Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes LEGION LOST:The Worst (And Best?) Observations...

Worst: A massive wasted opportunity for Gates, Tyroc, and Tellus to get some much needed spotlight.

Best: Thanks to Season Five DVDs of "THE BIG BANG THEORY" Legion Lost will have achieved a form of Comic-Book-Rack immortality...

Worst: what could have been an interesting 6 or 12 issue series, and in turn an opportunity to show the Legion off to a wider audience, was inexplicably expanded to an ongoing book when it was clear they had no other story ideas.

Best: it is now over and we can all move on.

Worst: the inability of the creative team to wrap up major plot points, making the series lack a true ending

Best: the hope that we can see these characters back with the main Legion team,where they belong

Best: We got an opportunity for both the seven 'lost' Legionnaires and the remainder back home to get some breathing room to develop and flesh out their characterization.

Worst: It didn't happen.

Worst: DC didn't have Legion Lost writers work with Levitz to play a decent series to bring more readers into Legion fandom.

Best: Tyroc was finally made into an interesting character, and Timber Wolf, Dawnstar, Wilfire, Gates and Tellus got more exposure. (Too bad the writers didn't take the time to write them decent stories). Oh, and Pete Woods sci-fi art was superb! I'd love to see him have a chance to draw the 31st century sometime.

Oh hey, good point, Leather Wolf.

Best: Pete Woods deserves some kudos for some nice art. I particularly liked his take on Dawny, as she had a distinctive 'Native American' look to her, and wasn't just a white chick in buckskins.

Fabian Nicieza really hit the ground running, having posted almost a dozen enigmatic posts to the DC boards setting up the Alastor mystery. I don't recall any writer trying to get engaged with the fanbase in that way before a book even launched.

I'd love to have an off-the-record chat someday and find out what went so terribly wrong behind the scenes with the stuff he was trying to set up. (The half-assed nature of the company wide reboot, I suspect, had a lot to do with it.)

Worst: Fabian Nicieza may join the list of creative types who have felt 'burned' by a Legion writing experience and aren't going to want to give it another run anytime soom.

Best: Another vote for Pete Woods' art, and the art overall was nothing to complain about.

The choice of team was interesting and there were some new character developments. Especially good for Tyroc. Good potential for Yera. Everything came down to Gates in the end.


Worst: the whole muddle that started with Harvest. I didn't even read the middle issues, just flipped through them and picked up again with #15 & 16 to see how it all played out.

Gates was too shrill, the Wildfire-Dawnstar thing was tiresome (even though it was a lovely scene when they were reunited at the end) and I think they wasted the #0 issue on Timber Wolf; he's already had plenty of origin story.

Over-reliance on the "We are Legion" idea, which is quite heartwarming when used in a restrained manner, but seemed to be on every page in the final issue.

They're stuck in the 21st century, until some editorial board decides to use them again.

Best: The on-line setup was interesting, some of my favourite characters were selected and had potential for a fun mix.

Worst: The on-line stuff before the series was the best writing we would actually get. The character choices were squandered, what could have been an interesting villain fell flat and the plot went nowhere.

I love cheesy stuff like that (being a huge fan of Superboy's Legion, which was full of feel-good moments), but hated how it was recited like some sort of mantra here, when the team was portrayed as *tremendously* dysfunctional, with lies and secrets and near-betrayals all over the place. One couple was broken up specifically for the team (Gim and Yera) and there were hints that Dawny and Brin were going to have some sort of affair. Brin was constantly not just undermining authority, but also running off and doing whatever the hell he wanted anyway, and Drake (especially), Yera and Gates also took every chance to launch cheap shots at Tyroc's leadership.

Even when it was in character (for Drake, for instance), it still showed a completely different story than the writer was telling with his 'We Are Legion' crap.

The 'We are Legion' phrase had literally no relation to the characters and their behaviors we were seeing on the page. It was like a picture of a bunch of people strangling each other to death and the caption 'loving family,' interesting only in an ironic way.

Some "Legion-y" teamwork in the final issue WOULD have been nice. If Gates had brought his teammates as backup, he would likely never have been disfigured.

Where on the DVDs is Legion Lost?

Early in the season, issue #1 of LEGION LOST is clearly seen on the wall rack of Stuart's Comic Shop (along witha mytriad of New 52 titles) in a few episodes. Later in the season LL #6 is also seen.
In fact, considering that the team has never figured in the characters' conversations, the Legion has had a pervasive presence on the show in Comics (Legends of the Legion #1, LSH # 1, LEGION LOST #1) Graphic Novels (Death of Ferro Lad, Superman:Mon-El, LSH:The Choice) and merchandise (Mattel Legion Action Figure 12-Pack). The Set Designer must undoubtedly be a Legion reader.

Worst: No fundamental reason to exist as a title. I, for one, was totally stoked to see two Legion titles in the new 52. But upon publication, this title reeked of being placed on the schedule solely by editorial fiat in order to "build" the crappy Harvest story that crossed over with the Superboy and Ravagers titles. From the outside looking in, it seemed a title created to facilitate cross-overs, which will never succeed in the long run. Bad characterization, bad dialogue, inconsistent plotting. I never sensed any plan for the Legion Lost characters other than "put them in the 20th century in this loser Harvest story until editorial changes its mind and leaves the book to flounder aimlessly until cancellation."

There were clearly other things going on, other potential directions to go, but most of these points were dropped over the course of changing artists and writers and direction, leaving me with the foregoing impression: a bastard-Legion book that - although it was nice at first blush to see those lesser known characters - ultimately did more damage to the franchise than good.

I just finished reading the whole LL2 run, including the separate trade collecting the complete Culling event, as research for my planned fanfic continuation of the Retroboot. And TBH...I liked it.

Even more to my surprise, I generally enjoyed the Tom DeFalco issues more than the Fabian Nicieza issues, except the moments when Fabe got to delve deeper into Drake, Tellus, Brin, and Dawny (more on that shortly.)

I *loved* seeing Gates and Tellus, both favorites of mine, get substantial exposure of the kind they hadn't enjoyed in a long time. Yeah, Gates's remarks could have been a lot wittier and sharper, but I can live with that.

The first arc's plot, involving the pandemic, left me cold; I would have expected something much more action-oriented and cosmic from Fabe. And if I wasn't so indifferent towards Chameleon Girl, I would have been a lot more offended by the whole mutually-abusive-spouses thing (although as a Colossal Boy fan, I do still resent this seemingly arbitrary taint on him; and, unless I missed something in the Levitz Retroboot trades, which I was reading at the same time, I didn't see any reference there to Gim and Yera's fighting; but I'll still give Fabe the benefit of the doubt, because it may have been editorially mandated, and not his idea.) In the end, it's just a reminder that in some ways, he's no longer the man he was 20-25 years ago, when he was brazenly blazing new trails at Marvel.

But at least Fabe was around long enough to do some nice character work. Having different Legionnaires narrating long stretches of his issues gave us new insights into them and uncovered unexplored potential within them. I especially appreciated his nuanced, relatively understated take on Wildfire -- it's clear he likes the Drake a lot.

DeFalco will never be my favorite writer, but he kept the book moving along acceptably. As for the Culling, all the echoes of early 90s Marvel -- the good, the bad, and the ugly -- were, at best, a pleasant, invigorating trip down memory lane for someone like me, who was much more into Marvel than DC during the 90s; at worst, they were a reminder of how DC has been going through vicious cycles of wanting to Marvel yet not having a clue what was good about Marvel.

The happy ending was an undeniably cheesy cop-out, but I love more than half of the LL2 team so much, that I look at it more as being like the semi-ironic happy ending to Grant Morrison's Animal Man run. (Never thought you'd see Nicieza, Morrison, and DeFalco all mentioned in the same context? Well, now you have.)

And call me mad, but I think Harvest has an amazing amount of potential. I have a library request out for one of the Nu52 Teen Titans trades, in which Harvest "dies", just so I know his whole history, but no matter what happened to him, that won't stop me from taking liberties to bring him back. I have big plans for him, including *my* take on which DC-icon-gone-bad he might be.



This.

Worst:
- Abandoning the story that started out the series, giving us a lack-luster wrap-up.
- The Harvest storyline with the crossing over and the guest-starring... just took the wind out of the sails.
- THE worst was just the missed opportunity of having a LSH foothold in the modern DCU in a much more integrated way.

Best:
- Pete Woods's art. I thought it was beautiful.
- The choice of characters. Great mix. Much needed exposure for Tyroc and Tellus (though also worst: I hated it when artists would draw Tellus's body as being very humanoid)