Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Long Live the Legion! The Legion #37 - SPOILERS!

If Waid lives up to his hyperbole of making this book one of DC's top titles, that would justify giving us a second Legion book again...

And I'd love to see Gail write it, as long as it wouldn't interfere with her putting out Birds of Prey!

Interfere away! I'm only loyal to one book, and that's Legion (that's not a knock against BoP or it's fans by the way.) I really enjoyed this issue, especially the "new" cadet. I was surprised to see the "away" team turn up on-camera much less to find out the villains' plans include them in the calculations.

Hey, Violet shrank too! Garth put on his own duds again! Gym'll's still hanging in there too. The art somehow looked better too, not that I had any complaints before.

Okay, more detailed comments:

--The Kharadians remind me somewhat of Tangleweb and his species, who had the ability to gain knowledge and technical skill by "feeding" on the minds of others. Wouldn't there be someone other than the Legionnaires involved in trying to stop this war, though? What about the Science Police? Shouldn't the U.P. Armada be blockading the planet?

--The "exposition" page with Chuck and Gear seemed kind of pointless and redundant, unless, I suppose, you hadn't read the previous two issues.

--Are buildings collapsing because of the fires? Why are there fires?

--The scene between Jo and Tinya is quite touching.

--I really like Devil as a villainess. She's seems really familiar, almost like some sort of villain cliche, yet I'm having a hard time pinning down exactly who she reminds me of.

--At least Karate Kid got to kick some butt. It's interesting that the Persuader just waits to see what happens, rather than engaging in the fight. I still don't understand the role of Lialla in the storyline, but I think I've got Pinter sussed. The guy does his own organ transplants, right? Could he be... the surgeon that the Legion is looking for?

--I don't quite get the Devil-Canary relationship. It's got to be something more than just "She has a crush on me." She's way too submissive.

--Okay, I can take the "Brin as tracker" idea, but the "healing factor" annoys me. And "the wilds"? From what we've seen thus far of him postboot, he's an urban brawler.

--Have we seen Cham bleed before? It seems kind of strange that he would. Nightwind rocks, but Drura steals the show by giving the "Green"less villains the green apple splatters!

I was just a grinnin' and a grinnin' as I swept from page to page. Whattaread!

random thoughts:
-- Timberwolf's "healing factor" must be a lot stronger than previous incarnations. I mean, that was a beavy-duty impalement right through the chest!
-- The return of Dr Gym'll third arm!
-- I loved seeing Karate Kid just go to town on those inmates. Super Karate indeed...
-- So, does Drura need that helmet and air-tight uniform to keep her powers in check or something or was it solely to keep her appearance a surprise? I'm not clear if Cham's plan necessitated her putting herself in harm's way as bait before letting them have it though - she coulda been killed. It was good to see the return of Cham as tactician though.
-- With the bug evolution problem getting more attention here, I wonder if this will tie in to the resolution of these anarchists who are all about technological devolution... could Canary be the answer to this civil war??

My interpretation was that her suit was a precaution in case her powers got out of control. Presumably she's learning to use them?

Something else else interesting I noted was on the splash page with the Legionnaires on Kharardia. Triad orange seemed to be 'merging' her hands into the exhausted neutral's body. It this a case of Triad triplicating one body at a time out, or is one of her three bodies merging to provide better healing/strength to the other one?

Was this something you had scripted in Gail, or something Dan had drawn in? Whatever's going on there, I like the possibilites of expanding Triad's ability to something like that.

As for Drura's suit, I can definitely see it for maybe keeping her germs from spreading with her full body covered. That and keeping her hidden until her grande entrance!

Wonderful story. Without resorting to (in my opinion) silly stuff like having him beat up Daxamites, Gail really has KK shine here in a pre/postboot fusion. Just let him get "mentally prepared" and he can take on the world. Love it.

Great story pacing, too, with the Legionnaires subtly recovering, reorganizing, and getting ready to strike back. In the last few arcs' penultimate issues I always had the feeling of "how the heck can they wrap all this up believably and satisfyingly in one more issue?"--and they usually didn't--but this feels like it'll resolve right when it should. According to my renowned powers of comic-reading precognition, anyway.

The art grates a little--too many "Look how superheroey I am!" poses, and the power-blast visuals are pretty repetitive. The faces and outfits are still beautiful, though. And I like the recurring motif of Vi literally picking up the broken city and putting it back together--the mother-goddess image really suits a woman with growing powers.


Well, it did give us some new information: specifying the Spike's effect as limited to inorganic power sources (ending our debate over why it didn't shut down Ultra Boy's powers and/or human nervous systems), and also mentioning that the outside world knows almost nothing of what's going on in Metropolis.

Crashed ships? Not that they run on fossil fuels, but they (and the buildings) probably contain some flammables. And some types of power sources may have exploded when they were Spiked.

Good thinking! I'm ashamed to say that possibility didn't occur to me at all.

The Persuader's behavior could be interpreted in a number of ways, but one possibility is that he simply doesn't know what to do in this crisis, even to save his own skin. He's never been the brains of the F5, after all, and may be pretty uncomfortable planning for himself...but at the same time his badass rep is far too important for him to just go around asking what to do and helping out. So he hangs back, looks tough, and--without being obvious about it--ends up following the nearest guy with leadership skills. Who happens to be Val.

Alternatively, maybe this is all just his way of deciding whether Val deserves his daughter!

Devil is a homicidal maniac; maybe submissive's a sensible way to go. But yeah, Canary does seem to have some issues with intellect/willpower. Could be Devil's got her drugged/brainwashed too.

Yes, this seems to be a preboot nod--as I understand it. Wasn't Brin raised in the wilderness, and/or hid out there after he got conned by Karth Arn?

Personally, I'm for anything that makes Timber Wolf's powers more unique within the Legion than his standard fast/strong/tough package, but I agree that the healing kinda came out of the blue. Maybe we can call it a *cough* secondary mutation.

Gail.. all I have to say is this.... It has been YEARS since I read a Legion title where I actually sat up and CHEERED when I saw a character return. I then thought of Lashie... and I knew a few others from this board would be just as happy. I hope that Infectious Lass carries over to the new title.

Thanks Gail! That one panel introducing a certain new cadet has made me giddy with joy!
I've been giggling to myself all day long!

lil'rhino

Haven't read it yet but I am excited by all of your posts. Between the art and Gail's writing I feel like the good ole days (levitz for me). Cham using his brains instead of just being a visual! It's been ages.

Can't wait. Gail please answer my question regarding Arrow reciting the italian opera verse? pleassseee.

Jorge

[/B]

You're right. I had noticed the reference to inorganic power sources, but forgot about it when I went back to comment on the issue. It still leaves open the question of why whatever's going on would not affect organic power sources, though.

[/b]

That makes sense of the Persuader's motivation. I'm hoping he and Lialla get to play some important role in the next issue, however, or else I'll be left wondering exactly why the both of them were here at all.

I kind of like him as a kind of werewolf character, myself, which is sort of what he's gradually become in various incarnations over the years. Werewolves are notoriously hard to kill, however, so maybe that's playing some sort of role?

Love those bugs, but it sounds like the Legion made a really BAD decision intervening in their civil war. They should have kept out of internal politics and just allowed the two Kharadian races to commit "mutual genocide", imo. Their interference has only exacerbated the threat. Good call, Jazmin. Spark looked adorable. Her brother still has a long way to go but I'm grateful for the Cockrum-esque uniform and the more classic hair style. Thanks for giving us a peek at the other Legionnaires, Gail.

I missed Tasmia (though she's rendered beautifully on the cover) and hope her role isn't done. It's a bit frustrating to watch Dreamer just lounge around semi-conscious. Ah, maybe next issue. Kudos to Gail for acknowledging and portraying Cham's intelligence. Yes, the Durlan *is* smart. Not being a fan of Karate Kid, I found the three pages devoted to his kick-boxing (or whatever) a bit excessive, and I have to wonder about the Persuader's diffidence, but I'm glad that Pinter may have a more important role to play. He's a gas.

What can I add about Drura? She actually makes my stomach churn, but it was great fun to see her strut her stuff and give Arrow and Lantern their just deserts. She and Nightwind made the male cadets look impotent in comparison.

Has Winema kicked the bucket off-panel? Maybe not, but I'd trade her life in a NY minute for Dr. Gym'll's. Hang on, buddy. We need you in the relaunch.

Devil's plan to send the LSH into a "big pot of nothingness" is absolutely nefarious, though the source of her antipathy towards them remains fuzzy. Whatever fate this gal meets in the end, it can't be gruesome enough. Have at her, Wolf, and next time bite her nasty tounge off. Canary looks like a sleeper.

I might have been miffed about Wolf's "healing factor", too, but it seems to me *this* version of the LSH is a deliberate anomaly. If what Geoff Johns said recently is true, the TT/Legion special will portray the Legionnaires just as DnA did. Even so, Gail and Jurgen's reimagining has turned out to be fun. I just wonder how they can possibly wrap things up in one issue without straining credulity.

(I want to stress I have read no other posts in this thread before posting this)

This issue left me completely cold. This isn't the Legion I know.

Sure, they're heroic (I don't mean in the sense that they've suddenly become vampires or villains off panel or somesuch), but none of the characters "feel" like the characters I've come to know over the course of the post-boot. None of [what we see of] the Legionnaires this issue "sound" like themselves. And I'm a post-boot fan. The pre-boot was over before I started collecting comics. I'm not going to be cheering just because you dropped Infectious lass in.

We start with Spark spouting a bunch of technobabble in a fight that better have some major impact on the Metropolis story to be worthwhile. If we're not going to get an in-depth examination, I'd rather not see it at all

And Spark has, for some reason, changed her costume to have Cockrum rather than Sprouse lightning bolts. ON page two, Cos' shoulder thingies have shot up in size, and Thom looks about 35. That's a new power signature for KQ2. And is T-Purple really sticking her elbow in a mouth that looks like it's about to bite it off? And while I'm not objecting to Jarth weaing Garth's suit (albeit, again with the Cockrum bolts), since I've been asking for that for months, some explaination would be nice as to why he didn't and now he does would be nice.

Okay, M'On and SB in those costumes takes the story down 10 points apiece (ask anyone, I've been ranting about those for months).

"long range satellite scans produce only static." This was one of the things I was chalking up in my "bad science" column in last issue's thread (Although it was previously from #35, not #36 - And I do apologise about not doing that reply. It got kinda out of control, and my "science time"'s been taken up with revison for exams. The other big bugbear I found was the "organic magnetic material." Not that organics can't be magnetic, but there's no way for any entirely on-board system to create enough magnetic lift on Earth to hover. And even predictating that it could, it wouldn't be stable, but tossing around randomly). Basically, the satellite scans, unless you're saying they're all working on some pseudo-science energy, work on EM radiation. Light. So basically, are you saying no light can get in or out with that? After all, why else worry about those radiation filters being off?

And "every Legion cadet?" Oh my God, they killed Babbage! And hey, no Roboticans in Metropolis to get Spiked, come to think of it? Since the only mention of actual directly-caused deaths are from impants in organics.

I honestly thought we'd get another character narrating these two issues, given that we had a "sign off" at the end of last issue (more a comment than an actual complaint though). But Brainiac's up, about and has tidy hair again? So he's completely pulled himself back together it seems.

Tinya not wearing a touchstone still rankles. And BTW, where's Umbra vanished to? She appears on precisely zero panels this issue?

the exposition's fair enough. But TW's reminding me more of Wolverine with every passing second. And why the frell is there no blood coming from the entry wound?

Val's acting more like himself this issue, thank grife. Although given that he's mostly fight-scene

So, where'd that rip come from, since the same spot was unripped on the previous page, and TW has the missing spot of fabric? And Logan's getting better.

I still don't see Val making a crack like at the top of p13. And again on p16.

Like I said last issue - Nightwind's fair enough, since she's actually important to the story. As is Drura this issue. But why are NONE of the cadets those we saw in L25 (& 32)? If you're going to have "extras" in the cadets, at least have familiar extras.

As evil plans go, it makes sense. If slightly stereotypical.

Gail... loved your Deadpool/Agent X. Bought Rose & Thorn, although that flagged badly toward the end. Got one issue of BoP and didn't bother going further.

But sorry, can't love yer Legion.

SoM, it's implied that this arc is set a bit later than the last of the DnA issues. That would explain a new group of cadets, the revised uniforms on the Ranzzes and so forth. If anything I would liked to have seen Kent Shakespeare or Polar Boy etc. from the first class of cadets shown as full-fledged Legionnaires. I wouldn't worry too much about fitting this story really tightly into continuity. I think the costumes and the new cadets are more or less nods to the older fans before the reimagining. As a newer fan, I can see where it doesn't do much for you though. If anything these little things make me think this continuity is toast anyhow, since it seems like there's a bit of an "anything goes" attitude prevailing.

Yeah, but I'm ignoring that, since an explicitly-stated six-month (or more) Gap would really make me explode.

Considering that continuity/consistency in characterization have been pretty much out the window since the beginning of The Legion series, I wouldn't worry too much about it.

I'm just happy to have a good Legion story for once, whether it fits into postboot/preboot/whatever continuity.

The point of that scene, I take it, is to emphasize the fact that the crisis the Legionnaires are facing on Kharadia is of significant import that they aren't going to rush back to Metropolis because of what, from their point of view, is little more than a power outtage. If one is writing a story about a team with "Thresholds" that allow them to instantaneously re-deploy members anywhere, then that's the sort of thing that needs to be done to make the story plausible.



Is there any explanation that would really have been plausible? I'm not going to blame Gail for not explaning away the absurdities of her predecessors.

I'm not finding the distinctions between what is working and what isn't very plausible myself, but thus far it hasn't detracted from the story for me.


[/b]

Well, there very well may not be any Roboticans in Metropolis, since they seem to have isolated themselves on not-Pluto. And it's easy to just assume the "every Legion cadet" line is hyperbole.



Uh, yes. Your point?

Well, to be fair the rip wasn't noticable in the panel just before Canary pointed it out. There were highlights on Devil's side that made it appear that she wasn't in shadow or anything.

Also, Tinya's clothes are suddenly given a shiny "metallic" sheen and Violet has cut-out areas on her sides that are too regular to appear to be rips. But I chalk those up to sloppy work from the editorial side.

EDE, blue touch paper comment. Don't go there.

[/b] But that had already been established. All the extra pertinent info we got is that the bugs have gaping maws. It reminds me of a MOnty Pythonesque moment in Exiles where we cut to the bulk of the team in dire straights against a seemingly unstoppable army for two pages... then when we next see them, they're basically going "phew, glad we got out of that one okay." It was a bad comedy moment. Since the story is about the Metropolis team and not the Kharadia team, it is highly unlikely that we'll get any sort of decent resolution to the threat we've seen, so best to do a The Zeppo (Buffy ref) and cut out the glimpse.

[/b] I don't know. I'm not a writer. But it's a series, and I like my series serial.

Nor me really, since I'm "inured" . That's following on from something here.

[/b] In context, it reads as a statement of fact along with the other statements of fact.

The train went into a tunnel just as I noted that page (The post's a transcription of some notes I scribbled as I was reading.). But the exact same spot on her costume on the previous page shows no rip. (I've edited the original post).

It seems like you are creating a catch-22 by holding the issue up to a criteria that it is not designed to meet. I'm sorry if it keeps you from enjoying the issue (I certainly did) but you've predisposed yourself to not liking certain aspects of it which stem from a storytelling choice that you don't find valid.

I'm only referring to parts of the story that can be explained by a timeline gap. I don't get the overly Wolverine-ish Timber Wolf either (I think using the exact phrase "healing factor" didn't help), but I haven't warmed up to the rebooted version anyway.

Probably matlock, yeah. But I'm the kid who screamed at the telly whenever a cartoon decided its viewers weren't intelligent enough, or had such bad memories that they wouldn't notice that the thing last ep and the thing this ep completely contradict each other. And I hated the New Adventures of He-Man for suddenly having a different sword, then taking a wrecking ball to the whole thing.

Point is, I don't like big sudden changes, or worse big, sudden, off-panel changes (or loads of little ones, which amount to the same thing IMO), and never have. And if you try and explain it by "Oh, that was yoinks ago, even if it was last issue", I think that's worse than no explaination at all.

[/b]

Really? Maybe I missed it in the previous issues, but all I'd understood was that they were trying to prevent a pretty nasty civil war on Kharadia. I thought the whole notion of it escalating to a point that it might spread to other planets, and thus that it was much bigger threat, was something new. I certainly hadn't gotten the notion that the crisis was serious enough that it might plausibly be thought of as more important than what was going on in Metropolis.


I don't know. I'm not a writer. But it's a series, and I like my series serial.[/QUOTE][/QB]

Yeah, but would you prefer him staying in the Element Lad costume, an implausible excuse as to why he's only now changing costumes, or the unexplained changing of costumes? The latter doesn't seem like such a bad option to me.

The train went into a tunnel just as I noted that page (The post's a transcription of some notes I scribbled as I was reading.). But the exact same spot on her costume on the previous page shows no rip. (I've edited the original post).[/QB][/QUOTE]

I actually had the thought "I wonder if there were rips in the previous panels?" just as I was posting that. It is somewhat annoying as an artistic inconsistency, but probably less annoying than the number of Legionnaires that should currently be missing limbs after sticking them in all those gaping mouths.

SoM makes an excellent point about liking his "series serial". When I read the first issue of the arc, I voiced the opinion that it should have been published as an independent mini rather than the series finale, notwithstanding the fact that her story and Waid's are supposed to intersect. Gail's tone and style, however much you may like it, are so radically different from DnA's that it's difficult to think of this team as the same one we knew in May. Ditto Jurgen's artwork, fine as it is. That Waid and Johns are reportedly reverting back to the DnA team in next month's TT/Legion special is bound to confuse matters even more, unless it is revealed that the Simone/Jurgens Legion is some sort of hypertime blip.

I'm no continuity whore, but Gail's Legion, as entertaining as it is, does seem inconsistent in many important ways, and I'm not just talking about Garth's uniform.

On a different front: did anyone notice the Kid Quantum doll Tinya was holding? I want one, too, if only to stick pins into it.

I certainly had got the idea that it was very serious. Honestly though - "show, don't tell" is all very good, but unless you have the time and space to properly show it, better to just tell, as on the Buffy ep I referenced.

Honestly? I'd prefer him in the Element Lad suit.

It's like Kinetix - I dearly, dearly wish DnA had taken the chance to revert her in L17/18 (especially since I think 90%+ of the story potential there was in her reacting to what had been done to her after she reverted). But even that doesn't mean I want her simply to turn up on panel as her spunky self, even though I hate Terrorform-Zoe.

Heh.