the Coluan people so as to steal Brainiac's knowledge, but Brainiac escapes and threatens all of Colu; in truth, however, this is a story about the strained relationship between Dox and his son, and how that's reflected in the equally strained relationship between Dox and Brainiac. Brainiac may be a super-villain, but Dox despises him most because Brainiac never treated Dox like he was good enough or smart enough -- basically, the reader understands, Dox wants the love from his father he never received, and Brainiac 3 wants the same.

Bedard adds some extra spice to the end of this by having Dox seemingly retreat -- only to return with former LEGIONnaire Lobo in tow. While I paused at the inclusion of another "big name" in this book, Bedard writes Lobo spectacularly. Almost immediately, Bedard demonstrates he understands that Lobo works best in a story like a Looney Tunes character -- Bedard blows Lobo up and has him reshape himself, and even has Lobo challenge Brainiac 3's sentient planet Pulsar Stargrave in a way that, Pulsar notes, defies the laws of physics. Indeed that's perfect -- that's Lobo -- and it ends the story on a high note.

To pick again a bit, however, I'd note that Pulsar Stargrave is a Legion of Super-Heroes-era villain with its own backstory, that the Legion's Brainiac 5 mentioned as recently as Last Stand of New Krypton Vol. 2 (which leads into this story), so Stargrave's presence here -- and the fact that he looks exactly like Solaris from Grant Morrison's JLA: One Million -- doesn't quite make sense. I didn't mind that Bedard plays with Vril Dox's origin a bit, all the better to make him coincide with Geoff Johns's newest Brainiac iteration, but Bedard also revises Starfire's origins in a way I didn't like. Bedard minces details as to what brought Starfire to Earth in the first place, but moreover he completely glosses over the Sun-Eater destruction of Tamaran during Final Night, focusing on the less continuity-heavy destruction of an earlier Tamaranian planet by the Psions. This works in view of the LEGION's conflict with a Psion Green Lantern, but felt too simplistic for a reader "in the know."

Though I've flung my share of brickbats at REBELS: Sons of Brainiac, ultimately I feel this is a pretty viable series, when the focus is right. If Bedard was intent on making this a "cosmic all-stars" title, so be it -- there could be worse things than a space title starring Vril Dox, Starfire, Lobo, and the rest. Unfortunately, I wonder if this lack of real focus contributed to the title's demise -- REBELS faces cancellation just before the Flashpoint crossover, and it remains to be seen whether the final issues will get a collection. I hope the series ends, at least, with Vril Dox still out there, leading the LEGION, such that we can see him as a guest-star in titles if not leading his own.

[Contains full covers. Printed on glossy paper.]

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Review: REBELS: Son and the Stars trade paperback (DC Comics)

Despite a slow but well-written second volume, R.E.B.E.L.S. rebounds in this new book, bringing to a satisfying close the series' first major storyline. R.E.B.E.L.S.: The Son and the Stars uses the scope of the large cast to create some epic-seeming battles (even if not really using each cast member themselves) and it has one of the better Blackest Night crossovers in addition to the book's swashbuckling ending. My biggest question: where can the book go from here?

[Contains spoilers]

One aspect of recent events in the Green Lantern titles that I've really enjoyed has been the multi-front battles -- the Green Lanterns fight the Sinestro Corps, and then both groups have to fight the Red Lanterns, and then all three fall victim to the Black Lanterns. R.E.B.E.L.S. writer Tony Bedard accomplishes something similar here when the Black Lanterns interrupt a major skirmish between Vril Dox's team and Starro the Conqueror's henchmen, and watching the good guys fight the bad guys and also the other bad guys makes for frantic fun.

On one hand, Bedard does well making the Blackest Night crossover seem like a sudden, unplanned event, even knocking out key members of Starro's team in the process. On the other hand, the reader certainly sees where the Black Lantern resurrection of former L.E.G.I.O.N. member Stealth, mother of Dox's son, fits into the ongoing between Dox and the so-called Brainiac 3. The best Blackest Night crossovers, I've said before, are the ones that are less about the faux resurrected hero themselves and more about what emotions or issues the resurrection generates among the living, and having Stealth around only heightens how Brainiac 3 blames Vril Dox for his mother's death.

Indeed, as Brainiac 3 didn't show up in the initial R.E.B.E.L.S. volume, The Coming of Starro, at first it seemed R.E.B.E.L.S. might be "about" something else. Between Strange Companions and this volume, however, Dox's relationship with Brainiac 3 came to the forefront, never moreso than when Brainiac 3 betrays his father and defects to Starro in this book. Dox is the DC Universe's best morally-gray hero, and Bedard makes it purposefully hard to tell from one moment to the next whether Dox mourns the loss of his son, or just the loss of the use of his son's intellect as a weapon. Dox and his son have become the overriding plotline of R.E.B.E.L.S., greater than the conflict between the heroes and Starro, and it makes for fascinating, nuanced reading.

In concluding the Starro storyline, Bedard evokes a feeling of classic sci-fi swashbucklers. The heroes try to make a weapon to defeat the villain; the weapon succeeds, then fails; a last-second save almost bails the heroes out of trouble; and finally it all comes down to a face-to-face showdown between Dox and Starro. There's an extent to which, as R.E.B.E.L.S. takes as its setting the cosmic elements of the DC Universe, this title and Green Lantern Corps are rather similar; at the same time, Corps has been so dark (and yet exciting) of late, while R.E.B.E.L.S. evokes the science-fiction joy of classic Buck Rogers, for instance.

I'm left wondering, however, what's next? The R.E.B.E.L.S. are only such in book-name only now; the end of this story, it seems, ushers in a new era for L.E.G.I.O.N. Dox-on-the-run offered a fair enough differentiation from the aforementioned Corps, but I fear a new L.E.G.I.O.N. book would threaten to become old hat; possibly all the L.E.G.I.O.N. stories have been told the first time around (and hey, DC, where's my L.E.G.I.O.N. collections?). My biggest hope is that Bedard takes this turning point as a chance to cement the book's cast; even as Dox, Adam Strange, Kanjar Ro and others found the spotlight here, there's still characters like Bounder that have barely spoken. Maybe in firming up who's on the team, that will help to give the title future direction.

[Contains full covers]

Either way, a big thumbs up for Tony Bedard on R.E.B.E.L.S.: The Son and the Stars. As other new series have risen and fell, Bedard is three books for three on R.E.B.E.L.S., and it's a lock I'll be picking up the next book as well.

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Review: REBELS: Strange Companions trade paperback (DC Comics)

Tony Bedard's second volume, R.E.B.E.L.S: Strange Companions, is criminally undersized collection -- just three issues and an annual. Maybe that equates about five issues, but if you compare it to the same-priced six-issue Wonder Woman: Warkiller, the latter feels like quite the more complete read (as well as offering more bang-for-your-buck).

None of that is Bedard's fault necessarily, however, and indeed R.E.B.E.L.S is so good -- both for the nostalgia factor, and what it creates from scratch -- that the main problem is just waiting for the next volume.

[Contains spoilers]

Strange Companions, as it sounds, deals with more team-building for the R.E.B.E.L.S. -- or, if the previous volume, The Coming of Starro, built the team, then Strange Companions establishes R.E.B.E.L.S.'s larger society. There's a panel in the third chapter of the established cast that nearly crowds off the page -- not just the main team, but spouses, children, various dignitaries from alien species, even a guest hero and villain or two. It leaves no question that Bedard is universe-building here, creating a rich tapestry for R.E.B.E.L.S. that's just right for a space opera, much in the vein of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.




The downside is that no one cast member really gets the spotlight this time, when -- given that this is a relatively new series and cast -- we might benefit from knowing a little more about everyone. Wildstar remains something of a cypher, and Bounder even more so -- we don't know at all how Bounder relates to Strata or why he stays with the team, for instance. The most prominent character is exiled Dominator Xylon; Bedard gives Xylon a warrior's grace despite his single-mindedness, not unlike the depth ultimately given (again) to Star Trek's Klingons, and Xylon's "kill millions to save billions" mentality is perfect (and perfectly dangerous) alongside Vril Dox. Bedard has demonstrated a natural voice in bringing to life the militaristic Dominators in his guest stint in the Legion trade Dominator War, and I'm glad to see that attention given to these long-time DC Univese aliens.

By far the real star of the book, however, is Starro himself. In one single annual, Bedard takes what's been so far a rather stereotypical dictator and his followers and makes them entirely dynamic on the page. Each story in the annual -- that of Storm-Daughter, Smite, and Starro himself -- is better than the one before. Starro is in a way like John Byrne's early Lex Luthor, teasing and tempting each character until they don't know good from evil, and both have lost so much that they have no choice but to follow Starro; it's gripping stuff.

And then Bedard presents the clincher, that even the starfish that rides on the Starro dictator is a slave to him, desperately wanting to be free. Starro carries a hostage right on his body; this underscores well just how evil this character is (letting alone the long-established DC villain that Starro knocks off here). It's another complication, another thread in the aforementioned tapestry, and that's the part of R.E.B.E.L.S. that has me hooked.

[Contains full covers, printed on glossy paper]

What I'd like next time, of course, it just more. R.E.B.E.L.S.: The Son and the Stars will be five issues, including a Blackest Night tie-in; that's no more than what's here, really (though at a higher price), but at least it's five current, real-time issues, and maybe that'll seem more substantial. Strange Companions demonstrates that R.E.B.E.L.S. has what it needs; now I'm just eager to see it take off.

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Review: REBELS: The Coming of Starro trade paperback (DC Comics)

If you're like me, you have fond memories of Vril Dox trying to rescue an Eclipso-possessed Superman from a volcano alongside Guy Gardner and Lobo, and you understand what an unmitigated joy it is that writer Tony Bedard brings Vril Dox back to the page in R.E.B.E.L.S.:The Coming of Starro. When Dox finds his former L.E.G.I.O.N. teammate Strata and the two start talking about Strata's husband Garv, it nearly brought tears to my eyes; this is 1990s nostalgia at it's best, and if you don't agree then you don't have a heart.

[Contains spoilers for REBELS: The Coming of Starro and Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds]

Bedard's REBELS has much in common with his short stint on Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes. Here, as in there, Bedard gets nitty-gritty with alien politics; both the Dominators, again, and also the Citadel, the Durlans, the Khunds, and more (not to mention the Omega Men). These are old-school, Invasion-era DC Comics aliens (the original LEGION having also stemmed from Invasion) and it's what quickly differentiates REBELS from Green Lantern Corps* -- Corps so far has largely been from writers Dave Gibbons and Peter Tomasi's imaginations, while REBELS feels firmly and enjoyably rooted in established DC Comics space-faring lore.

(* News of the day as I'm writing this is that Bedard is taking over writing chores on Green Lantern Corps, so it'll be interesting to see whether some of the classic DC aliens begin filtering over, and how soon until we have a Corps/REBELS crossover [throw in a new Darkstars title, and it'll be just like old times].)

The best part of Vril "don't call him Brainiac 2" Dox has always been his know-it-all self-righteous smugness, in a way easier to enjoy than Batman's emotionally-damaged grim and grittiness. Bedard has Dox's voice down pat, indistinguishable from Keith Giffen or Mark Waid before him; but Bedard also takes the opportunity to demonstrate how Dox has changed. For longtime fans, that Dox actually asks Strata to "please" help him regain control of a sabotaged L.E.G.I.O.N. is astounding; there's some sense here that replacing his former teammates with robot drones has left Dox almost lonely. Dox is a jerk, but he feels honor-bound to help the planets that have paid him for protection, and these two sides are entirely why he has and continues to work as this series' protagonist.

Starro also follows on Bedard's Legion run in that Supergirl and Brainiac 5 from that run figure strongly in tying this LEGION/REBELS incarnation to the group in the future. Here indeed Bedard even improves on the original LEGION's ties, and I thought his creation Wildstar (a mix of Legion couple Wildfire and Dawnstar) was especially inspired, as was his Bouncing Boy equivalent. It all only falls apart a little bit in that the Brainiac 5 that Bedard uses is pretty much out of continuity as of the end of Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds; I might have preferred to see him use Superman and the current incarnation of Brainiac 5 instead, though it would also be interesting for Bedard to try to explain away the Multiversal wrinkle in a story, too.

In addition, having already seen the demise of a LEGION/REBELS series once, I'm mildly afraid that Bedard has limited himself with this series. Having the LEGION characters on the run as REBELS is a good short-term concept, but eventually they essentially become the Omega Men; it seems to me there's a lot more story potential with Dox and the LEGION police force than Dox and the REBELS outlaw gang -- eventually they explain the situation to Superman and they're the LEGION again, right?

I'll also admit some disappointment with this new incarnation of Starro as an alien conqueror (who looks just a bit too much like Mumm-Ra the Everliving). There's not much to distinguish him from your run-of-the-mill alien world conqueror, and I found it a bit too convenient that Starro just happened to take over LEGION from Dox; there seems plenty easier ways to take over the universe. Bedard seems to posit Starro as the ongoing villain of REBELS, but I'm not convinced he can quite hold the series until we see more characterization.

Still, just when Rann/Thanagar: Holy War had me a little concerned about the state of DC's space comics, REBELS is a great "new" series, and has certainly earned my buck. Kudos to Tony Bedard for bringing back Vril Dox, and hey, long live the, uh, REBELS.

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