It's time for the first big reveal!! We take a look at Legion Lost #7 & 8

I'm back! It was a lovely weekend with too much sun and some great live music, so I'm refreshed and ready to continue.

In case anyone's forgotten where we left off, Umbra has left the ship and traveled to another planet, where their local superhero is rapidly approaching. And some of her shadow ancestors, who are actually part of Saturn Girl's psyche, are attacking the rest of the Legion. A few of them are unconscious and Apparition has disappeared.

Let's begin, shall we?

Legion Lost #7 

This issue is narrated by Ultra Boy, so I can only hope they're going to give him some depth and not just have him a love-struck idiot for most of this. He flies to the planet where Umbra has gone, with Monstress right behind him, believing that Apparition is with Tasmia.

The two Legionnaires quickly realize that they're on an inhabited planet and they're in the middle of a huge mega-city. They spot Umbra, who's engaged in combat with the local hero. His name - Singularity. The planet - Lorcus Prime. She blasts him just as the other two Legionnaires join up and want to know what's going on. Umbra gives maybe the best speech so far:

Like any of you really cares what happens to me. Don't you see? We're not the Legion anymore! We're a bunch of castaways, lost in the back of beyond with no hope and no future!

I know that this could be just discounted as another example of this being the darkest, saddest Legion, but I think this might be the most honest anyone's been so far. Umbra isn't connected to any other Legionnaire. She's not friends with anyone and the only Legionnaire she actually wanted to spend time with, M'onel, is gone. She's being realistic, character-wise.

Ultra Boy, of course, only cares about where Tinya is, so he grabs Tasmia to get answers. Which was the wrong choice. She blasts him away and tells him that Tinya's no where near. Jo's stunned - where could his wife be?

On another part of the building, Monstress tries to communicate with Singularity, who understands "Monster" even if he doesn't understand anything else they're saying. And wouldn't, because he doesn't have a translator and they're not speaking his language. I know that the writers, Abnett and Lanning (DnA) have long given up on trying to be consistent with the tech the Legion uses, but this is just kinda lazy. And it's an easy fix - just have him talk about how she looks like a monster.

Of course, another fight breaks out and Monstress and Singularity start trading blows.

Back aboard the Legion Outpost, the fight is stopping as Brainiac 5.1 tells everyone to stop attacking the shadow creatures that are actually Imra's consciousness. He and Live Wire head off to stop Imra, hoping to use some tech to break off her connection to Umbra's mind.

Speaking of Umbra, we get a gratuitous butt shot mid-battle and something happens to Singularity - no idea what that might be - and something happens to Ultra Boy but, again, no idea what that would be. I think this is bad plotting instead of bad artwork and they're just not making these panels clear. I think Singularity smacked him.

Back on the Outpost, Apparition suddenly shows up to save Chameleon and then Brainy zaps the shadow creature into a machine, trapping Saturn Girl's mind there. After a little bit of study, Brainy hypothesizes that Saturn Girl removed Umbra's fears and doubts and that's what became the shadow creature. So now, Umbra is even more arrogant than before.

Which is why she's battling Singularity and destroying the city around them. Monstress and Ultra Boy head back to stop them. Umbra gets even nastier, calling Monstress hideous and ugly. She also uses her powers to distract and defeat the much larger woman. So on the plus side, we're finally seeing Umbra at her best (worst?) powers-wise and she should be one of the true powerhouses in the Legion. Too bad it took her losing half of her soul to do it.

Ultra Boy starts realizing that every time he switches powers, the world changes around him. It's a wasteland, not a city. But since he's busy trying to stop Umbra, he can't get her back to the Outpost to save Imra. So they plot a course to land the Outpost on the planet, which may not work and they may not be able to get back into space. But they must save their teammates, so they start doing it.

Just in the nick of time, a small craft appears, powered by a quantum shift drive, and it docks with the Outpost. They stop what they're doing, rush down to the dock, and discover that Element Lad, Spark, Shrinking Violet, and Cosmic Boy have arrived to save them.

Most definitely to be continued...

Legion Lost #8 

So if you were thinking "Hey, they now have a small craft, powered by a quantum drive, so they don't need to take the Outpost down to the surface of the planet and all is good," you'd be wrong. They're still doing it because... reasons?

Chameleon is the pilot, navigating this massive ship down to the surface, struggling with everything, and he's also this issue's narrator. We get a nice reunion of Spark and her brother, Live Wire, and her... boyfriend?? Not sure what their relationship status is, to be honest.

They all get back together and Cosmic Boy lets them know that everything worked out (the rift closed and no one died) and then Element Lad explains how he was able to get back to the Legion. He recounts what he told us in the first issue and then says he just ended up back where they left. When he went back through the rift, his aging was reversed but he'd lost everyone. The Legion was able to track the rest of the team by looking at the jumps Jan made. Brainiac 5.1 is the only voice of doom as he points out that it would take ninety years, and all the computers in the United Planets, to do what Cosmic Boy claims they did. He also points out that there's no way Jan would have de-aged. No one wants to hear his complaints - they're just happy they're rescued.

I, however, being the cynic around here, have the same questions as Brainy.

Cham introduces Shikari to the four Legionnaires, effectively explaining them to all the new readers as well. She reacts... differently... as she bows and calls Cosmic Boy "Founder Legion."

Then we get back to the problems at hand. Back on the planet, Ultra Boy wakes up Monstress and he tells her that every time he uses his invulnerability, he sees the world as a desert, not as a metropolis. Monstress wonders if Jo's been hit too hard, but has no one noticed that they haven't run into a single other person? Just the superhero Singularity... who punches Umbra and returns to fight these two.

The rest of the Legion arrives, everyone's happy to see each other, and Singularity isn't happy more aliens have come to invade his planet.

Cham's narration is full of hope, of happiness, as he watches the team fight together, following Cosmic Boy's orders, and working as a unit. He says:

We're not lost, anymore. We've found ourselves.

Once Brainy and Ultra Boy start talking, they pull Cham out of the battle to investigate the subatomic psionic images, which could be changing everyone's perceptions. They fly out to find the source, something that is making everyone see an illusion. They enter the chamber and Ultra Boy breaks the machine, ending the illusion. The city is gone.

And they realize the illusion was created for Singularity. Brainy is able to translate the writings around the chamber and says that, once Lorcus Prime achieved a utopia, they didn't need a superhero. So they created this planet, created the illusions, so Singularity would live out his life in a fantasy. He, to no surprise, flies out in shock and anger to find the truth. Now that would be a great follow-up story - Singularity finding his home planet and how they deal with the betrayal.

We get back on the Outpost so that Brainy can save Saturn Girl and Umbra. He hits a button, energy blasts through the two of them, and Umbra wakes up, her fears returned.

But Imra is still unconscious. She won't relax and accept the process. In a final act to save her, he injects her with a drug that will knock out her psionic abilities. and then Cosmic Boy, Spark, Element Lad, and Violet disappear. They were all illusions created by Imra's mind. And then Apparition disappears as well. She was never there.

Ultra Boy is broken, again. Cham can't handle this and goes cold. They're lost.

And Imra wakes up, wondering what's going on.

Okay - just a couple of random thoughts about these two issues:

First, the artwork - Olivier Coipel is finding his groove and each issue looks better than before. There's a real Art Adams vibe to a lot of what he's doing and I really like it. Yes, he still struggles with Monstress, but that's my only real problem.

Second, the big twist. I have to admit, that when I first read this issue I had one reaction: "Does this mean Apparition has been an illusion for years?" I figured that this was going to be an even bigger reveal and that Apparition had always been dead, blasted by the Daxamite years ago. They had always been on the same team, in the same stories, and if Imra is as powerful as they say she is, she could definitely pull it off.

Speaking of how powerful Imra is now - just think about this for a second. She was able to pull off two completely personalities and conversations at the same time for weeks. She was able to successfully convince Ultra Boy that his wife was with him. Think about it - she "became" the person he knows best in the world and he never once thought that something was wrong. So she never slipped up - I'm guessing this means that she read him memories completely and built Apparition based on that. Because this is a family friendly column, I'm not even going to go into how she was able to make Jo believe he was in a romantic and sexual relationship. I mean, how does Jo talk to her after this?

Also, while unconscious and possessed by the shadow demons, she was able to create four more completely accurate illusions based on four other Legionnaires. Can we now safely say she's the most powerful Legionnaire ever?

I mentioned before that this was somewhat sociopathic of her to do, and someone ( u/Crixusgannicus sorry, should've mentioned this is the first draft) pointed out that this is Imra at her strongest - she's a warrior, a soldier, and a leader, and she did whatever she could to make them successful. I'd argue that she can be both. Keeping Ultra Boy sane and not having his face death keeps the team together... kinda... and that's best for the team. But becoming an entirely different person without caring about how that affects Jo is the act of someone who just has no emotional connection to them. She saw Jo as a child who needed to be placated. Not as a teammate.

We'll talk about this more in the coming weeks, but I honestly don't know how any of these Legionnaires come back from this. I mean, the emotional manipulation, the invasion of privacy, the giving of false hope - would anyone forgive her after this?

Our next Legionnaire in the spotlight... Princess Projectra/Sensor Girl/Sensor!

Did you know that Jim Shooter created Projectra when he was 14 years old? He wrote the short story that introduced her in one of the first scripts he sold to DC Comics. Am I the only one who just finds it insane/amazing/astounding that, in the 1960's, a teenager was writing for a national comic company? Can you imagine it happening now?

On a complete aside, when you think of how little writing experience most of my favorite comic writers had when they started in comics, and how most of them were teenagers or in their early twenties, and try to contrast that with today's comics, does it hurt your brain a little? Is this an argument that experience doesn't matter at all, especially in a medium that should be aimed at younger readers? I don't know.

Did you know that Steve Lightle, when he designed Sensor Girl, had no idea that it was going to be Projectra? He based the design on Supergirl, which tells you that even members of the creative team were in the dark as to the big reveal.

Anyway, my thoughts on Projectra:

• I'm not going to lie here - my affection for this character is probably more related to her connection to Karate Kid than to anything she did before she became Sensor Girl. If I'm being completely honest, she didn't really do much for most of her time as Princess Projectra. She stood around, pleaded for help, watched as the villains ignored her illusions, and had one of the most daring costumes in the 70's... which might be another reason why I liked her.
• Having said that, she was a Legionnaire that I was happy to see on the team. Her powers were fascinating to me and, even as a young lad, wondered why she didn't do more with them. She would occasionally get moments to shine, but they were very few and far between.
• It's tough to logically explain her home world, especially in the 30th Century. Why wouldn't they embrace any technology? How would she be able to handle going back? How could she handle the archaic laws and customs? How could Karate Kid? We already think of traditional marriage customs, such as dowries, as out-dated and offensive - what would anyone living in the 30th Century think about Karate Kid having to go on a quest to prove his worth? And let's not even get into the whole "is this racoon slavery?" problem in PZH.
• But when Paul Levitz killed off Karate Kid and turned her into Sensor Girl, it was like he leveled her up, Pokemon-style. She became far more interesting, had much better powers, and was one of the heavy hitters on the team. She got some great moments as the veteran and her dealings with Emerald Empress were epic. One of the biggest losses at the end of the Levitz run was that we never got to see her as team leader.
• Man, they didn't like her much in 5YL, did they? Her planet kept getting attacked. She did become more of a sorcerer, which was nice, but she never really got to save the day. Then they killed the SW6 version as quickly as they introduced her.
• I really wanted to hate the snake version of Sensor in the PZH Legion, with the constant refrain of "this isn't MY Projectra," but they went and made her one of the most interesting characters in the book. So, instead, she became one of my favorites. I will still argue that she should have dated Cham, or really be controversial and paired her up with Karate Kid again. But I will defend what they did with her. It's not MY Projectra, but it's still a damn good one. I didn't like when they made her more humanoid, though. I thought that was a cop out and just the creators not wanting to deal with a non-humanoid character.
• I was less impressed with the Threeboot version as they just kept making her more and more evil as the series went on. Okay, she was human again. But she was a horrible character and pretty insulting to anyone who might've liked Jeckie in the past.
• And when she came back with Karate Kid in the Justice League, I can't lie - there was a wave of nostalgia that made the book more enjoyable than I would've expected. Yes, Geoff Johns was writing his own fan fiction with these issues, but it worked for me... okay, that part did. We'll get more into what didn't when we get there...
• I put Projectra into the same category you can put a lot of female superheroes who were introduced in the 60's and 70's - the writers didn't want to let them use their powers effectively because, at the end of the day, they needed to be saved by the men. Think Sue Storm. Or Wonder Girl. Or The Wasp. Or half the female Legionnaires. It's tough reading those old issues now and I'm glad writers in the past 40 years have been better at showing off their powers.

Thoughts? How did you react at this first big twist? What do you think of Projectra?