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Mild Mannered Reviews - Adventure Comics

Adventure Comics #519

Adventure Comics #519

Scheduled to arrive in stores: October 13, 2010

Cover date: December 2010

"Playing Hooky II"

Writer: Paul Levitz
Penciller: Eduardo Pansica
Inker: Eber Ferreira

Michael Bailey Reviewed by: Michael Bailey

Click to enlarge


Invisible Kid, Shrinking Violet and Chameleon Boy get aboard Zaryan's robot ship and do a good job of not being detected until Invisible Kid trips an alarm on one of the robots. Meanwhile Brainiac 5, Lightning Lad, Saturn Girl and Cosmic Boy travel to the Smallville of Superboy's time and instead of taking him to the future they stay in the past under the cover of a training exercise. Superboy spots a F5 tornado and after playing in it for a moment the Boy of Steel spins around counter to the spin of the tornado and stops it from doing any more damage.

Back on Zaryan's ship Shrinking Violet and Chameleon Boy take care of the robot problem and their mission continues. Back in Smallville Clark persuades the Legionnaires to help in the rebuilding efforts. There is a good amount of complaining but even Brainy gets into the spirit of things and even gets to meet the Kents, who cause the disguised Coluan to blush. On Zaryan's ship the three Legionnaires find Zaryan himself and decide to try and capture him but fail to do so. Zaryan escapes and swears that next time he is bringing the battle to Earth.

In Superboy's time Brainy and crew go stargazing and spot a probe streaking out of the sky. It crashes into the Kent barn and the probe is revealed to belong to Brainiac Zero. Brainiac 5 had been expecting this and manages to stop his ancestor's probe. On the way back to the future Brainy admits that he knew the probe would strike and manipulated the first meeting of Superman to meeting Superboy instead to prevent his ancestor from doing any real harm. Lightning Lad, Cosmic Boy and Saturn Queen give him a hard time but aren't too mad about being conned into the mission.

4Story - 4: This was a very light hearted story. Even the action scenes seemed less intense and more of a fun, old fashioned, comic book romp. I liked how the story kept shifting from the future and the past though I will admit that I liked the Smallville scenes a lot more than the ones on Zaryan's ship.

Don't get me wrong. I liked seeing Invisible Kid and crew sneaking around the robot ship, getting caught, fighting their way out of that situation and then trying to take on the big villain themselves. The scenes that grabbed me the most, though, took place in Smallville. I loved seeing the Legionnaires and Superboy playing in the tornado though I just watched the latest episode of the Discovery Channel show STORM CHASERS where they showed the real damage a tornado can do so I will admit that I was taken out of the story for a few moments here. After that I was back on board. It was great seeing Brainy meeting the Kents and even though the Brainiac probe thing bugged me a bit because it seems to take some of the teeth out of what has been done with Brainiac over the past two years I couldn't find too much fault in it. The ending where Brainy gets a hard time from his teammates was satisfying and put a smile on my face.

Overall this was a fun little read. There were moments that took me out of the story and I would have preferred the action taking place entirely in Smallville but it was a solid read and I enjoyed the heck out of it.

4Art - 4: The art was solid in this issue as well. The action scenes were composed well and I liked the emotion the artists were able to convey through the characters, especially the Legionnaires in Smallville. The people themselves looked a little odd, especially Clark, but it wasn't bad enough to make me dislike the art.

4Cover Art - 4: I like the cover but it was far more serious looking than the story inside. The art was good, just a bit misleading.

Mild Mannered Reviews

2010

Note: Month dates are from the issue covers, not the actual date when the comic went on sale.

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