Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Re-Reading the Legion Archives: Volume 29

thoth lad:


The young Legionnaires had not yet encountered the Emerald Eye, so naturally would not recognize it.


Given that there was cloning involved in their resurrection, perhaps McCauley found some other set of clones that Clonus the Controller didn't end up using. Maybe Clonus made a set of "straight" clones before he started tinkering with their genes and ulttimately came up with the versions we saw in the Wanderers series.

As I typed I was thinking that the Adventure team would have met them, but of course they wouldn't as Andrew is one of the SW6ers.



The Legion of Wanderers! Financed by the multiple infighting McCauleys or Omnicom Men, as they prefer.

It didn't occur to me that the SW6 hadn't yet met the Eye.

Presumably, everyone was freed from McCauley's Eye-stasis, It would have been nice to see the Wanderers bid farewell to the kids. Never enough panels.


Good connection to the war-related PTSD. Rokk is shown in this issues to have suffer more lingering hallucinations than the others - maybe his PTSD plus this experience set him up for the later mental breakdown. He's never really recovered, which may be why he spends most of his time in a chair.


This series does focus a lot on the relationships and emotions rather than the action. It might make it run slow at times, but it gives depth to the storytelling.

Legion of Super-Heroes #40 "Guess Who's Back?" by Keith Giffen, Tom & Mary Bierbaum, art by Jason Pearson & Karl Story, Colours Tom McCraw, Assistant Editor Eddie Berganza, Editors K.C. Carlson & Michael Eury

Cham arrives on New Earth, meets up with Rokk and Devlin (now a member of the adult Legion). They find the SW6 team rebuilding the HQ.

The two Brainys find SW6 Laurel, who asks if Valor has returned in the time bubble. Young Brainy tempers the news, old Brainy is blunt and says he's probably not coming back.

The Subs and Universo arrive on New Earth and are cheered by the crowd. Jacques goes AWOL from his Presidential duties, dumping the work on Troy, to look for his sister. He finds her.

Dominator experimental subjects, still mind-altered and loyal to the Dominion, have also arrived for treatment. They include Myg, Wildfire's brother Squire and Charma's daughter Cocheta. They break free. Jan disables Squire, but the others aren't subdued until Universo calms them down. He's cheered by the crowd, who call for Universo to be President.

On Delan III, Nura cajoles J'onn J'onnz to help Mysa, who is on Sorcerers' World looking for something.

Garth calls Rokk at the new Legion HQ to report Imra missing, with no clues.

The adults and SW6 get together; most of the young ones are pleased with their older selves. Brainy sulks over young Brainy and Laurel; Vi, after a talk with adult Vi, dumps Devlin (who assumed she'd just follow him), adult Jo mourns Tinya after trying to avoid meeting young Tinya.


Comments:
There's a lot that irks in this issue. Is there anyone Nura hasn't slept with? Why has J'onn Jonnz appeared all of a sudden? Some crossover? Jacques is very negligent of his Presidential duties. He should have some gopher out looking for Danielle. Jan can do just about anything. No wonder they have him off on spiritual quests most of the time. Cham displays a lot of insensitivity regarding adult Jo
avoiding young Tinya.

The cover was a fake-out, as these things tend to be, albeit a nicely colourful one. The villains are easily discarded (their pods were shown in #27); they only serve to show the adult Legion not up to the job and Universo, by contrast, quite able. The Subs do get some recognition; the adult Legion, and even President Foccart, none.

It looks at this point as if the two Legions will be working together out of the salvaged HQ. It's not clear, however. Rokk and Tenzil man the monitor board but the two groups, apparently, haven't formally met.

The highlight, for me, was the social gathering with the two Legions together. The two Aylas made me smile, as did the two Andromedas. Young Violet gets an important lesson about standing up for herself and even puts it into practice (although she'll go back to being timid Vi in the Legionnaires series). Can you change by example? Can Violet become more self-assured without going through the sens tank experience? Small steps. Andromeda will change her uniform to be somewhat more sexy, without going for the adult Laurel's thong and jacket.

It's all very upbeat (we never see Cham's reaction to learning about his younger self's death) but ends on a sombre note, with Jo, alone and in misery, reading his last note from Tinya. He thought he'd moved on, but it's hard to take that living reminder of all he lost. It's personal, powerful and has more impact that the unknown billions lost in Earth's destruction.

I think the cover (and its corresponding retcon about Drake having a brother who also became a ball of energy) is a disgrace. What a smug, stupid way to wind up the Pre-5YL fans even further. I've been keeping mostly quiet about the things that have bothered me over the past 20 or 25 issues, but I felt I had to speak up on this. Disgusting!

v4 Issue 40

From the cover, I probably thought we were going to find out more about Black Dawn. Instead, it turned out to be a pain.

I'd a decent knowledge of the Legion's history by this point. But I'd never heard of Drake having a brother. It bothered me enough after I'd read the book, that I'm sure I went off to check Who's Who, and The Legion Who's Who... and the RPG... and that Amazing Worlds of DC thing. I didn't find anything, so it was an irritating loose end. Practically everyone else in the scene was an old character, so I just assumed I'd missed something. Squire was created from scratch in a replication of Drake's origin. TM's journal puts the inclusion of Squire on the cover as a call made by the marketing guys, giving the character undue prominence.

The issue builds up to a full, and casual, meeting between the two Legion teams. It's a big pay off for all the TMK characterisation on the SW6 since their introduction. This extends not just to the dialogue, but to the art which has consistently drawn them as much smaller, and younger, than the original cast. Following on from Alt+Dirk having a (provoked) Space Mutiny moment last issue, he hits on Laurel who dismisses him. It can be har to change who you are, even if faced with the burning wreckage of your future self. A lesson for us all there.

Alt+Vi's shyness and indecision is counterpointed with the lessons that older Vi has learned from the traumas she's gone through. As we saw last issue, older Vi isn't that far removed from some of those insecurities. So, she's in a good place to quietly help her younger self. Devlin comes across as an ass here. He shows no consideration for Alt+Vi. He assumes she wants to go with him. Obviously when he finds out that this isn't the case, he can't possibly go with her. Of course not, because he's committed himself. Can't possibly go against that. Jerk.

I also wasn't chuffed with the easiness in which Alt+Vi got to join the older team. Rokk seems to have an open-door policy when it comes to Legion membership. Just bring your own chair to watch the action going on elsewhere.

An example is Garth letting them know if Imra's disappearance. Rokk offers to help, but Garth tells them there's nothing the Legion can do until a clue is found. Rokk is satisfied with that. Alternately, he could have mobilised the team full of espionage skills, enhanced senses and 5th level intellects to help out anyway. But that's not this Legion. While the character moments are good, the inability to get some story momentum is a continual failing in this volume.

Jo meeting the younger Tinya gave TM a chance to reprise Jo's return from the past a number of issues ago. It's a strong scene, but it's one that the book has already gone through.

The Laurel/ Brainy relationship is dealt with nice and directly, through questions from their Alt+selves. It's a question that you'd want to know the answer to after all. It's a little surprising to see Brainy as a wallflower here. It's apparently a business meeting, so we could have seen some of that. As it is, I would have though he'd find any of a billion things to be occupying his time with. It's just as well Rond's not there to see that Laurel clearly still has feelings for the Coluan. It's clearly reciprocated, but the two have grown too far apart. The younger couple might have concluded that it's because older Brainy turned into a jerk, following his comments regarding Alt+Lar earlier in the issue.

The relationship between the Alt+Brainy and Laurel shows us what could have happened if the two had spent much more time together from their adventure days onward.

The action in the issue involves a number of escaped Dominator prisoners. We learned that some chamber captives had been mind wiped, and here's some of them: Polecat, Charma, Holdur, Black Mace, Ghost Girl, Flare, Wildfire's brother and Myg. I remember thinking that if anyone could throw off a Dominion mindwipe, it would have been Myg. Just shows you how lucky the others were.

Sade is hanging around with the Subs again, but I don't think we saw much more of her. I'm not complaining, as a kill keen character has no place on a Legion team.

The resolution doesn't involve the heroes winning, but rather the arrival of Universo overcoming Charma's powers. We know that Universo is in league with McCauley to rule everything. But he's playing the modest hero of the resistance here. I remember thinking that we didn't get to see Kent using his powers much here. This would have been a good time to give us some more background. The arrival of the SW6ers helped to prevent more damage. Again, they're more effective than their older counterparts. Tellingly, they've got access to flight rings. Where did the older team's get to? Jacques could certainly have used one. He's also not concerned with being Earth's president, leaving his duty to millions to make sure Danielle is on a spaceship. Surely there had to be a better way for him to contact her?

It's an issue with plenty of subplots. Another involves Mysa on her quest. Nura is monitoring her and is going to send someone to help. I'm not sure when the penny dropped for me regarding the person's identity. If memory serves, TMK were going to initially have Laurel come from the 20th century. When that got changed, they forgot to drop there being three survivors form that era to two. That space was filled by another character form that era who had already appeared in a Legion comic. I guess Nura hooked up with him after Chuck & Lu's wedding.

"My lips are neutral-sealed," is another of the great lines in the volume, that can be used elsewhere.

Drake might never have known he had a brother, he said he was an orphan (Secrets of the Legion # 3), so perhaps if he and Squire were adopted by different people, it's plausible that we readers of the Legion would have known nothing. I assume that he was a normal human until the Dominators found that he had a "meta-gene" that would enable his consciousness to survive transformation into anti-energy, so a genetic connection with Wildfire would fit.


I don't think Vo and Devlin actually broke up, but rather resigned themselves, for the time being, to a long-distance relationship.

I don't think there's any implication that Nura slept with J'onn, just that they're friends.

On first impressions I wasn't that keen on this portrayal of Nura. At least compared to other members of the v4 cast. Compared to her leadership in the Levitz era. A few points if I was taking a Devil's (Dozen) Advocate approach...

I was surprised at the depth that Jim Shooter had considered the sex lives of the Legion, never mind what the rest of Legion fandom around that time might have been thinking of.
So, I think TMK had taken that initial appearance where she wowed all the boys, added Nura's flirting (I'm recalling Levitz, but might have been earlier) and her breakdown with Thom which included her seeing other people (not including Atmos here, which was very different). They've taken those threads and concluded that Nura is someone who is certainly desired by a lot of teammates, and who does have intimate relationships with some of them. This is over quite a long timeline. I'm not sure if any of these are specifically when she's supposed to be with Thom. Considering what a smitten kitten he was right from her first appearance, I guess that at least some were. But they could have been when they had separations, that we got a glimpse of towards the end of the Levitz run, where their relationship seemed to be a troubled one.

This volume seemed to suggest Lu having relationships with others along with Gim, Lar and a few others having other partners.

Nura wouldn't be the first politician to indulge in a wide ranging sex life. Turning up with boy toys, is a bit of an on the nose example of that. But in a genre of scantily clad female characters, does provide some balance.

Nura's leadership skills must have developed if she's now High Seer of Naltor.

J'Onn was in the Cockrum drawn Lu/Chuck wedding splash page. So he was technically already in a Legion comic and I blab on about that in my review. Tars Tarkas was also in the pic, and there's a Lost Tale of the Legion where John Carter is brutally rejected by Sun Boy at the try-outs.

Dirk: You only have superhuman abilities in low gravity worlds? Rejected!
John: >choke< I mustn't tell them about my true superpowers... immortality and astral projection! >sob< This future world is not ready!

The likes of Jacques, Jan, and I'll include Devlin have promise that I don't think is fulfilled in v4. Ironically, in that lacklustre development, they probably provide a mirror to people in our own time. We're told what a great resistance leader and politician Jacques is, and don't see much of it. Troy seems to do the legwork, and does it again in this issue. Jacques is there to add a signature to work done by others, and he can't do that. Jan is on a self involved spiritual journey that seem to be up his own rear. The only external impact the journey has is to alienate his partner. Devlin was touted as a super reporter, but we got to see none of that in the story, where he became a comedy stereotype. 30 issues later and he's a Mary Sue who's glommed onto the team and panel hogged to the point he's the superpowered lynchpin between groups, and the writers' point of view character. He's still a stereotype waxing lyrical about a homeland he's picked up from an Omnicom tourist brochure.

Considering how keen TMK were to depower the Legion in this volume (denying them flight rings when the SW6 guys are zooming around with them), Jan was an odd choice to add to the cast. Writers have gone out of their way to keep him from using his powers effectively.


and...




There's nothing wrong with adding a character to the cast. There's all sorts of possible origins for Squire. Considering the book has clones of the main cast running around, there's a few more along those lines that are available. TMK had brought back so many characters into the book, that my reaction at the time was one of trying to find out who this guy was. I think the failure to find anything (pre internet) was a pain. When TMK revealed that he was new I probably felt that I'd just wasted my time. It seems to be my reaction to it more than an issue with TMK adding another character into the DeMille of comic books. It turns out to be a bit pointless as I don't think he ever reappears. One of the many dangling plot threads.


I'm thinking of just copying and pasting this into each review. It's really the job of the editor to steer the book. A basic part of that is to ensure that the writers are aware of the who the readers are paying to see. Having the Legion being part of a complex galaxy where they are part of larger plots, can be done without losing the group's identity, removing their effectiveness or failing to make them central to their own book. All things that have failed here. Like the earlier issues, there's lots of ideas, and lots of good execution of them, but not necessarily to the book's benefit.



I've always thought Vi's determined personality after the sens-tank was her working through the trauma it had caused. Added to that, I think she was reacting to her colleagues who didn't notice she had been replaced and, to an extent, moved on as she was recovering. Vi made a lot of very hard decisions when she recovering both physically an mentally. The physical side of we saw in her training regimes and more proactive approach. I think there's a difference between making the mental decisions and actually being able to fundamentally change. We saw that in this issue where a battle hardened Vi considers Ayla to be the strong one, and wants to be needed too. That sense of wanting to be needed can be traced all the way back to her earliest insecurities and through having to deal with teammates, including Gim, who hadn't noticed someone else could take her place.

It's scenes like this that sum up this volume for me. TMK have put abundant levels of thought into developing the characters, and have a wealth of history which they use to steer their choices. Yet, such scenes are in a book that was torpedoed in editorial.


Well put about Jo. Since we saw Cham look at the SW6 kids with a sense of nostalgia, I imagine his reaction was "So, there's a vacancy for a Durlan?" I seem to recall he couldn't join Alt+Legion fast enough.



Devlin is the new Duplicate Boy!

It makes me wonder how Alt+Vi and Alt+Ayla viewed each other after the meeting. Were then many other relationships that started after SW6 entered the chambers?
Garth/Imra; Jo/Tinya; Querl/Laurel seem to be set up. Lu isn't mourning a missing Chuck, so that doesn't seem to have started.




From this reading, I thought that there was a time when they were at it like space rabbits. I'm still going for a drunken night after the Chuck/Lu wedding.

"She doesn't even know about you and me and how we...well, you know..."
That brings an ">ahem<" from J'Onzz.

Nura calls him sweetie and J'Onn admits that he could never say no to her.

I respectfully disagree, but I give you and Chaim credit for putting a lot more thought and care into this character than T + M did.

It's not as though I'm a fan of the move. He seems to be a throwaway character. I think TB said that the Dominators would look to experiment on the relatives of those with powers. And that's about it. But it's not seen for anyone else. Squire's escape from his containment suit is never dealt with. How he got a containment suit is never covered (although getting a spare from the taken over Legion HQ is probable). It's all just left in limbo.

I didn't have an issue with Wildfire heroically sacrificing himself during Black Dawn. It's only through rereads like this, that I see it as a systematic move to remove the strong personalities in the team, allowing the 5YG events and Legion reformation to occur as plotted. Drake's sheer power and outspoken personality would have got in the way of that. Particularly with this reread, I can't see him being keen to sit on his anti-energy butt for as long as the rest of the cast.

Not having a particular favourite Legionnaire, I don't get the same impact that Lar's death in v3 or Drakes off panel removal in the 5YG that others possibly do.

Having made a mess of the Dawnstar subplot, it would have been nice for a Legion-based editor to put a hand on someone's shoulder and say "If you bring this guy in, then you're going to have to wrap up Dawny's plot in the next 2 issues and that includes things with Bounty and Drake." Or "I'd just leave this one, considering what's happened to Drake and Dawny. You can have a captured Energax causing the problems just as easily in the scene."

Fair enough, Thoth.

Having ruminated on it all for a while, I think what I'm really angry at is T+M's apparent unprofessionalism. It seems to me like they were throwing a big "F__ You" at editorial and readers alike -- "Here, here's your $#@$@$$% belligerent ball of energy guy. HAPPY NOW?"

To reiterate: Disgusting.

It's possible that young Vi and Devlin would have a long-distance relationship - that is what she's used to. I hadn't considered that but it's certainly a possibility. As thoth pointed out, there wasn't any discussion that Devlin would go with her instead; he's still in awe of the adult Legion, not the young kids, and that seems to trump a casual/wartime romance (or maybe it was just friendship; Vi appeared more admiring of him than he of her).

Regarding Nura and J'onn, it was the "ahem" and "you know" that got me thinking there'd been a sexual relationship, although it's as if they were talking with sensitive children in the room. Tom Bierbaum wrote in his blog that the editors wanted to keep the relationship unclear, however:

As we scripted that page, we clearly implied that J?onn was one of Nura?s many lovers, but I can remember they wanted to avoid that implication, since Nura?s humanoid physiology would presumably be very incompatible with J?onn?s. They ended up just adding an odd line from J?onn -- ?As usual you presume too much? ? which doesn?t read well on the page and doesn?t really change the implication that the two have been lovers.

Again from Tom's blog, his regrets regarding that cover, which thoth mentioned:

The cover demonstrated how the book was starting to ?stunt? to try and pump up sales. Because we had the Squire Burroughs character in the story, they put him on the cover with artwork that made him look like the original Wildfire. The caption was ?Guess Who?s Back? Wrong!? This is hardly a cover that?s representative of the significant events of the issue, but it is a cover that probably motivated a more than a few people to pick up the issue, considering that one of the steady requests we got in the letter column was for the return of Wildfire (and the very first thing they did after Mary and I were gone was to actually bring back Wildfire).

Could Squire and the other Dominator mind-wiped people, who were shown cocooned earlier in the series, have been a Giffen addition, carried over to this story by the Bierbaums?


As we'll see in the next issue, the chair sitters aren't as desirable as they used to be.


Good question; was there ever an answer? Something about the minerals need being too rare?


Perhaps all the enthusiasm was being channeled into the young Legion team at this point, which is clearly the Bierbaums' first love. Could Jan have been included in response to fan interest? He doesn't do much for many scenes, then stops Dominators dead in one panel. Cosmic Boy had one day a year when he didn't use his powers, it's almost the reverse for Jan.

Thanks for providing the details of TB's explanation for the whole Squire fiasco, Cramey. I'm more willing than before to give his blog posts the benefit of the doubt, but I do still take everything he says there with a boulder-sized grain of salt. And having said that, I find it a bit cynical that he'd say what amounts to, "Well, I didn't like the cover, but it probably helped sales." Obviously, it didn't help sales a great deal. If anything, I would imagine that a lot of the readers who made an exception for that issue came away hating this volume more than ever, and refusing to buy any more issues.

Yes, writing about it after the fact, even with the best intentions, may muddy the history. I haven't read ahead for the letters on this issue, but I imagine a few fans were disappointed and I don't remember at all how the original Wildfire was brought back.

I can't recall reading of a constant request for Wildfire. Perhaps some were early requests for more on his fate in Black Dawn. Perhaps others were hopeful that a Drake reappearance would help save Dawny from her fumbled subplot.

He was a popular character, so I imagine a number of people not chuffed with having him DOA as the volume began.

A quick check of the chambers list of #27 shows that Squire was mentioned there. He's supposed to have object animation powers. I thought that this hinted at the Dominators trying to combine Wildfire with what they had learned of Quislet.

Squire is shown with a visor covering whete his eyes would be. Not having eyes, Squire wouldn't be affected.

I've wondered if the original idea was for Squire to play some sort of role in bringing Drake back, with his "object animation" powers playing a similar role to the way Quislet helped in constructing a body for Drake in v3.

It's weird that when they brought "Wildfire's brother" back for the Threeboot, they named him "Randall", like Atom'x.

Yups. All sorts of possibilities.

The Legion try to recapture Squire (under dominator control and intent on sabotage)>
Querl uses similar fields that Quislet used on Wildfire to do this>
That alerts the things in Quislet's dimension and there's an attack from there>
Legion fight back, leading to rescue/heroic sacrifice of Quislet/Squire>
Quislet/Querl uses Quislet technology to draw Wildfire's energy from the sun and into containment field.

Similar technology could also have been used by Dawny and a hell bent, previously possessed, Bounty character (from the old issues) to trap the Bounty energy entity. Guess Who fun as it body hops around the cast.

Legion of Super-Heroes #41 "Introducing the Legionnaires" by Tom & Mary Bierbaum, art by Chris Sprouse, Ron Boyd & Karl Story, Colours Tom McCraw, Letters John Workman & Bob Pinaha, Assistant Editor Eddie Berganza, Editors K.C. Carlson & Michael Eury

After a racquetball game with Rokk and Cham, jacques decides to dump the Presidency on Troy and take Cham's place in the Legion. He discusses potential new members with Rokk and Tenzil. They approach the Subs, who want to think about it, as does Danielle Foccart.

Adult Brainy tries to get info about the Bounty entity out of a silent Dawnstar.

On New Earth, Jan greets Sean, now SP Earth Chief. Lyle's parents find him; he realizes that 17 years have passed for them. The two Brainys meet with SW6 members who are wondering if they're clones or not. If they're clones, Lu should have all 3 bodies. Young Brainy tells her to concentrate and her thrid self appears. Adult Brainy claims it's still inconclusive, but they can't go back in time since there's no break in history. Cham has a proposal.

The SW6 team, with Cham and Danielle, salvage the old rocket ship HQ and restore it. President Stewart and Chief Erin are eager to work with them. Cham suggest they get new names and uniforms. Marla delivers the goods and the new Legion gets their first assignment on New Earth.

Comments:

What's to become of the adult Legion? Nobody is particularly anxious to join their ranks, except Jacques and Devlin. And Crystal Kid, in whom they're not interested. Some standards remain.

Jacques replaces Cham as... what? Legion organizer, essentially. Both he and Cham leave positions to possibly recapture their youth, Cham with what he remembers as the original team and Jacques with his first Legion teammates. It's not clear who's running Brande Industries; Marla still jumps to fulfill Cham's requests; RJ was headed back there but is absent from the story.

Young Brainy is different from the older version. He's out with Lyle and has a relationship with Laurel. We haven't heard him insult anyone yet. He's happier. Was it his idea to see if Lu could produce her third self and thereby atone for her death by Computo? He's more involved with his teammates on a personal level, unlike adult Brainy, who does help the team but from the safety of his lab.

This issue is filled with plenty of repartee and good dialogue, with a few shout outs to the past. It ends on a high note. There's a real sense of enthusiasm with the young group. The kids have been more active than the adults since they first appeared. There are three new members, Computo, Dragonmage and Catspaw. The new names and looks feel fresh and their personal interactions are lighter. They bounce back quickly from life's vicissitudes. They're the bright and shiny future; the adults are more mirrors of the drudgery of everyday life.

v4 Issue 41

We've spoken before about the numerous false dawns for the Legionnaires, from updates of classic tales to a reboot Legion forming from a reboot. Following a number of iterations on what to do with them, Giffen settled on the adult Legion being the clones and the SW6 Legion being the actual team, abducted early in their careers. Reading between the lines, I think Giffen was going to make the personal cost of the Terra Mosaic higher, as he mentioned the survivors of the old Legion going off to become the Omega Men.

With Giffen gone, TM hold back from reaching a conclusion. With the premise for Legionnaires series now given the green light, perhaps they wanted to tell that story there. Or perhaps they wanted to avoid yet another outcry in a title that had several.

The cover introduces the Legionnaires. It's not unheard of for episodes or issues being used as the launching pad for new characters to spin off into their own books. The Legion followed a slightly prolonged, but similar path, in its early years. The cover is drawn by Sprouse, who would be the Legionnaires artist and is there to capture the attention of newer readers. For those who were picking up the book before this, the Legionnaires have been introduced every issue since their first appearance. Their prominence in the book as partly due to the indecisiveness around what to do with them, and wider creative issues. But there's a bit of me that think that they get spotlighted as they were intended to be the "real" Legion. The old Legion, now revealed to be clones, were already being relegated from their own book as a result.

The SW6 kids raise and repair their old rocket ship; get financing and a bit of purpose from Brande and Earthgov, new costumes and new codenames. There are new members and TM continue to show more personality with the SW6 Legion than their Adventure counterparts had. Computo joins as there's just so much life and fun here."

Danielle's probably about the age of the Legionnaires, if not slightly younger. It would be a little while before TM realised the implications of a relationship with the old Legion's Cham. Catspaw is possibly a stand in for Timberwolf and Dragonmage fills the mystic roster position of the White Witch. From what we've seen of his powers, I'm stunned that Dirk hasn't already rejected Dragonmage from the team. He doesn't have control of his powers.

The scene where Lyle meets his parents was touching. I can't remember if it's followed up on. Or even expanded as the SW6ers connect, or try to, with their old lives. That what most folks would do. However, this new team on a New Earth is probably going to be considered to be a clean slate.
Form what I recall, Alt+Lu's third body was destroyed prior to the date they supposedly entered the chambers. Here, she's able to recreate a third body. There's some very unconvincing waffle from Brainy about how this doesn't definitively show them to be the clones. TM just really wanted a Triad on their team, to recapture more of those Adventure days that they loved.

Elsewhere, the original team have to trudge through some scenes with little "life and fun." In addition to Triad, TM want Cham on the team. To do that, they arrange for Jacques to take his place on the older team, while he joins the kids. So Jacques gives up his presidency without any thought to the repercussions, leaving Troy Stewart to deal with it all.

Looking at it later, I saw it's just TM rearranging the furniture to launch their new book. But it still reads very poorly. Billions on Earth have died, and there are massive repair programmes are ongoing and Earth must be economically precarious. Yet, he drops all of his responsibilities (that he agreed to do) over a squash game to join the Legion of Upholstery Sitters.

Officer Erin makes is another person who I take it is going to appear in the new book. The previous story in this volume is only touched upon with the character drawing a line between old and new lives. Considering the sensitivity over the subject the seeming abandonment over whole sections of a character's life doesn't work well. TM interested more in getting their furniture into the New Title van than dealing with the issues TMK introduced into the volume in the first place. Sean gets to meet Jan once again. As usual Jan is on a spiritual journey up his own rear. Martyr Lad goes on about how tough it is to go it alone. In front of the person he chose to dump, and in an issue where Jacques has him on the membership of a team of his friends. Idiot.
The lack of "life and fun" with the main cast, (which TM are pretty much saying between the lines here, is also completely down to the direction TMK chose to take the book. There were plenty of ways of brining that into the main title too.

Jacques organisational brilliance extends to him constructing a list of Legion members. >gasp< Like #13, I wonder if this was something the editor asked them to do. Perhaps there was concern that readers would have forgotten who the central characters were supposed to be. I don't mind characters being part of much bigger plot, that they couldn't reasonably be central to. But the old Legion have been shuffled into the background, when they could really have made a difference. There's an argument that stories such as the GDS had huge scope and still made the team vital to it.

Along with Jacques switch from president to the team, Rokk's reaction to having Sade join was a big disappointment. He's not opposed to having a killer on the team, considering that it would be "interesting". TM having Cham tell the readers (because he doesn't have to tell the SW6ers, yet oddly does anyway) what the Legion stands for, jars with the views of the leader of the older team.

Giffen might have left the book, but his spirit lives on in the book with parallel ideas in his Justice League book. The power being blown out (JLI #8), the failed recruitment drive (would be used only a little later in JLI #19) and that rushing off for their first mission set up (JLI#7).

Poor Crystal Kid must have thought he was getting to join one of the teams. After all, he was a member of the Legion in the 5YG.

When Giffen used the failed membership drive in the JLI issue, I had a similar reaction. If the team had been reduced to the point where fictional characters wouldn't want to join it, what was I doing reading it? This wasn't any sense of outrage or anything. Just a feeling of resignation.

This issue continues with the Terra Mosaic supblots, and focuses yet again on the SW6 Legion. With their own book finally being launched, they should move out of hogging this one. Some scenes were simply annoying such as Jacques, Rokk, Jan and Sean. In their enthusiasm to return to the Adventure team they love best ( and a fresh start away from the politics dogging this one) they've made a few of the remining cast much more unappealing.

I can't recall if the two teams were used in crossovers prior to the reboot. But it could have been a fun JLA/JSA type of story.

Poor Crystal Kid had already been a member.


Marla Lad is the real hero of the Legion. I reckon he uses his finance powers to make the company a huge success while the Brande's dart around the galaxy. There's also the Dark Marla storyline, where he sends in a Brande Ind security team to "acquire" all the artefacts the Brandes stumble across. All in a bid for galactic power.


The personality differences are well done. The SW6 Brainy is also one who had an ongoing relationship with Laurel, since she didn't have to go back to the 20th century.



The Planetary Chance Machine was fun to see, and the banter was good. TM are really good dialoguers, and have been throughout.


I think the drudgery of the older team is entirely down to TMK wanting it that way. They could effortless had any number of heroic older team scenes in the book. The premise of the book was to show us heroism in the darkest of times for the UP. It lost it's momentum along the way, and the writers kept plodding away through the backroom problems to grind out a pre planned storyline. I'm sure the shiny, happy SW6 also resulted in a boring, inactive older team, as part of TMK's attempts to differentiate between the two groups. As the SW6ers leave for their own book, we're now left to read the boring, inactive characters. Looking forward to ten full issues of Rokk sitting in HQ wondering what to do; Jacques working on a power point presentation; Tenzil's HQ bound practical jokes'; Devlin's Stereotype Panel Hogging powers; Jan's spiritual guidance for idiots course and the rest of the cast realising that they could make more of a difference anywhere else.

By these issues, Immonen's art was a needed big plus to the book.

ROTFLMAO

Sadly, the next several issues are so awful they almost make me wish we'd had exactly what Thoth jokingly describes above.

In my opinion, naturally.

Legionnaires #1 "Baptism by Fire!" by Tom & Mary Bierbaum, art by Chris Sprouse & Karl Story, Colours Tom McCraw, Letters Pat Brosseau, Assistant Editor Eddie Berganza, Editors K.C. Carlson & Michael Eury

The team goes into action in the Djakarta dome as fire and explosions endanger residents. Power failures cause problems in other domes, endangering the complex linkage system. Danielle fixes the problem fairly easily. As Cham and Danielle monitor Jo and Andrew repairing some damage, they see a gang, each bearing a tattoo of a hand, cause more explosions to the power grid. Ferro stops their vehicle; a girl, Mega, gets away but is stopped by Garth. She claims she was forced to go along with the gang; Imra reads her mind and confirms this. At Legion HQ, she explains that the "Hand Gang" reports to an unknown leader.

At a meeting of all members, Cham gives a pep talk, reviews recent history and proposes the team elect a leader. Rokk is chosen and he selects Danielle as second in command. Mega tells them about the gang; Rokk decides they should infiltrate the gang and discover the leader. Jo, Lu, Tinya and Vi dress as gang members and investigate. They get in, but don't fool the leader, who turns out to be Mano. Mano employed a Hykraian telepath to track them and jam their communication with Imra. Mano exterminates Mega for being a traitor. Jo had tried to stop this using ultraspeed, but was shot. Mano tells the Legionnaires to stay where they are, or Jo will definitely be killed.

Comments:

This first issue of the spin-off Legionnaires series presents a big shift in mood. There's a lot of action as well as emotional scenes, some humour and a good cliff-hanger ending.

The street gang as villains struck me as low-key and pedestrian, despite the trouble they caused, until we saw who the boss was.

Mano's motives are unclear; is he just nihilistic or is this part of a bigger Fatal Five plan? We know the Eye is parked with McCauley and Validus is out of the picture, but haven't seen Tharok or The Persuader yet. Mano on his own isn't as scary as the Five together; he's running a gang of teenagers, not clever, hardened criminals. They're easily outwitted by Danielle/Computo and the Legionnaires. Nevertheless, Mano's a surprise for the kids as well as a bigger problem than the gang itself. He knows them, but they don't know him. He's gotten a visual update by the artists and looks more impressive.

It's been a long time since we've seen Andrew Nolan in action and he gets a big part in capturing gang members, showing initiative and daring.

What struck me the most was the effort put into crafting the individual personalities of this group. They're a continuation of their original versions, but more differentiated. We've had a lot of Vi and Tenzil up to this point, a bit less of others, but with this and the previous issue, we get a feeling for most of the other Legionnaires. Essentially two issues to establish characters, send them into action, set up a love triangle between the founders, show all the members, briefly, and identify them in one manner or another. It's a big contrast with the current series, which still has us wondering who's who after seven issues. Not entirely comparable, since these are mostly familiar characters, but I think even a brand new reader would have a good idea of the group right off the bat.

The Chris Sprouse/Karl Story art doesn't hurt the eyes at all. It's almost too happy - those big eyes, those wide smiles - but that's a welcome change after dealing with the angst of the adult team and the destruction of Earth.

I loved the Chris Sprouse art and was sad to see so little of it in the end.

It's obvioius that the Bierbaums are trying to give the young Legionnaires better-defined personalities, but they seem so "stock."

Finally, it's good that the Bierbaums/DC are making an effort to make the team accessible to new readers (they featured something of a "Who's Who" of the team in the back pages of the first several issues), but there's so much that the narrative assumes readers know about the villains and the backstory from the LSH series. Ultimately, it pretty much doomed Legionnaires to being a failure at what it was meant to be, and what the Post-ZH Legion really became.

Legionnaires #1

TM have put a lot of effort into their first issue. The plot is fairly straightforward. We get an action scene with the founders to start with. We get a glimpse into their personality. TM then do well in giving us two more little groups to show us what some of their cast can do. Cham & Danielle followed by Jo and Andrew. There's some added posturing between Rokk and Garth regarding Imra. Garth is quite the jerk (I wonder if or how TM planned to deal with that).

The three scenes also work to show us ongoing sabotage and to provide us with a captive. It's smoothly plotted. It's a bit less likely that Mega would be invited to a team meeting, but it allows TM to have Mega in the room while we get to see the rest of the cast.

We've just had Cham say that he doesn't have to tell the Legionnaires what they stand for. But here, there's quite an infodump based on what we've read in v4. I wonder what the reaction would have been if this had been the first issue of v4. A new Earth, a new young team of heroes. Lots of fun questions, but tackled by a far more upbeat, optimistic team. I guess, particularly after v4, they didn't want the reader to have too many questions. Infodump Lad covers it all in about a page, which is decent for that sort of thing.

Having gone to the trouble of moving Cham over from the adult team, it's not long before he's a peripheral Marla Latham figure. It's fine that the Legionnaires run their own team. But I wonder why there was a need to have a Latham figure here. Had things not moved on since it dawned on the '60s guys that people might realise the kids were running around without a chaperone? The Legionnaires had already tackled plenty of galactic crises before the start of the series. They really don't need the guidance. Would the survival of SW6 Cham been a better option?

We get more glimpses into the personalities of the cast as leaders are selected. It's all fairly quick thanks to TM keeping Mega in there, allowing for back and forth about how to deal with the mission. Even little things such as Tinya and Jo seen holding hands are good hints at establishing the cast.

The Hand gang seemingly aren't much of a threat. They are threatening the power infrastructure of New Earth. Perhaps showing us more of the threat of the two domes colliding, as told in v4, would have added a bit more to them. I'd have happily dropped a couple of Garth panels for that.

Jo's the only one on the mission team, we've already seen in action (remaining a TM favourite). The gang infiltration plot suits his background. It's a good way to see more of the personalities of a smaller group.

Having led the group into their HQ, Mega's usefulness is at an end. She's killed by the boss Villain, who turns out to be a revised Mano. Jo's power limitation gets him blasted while trying ultra-speed. It's an example of why Jo works better than Lar or Kal in a lot of ways. The writer can move the plot without having a lackey having to show off his "I visited Krypton and all I got was this radiation imbued T-shirt" memento.
I'm not sure that Mano deserved two closely spaced splash pages. The group got to the villain pretty easily, so perhaps a little more effort there, along with a Fatal Five hint, would have been nice or some background to the gang. The gang's HQ was pretty generic, so it didn't hold my attention much. Just a linear device to lead to Mano. TM could have gone back to see how the rest of the cast were doing, but it's not a bad decision to stick with the mission team and focus the action.

I was probably a bit disappointed with Mano's appearance here. He'd lost a lot of his potential at the end of v3. He wasn't allowed into the Empresses' Five and was too easily beaten by the Legion. In v4 we got to see a much more effective Mano in the Mordruverse, and one in a position of power, working for Starfinger. Here, he's more of an Acme villain.

It's a cleanly plotted story. Nothing too complex, but with lots of attention in showing us little bits of characterisation across the cast. That's both in their speech patterns and reactions, but also in their interactions. That side of things is really well done.

It's not supposed to be a book with the complexity of the start of v4 but, like Mano's appearance, I probably read it with that in mind. It was a shared universe after all. Again, this being a fresh start or what TMK had decided to do with v4 would have removed that.

There's a lot of parallels between this issue and the opening half dozen of v8. Legionnaires comes out very well in a lot of the comparisons.

Things like the Planetary Chance Machine were fun to see for old-time fans but, despite being explained, would probably not have had much impact on new readers. It would be interesting to read a review or two from a brand new reader.


Went digging and found this in Tom B.'s blog:

In our 15 issues of ?Legionnaires? we weren?t prepared to break up Saturn Girl and Live Wire, in part because I really don?t like breaking up long-term comic-book couples. It seems to me to be an easy, sensationalistic plot device that gets used too often and ultimately costs the series credibility when a couple is on and off and on and off too many times. But more to the point, I think Saturn Girl sensed that Garth was in a fight for his survival as a hero and that if Imra gave up on him, he would probably lose that fight. And as unacceptable as she was finding his behavior, she couldn?t bring herself to give up on him and watch him fail as a Legionnaire.

Given enough time with that team, I think my first choice would have been to have Imra stick with Garth and gradually help him find some true heroism within him. This particular version of the character would probably always be somewhat of a rogue, but I?m not sure the younger Imra would necessarily mind that too much as long as he found a way to channel his fiery personality in positive directions.


I wonder too... coming off the magic wars, into this young team. I'm so used to the other, it's hard to envision this possibility. The Legionnaires book feels refreshing after the 40 issues of v.4, but if we'd had that from the beginning, it might have been too much of a regression for me. The young adults moving on to somewhat older adults feels more natural. There's also the question of what would have been done with the older Legionnaires to make room for the kids - hire Giffen for a one-shot to blow up the planet on which the great Legion reunion was being held?


They did a nice job of sidelining Cham on page 15. He's really just needed for the funding, although he could also fill in a few blanks in their history (like maybe checking out Mano's whereabouts when he sees the gang's hand symbol). He's much more hands on that Marla was ever shown to be, which is sort of creepy; why does a 30-something want to hang out with a bunch of teenagers?