Review: The Brave and the Bold #35
Consumed with childish jealous over the Legion of Super-Heroes' recent world-saving adventure with the Doom Patrol, the Legion of Substitute Heroes travels back in time with the sole purpose of trying to show them up. They bunge their mission, of course, and wind-up teaming up with the equally-lame Inferior Five.
The Good
Saiz's art is clean, appealing and it goes down easy, which is actually a harder act to pull than it sounds when it comes to comic storytelling. Although, I don't think the humor works for the most, there was something tickling about the Substitute Legion being so half-assed about their scheme that they're so easily discouraged by even the most of minor set backs.
The Bad
These characters are lame. I know they're supposed to be intentionally lame, but as far as super-hero parodies go, the Inferior Five and the Legion of Substitute Heroes aren't even as funny as, say, the Great Lake Avengers. I understand that a big part of the intention of this book is to dig up some of the most obscure characters from DC's past, but reading this, I can't help thinking that both of these teams should've stayed in the Silver Age. It's almost impossible to make them interesting and this issue really isn't savage enough of a goof to properly burst their bubble. It's actually an overly-complicated, almost serious time travel story that doesn't go hard in either direction. I was actually thinking about what Ennis was doing recently with the similar second-rate heroes, Super-Duper, in the Boys and how much more I enjoyed it.
The Verdict - 1.5/5
I didn't especially like the first half of this two-parter and seeing it full just made like it less. I'm all for honoring the past and drawing oddball characters out of back issues, but this time-travel story felt more like 44 pages of "fan service" for spoof characters that probably weren't even that funny in the first place.
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