This week, the final issue of Brian Michael Bendis’ Legion of Super-Heroes reboot came out and I enjoyed it. In fact, I ranked this series as my second favorite comic book series of 2020! Bendis and artist Ryan Sook, along with a plethora of additional artists, recreated the Legion and told a pretty fun story involving a bunch of fun characters. This 12-issue series is notable for how it insisted on using all of its characters, giving little moments here and there to pretty much everybody.

Except for Matter-Eater-Lad. He didn’t do squat for the entire series! I’m not even sure if we saw him eat anything on panel! What a waste of this amazing redesign!

Now, I’m no longtime Matter-Eater-Lad fan. Honestly, I’m not even much of a Legion of Super-Heroes fan. They’ve never been my cup of tea. But I was on board for this reboot and I enjoyed it. I especially loved the character redesigns provided by Sook and others. This is one great looking bunch!

And of the lot of them, I was tickled pink by the redesign of Matter-Eater-Lad. Check out this glow up!

From scrawny, nondescript dude in tights to that big, beefy, glorious god of a man up top. The new Matter-Eater-Lad looks like a fun time. He looks like the life of the party, turning swarthy into the new sexy. How can you go to all the trouble of redefining peak masculinity with a simple look and then not put it to good use?

And that’s all I really want to say. This reboot gave one hell of a character redesign to the beloved weirdo that is Matter-Eater-Lad, and then they didn’t do anything with him for 12 issues. We never saw his recruitment. We never saw him eat anything. He was only ever part of the same group shots as everybody else.

That’s a damn shame.

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