Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Legion of Super-Heroes #6 (2020) - Preview and Spoilers

At this point my expectations are so low that I was actually impressed that so many characters got to speak and use their names!

I'll have to go back and look for sure, but I don't even think Dr. Fate was in the issue.

Dr Fate makes 3 quick "appearances":
1) bottom left corner, above the head of the villains leader on the double page where we see Gold Lantern fighting against the water (pages 10-11)
2) On the following page, in the background, we can see him fighting in between the arms of Shadow Lass (pages 12-13)
3) on the page where we see New Earth at the end, we can see the back of his helmet (first one at the bottom of the sphere) since we are standing behind them. (pages 20-21)

No dialogue at all. no information. Just a visual.

Good questions. I did not even pick up on that, since it has been so long since last issue. That's not a good sign!

Thanks. Definitely "blink and you'll miss him" cameos.

Another case of the cover lying!




thanks for confirming. I remember glimpsing Fate in a panel too... sigh.

Disappointing issue for me.

And that's being generous. This comic is awful. I CHALLENGE anyone to name a worse first 6 issues of a Legion series.

I actually don't think this book is really being written by Brian Michael Bendis. Not because I'm a fan of his (I'm very unfamiliar with his work in fact) but just because I cannot believe an apparently respected, award-winning comic book professional with decades of experience in the industry could write something this amateurish. Bendis has a teenage daughter doesn't he? I bet anything he's secretly handed over the writing and plotting duties to her and he's just giving it a smooth over with some of his dialogue flair. (I have a theory that a lot of established comic book writers do this to give their kids/spouses some experience in the industry actually.) How else to explain a character as ridiculously stupid as Monster Boy? Leaving aside the fact that he is completely redundant on a team that already has Chameleon Boy, there are so many questions:

* What defines a "monster"? Surely that will mean a different thing to every different person and culture in the universe. And yet, all he seems to turn into are the type of stereotypical creatures you might see in a 1950s B-movie on Earth.
* How is a character who has no control over their power and could theoretically turn into anything from a 100 ft. tall volcanic dragon to a highly contagious sentient virus allowed to be on this team? He would be a completely unreliable teammate and a danger to everyone around him. Even the Adventure Comics team would have told him to "Get lost!".
* I know I said I wouldn't mention it but Chameleon Boy is right. there. What does Monster Boy bring to the team that isn't already done better and by a much more beloved character?

To me, everything about him screams "I am some teenager (or younger)'s first character and isn't it cool that s/he get to see me in print!"

The Legion deserves so much better than this.

Someone on Facebook said, "Monster Boy can't control what monster he turns into? In the Adventure Era, that would have gotten him rejected!"

I couldn't help but nod... and now you've got me nodding again, Blacula.

Blacula, I think you are so lucky to be unfamiliar with his work. His Marvel superhero work is filled with moments that would have gotten him a failing grade in Creative Writing 101. Old dogs and new tricks...

Apparently #6 is hot on eBay right now due to it supposedly being the 1st Gold Lantern

Not sure if this has been brought up in the forum but someone on reedit made the connection with Green Lantern's Lashorr's race and the new Doctor Fate.

Huh! I see the resemblance..

wish there was more in the series to interest me in the new Dr. Fate though.

v8 Issue 6

"I got this." "We got this." "*I* have this." "I got your back."

There's not a lot of dialogue in the issue, so it's even more obvious than usual that they all have the same speech patterns and vocabulary range.

"Meet the new recruits!" exclaims the cover. In this 'boot, they're all the new recruits really, so it's a cover aimed at previous readers. We didn't get to meet Dr Fate at all. A couple of glimpses, just like the majority of the cast.

There's so many Legionnaires running around that there's no real sense of an enemy. It's basically one big ship, a few little ones and some glimpses of some faceless goons. Their underutilised boss holds the trident. It's the sort of threat any couple of Legionnaires in the '70s and '80s would have dealt with easily. And that would only be two so we could get a bit of dialogue in there. Brainiac Five spends the issue warning the other Legionnaires that it?s oh so dangerous, in a pretty poor attempt to pretend the threat is much more than it really is.

The art is lovely, but at 4-5 panels a page and umpteen Legionnaires to shoe horn in, there's very little depth to it. The big pay off is one that you could see coming as an option some time back. So it would have been nice to have *seen* it happen. That would have been worth the panel space. How did it impact the people in the domes? We don't know. Instead we get Liaison Lass/ Scarf Girl/ Lady Snark get a comment in, to remind us that we're quite a way in from that Millennium issue. Jo's dad is still in the huff and President Brande sounds much like all those Legionnaires this issue. I expected her to say to the Legion "I got this" referring to Nah Snr's strop.

We could be doing with:-
Punting half the team round the galaxy somewhere
Focusing on who is left
Get some character arcs in there
tell a couple of stories in a single issue or two.

So I'm not even sure what's accomplished at the end of this arc. I mean... New Earth "getting its oceans back" sounds like a cool science fiction idea, but there's no Earth on which to put them. So what you have is just a bunch of water floating in space. It's just bizarre.

And I don't FEEL anything over it. I mean... the story has shifted focus and jumped around so much that I barely even registered Earth had no oceans. And we were never shown the "so what' of Earth not having oceans, you know. I'm just comparing this to other big Legion moments like the Earth blowing up in 5YL, or Saturn Girl beating Universo, or the Reboot Legion beating Mordru or exposing President Chu, or beating Evillo, or the Sun-Eater, or the Legionnaires beating Lemnos in the Threeboot...

and this... this didn't make me feel anything!

Other than annoyance, and confusion at who was saying what because nobody really said anything! In most of the scenes, you could have swapped out any Legionnaire for any other Legionnaire AND IT WOULD NOT HAVE CHANGED ANYTHING!

A few people have mentioned "the end of this arc" and I've been like "What arc? Has a storyline finished? Are we sure? Which one?" and only after about 3 minutes did I remember that there was something happening with the trident of Atlantis that is apparently now over. THAT is how unimpactful that "plot" was.

How ironic that the story had a literal climactic huge SPLASH and it was depicted on one of the few pages that wasn't a splash page.

Then I turned that page, expecting to see the stupendous consequences, and instead there were just people standing in a room. I flipped back, thinking there must be some pages missing. I still think there are some pages missing...or there should be. What a waste of a build-up, such as there was.

I really like the concept of this new Legion. The original Legion was targeted to the worldview of mid-20th Century white adolescent males (like me), and in all its versions it has never moved too far from that. This Legion is being extrapolated from a more diverse early 21st Century worldview. There are so many opportunities to explore dynamic ideas, and Bendis is doing some of that. But those ideas aren't telling a meaningful story. At least so far. And I'm sad to finally say, it's not looking promising.

I think this book is trying to do too much at once. Bendis clearly wants to devote as much time to the setting of the 31st century as well as the characters, and the plot suffers from it. Hickman is doing similar world-building in X-Men, but it feels more natural than what Bendis is doing here. I guess it is because the X-Men are still maintaining their basic characters (for the most part)?

I also think the book lacks a clear central villain. Part of the reason I like the Threeboot is because Terra Firma was a challenge to the Legion and they had motivation for their actions. So far Bendis has tossed around Mordu, General Nah, and the Horraz, three very different threats.

Yeah, and I still don't really get the motivations of any of these three threats, other than a vague desire to have the trident. Which fell flat, because all I remember is the trident was some powerful object. Okay, so what? I still don't know what the Horraz wanted or why they were so angry. Same for Nah and same for Mordru.

This LOOONG OVERFRIGGINDUE issue was ok, ... although I felt that Dr. Fate got short shrift.

Is it just me or are the Horraz not getting more and more lovable with every issue??

Horraz plush dolls will be the big Christmas gift.

I kind of feel like that's pretty much an accurate take on his writing in general. Avengers, Legion, whatever, it feels like you've just watched a trailer for what could be a great movie, but, other than a few good scenes splashed into the brief, disjointed narrative, the 'movie' promised never actually materializes. He can tell you that he has an *idea* for a good story, but he can't actually tell the damn story.



Oh, don't worry, next month she wants to arrest the Legion again! 'Cause her characterization is "Whatever, throw a dart. Today I'm pissed. Tomorrow we'll be besties. The day after Imma cut you."

She bounces between contrary positions so fast *she* might as well be Bouncing Boy.

I think that applies to EVERYONE's characterization. If it weren't for the powers and some backgrounds (e.g. Superboy coming from the past, Rimbor being Ultra Boy's homeworld), most scenes could use an entirely different set of Legionnaires and nothing would have changed.

Gold Lantern showing up to transmute whatever? could have been Element Lad.

Monster Boy scaring civilians? Could have been Chameleon Boy.

The away team taken to Rimbor? You could have switched Mon-El for Superboy (so someone super-strong would have taken Daddy Nah out). Cosmic Boy, Shadow Lass, White Witch, Colossal boy? Didn't matter.

The team that interrogated Mordru? Saturn Girl (and her telepathy) was the only essential one there.

Heck, Rose could be replaced by Shvaughn Erin and I feel it wouldn't matter. Rose's history, past, split personality, none of it matters here at all!