Ra's Al Ghul versus the Legion - who will defeat this ancient threat? It's The Legion #7 & 8

First of all, let me thank everyone for coming here from reddit - I really appreciate everyone's time and I'm so glad you're willing to spend some of your day reading my opinions.

Second, last week was really the final straw for me regarding reddit. It's a great platform to make comments and write short articles, but it's become more and more unstable for long form writing like I do. Saving has become increasingly challenging, there are near-constant warnings that I've lost connection to the server, and posting pics has become almost impossible. Because of this, I've moved my writing to this blogpost.

I've also transferred over all my articles to this website, so it's now a "one-stop-shop" for everything Legion-related that I've written. I have no idea whether the search engine is effective when everything's been dumped in the course of a couple of weeks, but we'll see as we go.

Let's begin...

The quick recap leading up to this is that Ra's Al Ghul is doing something horrible, there are energy monsters and purple balls and Legion World has been blown up, Saturn Girl has no problem mind-blasting anyone who disagrees with her, and it's time for the Legion to save the world.

Let's dive in!

The Legion #7

Wow! It's Wizard's Book of the Month! Is there anyone reading this who doesn't remember the good and the bad Wizard brought to the comics industry? Is there anyone who doesn't think that DC paid for this award? But since we have another excellent cover, I can't complain too much. I will say this - these covers do leap off the stands, don't they?

Ra's Al Ghul has taken over the Earth's telecommunications and is announcing his evil plans to everyone. As I mentioned last week, I always find it funny when a villain who hasn't been active for 1,000 years shows up and we're all supposed to believe that everyone knows who they are. It would be as if Leo the Isuarian or Henry III suddenly popped up on our television screens and expected that we'd all know exactly who they were. (And yes, I had to look them up)

Here's his plan, dumbed down for myself:

• Ra's is forcing the human race to undergo a process of evolution called Hypertaxis - this will cause massive changes in the population, such as:
• the best new humans, the ones who will undergo the most evolutionary changes, will become "Hypersapiens," the next phase of human evolution
  
• turning 1 out of every 100,000 human beings to become what he calls a "Terrorform," beings that will protect the Hypersapiens while they're in a cocoon state and changing
• everyone else, especially the non-human beings, will be in grave danger and probably die
  

If anyone has a better explanation of his plan, please write something in the comments either here or on reddit. Writers Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning (DnA) are really getting deep into the sci-fi here.

So those people with the glowing eyes we saw last issue? They're the Terrorforms. And they're blasting everyone.

The S.P.s, led by the U.P.'s Vice President, Winema Wazzo, are ready to hold off these new attackers. Much to her displeasure, the Legion arrive to help.

The Legionnaires head straight towards these alien-looking Terrorforms and Brainiac 5 tells them that fighting is useless. They need to talk to these beings and convince them that the biological orders they're following aren't correct. He starts talking to them and another purple (and red) ball rolls into view.

They're surrounded and, to be completely honest, I'm very confused about what's actually happening. I'd like to think I'm able to read a comic, but from what I can gather, the Legion is surrounded, Shikari gets blasted, more balls appear, more Legionnaires get blasted, and Cosmic Boy has added metal discs to his costume so he can create a shield.

Vi (or Leviathan) ends up on the ground, unconscious, and Ultra Boy rushes off to attack. Both he and Kid Quantum get knocked away by a Terrorform, who then picks up Vi and throws her into a building. Is she invulnerable when she's big? If not, this is really bad.

Oh, she's fine. Just normal size again. Just as she's about to get hit again, a green light swooshes by. It's Kinetix. But not Kinetix. She's been changed into... I think one of the Terrorforms but she still has red hair, still looks humanoid, and can communicate telepathically with Vi. She then tells Cosmic Boy to blind the others, which he does, and Kinetix is back on the team... kinda...

Just in case you were wondering, Cosmic Boy uses his powers to put metal bits over the Terrorforms eyes. And they're useless now and just give up?? Maybe?? So when he flies away, and the metal falls away from their eyes, do they just start killing again? Or did Rokk shove the metal into their eyes, permanently blinding them? Did this book get even darker?

Interlude: Out in space, 15 days from Xanthu, the Khundian fleet, with Dreamer, watches as the Robotican base world flies by on a heading for Earth. Well, that's not good.

We then head to the Moon, where Ra's and the Oversight Watch have landed and he wants his genome samples unloaded carefully. So he said at the beginning that he's speeding up Earth's evolution by moving the Moon closer to the planet. Then he lands on it, even though it would be under immense change and gravitational pressures and incredibly unstable. Surely a space station would be better? Or, really, anywhere but the Moon and the Earth.

Mr. Venge returns and reminds everyone that Legion World has been destroyed. And Ra's lets everyone know that he expects the Legion to attack and, when they do, the Watch and Venge will kill them all.

The Legion and the V.P. are, of course, chatting pleasantly about what they need to do to save everyone. Haha... of course it's frosty as Winema taunts Jo, telling him that there are things he doesn't know but there's no time to tell him. Glad that we have one bit of consistent characterization from the past version of the Legion - Winema is a horrible person.

The Legion uses Winema's telepath to enter Kinetix's mind and learn what's going on. We learn that the last evolutionary event, the last time we saw Terrorforms and Hypersapiens was when the dinosaurs were wiped out and this led to human beings. And what is Kinetix? A hybrid, a Terrorform with an alien and mystical side that's changed everything about her.

Then her eyes glow and Brainiac 5, Shikari, and Chameleon appear again. I had to go back and reread the older fight - I'm sorry, maybe I am just slow, but it was not clear to me at all that they had been turned into those balls. If, when you read this, it was clear to you, it wasn't for me. Which sends me down the rabbit hole of wondering how many others were turned into balls? What happened to them? Were they teleported? Were their molecules changed? Have I just spent more time thinking about this than DnA every did?

To end all this chaos and confusion, we move forward three hours - the Legion arrives on the moon, ready for the final showdown with Ra's Al Ghul.

Okay, let's ignore the fact that there were many, many times when the artwork made this story harder to read than easier. Or I'm just slow. But honestly, when you have a big reveal of three Legionnaires returning from the purple balls and one is bent over, butt in the air, and you can't see their face or any coloring that would let you know who it is, it's just not well done.

My big gripe about this issue is very, very simple - why did the Legion not attack Ra's when they never actually did anything to save the Earth? It's an extinction level event - the Moon is moving closer, the tides are going to go crazy, and millions will die. The whole reason why they stopped fighting Ra's last issue was to try to save as many people as they could. But they didn't. They stopped the Terrorforms (and very easily, I might add) and then read Kinetix's mind. And now they're just going to attack Ra's and still not actually help anyone. This issue took a hard turn downward and I can't say I'm too impressed.

And I'd be remiss if I didn't say this: Really? This is what they're doing with Kinetix? This? Wow...

The Legion #8

It's time for the big showdown... or the fight of the centuries...

Let me start with a little aside about M'onel. Okay, so let's think about what it would have been like for someone to have been stuck in a neutral zone or phantom zone for 1,000 years. Would he have stayed on Earth? Would he have wandered through the universe? How much would he remember? Why didn't he go completely insane? How would he have remembered Ra's Al Ghul? Yes, I spend waaaaay too much time thinking about this.

We begin at the hospital, where the doctors are trying to help M'onel, with Triad watching and fretting, and none of the surgeons can do anything. They can't make an incision because he's, you know, invulnerable. And there's a bullet inside him that they can't figure out and can't remove.

Here's another aside about M'onel and, I guess, Superman and all invulnerable heroes. I've always assumed that M'onel is invulnerable all over and not just on the outside - he doesn't have some sort of force field that protects him, his flesh is super-strong and impervious to damage. If this is right, and I'm guessing it is because they can't cut into his skin to remove the bullet, wouldn't his skin heal around the bullet, making him fine again? Am I completely wrong on this? I don't know if his flesh would push out the bullet, a la Wolverine, but I don't think that he'd be suffering like this.

Also, he's a Daxamite... which the doctors should know... right? So just hit him with red sun energy and operate? I get Triad doesn't want to admit he's Valor, but they can tell the surgeons he's from Daxam.

This is just a long-winded way of saying that nothing makes sense.

Luckily, neo-Kinetix arrives, hits him with some green energy, and I'm sure we're all good again.

We get another explanation of the evolutionary changes and I realize I was wrong... glad that in a book that's sprinting through plot points, we're spending a complete page to explain the bad guy's plan. The Moon is still getting closer and closer to the Earth, so I got that part right. Yay - one right out of many mistakes. I'm doing okay this week.

Cosmic Boy is nice enough to give this recap, and an explanation of who Ra's Al Ghul is, just as the Legion and the Science Police have arrived on the Moon. Okay, maybe not the best timing, but what are you gonna do?

Ra's is listening in and is somewhat offended he's been called arrogant. Then, just as he's getting his team into position to stop the Legion, Mr. Venge shorts out and disappears. What? What??

Which is when the Legion bursts into the control room and the battle begins. Well, not really. The Oversight Watch immediately surrenders and it's up to Ra's to do everything himself.

If you've already figured out that when the Legion needs to lose a fight, they battle individually and when they need to win, they actually use teamwork, I think you can figure out what's going to happen here. Ra's knocks out Shikari and Chameleon before the team can even react and then starts beating the Legion one-by-one. Unfortunately for the team, Ra's is prepared, and knows exactly how to beat each of them. He's even able to "reflect" Kid Quantum's powers back at her... which makes absolutely no logical sense, but that's not the first time.

And I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that Ra's said to Kid Quantum "you're the only one in this performing troupe to have any credible meta-powers." In case you were wondering who DnA liked on the team.

It's Gates to the rescue. He teleports Kid Quantum away and, by mistake, gets Ra's right hand and wrist as well. Well that's kinda disgusting. But he doesn't bleed - he's all Lazarus Pit now so he's full of golden energy.

Cosmic Boy shows everyone how important this series is by saying, "Give it up, Ra's. We can do this all day." So we know the MCU read this series.

Ra's teleports away and Brainy figures out that the Moon will hit the Earth in two hours. He begins trying to figure out how to stop it after Ra's made it impossible for the Legion to stop the terraforming machines.

Elsewhere in the compound (and why didn't the Legion chase after Ra's?), our villain is knocked to the ground by the fully-recovered M'onel. Neo-Kinetix saved him and now he's ready to fight.

Because we don't have any time to waste, they burst into Ra's cloning area, where there are hundreds of bodies in stasis tubes, all Ra's. He's stunned - he didn't know this existed. He lashes out with his missing hand, burning M'onel's face. So we're supposed to believe that Ra's, who's been in control of everything, didn't know this huge chamber of duplicates of himself exists.

Now it's only Triad and Ra's Al Ghul. Amazing that she got to the moon so quickly, or that no other Legionnaires have rushed to help, but we have our final battle.

With just a couple of punches and kicks, Triad "wokk"s Ra's into an empty stasis tube and the battle is over. Who knew that Tri-Jitsu is better and stronger than... the entire Legion.

But the big problem is that the Earth will be destroyed, so it's the Terrorforms to the rescue. Led by Neo-Kinetix, they surround the moon and try to stop it. The Legion heads out to assist, with Kid Quantum at the lead, and try their best to both hold the Moon together and push it backwards.

If this issue wasn't packed enough, the Legion World suddenly arrives. They cloaked themselves during the attack and Sensor created an illusion to let the military think they were destroyed. Also, the Kwai have agreed to help with the Threshold travel. Wow - that's a wrap-up.

The Legion World, now unable to move, is stuck in orbit over the Earth. They're counterbalancing the Moon so, thankfully, the Earth is safe.

Everything's fine... right? Well, aside from the Terrorforms... who suddenly stopped being blind when they needed to help. And the evolutionary changes... and the hundreds of Ra's... and Earth suffering numerous disasters and, I'm guessing, millions of deaths...

I'm honestly trying to remember the last time I read a comic that felt like the writers were trying to shove three issues into one and didn't care if anything made sense. With all the decompression that we normally see, this was the exact opposite.

Let me catch my breath and I'll share my thoughts on the first 8 issues.

I'm going to start with the most controversial statement - as much as I really enjoyed most of this story, I really dislike seeing villains from the 21st Century show up in the Legion. Having Ra's Al Ghul as the main bad guy just didn't work for me for a number of reasons, but the basic one is this - he's a Batman villain. I'll give you Justice League, if you want to quibble. He's not a Legion villain. And the Legion doesn't need him. Ra's doesn't make people want to buy the comic. He doesn't move the needle. His appearance in this story is basically admitting to the fans that the Legion can't sell on their own. That a good story isn't enough. 

Now I'm not saying that it isn't fun to have Lex Luthor go up against Batman, and sometimes a villain can shift to a different hero and change everything up (Kingpin moving from Spider-Man to Daredevil). But this move just seemed like they believed that no Legion villain would be good enough to lead off the new series and wanted to cash in on someone from a more successful title.

And, to be blunt, would this story have changed at all if McCauley had been the villain from the beginning, just with boosted powers? Would it have been so hard to just have McCauley, after being worked on by the Khunds or having acquired tech while he was president, much more powerful, dangerous, and elevate his villain-status to the next level? You didn't need Ra's. At all.

The only scene that would have to change is when Ra's shoots M'onel, and that could've been easy to fix. Just have McCauley wax poetic about how he knows M'onel is Valor and how he wants to defeat him with a weapon from his past. And boom!

Also, I think this story would have been far more interesting if Ra's was Mr. Venge, not McCauley. We get more arguments back and forth about who's in charge. We get Ra's revealing that he's been using McCauley for his own ends and Leland not having a clue. It's just more dramatic.

My second controversial statement, maybe, is that this story was really badly paced. The first six issues were great - everything gets set up, we understand what's going on, we have mysteries and confusion and we're intrigued. But by the time we get to issues 7 and 8, we're moving at hyperspeed and they're sprinting through everything. Either they needed to turn this into two six-issue stories and let things breathe, or they needed to cut out a lot of the extras... for example, the trip to Kwai space. By the final issue, I doubt anyone cared if anything made sense or if there were letting any moment actually hit with the readers. 

I'm not going to get into the massive plot holes or I'd be here for another 10,000 words. Let's just say there were a lot...

And finally, the fact that the final battle was Triad against Ra's Al Ghul, after he's mowed through the entire team, and she defeats him in one page, was so disappointing that I was shaking my head. This has a lot to do with my prior comments on the pacing being off, but do I need to explain rule number one of writing a team book? Let the team defeat the villain. Not the literal weakest member of the team. I'm all for elevating Triad and giving her tons of attention (she's been one of my faves in the PZH Legion), but this just went a bit too far.

Strangely enough, having written all of these criticisms, I actually enjoyed this more than I enjoyed Legion Lost. Perhaps it was because we had the whole team again. Perhaps because there was some great set-up for characters and settings. Perhaps it's because Coipel did a better job. Perhaps because it wasn't as dark. Or maybe just because DnA and Coipel were just more comfortable with the book and the team so everything worked better. Agree? Disagree?

Our next Legionnaire in the spotlight... Quislet! 

Believe it or not, this is one of the hardest ones of these for me to write. Quislet had an even shorter run as a Legionnaire than Magnetic Kid (although he didn't end up dying). But Quislet brought a few new things to the table that we hadn't seen before:

• They were the first gender neutral Legionnaire. Quislet was referred to as "he" during volume 3, but I'm going with "they" because... well... we're smarter now, aren't we?
  
• They were the first non-humanoid and non-organic-being Legionnaire. Coming from the Teall dimension, they were a pilot who had been sent to the Legion's universe to explore and send information back to their race of energy beings.
• They were the first Legionnaire whose power was solely destructive. Once they took over matter, and animated it, it would disintegrate. I guess you could argue that Matter-Eater Lad's power is destructive as well, but he does actually produce something once he's done eating, right?

This recap of Quislet is hard for me for the simple reason that they didn't really do much as a Legionnaire. Aside from giving Wildfire a new, energy body, and driving everyone else crazy by flitting around, collecting and spreading gossip, and generally being a nuisance, there aren't many battles where you can say "thank the gods for Quislet being there."

They did lead to a few moments where I was wondering, for example, how Universo could take over a microscopic being from another dimension.

And they were a great bit of comic relief.

But they're not going to be added to any "best of the Legion" list. And I don't think any fans are clamoring for them to be brought back.

But if you like your Legion as diverse as possible, they were a great member and a great addition to the team, even if they weren't the most effective Legionnaire. In the fine tradition of Tenzil and Chuck, Quislet was a Legionnaire who brought more than an amazing power set to the table.

Actually, as I write this, their power set was pretty amazing when you think about it. Maybe we could do more with Quislet in a future version of the Legion.

Well? What do you think of the new home? And the end of the first big Legion storyline? And Quislet? Please share your comments either here or back on the reddit page.

See you next week!