Legion of Super-Heroes Archives (Vol. 9)

Rating:
Summary: A Bad Period for the Legion
Review: I thought that this was an average collection, but it is a keeper because it shows the end of the first era of the Legion of Super-Heroes. After the tales in this book, the Legion was stuck with backup stories and reprints for several years. Many of the creators who made the Legion so popular left. Jim Shooter stopped regularly writing and worst of all, Curt Swan stopped. It is an important book, and I suggest you buy it if you have the first 8 volumes.

Rating:
Summary: Sputtering Into The Seventies
Review: When these stories first appeared, Curt Swan no longer did the pencilling and the Legion series was reduced to being a backup feature in Action Comics. The shorter format stories did not do the group justice. After all, the LSH usually has at least twenty members. Also, the pencils of Mr Mortimer are not quite up to the very high standard set by Curt Swan. This double whammy nearly did the Legion in during the early 70s and these stories are good examples of that. This is a valuable volume if you are a Legion completist like I am but if I were just starting out, I would explore volumes 1 and 6 (which has the best stories of all time). Hopefully, there will be more Legion Archives books in the future as the later Bates/Cockrum and Grell eras are certainly deserving of Archive status. As for this volume, this is the weakest of the nine published thus far and weaker than the future volumes if they continue this series.