The start of a brand new era - we look at Legion Lost #1 & 2

One thing I always find fascinating with comic book companies are the methods they use to try to bring in new readers and revitalize titles when sales are sagging. I know I'm missing some here, but I always think of the following as the most common, tried and true ways to keep the title going:

• Reboot
• Relaunch
• New creative team
• Blow everything up, create the illusion of change, and then return to where you were before

Legion editor Mike McAvennie decided to go with three of the four.

First, Legion Lost is a relaunch. Desperate to separate themselves from all the continuity and numerous characters that people always complain about when they say the Legion is hard to get into, they cancel the two books, pare down the roster to 12, and start with a new number one.

Second, we have a new creative team. Writers Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning (DnA) and penciller Olivier Coipel take over the Legion, taking it in completely new directions and ignoring a ton of what happened before.

And on a complete aside, it was brought to my attention that not only is Coipel drawing the hardest superhero book, he's also just moved over from animation and is literally learning as he's going. So I'm going to be very, very kind to him moving forward. This might be the worst way to start working in comics and I'm impressed he kept at it.

Third, we're blowing everything up, creating the illusion of change, and returning to where they came from once everything is done. We'll talk about that more as we continue the reread.

Let's begin!

Legion Lost #1 

We are immediately thrown into a strange new world with strange new characters. And the stakes are really high.

We're in the middle of a comet, following three winged alien beings flying through the tail and trying to escape from the Progeny. Who I'm guessing are the new bad guys. They vaporize one of them immediately, kill another, and the last one tries her best to escape from these attackers. The Progeny also reveal that they are collecting the organic residue from the dead aliens. That's not good, is it?

Shikari, the last surviving alien, tries desperately to find her way to safety and enters a nebula so that no one has any way to figure out where they're going. She reveals that she has "pathfinding senses" that the nebula is now blocking.

Full disclosure here, so you never forgot that I'm often not the smartest guy in the room, it took me multiple issues to connect Shikari with Dawnstar... and Dawnstar is one of my favorite Legionnaires.

What does she find in the nebula? The destroyed remnants of the Legion Outpost.

Once she enters the ship, looking for safety, she somehow activates a memory crystal. The image of Jan Arrah, Element Lad, is displayed and his job is to provide all the exposition we need to understand what's going on. They get around the pesky "how can an alien understand him" problem by explaining that he's communicating empathically, so she doesn't understand the words but gets the feelings... I think...

Here's the rundown of what happened:

• They went through a quantum barrier and nothing works, including the clocks.
• Jan put everyone in sheaths of Tromium crystals to protect them - that's the material that protected the ship when it went through the rift. No idea how he knew that, or why he was creating it, cause he was creating Tarnium before...
• He starts talking about how much time has passed, and how, since there are no computers, he has to figure out everything by hand. Has Element Lad, in this continuity, shown any ability to figure out launch physics without a computer?
• Then he explains who the Legion are and how he wants to save them and send them back home.

As Jan's explaining this, we see him aging and, much like the Blight story, his costume gets ripped in very odd places.

Oh, and Shikari takes off her mask to reveal that she has humanoid features. Also, she repeats some of the words she's hearing, like Legion and beautiful, which means that this method of communication makes no sense at all. So she is hearing the words, understands what they mean, but doesn't speak the language herself.

The image disappears, leaving her alone, and she quickly discovers the Legion in their crystalline blocks. But before she can do anything, and with perfect timing to not interrupt the explanations, the Progeny arrive and we see that they are slug-looking creatures who want to destroy her because she's a variant.

As they start shooting at her, they destroy the Tromium crystals and... ta-dah! The Legion is awake and ready to fight. Who's here?

• Ultra Boy
• Brainiac 5.1
• Monstress
• Umbra
• Kid Quantum
• Live Wire
• Saturn Girl
• Chameleon

Live Wire is speaking Interlac (that one concession to the past so far), so no one can understand what he's saying. Not even the reader, if they don't know what these symbols mean. The Progeny and Shikari speak Proverso, so they're only able to communicate with each other. So does this mean that Shikari was "hearing" Proverso when Jan was speaking and she just didn't know the words he was using, like "beautiful", but she didn't know it in her own language? Or was she saying the Interlac word for "beautiful"?

The battle starts and Shikari explains what she sees of the eight Legionnaires and their powers. They defeat the Progeny quickly and Saturn Girl gives Shikari a telepathic earplug so they can communicate.

They've added a part where Shikari struggles with pronouncing some names and words, like Chameleon. Which, again, makes no sense when they're using telepathic earplugs, but this won't be the first time the writers ignore how things work in the 30th Century.

Brainy reveals something they don't want to know - the rift sent them so far away that he's unable to figure out where they are. He doesn't recognize any of the star systems.

Ultra Boy, of course, loses his mind when faced with the possibility that Apparition might not be there. After all, he loves her too much and they've been through so much that he can't lose her. She might be hurt so he's ready to go search everywhere for her. Luckily, when he reacts violently to Live Wire telling him to calm down, Tinya appears through the floor, telling him that she's okay.

Just as the happy reunion occurs, Brainy points out the next big problem - a huge threatening ship has arrived.

Most definitely to be continued...

Legion Lost #2 

Just a quick note about the cover - is that Monstress? Is that some weird alien from this new part of the universe?

Judging by the first page, it's Monstress. Who's our narrator for this issue, recapping what's gone before. We also get a little more information about the Progeny - their goal is to exterminate any life forms that aren't pure. So we get a little genocide in this new Legion.

Saturn Girl takes charge, acting like a leader again, and splits the team into groups. They to defeat the Progeny and get supplies from them as well. I guess they've already searched the Outpost and realized there are no other Legionnaires there. Or any supplies.

As the Progeny approach, we learn two things - they refer to the Legion Outpost as an artifact and they keep referring to someone called "The Progenitor." Their god, perhaps?

We also learn that the Legion flight rings aren't working anymore, so most of the team is going to be stuck walking.

They've added a really nice touch here, character-wise: Shikari can't remember the Legionnaires' names, so she's given them nicknames. Large-Legion for Monstress. Orange-Legion for Cham.

The team of Saturn Girl, Live Wire, Ultra Boy, and Apparition start fighting with the Progeny, making their way further into the ship. We get our first hints of trouble, as Imra's getting irritated with Ultra Boy, wanting him to calm down and be smarter. Good luck with that.

The other team, lead by Shikari, discovers that the Progeny recycle the husks of the creatures they kill, essentially dissolving the corpses into some sort of ooze. Monstress has seen enough and demands they stop it to save whoever's left in the chamber. Cham disagrees, but lets her and Shikari go down and wreak havoc.

We're already seeing more and more dissension among the team then we saw in the entire run before. No one likes Umbra and she's fully embraced her "I can't stand anyone" personality. Even Shikari immediately figures out that "Dark-Legion" is unpleasant and hard. And Monstress is pretty tired of her act too.

Then we get a one-page origin story for Monstress, which, I believe, is the first time they've actually explained how she got her powers. Strange that it took so long, but considering how many characters the old creative team was juggling, I can't be surprised that they missed some of these stories. After all, they needed to tell another Invisible Kid story showing him as the greatest superhero of all time...

Cham, Kid Quantum, and Umbra burst into the engine room of the ship and quickly disable it, surprised that it's running on atomic power. Umbra makes a few more nasty comments and Cham calls her out. She also shows off her racism against Durlans. Sorry, but are they trying to make her the least likable character in Legion history? I mean, she's currently trying to take the title from Andromeda and she's gonna pass her quickly.

The first team continues wrecking their way through the ship and meet up with the ship-master. Saturn Girl makes her demands and, when the Progeny don't want to be nice, she just tell them she's going to take whatever she wants and then promises to return it once they've reached home.

But the horrors that they're now in get thrown in their faces - instead of stopping Monstress and Shikari, the Progeny just kill everyone they've captured so they wouldn't be freed. It's a horrific moment and Monstress is quick to point out that the Legion won't kill.

They take a shuttle, haul what's left of the Outpost away, and make off with supplies. Both sides are disgusted by the other - we're in a dark new world, aren't we? Brainy makes it worse by again saying that even he's unable to calculate just where they are. They want to make sure we're completely clear on the fact that we're in an unknown part of space.

I really liked that they story was told from Monstress' point of view - now I wish they had done even more with her before everything was destroyed. She's already one of the best characters in this series and it's only been one issue, so kudos to DnA for developing such a strong Legionnaire.

I'm also going to praise Coipel for these two issues - Lanning's no longer coating the pages in ink so you can't see anything and Coipel's pencils are starting to shine through. He's still struggling with some of the characters (Monstress especially) and there are moments where it's not super clear what's going on, but you can't deny the energy and the strength of his design choices. He's giving this series a much stronger sci-fi feel and the book no longer feels like it's just an alternate version of the 20th Century.

This is a really good start to this mini-series. I'm not quite ready to put it up with Levitz's Legion, or even the beginning of 5YL, and it's already surpassing the past year or so of the book it's replacing.

Our next Legionnaire in the spotlight... Dream Girl!!!

If ever there was a Legionnaire who needed the right writer, it was poor Nura Nal. When she was written by talents who wanted to show that she was more than a pretty face, or had some depth, she flourished and was shown to be a critical member of the team. When she was handled by someone who dismissed her and thought she was a horrible Legionnaire, or just there for sex appeal, she was wasted and denigrated.

I also think that she's the one Legionnaire who benefited the most from being elected team leader by the fans. After listening to Keith Giffen's podcast (which if you haven't listened to, I highly recommend it), I know that he couldn't stand her and wasn't too happy that she was the star of one of his first Legion assignments. I'm sure that if she hadn't been elected leader, he would've pushed Paul Levitz to either move her to the background or just have her leave the team. So being elected leader catapulted her to the center of the action during The Great Darkness Saga, cementing her place at the forefront of the team.

Perfect timing for Dream Girl. It's almost like she knew it would happen.

• Although her introduction and early moments with the Legion were not great... she changed Light Lass' powers without permission, left the team to stay with Star Boy and then came back as Miss Terious, she started to find her footing in the 70's. She didn't get to do much, but at least she was used.
• She may have been the first DC character to be shown sharing a bed with her boyfriend (Dave Cockrum snuck Star Boy's head into the background)
• She definitely got more fans because of Mike Grell's take on her in the 70's, as seen above
• As I was thinking back to how she was handled in the past, I almost think her single best story before Levitz's second run may just have been one of the worst Legion stories ever - the Doctor Mayavale travesty. But she's good in it...
• There are so many things I loved about how they handled her during the Levitz years:
  • Having her being unabashedly vain and superficial and almost making you think it's a cover
  • Actually being a good leader and making good decisions, something no one would've expected when she took over the job
  • Showing off her intellect, especially during the Eclipso story
  • Showing off her bravery and ability to think through tough situations
  • Her problems with her relationship with Star Boy - this was one of those longtime Legion couples that you never thought would break up... and then they did... and worst, she ended up with Atmos
  • Levitz made her a hero with actual flaws, who made mistakes, but was still a worthy member of the team
• And then they completely destroyed her in 5YL... man, that was harsh. It was as if the creative team had a personal vendetta against her.
• In PZH, she moved to the background, which I actually didn't mind, and they treated her with respect and showed how effective her powers could be. I really liked what they did with her.
• In Threeboot, just forcing her to be with Brainiac 5 always kinda felt... forced... but at least it was different.

And if you're someone who loves the second tier characters like Matter-Eater Lad or Bouncing Boy, you have to love Dream Girl... or at least cut her some slack.

Thoughts? What did you think of these issues? Or of Dream Girl? Please share in the comments below!