Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Legion Lost #16 - Final Issue

What little I saw before this series was 'did I mention that I'm a communist and hate you all?' over and over and over again. It felt more like a curmudgeonly caricature than a fully fleshed out character, since he almost always went for the grumpy negative comments, which, for me at least, made him kind of unlikable.

And so, I was hoping for some decent character development here, with Gates now temporarily stuck on a world that does have a few communist societies, and where his political views aren't necessarily considered a whacky aberration / punchline by the UP 'world government.' Instead, I literally have no idea if Gates is even aware that communism exists on Earth, after he's been in this century for as long as a year and a half.

Instead, I get him arguing with himself about whether it's okay to abandon the team, and while I do understand that he was drafted unwillingly into another Legion, and may not have started out the wide-eyed 'I want to be a superhero!' type as some of those who showed up for Legion tryouts in other continuities, I kind of thought, that, at some point, he had
graduated past 'I hate you and the teenaged death-squad your rode in on' and become a willing super-hero.

I don't blame Gates for that, btw. I totally blame Tom deFalco for wanting to impress upon the readers how uber-scary his big machine was by having Gates freak out and be all terrified.

I'm clearly no Gates expert, but IMO, he earned his place back in the Reboot, and the way he's been portrayed in the last year has been an unsympathetic regression for the character.

It's also my opinion that Fabian Nicieza had a very different plan in mind for where Gates was held for the time he was presumed dead, and for how he got the messed-up face. DeFalco's been calling it 'scars,' but it's pretty darn obviously not 'scars,' it's something very much more like what that virus was doing to everyone at the beginning of the series. The question of why only half of Gates' face was changed remains, and it could be inferred that whoever was holding him was using him to test a potential *cure* (or perhaps just charting the progression of the virus by watching how it affected Gates, but that seems less likely since they had no shortage of infected humans to observe).

Anywho, my opinion stands. Gates, IMO, like Wildfire and Dawnstar, was a character that could very much have benefitted from more character development and I'm disappointed that he didn't get it.

I haven't read that much of Legion Lost, but Gates this issue didn't read much like the Gates of the reboot at all.

I suppose it's possible they were left in the present for Giffen to use them in Threshold?

^^Not a bad theory.

I'm guessing it is a more a matter of someone having some plans for them in the present than Levitz not wanting them.

Well, that was underwhelming... a bit like the 15 previous issues, really. Now let's get back our characters in their century to play with the rest of the team.

Actually, in his debut appearance, Piotr asked Professor X if the former's mutant powers didn't by right belong to "The State"?

The time he dressed up to sneak into The Hellfire Club, he thought to himself that "It is wrong to wear clothes that cost more than my father makes in a year."

There may have been more moments like that, but those are two that spring to mind for me.

FTR, I actually like Gates, despite only having seen him here and there.

Getting back on track now: please, nobody ever ask me if want characters I like to be dumped into Comic Book Purgatory forever, or would I prefer to have them senselessly killed off at series end?



It's like asking if I want an arm broken or an arm AND a leg broken.

Hopefully Levitz will bring the lost home soon Brainy and Glorith may be moving in that direction. Ideally, I would like all the Yera as spy and Tyroc prophecy be written off as Harvest brainwashing rather than truth.

Now that I've finally been to the comic shop and gotten to read it, I'm about as underwhelmed as I'd expected.

The Gates time travel loop was handled deftly, if nothing else, and a random bad-guy shooting Wildfire a new containment suit sort of wraps that subplot up in a shiny bow.

The whole 'Adym is Harvest' reveal didn't do much for me, since I didn't care one bit about Adym *or* Harvest.

Were I a big fan of the Ravagers or this new version of Superboy, I'd be pissed that they got so little play, or, in SB's case, were treated like chumps.

This issue sort-of epitomizes the series in the way--not bad in a storytelling sense, but a LOT of missing potential.



I thought that maybe DeFalco would reutilize them again in Superboy (perhaps a slight retweak of "Superboy and the Lost Legion of Superheroes?"), but I would like that a lot better.

Threshold is a likely place for them, if they're going anywhere, although that book already sounds pretty crowded.

The thing I'm wondering is, everyone in the 31st century has concluded they're dead and gone - so no historical record whatsoever remained of their time in the 21st century? I guess it's the old "everything was destroyed in World Wars III-VI", except the Superman Museum stuff.

If Wildfire is just energy, won't he eventually catch up to the future and tell them what happened? Will there be two Wildfires just like we had two Gates for a moment?

You know I like that idea. Sort of Mon El 'ish' in that as energy he is unable to interact with people so if he lost his containment suit he could be in a personal version of the Phantom Zone.

But would his disembodied energy survive that long or would entropy cause him to slowly dissipate. (unless of course he trans morphs into the Time Trapper, driven mad by his desire to return to the 31st Century)

They should totally have followed up on Gates' joke a while back and had an issue with him visiting Kyrgyzstan.

One good thing about this series was that it made me like Tyroc, Timber Wolf, Yera and Tellus quite a bit more. Enough to care about how little was actually done with them, and how much more could have been done.

Which begs a couple of questions which have never been seriously addressed:

(1) If you found yourself a thousand years in the past, would you (a) try like mad to get back to the future or (b) accept your situation and try to carve out a life for yourself?

(2) Given 1a or 1b, where would you go? The answer might differ for the different Legionnaires.

Tyroc can physically blend in. Wildfire, if he wants to get back to the future, may just need to wait. Wildfire and Dawnstar are capable of unassisted faster-than-light flight through space. Tyroc and Gates can teleport; Gates at least, up to interplanetary distances. Tyroc may be able to travel to 21st= century Marzal. Timber Wolf can sort of fit in human society; also, he has friends in Gorilla City. Tellus is the most alien, but can project telepathic illusions.

As for me, I would immediately head for Shadowcrest in San Francisco.

They keep turning Brin into KK. He's been to the 20th/21st century now almost as much as original superboy. Wolf and the newbies (yeah, I've been around long enough to consider everyone after Brin a newbie) deserve more than being shunted off into limbo so we can get an entirely new bunch of newbies. Hey, why not use the cast from S&TLSH from around 200 to 250 again? This seemed to be the most stable time in the legion.

The problem with the Legion Lost team being left "lost" is that that team contains some of the most "alien" members of the team: Tellus, Gates, Yera, Dawnstar and Wildfire. The Legionnaires on the main title are mostly humanoid looking. We need these characters back just to bring back alien diversity to the Legion.

It wasn't #50 bad, but it wasn't good. Legion Lost, focusing on those seven characters, and the last issue seemed to focus on everyone BUT the seven.

I find it interesting that in LSH #16 they show part of the Memorial Hall with statues of the Lost members. Apparently, the 31st century Legion has already given up on them. Also with the reveal of more info on Harmonia and her immortality, you'd think she may have some real-time news about the Lost team.

I enjoyed the first half of the series, but the change in storyline and the introduction of Superboy and the Ravangers really brought the book down into a pathetic attempt of a cross-title story sales pitch on the part of DC. The momentum of the Legion characters was cut short to a screeching halt and it never recovered. I doubt the other titles benefited much either.

It's not certain that Harmonia was on Earth in the 21st century, so she may have been unaware of any superhero activity there.

I reread Legion Lost (up to #12) yesterday and agree entirely that the series broke down with the Ravagers introduction. There were just too many characters splitting the attention and Harvest, while threatening, got boring fast. I never bothered getting the Titans and Superboy tie-ins, but, as you suggest, I doubt those titles were improved by the addition of the Lost team.

Up until that point, it was quite a good story, with the distinct personalities of the Legionnaires, the effects of the virus. If they'd kept it to that storyline, then thrown in Yera's subterfuge, with a specific end in sight (i.e. Lost team goes home), it would have been enough for me.