The Great Darkness Saga, Part 2

 

Legion of Super-Heroes #291 (September 1982) picks up right where the last issue took place. That previous issue ended with the capture of one of the Servants of Darkness. Brought back to Legion HQ, the Servant is examined and discovered to be a clone of an ancestor of Shadow Lass.

It's an effective way of bringing us back into the story after waiting a month for the next issue. We are finally fed a little bit of information about the bad guys, but its only enough to be intriguing and a little creepy without giving away too much. 

Writer Paul Levitz and artists Keith Giffen (breakdowns) & Larry Mahlstedt (finished art) then continue to pile more stuff on, with examples of just how powerful the villain is. He releases Mordru, the evil wizard who is described as being equal in power to the entire Federation civilization. But then he almost casually zaps Mordru, draining the wizard of his power.

The same thing happens to another villain with god-like powers when the Time Trapper is also drained of power.

Dream Girl gets a premonition that her sister, White Witch, is also going to attacked. Forewarned, the Legion manages to save her.

It's during this battle that Invisible Kid tries to slip through one of the space warps that the Servants use to see who the Big Bad is. And it's here that we get a visual clue to his identity. As I mentioned last time, Darkseid isn't yet as well-known as he will eventually become, but he has been around. For attentive readers familiar with him, the panel below is probably the best clue yet to his identity.

Invisible Kid takes an Omega Beam blast and is injured. The Servant gets away and for the time being Darkseid's identity is still unknown to the Legion and probably also to many of the original readers of the book.

While all this is going on, the captured Servant comes out of her coma and nearly takes down Saturn Girl and Cosmic Boy. Lightning Lad, who has been ill himself, pulls himself together enough to put the Servant down again.

It's a great issue. It's fast-paced, full of great action, doles out just enough information about the villains to leave us wanting more, and moves the overall story arc along enough to be satisfying. 

As with the last issue, I'm giving short shrift to many of the continuing story arcs--there's an election for the new Legion leader (Dream Girl wins) and Chameleon Boy is on trial for something incredibly dumb he did a few issues earlier. I want to concentrate my review on the main story, but I should say again that these ongoing arcs gave depth to the characters and made them relatable. 

That's it for now. We'll be back in two weeks with the next part of the Great Darkness Saga. Next week, we'll jump back a little over a thousand years to discuss a war-time team up between Sgt. Fury and Captain America.