Legion of Super-Heroes Vol. 5 #11 pg 21 - Prelim

"I'm not smart enough."

It might be just a prelim, but it's for a page featuring one of my favourite Brainiac 5 moments across all of comic history. Unlike the last prelim I posted, I do wish that this one came with the word bubbles, and you'll definitely want to take a look at the published page to understand why I love this one so much. For context: Dream Girl has just been killed in action, and Brainy (who you might be starting to think was probably love with her) is not taking it very well. In previous pages he's enacted the start of a plan to save her, but here we see him furious with himself, because he doesn't know where to go from here. It's also worth noting that up to this point in the Threeboot, all he's ever done is talk about how he's smart enough to do just about anything, so the fact that he has no idea how he's going to save Dream Girl is hitting him pretty hard.

This page also features Theena, my favourite supporting character from this version of the Legion. The symbiote in her back has a unique property that allows it to access and display live images from pretty well anywhere in the galaxy, which I think is another great example of how creative some of the characters in the Threeboot were.

Once again Barry Kitson proves that even in his prelims he's mastered the art of conveying emotion through still images. Brainy's devastation and Theena's shock at seeing him so undone both come across very clearly, here.