Welcome to Winema Wazzo's woeful wrath! We're working through Legion 78 - 80 and Legionnaires 35 - 37

Let me just apologize first for the anguished alliteration in the title. Just couldn't resist.

To recap what's gone on before, Apparation's mother, Ambassador Winema Wazzo, has been trying her best to shut down the Legion because of her daughter's death at the hands of the White Triangle. She kidnapped Jan Arrah, wiped his memories, and made him attack the Legion.

And if that wasn't bad enough, there's a Sun-Eater heading to United Planets space and the Legion has been tasked with recruiting five villains, Tharok, Mano, the Persuader, the Empress, and Validus, to stop this grave threat.

Also, Cosmic Boy has basically become full villain, treating his teammates like garbage, pushing away his friends, and allowing Brainiac 5 to be arrested and kept on Takron-Galtos. Most of the Legion is ready to kick him to the curb, so to speak.

Let's begin...

Legion #78

I know I'm starting to sound like a broken record here, repeating the same complaint again and again, but I just can't figure out why Lee Moder continues to draw this book. We start this issue off with the U.P. Council standing around outside, watching to see if the Sun-Eater appears (which makes absolutely no sense at all) and almost all the characters look completely different from how they appeared before. President Chu has aged almost 30 years and her face changes in almost every panel. Winema Wazzo has become a caricature of herself, ranting and raving about how the Legion should be shut down. And, because the police in the 30th Century are incompetent, bordering on malicious, she just walks free even though they have proof she kidnapped and brainwashed poor Jan Arrah.

Aside: I just realized Moder passed away about a year ago, so I kinda feel bad continually criticizing his work. How did I realize this? For the first time, I actually looked up how long his run on the Legion was so I'd know how many more weeks I'd have to deal with his pencils. He's on the book until #100, so it's gonna be a bit. I also realized that his work on Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E. was far better, pencils-wise, so maybe we can chalk up his work to just being on a book he wasn't comfortable with, and an inker who didn't mesh well with what he was doing.

Continuing with the horrible policing, Cosmic Boy and Shrinking Violet arrive on Leland McCauley's planetoid to retrieve Mano. Apparently, ever since he attacked McCauley's factories to get revenge for the complete destruction of his home world, Mano's been shackled in a makeshift cell, surrounded by rats McCauley brought from Paris (what??), and held without trial, bail, or any sort of legal representation. McCauley brags that he bribed the Judicial Council to keep Mano there.

Rokk and Vi are completely unfazed, acting like this is completely normal, and offer Mano a pardon if they come and help them stop the Sun-Eater. To only McCauley's surprise, the villain agrees.

Wow - so, once again, Legion writers are able to make the readers feel more sympathy and compassion for a villain than for the heroes of the book.

The other Legionnaires, in groups of two, are able to recruit/capture the other members of the Fatal Five:

·         Saturn Girl scares Validus and he faints

·         Leviathan and Chameleon enter the prison built for the Empress, see that she's literally killed every one of her guards, and makes her the offer of a pardon... did neither of them think that this might be a horrible idea?

·         Tharok surrenders to Gates and Invisible Kid, but only after Lyle recaps Tharok's entire origin story, which was very nice of him

·         And on Takron-Galtos, the new warden gives Star Boy and Triad the Persuader. I guess the old warden was swiftly fired after he failed to get any information out of Brainiac 5, who's still just sitting in his cell and thinking.

To the surprise of no one except the Legionnaires, once the Fatal Five are reunited, they immediately turn on our naive heroes and get ready to fight. And if they have to destroy Takron-Galtos in the process, so be it.

This was actually a very nice old-school way of introducing a team of villains, although they've pretty much thrown out all logic to do it. I assume that every reader could see the story coming pages before the "surprise reveal" and, sadly, it just makes the Legion look kinda dumb in the process.

But I do like that Validus is back.

Legionnaires #35

Let's start with the good first. We get a new co-plotter and scripter on this book: Roger Stern. Tom Peyer will only be working on the Legion book and Tom McCraw is still co-plotter and colorist on both.

I remember, months ago, making the comment that there were no big names working on the PZH Legion and one person commented that I was wrong - Roger Stern was a big name who worked on this title. This lead me to really think about who was a big name creator and whether Stern fit the bill.

Stern had, by this point, a very long and profitable career in comics. He had worked on such books as Spider-Man, the Avengers, and Superman. He had been an editor at Marvel and knew how to make a good comic book.

But, and I know this will make me sound like a jerk, was there ever a point in his career where people saw his name on the cover and thought, "I've gotta buy this! Roger Stern is writing this!"

To further prove my point, did having him write the Legion improve sales in the slightest? Nope.

Having said all that, he is the biggest name creator to work on the Legion since Keith Giffen left. And he is a talented writer and plotter who knows what he's doing. I just don't think he drives sales at all.

This is a pretty mediocre fill-in issue, which is cute and fun if you're a fan of Tenzil Kem, Chuck Taine, Shvaughn Erin, or Rond Vidar. (Is anyone a fan of Marla Latham?) Shape-shifting aliens invade Legion HQ to blow it up, for absolutely no reason, and the Legion support team has to stop them. Thankfully, Lori Morning is nice, so one of the aliens converts back to its regular shape (surprise, it's a Proty) and the threat is ended. They never explain why the aliens are doing this, they're never really a threat at all, and it's an okay issue that doesn't really do much for the story at hand.

I'd probably be a bigger fan of this if later issues didn't feel so incredibly rushed. It just feels like bad plotting to waste an entire issue on this when you've got a hard end to your multi-issue storyline and have a ton of story to work through.

On the plus side, we learn that Tenzil has acid spit and Chuck has something in common with Cyclops, he's also an expert pool player because of his knowledge of geometry. Have comic writers ever actually played pool? I understand angles and geometry but I've never been able to translate that to pool because, you know, the physical act of hitting the cue ball...

Anyway, more importantly, XS returns to 2995 in Australia and, most importantly, has grown a rat tail. Wow, some of the 90's fashion choices were horrible.

Legion #79

We finally get the fight between the Legion and the Fatal Five. My thoughts:

·         The Persuader uses his Atomic Axe to cut Spark's lightning. I've always had a good laugh whenever the Axe could cut through things that would be physically impossible. I remember back in the 70's when he cut through gravity. Or when he cuts through atoms which, if he cuts through the right atoms, would lead to a small nuclear reaction, right?

·         Star Boy discovers that he has different superpowers than he thought, as he's suddenly got X-Ray vision (Why would they still call it that in the 30th Century? Are they still using X-Rays?) and super strength. Also, he arms magically heal and the casts break off. Was that the point of having those?

·         Violet continues to be the most effective Legionnaire, out-thinking everyone else and recruiting help (Brainy) when needed. They are sprinting towards over-writing her abilities, especially now that they've done away with her shyness.

·         Brainy uses his force-shield belt to break the Empress' knife, but then is knocked out when his overconfidence allows the Persuader to strike him. I like that he's got flaws and makes these mistakes because he assumes he's never wrong. It's a nice character flaw. But, continuing on the Persuader's Axe problems, if it can cut through the energy in lightning, why can't it cut through the energy of the force-shield?

·         The continued treatment of Leviathan has become almost offensive. I get they're trying to show he's... a jerk??... but they've gone too far. He treats the Legionnaires he considers weak with contempt and derision and he does not ever waver from that. As Gates and Star Boy literally save everyone, Gim's only comment is "I don't believe it. Those losers pulled it--" Is he overcompensating because he knows he's not very good? Is he critical of everyone? Why does any Legionnaire put up with this? Why does Cosmic Boy trust him as deputy leader? Why do the writers hate him so much?

The issues ends with almost every Legionnaire lying on the floor unconscious, and Tharok, the Empress, and the Persuader gloating over them. The Empress plans on killing them all now (such a miracle that none of them were injured or killed before, consider two of them use sharp blades when fighting and she routinely brags about knowing how to kill someone in 1,000s of ways) when Gates suddenly appears to save the day??

But before anyone dies, the hull starts breaking apart (and this was horribly drawn) and we have a nice little cliffhanger.

I've mentioned this before but it definitely needs repeating here. When you create villains who are constantly killing background characters, it becomes very difficult to make it believable when they defeat the heroes without killing. This battle should've resulted in numerous Legion deaths. The Empress has shown, since her introduction, that she has no problem killing beings quickly and doesn't need a knife to do it. All the writers needed to do was have Tharok say something like, "We can't kill them. Our boss needs them alive!" and the problem would be solved. Comics logic 101.

Legionnaires #36

Legion #80 - love the cover, but it kinda ruins any suspense of what might happen...

I'm gonna talk about both these issues together because these two feel like one big issue split into two. There's so much going on that it's going to be tough to keep everything straight.

Before getting into this, let's talk about pacing in a comic book. I love books that are full of story and really hate a lot of the deconstruction that's been going on for the past few decades. I want to feel like I've gotten my money's worth and there's a ton going on.

But I also hate when a book feels too packed and there's no time to breathe. You need books to ebb and flow within the issue, and within the story line. The best comparison I can give is this: think of the best action movies you've ever seen. Are they complete, never-ending action? No. They have to have slow moments to establish the characters and make you care about what's going on. John Wick doesn't work if you don't know why the dog is so important to him. It also doesn't work if they don't have those quieter scenes throughout the movie to break up the action.

These two books needed to be four issues. There's so much going on, so many different plot points that are hanging, that it ends up feeling like the creative team is just throwing things at the wall and sprinting to the end of issue #80. One of the bad things about this pace is that plot points get dropped, or lessened, and things really start to make no sense at all.

Here's everything that's going on that isn't part of the Fatal Five/Legion battle:

·         Winema Wazzo is still wanting the Legion shut down and is, finally, under house arrest for her kidnapping and brainwashing of Jan Arrah. She's also monologueing like a real over-the-top villain, which I always appreciate.

·         Braal and Titan look to be heading back to war and tensions are rising.

·         The Sun-Eater is heading towards U.P. space and other planets are signing up for protection.

·         Time travel is completely outlawed with the SPs arresting anyone researching it.

I'm going to move quickly through this, so I apologize if this gets confusing.

The hull breach in the battle between the Fatal Five and the Legion is actually the Legion Rescue Squad, made up of Live Wire, Valor, Andromeda, XS, Ultra Boy, and Jan Arrah. They're here to save the day with most of them joining the battle and the two Daxamites flying off to fix the damaged part of Takron-Galtos they're on.

While battling the Persuader, Jo hears some mysterious voice that tells him "Don't be strong, Jo -- be tough!" He changes to invulnerable to the Atomic Axe only cuts his costume, not his skin. So how did his costume survive everything else that's happened to him in the past?

During the fight, and after most of the Legionnaires have woken up, we get our first big reveal: Cosmic Boy put together this Rescue Squad after asking Live Wire for help and he did it all without President Chu knowing what was going on. Somehow, a teenager with no money and no connection to any law enforcement was able to get Jan out of medical care, recruit Valor and Ultra Boy, and get Andromeda out of prison. All without the U.P. realizing what he was doing...

Suddenly Kinetix arrives and start attacking the Empress to get information about the Emerald Eye. Why? What does the Empress know? Did Mysa mention any of this before sending Zoe off on the mission? Nope. Makes no sense but we're moving too fast to think about anything. Let's just fight.

The Fatal Five disappear by using a teleporter (I think...) in Tharok's robot half. So this guy had a teleporter the entire time, which would've made his life so much easier if he had used it before fighting the Legion, but chose not to. Okay, not how I would've done it, but I'm not an insane half-robot.

The Legion reunites and start talking about what to do next. Cosmic Boy takes charge and sends three teams off:

·         The first goes to Drak IV, where the Fatal Five have gone. Why there? Remember when Valor discovered the huge pile of weapons? When he broke up a gang and let the local police confiscate it? Those arms were from Braal, which, of course, the police never figured out and now the Five want them.

·         The second heads to Titan to try to calm down the High Command and prevent them from attacking Braal.

·         The third is heading to Earth to deal with Winema Wazzo.

Saturn Girl is informed that she's been called back to the Titan Home Guard and to stop talking to Braalians. But since these books are sprinting to a conclusion, this plot point is never addressed again. There's also a missile heading to Titan from Braalian space but, once again, this is never talked about again either.

We head to Earth, where Violet, Triad, Cham, and Invisible Kid head into Winema Wazzo's home to talk to her about what she did to Jan. But fighting starts, which we only hear, and Vi is knocked out and Triad, Cham, and Lyle are dead.

Brainy has surrendered to the President and tells her that the whole Sun-Eater story was a scam by Wazzo. Who suddenly phases up out of the floor, shoots the guards and Brainy, and swears "there'll be even more surprises before I end this madness!" So Brainy's dead? The guards are dead? We'll find out next issue.

Cosmic Boy is in the Mission Monitor Room at Legion HQ where he's joined by R.J. Brande. He's stunned by the shots of the dead bodies and starts crying over all the chaos that's going on, knowing he can't stop it.

Which makes absolutely no sense unless he believes that Brande is part of the evil that's causing all the problems. He knows that the Espionage Squad is pretending. He knows that Wazzo didn't kill anyone. He's performing for Brande, right? I know that the scene is to trick the readers into thinking that everything is bad, but it's completely wrong.

Also, couldn't they have drawn a new head shot for Kinetix?

Back to the President's office, where Winema Wazzo is in full crazy villain mode (love it!) and has been miraculously joined by a helper, Gullo. No idea how they got into the room, how they got past security, but who cares? We're speeding along.

Wazzo's demand: Brainy go back in time to save her daughter, Tinya. So Brainy is still alive. That's good.

To Titan, where, once again, Gates is the smartest character in the book, commenting that the Titan people (Titanians??) are "bloodthirsty warmongers" and it's up to him to save the day again. He and Saturn Girl teleport into the middle of the Titan Flagship and are immediately greeted by numerous armed guards who, thankfully, don't start shooting. Maybe not completely bloodthirsty.

On Drak IV, Valor, Andromeda, Kinetix, Leviathan, Jan Arrah, and XS are trying to stop the Fatal Five from using the Braalian weapons to escalate the war. Leviathan continues being a jerk, criticizing Jan for not wanting to kill the Five. But they're too late, as Tharok lets Mano know that he's already fired the megabomb at Titan.

So if this the megabomb they talked about last issue? Is this something new? Is this different from the numerous missiles that show up later? Regardless, Mano doesn't look happy.

Back at the President's office, Winema Wazzo (I'm getting sick of typing her name) starts her villainous reveal and admits to doing everything bad. She got the Fatal Five to ambush the Legion. She turned Jan into a weapon. She planted false evidence about the Sun-Eater. She even incited the first Braal-Titan war. Luckily for the Legion, a camera started broadcasting (no idea why or how) and the entire U.P. sees this confession.

Then, for reasons unknown, she blasts Gullo, killing them. That's enough to spur Brainy into action. His shackles suddenly open (again, no idea how or why) and he attacks Wazzo. She blasts him again, killing him this time.

Cosmic Boy watches this all and continues crying as if he's seeing his teammates die. Again, why? He knows this is the plan. He knows no one is dead. This only makes sense if he's pretending for Brande. But why do that?

On the Titan ship, all of the troops are suddenly under someone's mind control. Aven (remember him) suddenly shows up and reveals that he's using his powers to take charge. When Saturn Girl asks what's going on, he just says, "Don't worry. Cosmic Boy will take care of everything."

Back to Drak IV, where Jan saves the day by turning the Atomic Axe into cheese spread. Which splatters all over Leviathan instead of killing him.

More rockets take off towards Titan since Valor and Andromeda didn't get into the control room in time. But Mano stopped Tharok, destroying his robot half, because he didn't want to kill an entire planet. Okay, I get that his actions make sense because Mano's entire planet was destroyed during a way. But did he not know who Tharok was? Did he not know this group was horrible? I mean, they've worked together before. They spent enough time together that they were referred to as the Fatal Five. Did he just now develop a conscience? And also, wouldn't his powers completely obliterate both sides of Tharok's body?

Valor destroys all the missiles and Andromeda saves Tharok because she's learned that all lives are important, even the villains. Hey - character growth everybody!

Finally, we get the biggest reveal of the day. With Winema sobbing on the floor, and Brainy dead, President Chu suddenly grabs the gun and starts her own villainous monologue. She's the evil one - she planned everything, from the Fatal Five to Jan's abduction to the war between Braal and Titan to the fake Sun-Eater. She's the mastermind behind it all. Thankfully, there was a second camera in her office and it recorded everything.

Cosmic Boy and Brande walk in once she's done (again, no security at all, right?) and confront her. And they let her know that the Espionage Squad tricked her. It was Cham (who's actually fluent in Interlac) pretending to be Winema. Vi was Gullo and faked her death. Lyle was making everything happen while invisible. The President is arrested and taken away.

The reveals continue - Cosmic Boy had been working with Aven the whole time to gather evidence (remember a few issues ago when Lyle was sneaking through the President's room? They don't mention it at all, but I remember) and wait for her to attack. When she finally did, they knew they had to act.

We all wrap this up with a final bow - R.J. Brande is President, Andromeda and Brainy are pardoned, and there's no draft - the Legion can pick their own members.

Wow. That was waaaaaay too much for two issues and they ended up doing things again and again that made no logical sense at all. I honestly don't understand why they felt the need to wrap things up so quickly and not give the reader any chance to breathe.

And just to repeat my complaints about how they handled Cosmic Boy. He was the mastermind behind everything. He was playing the President like a fiddle the whole time. So why have the emotional reactions he had? Just so confusing to me.

Legionnaires #37

What do you do when everything goes back to normal and the U.P. is run by your benefactor? Let's find out:

·         Cosmic Boy resigns as Legion leader.

·         Rokk, Imra, and Garth head off to Titan on a diplomatic mission to quell the unrest that may have lead to the war with Braal.

·         Garth is still jealous of Rokk and Imra even though no one's dated, no one's together, and Imra has never really shown any affection for Garth. Also, Garth hasn't really spent any time with her at all. Just a weird subplot that they've never bothered to make sense of.

·         Andromeda quits the team and apologizes to Brainy while thanking him for saving her life. He, of course, is a sociopath incapable of being nice, so he acts like he doesn't care and she storms off, angry. Why write her off the team? There's so much they could do with her...

·         Leviathan, Kinetix, and Violet interrogate the Empress about the Emerald Eye. Why does Gim care? Not surprisingly, the Empress reveals nothing and Gim promises the Legion will help Zoe because he thinks she's cute. Man, they just can't let him look good, can they?

·         Gates can't quit the team because his home world of Vyrga wants him to stay. He's not very happy about this but I guess there is no freedom in the future.

·         Star Boy has to go back to Xanthu even though he doesn't want to. He likes being on the Legion (no idea why - Leviathan's been a jerk to him as have most other team members) and wants Brainy's help figuring out his new powers (that makes sense).

·         Jan joins the team as Element Lad. Good, Alchemist never worked for me.

·         Ultra Boy joins the team with a new costume and is suffering from phantom pains...

·         Lori Morning is all good and loves her new pet Proty.

·         Valor joins the team with a new name, which means "he who wanders" in Martian: M'onel. So why do they get to use this name now? What's changed? What's different? Are the Superman editors in a better mood?

This book was perfectly done and a great relief after the chaos of the last couple of issues. Glad to see M'onel back, even if I'll be misspelling it forever.

Now... our next Legionnaire spotlight:

 

 

 

What do you think about Phantom Girl/Phase/Apparition?

·         First of all, Tinya Wazzo may have had the best costume of any Legionnaire. The Dave Cockrum-designed masterpiece still holds up today and should just be her standard. Anything else falls short.

·         When I think of the best-written female characters in comics, Phantom Girl is one that immediately comes to mind. She was one of the most realistically written characters during Paul Levitz's run as she was shown to have layers. Some characters she was super nice too and some she had no problem making fun of (Timber Wolf, Wildfire). She showed strength and was perfectly fine working away from Ultra Boy. She had agency and was great either as a leader or a follower.

·         And even when she was in bad stories (the Reflecto saga) she was still written well. It's like the writers of the 70's and 80's used her as the template for a strong female character.

·         Unfortunately, she suffered in the 90's, as she was discarded to the L.E.G.I.O.N. to give Ultra Boy character growth and feel loss. However, she was again well-handled in that book and was a key member. Sorry, but retro-ing her into her cousin just doesn't work and didn't make any sense. It was Tinya.

·         And Apparition was just kinda there as one half of a tragic love story and as a daughter suffering under the thumb of an over-protective mother. They never really did anything with her, then killed her off, and brought her back in a horribly bad plot twist or two.

·         Which leads to me asking why the writers of the Legion seem to hate Tinya so much? Was she that horrible in the Silver Age comics? I don't think so, but that's just my take.

·         Anyone want to attempt to explain how to pronounce Bgtzl? My personal take: "Buh-Gitz-ul" But I do love "Bug-tussle". One poster on a message board wrote: "My headcanon is that the only way to pronounce Bgtzl is by phasing your tongue through the roof of your mouth."

·         I'll be talking about this in a later column, but is it also canon that Bgtzlians have a longer gestation period? Like 14 months?

·         I think that Phantom Girl and Ultra Boy need to be together in Legion lore, but I think it has to be earned and turning it into a Romeo and Juliet type romance was a huge mistake in the PZH Legion. I always saw the relationship as the coolest guy on the team found the one girl who he could be himself with and let down his guard. Tinya was the only person Jo could act normal around. Also, she was the smart one in the relationship. Vibes of Han Solo/Leia here.

·         Her and Shadow Lass' friendship was a huge loss post-Levitz and I don't think any writer has tried to recapture that relationship. It was central to the 80's run and one of the best friendships in comics. We need more of this.

·         As you may have guessed, she was always one of my favorites.

 

Thoughts? We've covered a really important run of Legion comics and I'd love to know what you think. Please share below!