LSH # 41-48, Annual #4 - Do we call this a slow, gradual decline or a fast, painful one?

Welcome back to the Legion reread. This week is probably going to feel a little different than before for one very specific reason - we are done with issues that I remember. What does that mean? Up until now, going back and rereading these books always came with a memory of the stories attached. Good or bad, I was reading something that had left an impact on me, a sense of nostalgia. Now, we're covering books that I read in the past, but had completely left my memory.

Insert a joke about an old man's failing memory.

So for this reread and the next, I'm reading these again but with somewhat fresh eyes. For example, I remember some moments about the Mordru saga, but none of the specifics.

I'm also going to try my best to be as positive as I can... this is going to be difficult.

On an aside, as I was reading over these books, I was kept continually thinking that these books have become the comic equivalent of the Fast and the Furious series. Things look pretty, everyone has whatever abilities they need regardless of their history or experience, and once you start thinking about the story, you're bound to have a bad time.

LSH #41 - In case you were wondering which team is more important, who gets the cover?

This is really two books in one - the regular story that wraps up the old Legion's time on Earth and the second that introduces the Legionnaires, the team made up of the SW6 Legion.

You can already guess which team gets more respect.

We start with Jacques resigning as President of Earth, handing the title to Troy Stewart, and then rejoining the Legion.

Wow, even with a new era, the writers striving their best to respect Legion history and make old, less-popular characters important again, they still don't want to do anything with Tyroc. I was pondering this and actually think that this version of Tyroc, the one who never shows his powers and just stands in the background doing nothing, may be a bigger waste of the character and slightly more offensive than when he was introduced in the 1970's. Tyroc, the first Black super-hero in the DC Universe, and this is what he's reduced to. He just stands around and watches everyone else act.

Then Jacques and Rokk start wandering around the Earth trying to recruit Legionnaires and no one really wants to join. From the Legion of Substitute Heroes to Danielle, Jacques' little sister, none of them are sure they want to commit to the team.

But, of course, on the Legionnaires, both Cham and Danielle immediately sign up, they get all new names and costumes, they resurrect the old Legion clubhouse, and, in Cham's words, they're going to inspire the youth of today, not their grandparents.

Ouch...

So I have to wonder, do the Bierbaums even want to write the old Legion at this point? Are they just taking a paycheck and scribbling down whatever they want? Do they care at all? Or have they just not gotten the character assassination they love out of their systems?

What this series has gotten out of its system, though, is anything connected to what Keith Giffen was doing artistically. With each issue, they move further and further away from everything that was established before. No more nine-panel grid, no more Edwardian costumes, no more grim and grungy style, no more pouting, no more characters who actually look the age they're supposed to be... except Dream Girl. They still want to make sure you know that she's old and overweight.

As much as I love the work that Stuart Immonen does on this title, I do think that his biggest failing here is that he doesn't really even try to make these characters look the ages they're supposed to be. I was complaining last week about Devlin O'Ryan never looking like a teenager (He's supposed to be 15 but looks the same as everyone else), but now I'm amazed that no one is even trying to make any of the other characters look their age. Cham looks the same age as the SW6 Legionnaires. Ayla looks like she's in her 20's again. Jo the same.

I wonder if there was a conscious effort to de-age the Legion to reach new readers. Perhaps with Giffen off the book, they wanted to try to get younger readers to try it out and figured the best way was to stop drawing everyone like they're in their late 30's... which is how old they're supposed to be.

But to flip to a more positive take, both Immonen and Chris Sprouse, who's going to be drawing the Legionnaires book, are doing really well here. Just wish they had better scripts to work with.

Next week, I'm going to start on the Legionnaires series and jump back and forth until we get to Zero Hour.

LSH #42 - I quite like this cover, even if I have no idea when Rond Vidar took ProFem

I mentioned last week that one subplot they introduced was Imra getting kidnapped off Winath by some mysterious robot, which was followed by Garth really not looking all that worried or concerned. I can understand that married couples want some time apart every once in a while, even the happiest ones, but he was really nonplussed by her disappearance.

This issue, this one issue, wraps up that plot line about as quickly as a writer could.

This is the first issue Tom McCraw, who is the series' colorist, plots. Once the Bierbaums leave this series, he takes over with issue #50. This does kinda read like it's been plotted by someone learning how to do it. The story jumps around, there are a ton of plot holes, and there are a few moments where we're a little confused about what's going on. I'm honestly not sure if he showed enough with this to make me excited about what's coming next.

We discover that Glorith, still weakened from her battles in the past, has sent this robot out to capture all the Legionnaires who attacked her after she killed every Daxamite. First, Luornu disappears. Then Rond Vidar is attacked in the home he shares with Laurel, who's the next target. A battle ensures and Laurel, after her hair is miraculously turned green for one page, is captured as well.

Back at Legion HQ, Brainy and Cham, who's come back because they need someone who's good at investigating, I guess, are discussing these disappearances. Brainy has a theory, mentions something called Code Six, which is never referred to again, and they discuss.

Finally, the robot takes Brainy himself and they arrive at Glorith's palace where the big reveal takes place: The robot is actually controlled by the second body of Luornu, the one they thought Glorith killed six or seven years ago. But no, Glorith didn't kill her. She just de-aged her and then, after the fight, raised her and turned her against her friends and herself.

A battle ensues, we realize it's not Brainy but actually Cham, who uses a transporter to pull Brainy to the fight and, for some reason, the Glorith-raised Luornu continually regrets her actions and feels sorry for what she's done. So I guess the idea is that nature is more important than nurture. Or she was still Luornu, even though she would have had none of the same memories or experiences.

Oh, and Brainy's naked. For comedy??

Luckily for our heroes, Brainy genetically coded Luorno (the one who survived, not the one raised by Glorith) with a force field so she uses it against Glorith, who isn't strong enough to get out of it. She tells the Legionnaires to leave, so they do... no idea how. No idea why they're wouldn't imprison Glorith for, I don't know, genocide. They just head back to the Legion HQ off panel and everyone's all good.

And for the happy wrap up of the book, new Luornu is back living with old Luornu and Chuck, who's just happy to have two wives instead of one. I believe the assumption is that, when the two Luornus rejoined, the old one's memories overwrote the new one's. Or they're always connected and share the same emotions. Or, even though she was reduced to protoplasm, her memories remained. None of those really make sense, because you could just argue that new Luornu would overwrite old Luornu and they'd want nothing to do with Chuck.

The most fascinating, and best written, section is the text page at the end, where they reveal a much darker side of Luornu's split personalities. It shows how much one of Luornu's personalities despises the Legion for letting one of her bodies die in the battle with Computo. Yes, it's stunningly dark, and yes, it kinda goes against everything else we've seen from her, but it would've been a fascinating angle to work with. Which means, of course, that they didn't.

It also makes me wonder which personality was reborn under Glorith's eye.

LSH #47 - Warning, the images here do not reflect what you'll actually see in the book

Instead of going through each book, I'm just going to talk about the entire Mordru and the zombies story. It runs from #43 - 48 (6 long issues) and, unlike the Terra Mosaic story, this one sticks to this one plot and doesn't meander around with fill ins. We also only focus on the Legion, which is nice to see.

One of the tough parts of reviewing this is the simple fact that most of my complaints about plot holes and moments that make no sense can be wiped away with one simple phrase: "It's magic!" As I was reading this story, all I could think was that so much of this makes no sense but the writers could just wave everything away and simply shout "It's magic!" over and over and you'd be stuck having to concede. For most of the problems, anyway.

Here's the high level plot:

Mordru wants more power and determines that the best way to get it is to merge with Mysa, who's found the powers of Amethyst, the spirit of the old Sorcerer's World. The only way this can happen is by making her so angry she wants to kill him. Which is what happens.

To punish the entire universe because Mysa didn't surrender to his abuse quickly, he casts a spell that resurrects every dead body in the universe. No more thought than that. No more plan than that. Just simple revenge.

But because this is the entire galaxy, the Khunds and their empire have the same problem. So they call the Legion for help. Who give it to them. No, not going to rescue anyone in the UP. No, let's go off and help the empire that invaded them just a short time ago, maimed Vi, and almost destroyed Orando. And everyone's just okay with this.

We get four new Khundish Legionnaires: Firefist, the co-leader and military hero, Veilmist, Firefist's possession who can teleport, Blood Claw, a tall fighter, and Flederweb, a bounty hunter. The Khundian leader gives much more flowery introductions.

And did I mention that J'onn J'onzz is back? Yep, the Martian Manhunter is somehow still alive after 1,000 years and he's the green guy that Nura asked for help before. He tries to help Mysa, gets blasted, and then goes to the Legion HQ to see what else he can do. Kono gets possessed by the spirit of Amethyst and she takes J'onn and Tenzil to Tharn, the new Sorcerer's World and home of Mordru.

The new Legion head to Sklar and fight zombies. Zombie who aren't Sklarians (the blue-haired, yellow skinned female warriors) but skeletons dressed as 20th century superheroes. So we get to watch them destroy Robin, the Justice Society, and Vigilante. Why? Why do this? Why go to all this trouble to draw the Golden Age Flash (literally down to the helmet) when it makes zero sense for this to happen? It's as if they knew they needed to distract from the horrible plot and chose this.

In true 5YL Legion fashion, they retreat when they're overwhelmed. Yes, a bunch of super-powered fighters are overpowered by a bunch of powerless zombies who can only fight with spears and swords. I hate to say that I end up agreeing with a Khund here, but when Firefist yells about the shame of retreating, I think he's right. These are dead bodies come back to life... with no brains or spirits... and the Legion is afraid of actually fighting them. Kind of. It's just so insanely confusing. Once again, it's as if the Legion entered a battle with absolutely no idea what to do or what they were facing. In this book, Rokk is a terrible leader.

Because we need someone to do magic, and Mysa is occupied, Projectra is suddenly a magic user and starts communing with these weird spirit creatures. Okay, I know what you're thinking - her powers have been tied to magic before. And I agree. But we've never seen her do what she does in these issues. She's casting spells, talking to spirits, and explaining Mordru's spells to the team. She's never done it before, not even in the 5YL issues, but who cares? It's the Glorith timeline and we can do whatever we want.

Here are some of the important zombies who wake up:

• All of the dead Legionnaires from Shanghalla, who fly to Sklar to fight the Legion. This includes Karate Kid, whose body was cremated on Orando, and Reflecto, who is another addition in the new timeline that we never see again.
• All of the dead Trommites, who fly first to Sklar to destroy the Legion spaceship (that's literally all they do) and then on to Pasnic, to kill everyone. Yep, a bunch of zombies, with no powers of flight, somehow go through space at light speed to attack in two different places. "It's magic!"
• Lots of dead villains, who end up on Tharn to protect Mordru in the final battle. This leads to the two most insanely bad moments of the series:
• Laurel, when about to attack the skeleton of Nemesis Kid, says: "Nemesis Kid! The snake who betrayed the Legion and killed Val!"
• When Ayla blasts a zombie, almost destroying him, saying that it's Zaryan, the Khund who killed Garth... so she recognized a skeleton by his armor...a villain who we haven't seen in a comic since the 60's. So she can't recognize Dawnstar but does recognize the skeleton of a man she hasn't seen in, by comic time, almost 20 years.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

More zombie fighting ensues and they learn that Mordru's spell will eventually lead to the zombies becoming solid, powerful, and immortal. The Legion shuts down the zombies on Sklar, but no where else. But that new wrinkle doesn't come into effect anywhere else. Just Sklar. It was just for those zombies, I'm guessing.

The Legion finally defeat the zombies on Sklar and Veilmist teleports them all to right outside Mordru's castle. To a planet she's never been to before, never seen, and a specific location that would have no idea how to find. "It's Khund magic!"

Projectra casts a spell, separating Mordru and Mysa. Why didn't they do this first? Why go to Sklar? Why not go to Mordru directly? What was the point of the previous issues?

But since Mysa still wants to kill Mordru, it doesn't work and the separation doesn't work. He's still all-powerful and buries the Legion under a thin layer of rocks. He does, however, take the time to craft individual tombstone for everyone, including J'onn J'onzz, who he's never met before. So that's kind of him.

Luckily for everyone, Devlin O'Ryan is here. Thank goodness the teenager who looks like a middle-aged man is there. He walks into the courtyard and starts yelling at Mordru, confident in his power of reflecting blasts back at the attacker. And it works. Mordru is blasted back into a tree, unconscious.

Everyone is, of course, still alive and they all start crawling out of the rubble. Kono, still possessed by Amethyst, heads over to Mordru and somehow fuses the Amethyst spirit with him. The three battle and the argument turns to this:

Mysa doesn't hate Mordru, she still and always has loved him.

On an aside, I know that spousal emotional abuse wasn't as publicized back in the early 90's and most people then wouldn't find this whole plot point as offensive as it is today. Mysa, who has been abused by Mordru for years and years, and finally has broken free and found her spirit again, just goes back to the same trope of loving the wrong guy and only wanting to help him. It's really horrible to read.

She drains Mordru of all his magic power and gets close to killing him. So who stops her? Projectra, who I would say is the one Legionnaire who would be most accepting of someone killing for revenge. They honestly could have picked anyone else to stop her and I wouldn't have been as surprised by the choice... especially after the scene where Projectra, once again, killed Nemesis Kid as revenge for his killing of Karate Kid.

Man, that wasn't good.

You know, when I started doing these rereads, it was fun to go back over the title that I loved so much.

This week was work.

Random thoughts about the series that weren't the main plot:

• Why did Andrew Nolan show up to tell the Legionnaires to send Mysa love when she was first battling Mordru? Did he have some connection to her than I didn't know about? Is this another point where the writers just wanted to pull an obscure character out of nowhere?
• With all the dead Legionnaires making an appearance, there is now only one ex-Legionnaire who hasn't appeared in the 5YL series. One. Man, I get that Wildfire was a jerk in the 70's, but he's also one of the most popular characters and fans were clamoring for his return. This is insane.
• I really liked the scenes where Rokk had to deal with his younger brother, Pol, as a zombie and try to stop him. It's exactly the kind of reaction I would expect - there was no logic and his actions led to the death of Blood Claw, but they were true. On the other hand, I kept wondering why they were almost babying Projectra every time she saw zombie Val. I know I'm sticking to the Levitz characterization, but this is a strong woman and leader who, as Queen, knows not to show emotion and focus on the task at hand. They should've been telling Rokk to get control of his emotions.
• The whole Jo/Veilmist/Firefist/Devlin subplot felt ripped from a bad 70's sitcom. In order to be free of Firefist, Veilmist kept asking Jo to kill her owner and then she'd come live with him. He refused, of course, and it ended up being Devlin who was responsible for the Khund's death. So she asks Jo to kill Devlin. They spent tons of time setting this up and kept going back to it over and over again. The result? The Khunds say that since Devlin is a minor, he can't own her. I believe this is the first in-comic reference to his age. Also, why spend so much time on this if you're just going to toss it out at the end of the story?
• Speaking of Devlin, now that I know he's 15, these stories are even weirder to me. First of all, why would he choose to hang around with a bunch of people in their late 30's? Second, why would the Legion want to add him to the team? Third, why has he become the Legion's deux ex machina? He literally saves them from every bad situation in this story. Yes, the untrained teenager bails the experienced Legionnaires out of trouble over and over again. He's the Legion's Wesley Crusher.
• I understand that this version of Roxxas is written as completely insane. And I get that he's riddled with regret over what he did to Trom - they've been writing that story for decades. And I get that Jan has, somewhat, forgiven him. But having Roxxas be the one who saves Jan and the rest of the Legion being okay with it just doesn't work. He killed Blok. He almost killed Cham, Celeste, and Dawnstar. But since he's "changed", all is forgiven? And are we, the readers, supposed to like him now?
• When thinking she's doing to die, Laurel kisses Brainy. Sadly, nothing will come of this surprise, but it was a nice little touch to show that there are still feelings there. Brainy had been written as the creepy stalker regarding Laurel up to this point, so it was good to see that he wasn't completely off-base.
• The cover to issue #47 shows the zombie Legionnaires. Great cover except for the fact that they had been defeated last issue and don't show up again. Did they just have a great piece of art they wanted to use? Why not use it for #46 instead of the generic everyone fighting cover they did publish?
• When Mordru is defeated, they show different planets as the zombies collapse. One planet is Lallor, and we see a few of the Heroes of Lallor fighting the dead. Of course, they're still in the same costumes they wore in volume 3 - good to see the 5YL changes didn't reach there.
• When Mysa separates from Mordru, she is suddenly a brunette and is drawn differently than she's ever been drawn before. Again, new timeline, but it's just strange that they couldn't even keep her as a redhead or the White Witch. Again, it's as if they're just changing things to confuse the readers.

But if you think those stories were bad, I give you Legion Annual #4.

LSH Annual #4 - This book should come with an apology

When making a list of the worst Legion stories of all time, I think this one wins it for me. It's just a horrible book all around. It's one of those stories where you wish you could wipe it out of your memory as soon as you finish it.

In 1994, DC thought it would be a good idea to connect all of their annuals with a central theme. In this case, it's Bloodlines. Basically, these evil aliens came to Earth, attacked people, and if their attacks were stopped in time the people they were trying to kill gained superpowers. Every creative team was asked to create a new superhero.

Only one was any good. In the pages of The Demon, they introduced Hitman.

Every other one was pure garbage.

And yet the Legion hero, a horrible person called Jamm, was the worst.

Just don't read this garbage. Save yourself the horror that is this book.

 

That's it for this week. That was... less fun... than before. Here's hoping the beginning of Legionnaires will be more enjoyable.