I feel a little bad for this issue of "Adventure Comics" as well as the previous one; well, as much as you can feel bad for an inanimate object. But ever since it was announced that Phil Jimenez would be drawing an arc on "Adventure Comics" about the Legion Academy, well, most readers I know have been looking forward to it month after month.

But before that kicks off in February, we're getting the second part of a two-issue arc with Mon-El as the new Green Lantern of the 31st century. And no matter how good that story is, I have a hunch that most readers are going to be thinking, "Hurry up and bring in Phil Jimenez drawing the Legion Academy."

But with all of that out of the way, "Adventure Comics" (or as I like to think of it, "Legion of Super-Heroes" #8.5) is another solid issue of LSH from Levitz, letting him focus almost exclusively on Mon-El and how one of the strongest members of the team handles now also possessing a Green Lantern ring. I appreciate that Levitz doesn't make Mon-El instantly able to handle it with great finesse, but also keeps him from being a blundering idiot. The mistakes that Mon-El makes are understandable (especially considering that he's not someone who's had to rely on a tool for his powers up until now) and we're getting him as a quick study.

More interestingly, we finally get to see the mysterious attacker from last month's issue that put Dawnstar on the critically injured list, and it's actually rather creepy. Paul Levitz wisely gives it no dialogue, instead letting us see it through another villain's eyes (so to speak) and it amps up the tension. Geraldo Borges and Hi-Fi help matters by making it both familiar and alien looking, and hopefully it won't be too long before we see it again.

Borges does a good job with the entire issue; his style matches that of the regular art team over on "Legion of Super-Heroes" and that classic clean look does well for a story about the Legion. His depiction of a solar-powered sumo wrestler could have ended up ludicrous, but instead Sun Killer comes across as dangerous, and not just because of the gratuitous violence he keeps inflicting on the ship's crew.

Presumably this plot is going to get wrapped back into "Legion of Super-Heroes" starting next month, but it's been a fun enough side trip into "Adventure Comics" for these past two issues. With "Legion of Super-Heroes" having dropped from 40 pages a month to just 32, it's nice to get a little extra LSH action over here. That said? I'm already dying to see what Levitz and Jimenez do together next month. That's got great potential.

(Oh, and one quick side note: I love DC's iconic cover scheme for this month, but I feel like someone should note that four of the five characters on the cover of "Adventure Comics" #522 don't appear at all, and the fifth is just a silhouette inside a medical bay. Oops.)