Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Long Live the Legion! SLOSH #20: SPOILERS

Now that's what I call a really good comic book. Not so much with the fighty-fighty, but lots of interesting developments and character stuff. More Dream Boy, more of Brainiac 5's plans for Dream Girl, Cosmic Boy's crush, the reason why there are giants running around on Earth and more on the devil's bargain Lightning Lad signed.

That last point: it's a tribute to how well characterized everybody has been that the first few pages are funny even though we can't see any Legionnaires' reactions.

ETA: There's a character named Raymond Luxury Yacht! How great is that?

Sounds like competition for Lester...

Pretty funny. He's the Ryan Seacrest of 31st Century Earth.

I liked DeKraker's pencils much more than the previous issue he drew. The work on that issue looked a little rushed.

Things I really liked.

A L.E.G.I.O.N. appearance
A Bizarro origin
Rokk made speechless (by a girl) BWAHAHA
The poop hitting the fan on the UP/Legion deal.

Strong hints that there's another super team recruiting youth who consider the LSH sellouts.

Everybody Snorgs Blargrux brings you: Real Rebels Embrace Authority! *snerk*

I don't believe that the U.P. is treating the Legion with the utmost respect, as they claim. They must have had a very good idea what their propoganda would accomplish, turning other teens against the Legion. Whether or not they intended to fuel the development of a rival group remains to be seen. Manipulative hoodwinkers, taking advantage of the underagers' gullibility. Who reads contracts when you're 18 years old?

A couple of Brainiac tie-ins: a Bizarro Brainiac created Earth's giants (the reverse of shrinking Kandor, he magnified McMurdo City) about 200 years prior, after the pole shift. Since we also see giants with green and blue skin, there must have been several different races in town at the time. They must also self-police or be very benign since the giants agreed to stay in "Big City" to avoid harming other people (like stepping on them). Gim must be the exception who can shrink.

Some L.E.G.I.O.N. hardware comes in handy, although Brainy regards Vril Dox as a bit of a dimwit. The Nura Revival Project advances, and Light Lass & Element Lad are indeed there because B5 needs their particular powers, not their spiritual advice. It all makes sense, if you read a lot of sci fi where people are teleporting or faxing themselves around the galaxy. I have a bad feeling about this, though; something is going to go spectacularly wrong, as it only can when the green kid is running the show.

Supergirl upstages everybody, to the great annoyance of the Legionnaires. Dream Boy hangs around like the unwanted kid brother. And we find out who Rokk has a crush on: <span class="spoiler_containter"><span class="spoiler_wording">Click Here For A Spoiler</span><span class="spoiler_text">Supergirl</span></span>.

We certainly get the impression that the other super team is hostile to the Legion - specifically, to their "alliance" with the U.P. No hints as to who is backing/organizing them.

I enjoyed DeKraker's art much more in this issue, as well.

Okay, things that annoyed me:

--The whole "Let me tell you about that big fight we just had" manner of dealing with the action is kind of getting on my nerves.
--Dream Boy falling into the role of the new kid that everyone hates. Wasn't this Lyle's role a year ago?
--I'm still not digging DeKraker's art, but I suppose it was *better*.
--Brainy's revival plan just sounds really goofy.

Things I really liked:
--The Origin of Big City.
--Cosmic Boy's crush.
--Raymond Luxury Yacht.
--The L.E.G.I.O.N. tie-in.

Speculation:
--The transmat mystery: Could Zymyr be responsible for transporting the giants out of Big City?

LOVED...

The acknowledgement of an interesting aspect of Triplicate Girl's powers. She has 3 unique perspectives on any scene which she can access once she integrates again. She'd make a great accident witness...and a great debriefer as she is seen to be here.

HATED...

The continued incorrect colouring of Phantom Girl's skin tone. I can see this happening on one issue but for it to happen again is just WRONG! She is a ghostly phantom...get it...pale, pale skin is the only way to go. FIX THIS!

I'm sure there are plenty of people on the UP's side who are capable of thinking about it like you just did. I'm equally sure that there are plenty, possibly including the ones who put together the propaganda campaign, who really think that the campaign represents the way the Legion must think.

Not exactly. They were fine with Lyle until his errors in judgment started surfacing. They hate Dream Boy just for being there.

sorry to say i've lost a lot of interest in the book at this point. the visuals are so watered down, it looks like nothing special.
the "new" clubhouse unveiling was pretty lackluster and uninspired. i don't like how the traditional supergirl/brainiac 5 romance is ignored. i hope that cos's "crush" is due to something suspicious rather than LOVE. wish the storyline would heat up already. ho hum.

A Reminder:

It's spelt "Raymond Luxury Yacht", but it's pronounced "Throatwobbler Mangrove".

Will Brainy's experiment recreate The Menace of Dream Girl? Is Rokk the new Dick Malverne? Will Garth earn fame and fortune as the poster child of the U.P.? This story was fun and unpredictable, and Tony Bedard's collaboration seems to have injected it with a dose of pure, unadulterated madness. I liked it.

I wish I could say the same for DeKraker's artwork. I can't recall ever seeing Kara, Shady and Tinya look so homely. Still, I would have paid extra for a flashback of Bizarro Brainiac's attack on Antarctica.

Whoever is operating behind the scenes (LSV?), they're extraordinarily clever to exploit the growing anti-Legion sentiment and cull disenfranchised kids like Seiss and the giants. Maybe stealing the objects was a test of some sort. I'm not sure why HQ was rebuilt in the image of the original, but the way things are going for the Legion, it's possible this one will be blown up, too.

Oh, and Star Boy *is* named Thom (last page). That comforts me.

I liked the story, but DeDraker's art, though better, is just too stiff. I will say he did a pretty nice job on the group shot, especially Cos, but why did he draw Colossal Boy at the debriefing when he's at home interrogating prisoners?

The most distracting thing I've found about his art is all these solid black teardrop things he draws that make people look like they have round black sideburns, no matter what color their hair is.

And the colorist has got to go. I guess I can finally accept that Tinya will be orange about 80 percent of the time, but in that big group shot, half the team is orange, and the one member who's supposed to be orange, Cham, is yellow!

Working for a newspaper, I know that sometimes presses can do wonky things to your colors. But once you know that, you then adjust your colors so they come out correctly on the press.

Storywise, there were several nice touches, and this issue does a great job of setting up the major pieces to come. (So do they not speak Interlac, or do all the Legionnaires study ancient English to honor their old heroes? Just wondering how Light Lass read the side of the ship. But I guess they must know English if they read comic books.)

Man, I'm just in a nitpicky mood this morning.

That's what I thought too, but that's not Colossal Boy at the meeting. It's Invisible Kid in his new costume. They do look similar--red shirt, shaggy brown hair, chunky build.

For me the issue moved certain plots along but I echo EDE's sentiment about how off-putting talking about a battle off-panel has become.

I'd hate to be in Garth's shoes this issue. Guess he never took seriously the notion that intent and outcome are never ever the same. I kinda get a sense though that it may wind up like the reboot Legion where Pres. Chu had them under her thumb. Also, I didn't realize how manipulative Imra's mom could be, but it sure shines through this issue.

On the art, I was thinking with the reduced page count we'd get Barry regularly but it appears that it won't happen at all. Same price, fewer pages, irregular artwork. I like Barry's art and the fact that he drops in here quite regularly but I have to admit a certain amount of disappointment with the fact that I have to endure fill-ins. Why not just get a regular fill-in artists or something to introduce some stability in that area.

No, there really is Colossal Boy. At the top of the page, it's Invisible Kid with Phantom Girl but under in the panel where we see the team it's Colossal Boy on the left sitting in his chair, it's pretty clear from its costume.

Invisible Kid has always his jacket on him and he doesn't wear gloves. However, in this panel, you can clearly see it's not a shirt, it's Colossal Boy costume, with the red on top and the blue/black for the under part of his arms and he has his gloves, etc....

So that's strange because the next panel, Dream Boy enter in the room and later, Supergirl announce that she left Colossal Boy in Big City.

Maybe Projectra thought she needed a little more practice with that spell after it didn't work so well in subduing the giants?

Obvious question time: While I dig the origin of Big City, why don't they just use Coluan technology to re-shrink the city?

Re: Big City: Remember that Brainy had to explain at length the shrinking technology to Light Lass, Saturn Girl and Chameleon. I'd guess that access to and maybe even knowledge of many 'alien' technologies is quite restricted.


Regarding the language they speak. I interpret that scene like this: Ayla misreads the English acronym for L.E.G.I.O.N. as just 'legion' thinking that the thing was some ship B5 commandeered for offical business. This indicates she's not familiar with all the conventions of English usage though she can get by.

Give this man a no-prize!

D'Oh! Maybe they don't want to be shrank back down and like being giants stuck in a city?

I liked this issue a lot. I do agree though that DeKraker tends to make everyone too cartoony looking by over-exaggerating reactions and expressions and it's a little off-putting. Especially, when you're filling in for someone of Barry's caliber, who gets visual clues across far better and more subtly.

Plus, Mr. Wacker, I hear that Ronda's available to color the series. Not only does she not make everyone orange, she's a step above everyone else in the field. Please think about it.

Another question. Can Gim's pineapple-pants brother shrink too? If not, why was he allowed to "step out"? (Or was Gim's place located in giant land?)

Maybe they tried to re-shrink Big City but something went wrong and people died. Or the Coluans just wanted too much money to shrink the place back to normal. We really need a Big City origin issue(s).

Good question, if pineapple-pants can shrink as well - a family characteristic, or is Gim truly unique? Are all those young giants recruited for the alternative team just as giants - or is the shrinking power more widespread?

I wonder if Garth's Bizarro Legion story had its roots in the Bizarro Brainiac incident - maybe Bizarros are like zombies in the 31st century, you just throw a few into every other story.

Like OMACs.

Or Wolverine.

Emotion? The magnetic windbag is getting his own Supergirl crush subplot?! Gah!!!

Sigh... Just keep slipping in some some Star Boy & Element Lad. I'll eek by on their patient consideration.

Why didn’t it occur to anyone to read the agreement that they have with the UP? I guess for the same reason no one thought to send Dream Girl’s body to her parents. Have they checked Supergirl to make sure that she’s human and not a techno-organic construct? Legion of asSuming Heroes, perhaps? But thats shows how young they are. I loved that this read more like a Legion story than other issues of this run have.

Am I the only one who felt like nothing happened in this issue? The pacing on this book is so slow I feel like I'm watching a soap opera. I bet I could read every other issue and not miss anything important. Why do they have to drag everything out? Suspense? Suspense about what?

And why does the action always happen off panel? The cover was very misleading. I was expecting a battle royal with the entire Legion fighting a race of giants. Instead, it's treated like a footnote.

I hated DeKraker's inks. His expressions are so over blown and cartoony. In one scene where Jan and Ayla's mouths are supposed to be hanging open in shock, it looks like they're sticking out their tongues instead. Shady and Jo look especially dorky in one panel too.

As for the "story," I wonder if Sun Boy is behind the recruiting of the giants and Seiss. And why does Supergirl care if the figments of her imagination like her or not?