Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes LSH #13--preview THIS!

What up, yo? The preview for lucky #13, that's what up!

Paul really seems to like writing SQ. It's just too bad-- given the limited space in the average monthly-- that we've gotten more about her in this incarnation than anyone else.

Yeesh - that Invisible Kid II dialogue is some of the worst I've read in a long time! I really hate the way Paul writes this character.

The rest of the preview looked OK though. Possible foreshadowing of Earth-Man's death with some of his speech there?

And for some reason I really like Questor. Weird, since Brainiac 5 is one of my least favourite members - but I think Questor has the potential to be a good villain. He's a new character right? I don't remember seeing him before this series.

Art and colouring look quite nice.

Agreed. It's especially weird considering that Jacques is Levitz' character. I like his redesign, though.

^ Me too. At first, IKII was one of the few Frank redesigns I didn't like - but I have really come around to it and now it's one of my favourites.

Re: Paul's writing of Jacques - it's funny but I think he actually writes him worse than anyone else I've ever read write him (not that there have been that many others). But the bits I saw of Jacques in the 5YL era and his one issue of the reboot were so much better than this inept character with his annoyingly anachronistic speech patterns that Paul seems to prefer.

I'm kind of tired of the 'blue baby' thingy, now.
This is going to be a long few months.
sigh

[snip]

Levitz has stated his reasons for Jacques speaking the way he does, and I'm fine with that. Jacques said early in his career that he really didn't care if people felt his speech was an anachronism, so... fine. I've handwaved away far more absurd stuff in comics than that.

What bothers me more is that his only function in this preview is to let us all know that Brainy isn't emotional about his homeworld being imperiled. Jacques at this point has known Brainy for a very long time and they met under extremely stressful circumstances, to say the least. The fact that Brainy isn't outwardly upset should no more be a surprise to Jacques than it is to us.

It didn't work for me. At all.

I think that blue flame might be related to Flash villain Cobalt Blue:

http://www.hyperborea.org/flash/cobalt.html

Oh, that's interesting info, SK!
The blue stone in XS's hand makes sense now, but it's all very anticlimatic, imo.

And kind of ho-hum.

I'm not crazy about the cover. The layout is awkward and the exaggerated looks on the faces of Polar Boy, Shadow Lass, and Sun Killer aren't appealing.

No complaints on the interior art, though. Everything was clear and the action scenes packed a punch. Timber Wolf seems to have shorter hair, which I like. The close up shot of Shadow Lass's face on page 10 is my favorite image of the issue.

I'm finding the LSV story line to be much more engaging than the Durlan story. As a whole, the series has improved a great deal in the last year. One of the things that I always admired about Levitz in the past was his ability to manage the large cast. That feeling has been missing for most of this series. The events of L3W, the fumbled introduction of the retroboot team, and some errors by Levitz early in the run left things feeling disorganized. With time, though, things are finally starting to fall into place. We now have a clear picture of who is and isn't on the team, where the non members are, and the active members are starting to get a good rotation. Quislet, Tellus and Gates all got some good moments this issue.

The final page was effective. Dream Girl's mysterious vision and Harmonia's equally mysterious comments have me intrigued. That's a good way to end an issue. Leave us curious to come back next month for more.

Great issue, but once again, I'm finding the endings too abrupt. There's just no tension to end an issue, it seems like at a random page it just stops. I know the Dream Girl's shouting "No!" and all, but it still seemed like we're in mid-scene and then I turn the page and we're done.

Other than that, it was a great issue, with all the right pieces moving forward. Loved seeing Gates, Tellus, Quislet and Wildfire all in the same issue (although Gates dialogue was a little forced for a plot reveal - He's not even FROM this universe, so how can we know his legends correspond to the Legion's).

Out of curiosity (and poor memory)...does Gates ever reference this in Levitz's run to date? Every time I see him, I get the feeling that their kinda glossing over or, worse, retconning out his being from another universe. I could be totally wrong, but I get that feeling. I know just the simple listing of his homeworld in the little info boxes feeds that impression for me.

Well, early on Levitz had Cham talking about how he was trying to help Gates adapt to life "here", though that could still apply to life off of Vyrga.

Hunter says he has no powers. Didn't they just say an issue or 2 ago that he had some sort of cosmic tracking ability, similar to Dawnstar's?


I didn't buy Shadow Lass fighting and beating Sunkiller with her bare hands at all. She didn't even use her power to try and shield herself from the glare.

The aging blue baby feels like a retread of Izaya from GDS to me.

She told Polar Boy to cover her as best he could. Even though there were no "power" effects drawn, I assumed Power Boy was lowering the temp around them all enough so that she could get close enough to Sun Killer.

Yes, but it's been stated that intense light alone weakens her and can eventually kill her.

I didn't do it. don't look at me. you must be thinking of one of the many other characters to use this name.


Me, i didn't make it past the first couple of pages.

what i'm wondering is why Element Lad didn't just change Immortus' body to oxygen or something. must be tough to regenerate that. or encase the fool in inertron. that would hold him for a while.


maybe element lad is suffering from some bizarre iq lowering disease no one knows about.

and from what ive understood before, i doubt that little explosion would hurt an inertron robot.

( sorry to be so negative but really not feeling the quality of work on LSH lately. )

He's ridiculously powerful, and only doesn't affect living creatures because he *chooses* not to, and so, it seems, writers keep finding ways to either kill him off, or write him out of the story (he wasn't used in Legion of Three Worlds, for instance), or have him use his powers ineffectively.

Since Immortus is a real person, transfered into that metal body, just turning him into oxygen would violate the Legion code, but inerton is his armor and frame, not whatever computer holds his consciousness (since the whole point of inertron was that it was supposed to be totally inert, and nearly impossible to destroy). If Jan turned all of the inertron into lead, Immortus would fall to the ground, his own body deforming under it's weight, and unable to do anything other than lie there complaining...

Or, as you say, he could just trap the fool in a vastly larger block of inertron, which he wouldn't be able to bust out of!

He also took a punch from Immortus, who, as I understood his bragging, could punch through mountains. In the rush to show a 'fight,' Jan's been arbitarily given Superboy levels of invulnerability *and* completely lost any understanding of how his transmutation powers work.

It's like the Timber Wolf vs. Sun Emperor fight (where Timber Wolf mysteriously had Wolverine's powers and tactics instead) all over again.

Tyroc can scream in space, Element Lad is invulnerable, Timber Wolverine can regenerate, has claws and super-senses, Shadow Lass appears to be fireproof, Earth-Man can mysteriously use super-strength after copying Sun Boy's powers.

And then there's the characterization, with Brande and Jacques changing their speech patterns, various alive/dead Schrodinger's family members, etc.

I have fond memories of Paul's GDS, but, ye gods, it's like he's got no idea who these people are!

Waid's powering down of Element Lad in the threeboot was one of the best things to ever happen to the character, IMO. But, we all know how that turned out. grrr...

Also liked Threeboot Element Lad.

(Yeah, I'm a freak.)

Where'd you get this? I thought all we knew about him was that he was constructed on Zoon. But then I haven't finished the current issue yet, so maybe it's in there?

In the Legion of Super-Villains one-shot, after Immortus bounces off of the Rock of Eternity, Mekt berates him;

"You should have had them super-charge your brain when they transferred it to the android, Immortus."

From that, I got the impression that he used to be a flesh and blood person (and it's unclear if Mekt really meant his *brain* is still in there, or that his digitized mind is in the machine).

Wasn't there some wrinkly old dude named General Immortus? It might be the same character...

(Edit: Meh, General Immortus is some old Doom Patrol villain, who was later retconned to be at least as old as pharonic Egypt. So not a pre-existing Legion villain, although he *could* be the same character. General Immortus did use robots, among other things, although he generally maintained his immortality through alchemy and super-science.)

Wasn't General Immortus the one who was behind the descendants of the JLA being assassinated way back when?

That was Prof. Ivo.

The dialogue in the LSV special seems to indicate this is the original Immortus.

In the final page of Legion 12 we see Mekt and Atta attacking Jan and Jacques.
Scene that is absent totally in 13.
Neither it has explained as Timber Wolf is in Japan and to both following pages in Colu fighting against Immortus in the 12 too.
And still I continue waiting for Saturn Girl's discovery on Harmony Li and the beginning of the search of Karate Kid for Jeckie; all that announced for the number 11.
Nice to see Shadow Lass, Quislet and Polar Boy in action.