Lazarus Planet: Legends Reborn is the third anthology comic to come out of the Lazarus Planet event. Like the previous two installments, Assault on Krypton and We Once Were Gods, we get four 10 page vignettes featuring different characters spanning the DC Universe.
SPOILERS AHEAD for Lazarus Planet: Legends Reborn!
The first story, “Masks and Monsters”, focuses on Commissioner Renee Montoya. Two of her GCPD detectives are working a serial killer case that’s gone cold. The suspect has disappeared and the killings have stopped, but when a new brutal murder happens, Montoya can’t help but take the investigation into her own hands as The Question. Montoya discovers the base of operations of the serial killer in a storage unit, but she also finds the culprit: a horrific monster that was transformed by the rains of the Lazarus Storms.
This vignette is your basic police procedural. There’s also a noir vibe. Artist Clayton Henry and colorist Marcelo Maiolo do a great job hinting at the Lazarus Storms through windows and on TV screens throughout the police HQ and create a gloomy, ethereal atmosphere when outdoors in the midst of the storms.
Credit: DC Comics
The second vignette, “Trilogy”, features Raven trying to help three newly formed demons that are in the middle of terrorizing a priest, hoping for some kind of exorcism. Things are going well, until it’s revealed that Beast Boy is actually the devil Trigon in disguise. Raven is sent careening through a dark portal, Trigon kills two of the demons and recruits the third. Christopher Mitten’s art is the most stylistic of the book, taking a simpler more cartoon-like approach as opposed to the more realistic styles of the other artists.
The third vignette, “City Boy”, brings us back to Gotham City for a story about Cameron Kim, aka City Boy, a new character introduced in Wildstorm 30th Anniversary Special back in November. City Boy’s special power is the ability to “talk” to cities and sense where valuable items are located. Soon after finding a batarang in a park, City Boy is struck by lightning from a Lazarus Storm and his powers are amplified. The lightning strike also brings a pile of trash to life, creating a little garbage monster that imprints upon City Boy and starts following him around.
With his new amplified powers, City Boy senses another item underground in the sewers and phases through the ground to retrieve it. When a pipe bursts and City Boy is close to drowning, Nightwing appears out of nowhere to rescue him. Along with the amplified ability to see more of the city “grid” City Boy also gets psychic visions when he touches items. When he grabs a tiara from the sewers, he sees it being lost in a windstorm and and an old woman alone in an apartment. After some deliberation with Nightwing, City Boy does the right thing and returns the Tiara.
Credit: DC Comics
In the final vignette, “Rain of Terror”, we catch up with Firestorm flying high, but when a Lazarus Storm begins, it blows him out of the Firestorm Matrix, separating Ronnie from professor Stein and crash landing. A few days later, S.T.A.R. Labs scientists are on the scene collecting data. When a shadow demon appears and attacks one of the scientists, Ronnie is forced to merge with Dr. Ramirez in order to transform into Firestorm and close the rift that allowed the shadow demon to materialize. When Ronnie and the doctor split, they are shocked to see that the doctor has aged rapidly while he was merged with Ronnie. They quickly merge back together and it is revealed that something similar happened to professor Stein who is recuperating in a hospital bed, looking extremely aged. Somehow the Lazarus Storm has changed Firestorm’s powers. The artwork and character design in this story were great. The Shadow Demon looks truly frightening, like a black hole with only a green glowing outline. Firestorm and his powers are looking especially good, the fire really jumps off of the page.
Previous anthology installments in the Lazarus Planet event have a lot more cohesion. Assault on Krypton dealt with Kryptonian and Kryptonian adjacent individuals while We Once Were Gods focused on characters with godlike abilities. Though the title and introductory text of the issue talks about “Legends”, I’m not sure that these four characters have gained legendary status, especially City Boy who is a brand new character. While all of the stories were good enough on their own, and I’m excited to see where their stories take them in future DC comics, I’m not sure what tied these four specific characters/stories together enough to justify them being included together.
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