Originally posted by minesurfer:
The bottom line is the writing shows a little bit of unfamiliarity with The Legion. I think both the editors and writers have a hand in that.
Okay, I see your points. I would disagree with your usage of the word "unfamiliarity."
I am willing to bet money that a pow-wow session between Johns, Waid, Berganza and Wacker produced both Teen Titans #16 and Teen Titans/Legion Special #1 (again, because TT #16 leads into the Special #1 which leads into the Re-boot #1, Waid and Wacker need not only to know what is going on in TT #16 but to have a hand in it as well). Wacker and Waid are definitely familiar with the Legion.
Flight rings can't activate transuits (or naturally protect their wearers from the vacuum of space)? Okay.
It's silly to have the Persuader's ax cut through parallel dimensions? Okay.
In that case, I would say the creators "cut corners" in order to set up both the meeting between the Titans and the Legion and the imposing threat of Fatal Five Hundred as quickly as they could.
They needed to bring the conflict from point A (Teen Titans in the 21th century) to point D (the Fatal Five Hundred rampage on 31st century Earth), and the only QUICK way they felt they could do that is via Point B (flight rings activating transuits) and Point C (Persuader's Ax cutting through parallel temporal realities).
Contrived and silly? Sure, it can be looked at that way.
As I see it, the fuss about the flight rings is really not worth arguing about (innovations do NOT have to occur on-panel), and the Persuader's Ax is one of those super-hero comic book "science-fantasy" elements that you either swallow and continue reading or laugh hysterically at and drop the book.
It's the same when in the mid-1980s in a Paul Levitz/Greg Laroque LSH, Vol. 3 issue Mon-el brought a white dwarf star into Legion headquarters to act as a power supply for one of Brainy's contraptions.