Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Legion in X-Overs!!! Pt. 6: Bloodlines! Ugh

And now we reach a new low for DC events and Legion crossovers. Yessir, it is time to review that loaded pile of excrement known as Bloodlines!

The story - Some freakish Alien(TM) ripoffs with the ability to disguise themselves as human beings somehow make their way to earth and feast on the spinal fluids of unsuspecting humans. Unbeknownst to them, however, some of their victims have the strange side effect of gaining new (and completely random!) powers. In the end these new superheroes have to combine forces to defeat the alien horde!


Is the Legion in it? - Thankfully, no.

Legion crossovers - Oh yes, and it's a doozy!. Legion V.4 Annual #3 features one such victim of the Aliens(TM). Jamm, Son of Satan! Ok, he's not the son of the Lord of Darkness, but he is probably the single most annoying addition to Legion mythos ever imagined.


Review - What in the world is the LSH even doing in this mess?!?! I remember this series quite well. I had just gotten back into comics when the whole Death of Supes was going in full force, so I was excited to get in on the ground floor of the next big crossover event. I remember collecting the first dozen or so annuals thinking that the story would progress and lead somewhere. It's as though each comic put their worst writing and art crew on their annuals, as though it was all an afterthought! Why the heck would sucking a guy's spinal fluid out of him give him the ability to produce razor sharp edges in his skin?

After realizing what a complete waste it all was, I stopped getting the annuals and didn't even bother getting the end event books. I still haven't even gotten the L.E.G.I.O.N Annual for this "event". I really did try to reread some of those Annuals recently. Most were absolutely wretched. I do enjoy the Adventures of Superman Annual, however, featuring Myriad, a woman who took on the knowledge and personality of those she came in contact with. Definitlely an off-beat story.

You gotta give the Legion crew kudos for at least attempting to advance their own stories despite having to go along with the crossover. The Legion was going through it's battle of the dead with Mordru at the time and the Annual was used to focus how the team on the home base of Talus was dealing with the threat. It even used the occassion to bring Timber Wolf back home to the future. I believe the issue of what happened to the dead of Daxam was addressed here, also.

But Jamm is a really, really bad character. While an intergalactic war with the dead is gong on, this kid just wants to see night Girl and Tasmia Mallor nekkid (well, who can blame him!) and play in a band with some of the Legionnaires.

Is there anyone out there who has a soft spot for this issue or crossover who is brave enough to speak up about it? I'd really like to ehar someone defend this book.

Speaking of Bloodlines, did any of the new Superheroes introduced in Bloodlines ever become popular? I mean are any still around today?

Refresh my memory here...who in the Legion Universe became "meta-humanized"?

Ummmmm...

Actually, i wouldnt be at all surprised if Jay (of Jay and Silent Bob infamy) was inspired by the Jamm character - Jay is also a hornbag, a nekkid-lady enthusiast - need i go on, or has everybody got the picture, now?

A few characters found life beyond Bloodlines, most notably Hitman who I think showed up in the Demon Annual. Some others include Anima who won a contest to see which of the Bloodline characters should get their own series. Hers didn't last too long IIRC. I think Gunfire got a series. Some others like Argus and the Psyber Rats showed up in other comics. That's about all I can remember.

I'd have to actually go into my storage tesseract to find that particular book but wasn't Jamm a regular character in that awful Timber Wolf series?

Whatever in the world were they thinking? "The only thing the Lagion is missing is an annoying skateboard punk character."? Possibly the most memorable thing about Bloodlines is that it's the worst summer crossover series they've ever produced. I can't even say it had potential to be better...unfortunately.

AFAIK, none of them. Jamm was the guest star but Timber Wolf (with the look I *hated* that made it into the reboot) and Aria(?) from the "Quiet Darkness" starred.

No, you're thinking of the very similar "Thrust."

Was the "Poochie" episode of the Simpsons aired around the time this book was written?

lol
I thought exactly the same thing while writing that.

Ok, I forgot that Thrust and Jamm were different guys. There never was that much difference anyway.

I've never figured out why DC keeps setting up Legionnaire series and mini-series in the 20th Century DCU. A lot of their charm is the superheroes in a science fiction setting in the first place and why would they want to throw that away when trying to launch a spin off?

The T-Wolf series could just as easily have been set up with a secret government agency that was part of the UP and we'd have been able to see some of the underbelly of the galactic government instead of a fake MIB situation in the good old USofA.

The old Karate Kid series MIGHT have been interesting set against a background of intergalactic bad guys instead of the nonsense they tried to pass off on us poor innocent comic buyers of the time.

Legionnaires Three I liked but the Cosmis Boy mini was mostly interesting because of the Ernie Colon art and the cool Night Girl see through outfit.

Valor was pretty cool toward the end of the series and that's when the Legion started showing up. Inferno never made much sense at all even though the artwork was just beautiful I was glad it was a short lived mini.

I keep hoping for a series that features the elements that made the Legion space-rock and the editorial staff seems to want to wnat nothing more than to find new ways to repeat past successes with new characters. I want Legion spin off books that involve the Legionnaires in settings that they belong to. The "adjustments" just don't work out.

Ok, I guess I'll quit ranting about ancient grievances.

I actually think this has my vote for worst crossover ever in comics. Really, it was just that bad. Jamm epitomizes why.

Most of new heroes really sucked too--I wish the Joker could kill them all in three panels in the new crisis.

Hitman was good, but Gunfire and Anima's series both sucked. Neither have been seen since. Sparxx was in Superboy & The Ravers but is long in limbo, and only Argus (in Flash) and the Psyber-Rats (from Robin) ever reappeared. Neither has been seen in many a long year. Hitman died at the end of his series, thus ensuring that there were no longer any good things left from Bloodlines.

Actually, a whole bunch of them reappeared...

...in "Blood Pack." Lord, what a horrible, horrible stupidity that crossover was.

Blood Pack...ugh...Jade will forever be disgraced for that one...

Amid a comics-organizing frenzy, I actually reread the Jamm story yesterday. It was even worse than I remembered. It was almost mesmerizing in its awfulness.

However, the letter column was a cornucopia of Legion World and Legion apa fans, including Outdoor Miner, Chaim Mattis Keller - perhaps many others whose secret identities remain unknown!

The main problem with those sonner 90s Annuals was that the whole tradition of doing Annuals - proudly reestablished with such milestone issues like Legion Annual #1 (Computo), still one of my all time favorite issues, or the Titans Annual in "Judas Contract" - went from being the main event of the years to being just the fifth wheel on the car, as we say in Germany.

When you are doing Annuals which nobody really wants to do, you have to get some low budget writers and artists and the result will look just as bad. I think this development found a late end when they stopped doing annuals in the late 90s.

So was Bloodlines bad? Hell yeah, it was. Jamm was a really insulting character - maybe the Jar Jar Binks of the Legion - but what followed was not any better. Elseworld annuals and other events I have thankfully forgotten made the annuals so obsolete that they finally pulled the plug.

I'm currently reading through my Teen Titans collection - and the annuals are always the hardest to get through, from the late 80s on. What were they thinking, considering these issues often were more expensive than the regular issues and did never have any relevance whatsoever?

Some Annuals were really good. LSH Annual #1, of course, and also the one where we find out Validus's true origin. But then there's that All-Star Squadron Annual (written in the early '80s) where Ian Karkull recruits a bunch of supervillains (in 1942) to kill some (to the JSA) seemingly random and unconnected men. The Justice Society manages to prevent the deaths of President Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan... but the guy Green Lantern was supposed to protect, an unnamed young boy, gets killed. Boy, did that make me think...

That All-Star Squadron Annual was pretty awesome. One of the greatest issues in one of the greatest comics of all time.

The tide shifted early on for DC's annuals, when after the first couple of years creative teams were discouraged from using annuals for grand finales to big arcs (a la Judas Contract).

In fact, DC developed a big problem getting annuals out in anything resembling a timely fashion, so a creative team couldn't count on fitting an annual into regular continuity. Thus in my opinion their marginalization began here.

Then came the mandatory cross-over themes. Armageddon 2001 wasn't too bad, some good came out of it, and a few of the Elseworlds were okay (but it kind of glutted the Esleworlds market for years to come). Year One was awkward for books that didn't have a Year One to flashback to. Pulp Fiction was a neat idea (it would have been neater if it wasn't an attempt to ride off of Tarantino's success), and Legends of the Dead Earth had some okay offerings.

But in each of these cases, only the books with an enthusiastic creative team pulled it of, and found ways to mesh the concept into what they were doing (LOTDE: In Legion, we saw Wildfire as the last Legionnare, and Jenni's quest in trying to return to the 2990s. In Starman, we in effect got both the epilogue to the series about 6 years early, but also flashbacks that advanced the overall story)

But Bloodlines were a waste.

Hitman (from Demon) was the only worthwhile character that I can recall.

For anyone who doesn't know, about 7 or so Bloodlines characters were recently killed in Infinite Crisis.

Somehow, they didn't achieve the same feeling that say, Dove or Kole's death did in CoIE.