I did a quick look at the first few pages of #1 but I have been so busy in the last week! I figure when Tuesday hits and I have to start being in meaningless meetings again, I?ll find time.
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Indeed! Although if I can snag an actual office with a door when I go into the office versus a stupid cube/does in the normal open layout, I can do it there too.
I will have to admit, I took a break over the last week and read (or maybe re-read? I do not remember if I read the whole series - I am pretty sure I own at least the first issue) the Legion/Titans Universe Ablaze mini.
I have to admit - its a pretty book. Given that it was released right during Damned/Rifts, I gotta wonder what they were thinking with Coipels pencils on the other book having happened. That was such a badly timed release its not funny. I had a few issues with the dialog and characterization, but was OK with the nature of the mini, especially with the directions that DnA were going, specifically around Imra. But I am getting too off topic - I need to get to reading issue #1. At least its only 22 pages!
Last edited by Gaseous Lad; 09/06/2107:23 AM.
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GL, I think this is going to be our biggest difference of opinion lol! I HATED Universe Ablaze, I felt the last 3 issues were very disrespectful to the team, making most of them ineffectual. Having the Legion split into three and face the Titans, and getting beaten so easily with each... yeah. (I did like that all the deaths were undone at the end, but that's it lol)
also felt that the large cast was poorly handled. We never saw Kinetix or Sensor use their powers. When fighting underwater, Element Lad or Sensor could have used theirs vs. Tempest and Arsenal; nope. Tempest later creates a whirlpool that stops... Apparition (intangible), Thunder (super invulnerable), and Kid Q II and Star Boy... when fighting Donna, Starfire and Arsenal, they send an away team which basically consists of Legionnaires who can punch things hard. WOOOOOW. Oh, and Starfire punches Thunder out twice, while Ferro gets knocked out with a headbutt... while in iron form. Oh, and XS is shown completely helpless against Wally/Flash.
oh, and Brainiac 5's forcefield cannot withstand a bomb blast despite having held up against the Atomic Axe and against Validus before.
Oh, don't get me wrong! There are MASSIVE problems with the story, a ton of which you point out.
I think given all the DnA reading I had been doing, I was just enjoying a more classic superhero romp with two of my favorite teams (granted - I wasn't as familiar with this era of the Titans), ACTING like Super Heroes and DRAWN like Super Heroes. Some of the fighting I was OK with, some not - Wally is more experienced than Jenni, Kory is pretty powerful, etc., so I was OK with some of that. But yeah, not using Sensor and Kinetix was kind of unforgivable (what is it with Zoe and the male writers/editors of that time, anyway? Such a lack of imagination!). So I guess its fair to say I enjoyed the tone of the books, especially figuring that they were going to have to go back in time to undo the entire story pretty early on, WAY more than the details, if that makes any sense.
It did make me really think about when this could have taken place in the continuity. The best I could surmise was that it was happening somewhere along the time of L*75 and LSH119 (late October 2998 for you kids keeping track with my timeline!) given a talking Kinetix, no ERG-1 and a lack of Blight.
Last edited by Gaseous Lad; 09/06/2111:56 AM.
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Like other such crossovers (e.g., X-Men/Titans), I just assumed Universe Ablaze took place in an alternate reality--one where Universo is Saturn Girl's cousin or whatever (another arbitrary reboot decision and one which had no impact on the regular series).
I, too, don't remember the mini-series fondly. It was beautifully drawn and packaged in square-bound format, but it was one of those "reset button" stories that makes you wonder, what's the point?
Oh yeah - I mean its just like any of the Marvel/DC crossovers - its a chance to see favorite characters together in one book in a story that does nothing to affect either group at the end, i.e., a money grab.
But I've bought my fair share of them over the years, so kind of figured that going in, so I let it go like on a rollercoaster. Some cool stuff, some not so cool stuff.
And if I'm completely honest, I was mainly upset that Nightwing wasn't more of a featured player, as he's definitely, hands down, my favorite Titan.
Good point about Universo being Imra's cousin. I didn't remember much about how DnA handled him later in the series, so wasn't sure if that was anything planned, but the way it was presented seemed to be in line with the rest of the reboot, so I had to wonder if that was something that was in KC's playbook that MM shredded, especially given the real-world timeframe that the book was released. Why release the thing when you are canceling one of the teams' titles? That was another big headscratcher for me.
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Released October 24, 2001 DC Comics, Color 22 Pages
No Place Like Home Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning - Writers Oliver Coipel - Pencils Andy Lanning - Inks Tom McCraw - Colors Mike McAvennie - Editor
Synopsis
We pick up the story immediately following the end of the primary story of Legion Worlds #1, one year after the Rift disaster and follow the public's reaction to the Legion Outpost's re-entry into earth's atmosphere. Oversight is attempting to destroy the object but M'Onel tells them to stand down, as he is guiding the Outpost to as safe a landing as possible, avoiding the Metropolis skyscrapers. He is able to guide the careening craft into a controlled crash landing in an empty park as helicopters over overhead. The Lost Legion emerges and we get a two page reaction spread of media coverage, including discussion of homeworlds, powers, the Legionnaires killed in Lost - and Gates. The world also meets Shikari.
Venge and the Oversight Watch arrives (three of whom we met in LW 5), and M'Onel leaves with his new teammaates to deal with a crisis in India while Venge remains. The Legionnaires board Venge's 'jet', and Shikari marvels at Metropolis, Cham marvels at the post-Blight recovery, and Brainiac tells Venge they may need a moment to adjust. Venge drops the bomb that Brande is no longer president.
Shifting to McCauley, he appears frustrated with the Legion's return. Repulse thinks they have no credibility, but McCauley feels otherwise. As his shuttle arrives at UP Congress, his motorcade is attacked by Corvan with his Oversight Watch completely occupied elsewhere. McCauley is held hostage when suddenly Ultra Boy comes out of nowhere to neutralize the immediate threat, while the rest of the Legionnaires follow while Kid Quantum, Wildfire and Shikari take wave 2, with Cham, Brainy and Umbra all following up, each getting a chance to showcase their powers.
The crowd goes wild, and the Oversight Watch arrives after the Legion has taken care of things. Repulse and his crew immediately butt heads with the Legion (as before) and McCauley tries to mediate the situation; the Legion stole OW's thunder, but the Legion did a great job. Vigo and Trudy, our newscasters from LW1, walk us out of the scene.
The Legionnaires go to get debreifed, and Shikari gets to be put under a microsope, so she is separated from them. Luornu Durgo attempts to visit her friends and is shut down by security guards. The Legion is on their way to Forte Hill when Imra suddenly wakes up (she'd been dormant since the landing) warning of a trap as their train car apparently explodes.
Commentary
So this is the start of the new series! For a #1 issue it checks off all the boxes - good pacing, introduces the characters really well for brand new readers, both on the level of background of what came before as well as what their specific powers are and how they work. The immediate antagonists, beyond the obvious Corvan terrorists, are the Oversight Watch folks. The issue had great pacing and I never felt the story drag at all, and ended with a good cliffhanger. I definitely want to get to the next issue.
Big points for the crash scene - very well done, as well as the media reaction spread. It summed up a good chunk of the Legion's story in two pages, although it still mainly focuses on DnA content. I liked how subdued the Legionnaires were given what they had just been through.
The early McCauley pages I quite enjoyed, as he is clearly frustrated with the Legion's return, and even more so when he's taken hostage, as he knows the Legion is on the way. The "oh no, not now" got a chuckle out of me.
The next several pages of the fight sequence did a great job showcasing what everyone does. I think its a textbook example of how to do this kind of introduction in a #1 story.
Story-wise my main criticism is one around the diversion. Repulse is shown to jet out very soon before McCauley lands, yet is already in India when the attack happens? What is the Oversight Watch using to fly? He could have easily come back to assist, and in fact, I was expecting to see him. Obviously from a story perspective it was the mechanism to get the Legion to the rescue, but it opened a pretty massive plot hole.
I'm still not in a good comfort zone with Coipel's pencils. He's massively improved in the almost 2 years since the first Legion of the Damned issue appeared, but I think his work here is a bit to rough and angular for my tastes. Maybe it will be different with another inker, I don't know. He is one of those artists that seemed to be used a lot by McAvennie at this point in time that seemed to do better drawing environments and technology versus characters. His cityscapes and technology were pretty good. That being said, I kind of had an issue with his helicopters and an osprey-looking aircraft. Made it much too 20th century military for my tastes in a sci-fi book set in the 31st. The prior art teams (mainly Moy) did a better job creating a more futuristic environment, so it made me wonder if the directions for the copter and Osprey were written in the script given DnA's penchant for quasi-military features in their narratives (not the first, nor last, time I wish I could see the script given to the artist for these things).
Overall, I'd give it a solid B due to the story and art criticism above, maybe a B+. Great start for the new series, for sure.
Last edited by Gaseous Lad; 09/06/2104:33 PM.
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Fight or Flight Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning - Writers Oliver Coipel - Pencils Andy Lanning - Inks Tom McCraw - Colors Mike McAvennie - Editor
Synopsis
McCauley's Oversight Watch team trudges through the tunnel where the Legion's rail car exploded. Repulse, Twine, Abyss and Brainstorm are there to confirm the demise of the Legionnaires. To their complete surprise, the Legion survived, and are pissed! The fight that had been telegraphed in the last issue happens. Saturn Girl had read, just before the bomb went off, that McCauley wants them dead. Brainstorm neutralizes Ultra Boy before himself being neutralized by Saturn Girl. Abyss takes out Wildfire with his void, and Umbra tries to eliminate Abyss before her powers fade. Repulse makes a foolhardy charge at Brainy, Twine attacks Kid Quantum and starts to drain her power as Wildfire reappears acting spent. The Legion vanishes. End round 1.
Back at UP HQ, McCauley in one room is wondering why Venge's lackeys aren't finished with killing him off, and we are given confirmation that yes, Leland did in fact order the Legion's death. In the next room he goes to meet with M'Onel, who is acting as McCauley's personal bodyguard, which keeps him occupied from meeting with the rest of the team.
Rejoining the Legion, lost in an underground maze. Jo wants to talk to Imra about Garth, but its not the right time. The Legion wanders into a "Genome Vault" and trips an alarm, alerting Sci-Cops, the Oversight Watch, and Mr. Venge. Round 2 begins.
We rejoin Shikari being escorted to Virology by a nurse, an orderly and a Sci-Cop. In the elevator, they are revealed to be Triad! She converges into one person again and Shikari realizes she must be Legion. On a balcony, they wait until a figure appears in a doorway in midair.
Back to the conflict, Jo charges Venge directly and is met with a solid fist to Jo's Ultra-strength. Venge tosses Jo into a pipe. Imra tries to get into Venge's head and is unable to do so. Wildfire blasts Venge and does nothing but ruin Venge's suit. Jazmin casts a slowing quantum field at Venge and the Legionnaires escape out the hole in the waste pipe that Jo made. Venge comes out of the quantum field and orders the reactor the pipe attaches to to flush out irradiated coolant waste, and theoretically, the Legionnaires. The fluid is released, and the Legionnaires walk to the escape grate, finding lots of bones. Tasmia somehow recognizes the wisps of hair and glasses on one skeleton to look like McCauley. Brainy does a quick gene scan and confirms that this is a now-deceased Leland McCauley, whom we last saw with M'Onel. Cham urges the folks to get out in the open and Jo opens the grate revealing a huge wase vat. Only the fliers would make it out. But then - Shikari and the Bouncing Boy are there to give them a lift.
Commentary
Another solidly decent book, but its not as good as issue #1. Coipel's art I think on this issue is a bit better than in #1, which is a good thing. I think the "Dungeon Crawl" nature of the story fit his style pretty well. The pace of the book clipped along, but peeling back the layers I think that was because DnA did a bit of a cheat, which I'll get to shortly. I was glad to see that we didn't dawdle into the level of nastiness that is the Oversight Watch (Good lord, I keep wanting to type Workforce!). But Venge is revealed to DEFINITELY be more than he appears, and, with the last minute reveal, so is McCauley. But the rest of that team is horrible. Honestly I'm surprised that M'Onel was able to deal with the company of these creeps for a full year.
Specific comments - Imra comes to at the end of #1 and we are told that she "saw it all" that McCauley wanted them dead. She's telepathic. From whom did she read this? The bomb?
Brainstorm is a telekinetic, which is effectively in the umbrella of Zoe's powers. I've NEVER heard of a telekinetic mentally attacking a person as that is the realm of telepaths, ala Imra. TKs usually toss objects about, and the powerful evil ones do that to murderous effect.
It was good to see that the OW was able to stand toe-to-toe with the Legion in the first battle, but it was very unclear to me how the Legion escaped.
So, we get the reveal that McCauley and Venge are evil, then Leland goes into the next room. Sonic-Lined? This is a new thing for me for Lar Gand. I thought a lead-lined room would do the trick. Seems like a swing and a miss for Legion continuity there.
I enjoyed the Shikari break out scene, and at first wondered why the orderly had a Power-Girl type outfit on, then revealing she was Orange Triad. It was a great reveal, but never remembered Lu being so well endowed.
Second battle - Didn't Imra put brainstorm out of commission?
A couple other points here that speak to how fast the issue went. Venge comes in like a shark and gives the team an inadvertant escape route, but when Jazmin casts her field at him, there's no real rush on the part of the Legionnaires to get out. There is the rest of the OW that is coming at them - we even see Repulse and Cham fighting in the background, but none of the OW, nor the SPs are chasing after the Legion. There is no sense of urgency. I thought for a moment that maybe her feild was cast larger, but Abyss is shown talking to Venge as he comes out of the field. This same lack of urgency is seen when Venge opens the drains and we see the release, but it never reaches the output grates. The whole effect reminded me of the castle seige from Monty Python and the Holy Grail where Lancelot keeps coming at the castle. I'm sitting there waiting for the wast water like in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom!
Also, I remember that the Legionnaires still had their flight rings by the end of Lost. Were they fried forever? I didn't remember them addressing that point since they've arrived. Regardless, they should at least be able for the "fliers" to get the others to the top of the drain outside before the waste gets there, whenever that is. They didn't seem to have much urgency about that point.
Great McCauley reveal at the end, but the lack of follow up for the murder of someone of that stature speaks to a very sloppy villain.
I have to give this one a solid B-. The story was snappy, but it seemed to me because there were a lot of shortcuts taken.
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On #1: Excellent summary and review as always, GL.
I had mixed feelings about this issue. I liked what DnA attempted to achieve, but the manner in which they did so fell flat for me. As I mentioned previously, I've already read ahead to issue #3, and I'm just starting to get into the groove of the story. At the time this was published, DC and Marvel were both constructing their storylines to appeal to the trade paperback market. The thinking was (still is, for all I know) that they would collect so many issues of a series in a trade paperback and sell them in places like Waldenbooks (back when endangered species such as bookstores still existed). This approach resulted in stories being spread very thin. There is much evidence of this approach in these issues. As I read issues 1-3 in two settings, I thought they developed the story very well. In isolation, each issue feels very thin.
For me, this was most noticeable in the opening scene of the Legionnaires being brought back to earth. Much attention is paid to news reports and ordinary people reacting to their return. But what gets lost are the Legionnaires themselves. They seem like remote icons. You mentioned that they seemed subdued when they emerged from the spacecraft. They were also probably in shock. Still, someone should have been jumping for joy that they'd made it. Someone should have run to embrace M'Onel. Mon himself should have been ecstatic that so many of his friends survived or even sad that some did not. But all we get is a backward glance ("Talk to you later, Cham") as he's called away on an Oversight Watch mission.
The rest of the story does indeed play by the numbers. There's the UP assembly being threatened by terrorists (like they were back when the Legion first started). There's animosity towards the Oversight Watch. (I did love Jo's jab, "Why not? There's nothing left to take.") There's Shikari being spirited away, and Brainy making a thoroughly logical argument about quarantines (ironic to read this during a pandemic). There's a shuttle ride and then an explosion. It all happens very fast. We talked earlier about how this series felt like an endless carnival ride, and it certainly starts off that way.
Ironically, I found the only character I was rooting for was McCauley. I totally get how he felt that his power and control over Earth could be undermined by the unexpected return of beloved heroes. He's the only character who displays strong emotion and who clearly wants something--even if what he wants is for the Legionnaires to be out of the way.
The Legion # 1 works but only to the degree that it relies on our previous love of the characters to carry us through the story. It provides us with very little new love.
I agree about Coipel's art. He manages to make everything look grimy and dirty--a style that suited Legion Lost but seems out of place here. Still, it's a very moody style of art and matches the on-edge tone DnA strive for. It took a while to get used to, though.
Reading No. 1 in isolation made me feel as if I'd been led to a buffet but told I could only sample the fruit punch. I wanted more--and not in the good way of feeling satisfied and yearning for the next issue. I wanted more of this one.
Oh, don't get me wrong! There are MASSIVE problems with the story, a ton of which you point out.
I think given all the DnA reading I had been doing, I was just enjoying a more classic superhero romp with two of my favorite teams (granted - I wasn't as familiar with this era of the Titans), ACTING like Super Heroes and DRAWN like Super Heroes. Some of the fighting I was OK with, some not - Wally is more experienced than Jenni, Kory is pretty powerful, etc., so I was OK with some of that. But yeah, not using Sensor and Kinetix was kind of unforgivable (what is it with Zoe and the male writers/editors of that time, anyway? Such a lack of imagination!). So I guess its fair to say I enjoyed the tone of the books, especially figuring that they were going to have to go back in time to undo the entire story pretty early on, WAY more than the details, if that makes any sense.
It did make me really think about when this could have taken place in the continuity. The best I could surmise was that it was happening somewhere along the time of L*75 and LSH119 (late October 2998 for you kids keeping track with my timeline!) given a talking Kinetix, no ERG-1 and a lack of Blight.
oh yeah, this I get. Titans/Legion is a very by-the-numbers classic superhero story, and certainly ends on a more hopeful note (despite erasing everything lol) than Damned or Lost did!
I'll be back later for Legion 1 and 2, but you make some great points GL and HWW!
esp about a fairly sloppy way to dispose of McCauley and Amilia Crugg. though i guess not many people will be wandering around those sewers, but still. I wonder if it's lead-lined, did M'Onel ever try to check in there with his x-ray vision?
also Triad being like Power Girl
and the Legionnaires being way subdued when they first landed. like in a daze. I always thought they were just still stunned after the whole last battle with Progenitor, and Candi and Garth dying...
agree that the book was very by the numbers, not too many surprises here.the terrorists, the bomb, heck even McCauley not really being McCauley wasn't too surprising - this McCauley is quite different from the comical McCauley of the early-mid-late reboot before DNA
Previous Thread
I HATED Universe Ablaze, I felt the last 3 issues were very disrespectful to the team, making most of them ineffectual. Having the Legion split into three and face the Titans, and getting beaten so easily with each... yeah. (I did like that all the deaths were undone at the end, but that's it lol)
