We're a little early this week, so enjoy a Friday treat! We look at Legion #117 - 120 and Legionnaires #74 - 76

Sorry that we're one day early with the posting - real life has taken over and I will be, hopefully, lying by a pool for most of this weekend...

Full disclosure before we begin. I completely missed Legion #117 and didn't realize it until I was almost done this column. What's worse for the creative team is that I didn't even notice until Legion #120. Yeah, lots of wasted paper here.

LSH #117 

Things I never thought I'd type: "Thank the gods Scott Kolins is back penciling this book!"

Sensor is still at risk of being cut to pieces by the bad guy's scientist and Invisible Kid and Brainy can't do anything because they're holograms, kinda. Wow, they actually are still using Brainy's discovery. Luckily for everyone, Sensor still has her powers and has made it so everything thinks she's being vivisected while she gets away. Always happy to see characters save themselves!

The villain, Pernisius, powered with the Eternium from the Rock of Eternity, spends a couple of pages battering M'onel around. Nothing important to see here.

We then meet a new character, at Blackstar prison, named Gear. He interfaces with computers and can create organic technology. He immediately spots Sensor and tells them to go after her. Knowing that her powers don't work on tech, they quickly recapture her. Well that's just depressing.

Then, to make things more confusing, Sensor learns that she's no longer going to be cut open for research, she's now going to be working as a slave, just like Gear. Her job is to haul things into some sort of fire pit. I wonder if they're trying to make some sort of reference to what happened on Orando and just completely missed the point.

Am I the only one who's just scratching his head trying to make sense of this? Why did the scientist stop wanting to cut her open? Why is there a slave prison here? Why didn't they call up Ultra Boy to deal with his home planet? Why did they make any of these decisions?

Before the Legion can do anything to save her (how is it that the power of the Legion, with all the myriad of talents, can't get into a crappy building with a force shield?), Gear says he wants to escape to (ignoring everything he's been saying for pages) and he and Sensor are attacked. They fight off the guards and Gear shuts down the place.

I know I say this a lot, but this is so bloody stupid that it's offensive. They want to introduce a new Legionnaire and this is not how you do it.

They free the others and I'm so glad we got this one-issue distraction from the actual battle and problem with Pernisius. Ugh...

Legionnaires #74 

It's the wrap up after the big battle with the elementals, so we'll learn who lives, who dies, and whether any permanent changes are coming.

We get our first moment, ever, where Ultra Boy shows a brain and actually questions what Apparition is doing - she's comforting Dragonmage and trying to help him. He points out that everything bad that happened is Dragonmage's fault - which is completely true. But Apparition points out that this doesn't matter - they need to help him recover from his injuries.

We go the battlefield, where Dirk Morgna and Brika, the dryad, have survived the fight and are no longer possessed by the elementals, but the other two died. The team starts trying to help everyone else who fought and who's looking a little worse for wear.

Saturn Girl proceeds to lay into Star Boy for leaving monitor duty to Dreamer and he admits to having made a ton of mistakes. So when other Legionnaires save the day by ignoring their duties (cough... Live Wire... cough...) it's fine but when Thom does...

More changes as Dirk realizes that he now sees everything differently and feels like the elemental is still inside him. Mysa offers to help and he gladly takes her up on it. He also realizes that he's got to help rebuild Tokyo after all the destruction, so Cosmic Boy suggests Magnoball games to raise money... no thought of the millions of people who are dead or injured after Dirk was possessed. But Magnoball!!

In a moment of an actual honest reaction to what's happened, when Dragonmage wakes up, Dirk immediately attacks him and tries to kill him. They drag him off and Dragonmage tries to defend himself, lying that he didn't know what was going to happen. Okay, honestly, if he gets away with this without even the tiniest punishment, even if it's self-inflicted, I won't be happy.

Then Brika finally succumbs to her injuries, but not before getting Mysa and Element Lad to promise to build a memorial for her destroyed planet. Man, she got the worst of all the beings that were possessed and, again, is any Legionnaire actually going to recognize that an entire planet of sentient beings were killed?

Continuing the "we have no idea how to write Live Wire" problem, he shows up from the Outpost and is immediately ripped apart for being a child and acting like an idiot. Not only does Saturn Girl criticize him, but so do Umbra and Chameleon. Again, just no idea why they're doing this and you know there will be no payoff.

Dragonmage continues moping around, watching how the other Legionnaires behave and hopefully he's learning something. For some crazy reason, Cosmic Boy takes time out of helping the others so he can yell at Alux Cuspin while he's in jail. I know they're setting up all of these scenes to show Dragonmage realizing what he did wrong, but this is so heavy-handed and cliched that it's just not working.

We end this issue with two moments that are handled so strangely that I'm not sure if the writers were even thinking clearly as they were happening.

First, Dragonmage surrenders to the Science Police and takes responsibility for everything that he did. Saturn Girl seems to almost want to defend him and then immediately flips and says he's gotta learn from his own mistakes. Also, do the S.P.s even know what they're arresting him for? Was anything explained to them? He basically just walks up, they cuff him, and it's over. They're trying to do something dramatic and just missing the mark.

And then Mysa and Jan build a monument to... Brika. On Mordru's prison planet. What? Why? What? How does that make any sense? How could they think this is what she wanted? Man, this epilogue to the elemental story just didn't work on any level and had so many weird, crazy, and nasty scenes that I'm just scratching my head.

LSH #118 - your last Alan Davis cover, so enjoy! 

We're continuing with a new villain, a Rimborian landlord named Pernisius who's been absorbing the Captain Marvel powers from the remains of what used to be the Rock of Eternity (the source of all the Marvels' powers) and has decided the best thing to do is pull every piece towards his home planet, rebuild it, and be the most powerful being in the universe.

Or, in his words:

I am already the most powerful being -- and of course, the most significant landlord -- in all the universe! I will amass history's greatest real estate empire, starting with -- a new continent here on Rimbor, my flagship property! The continent of Pernisia!

I wonder how drunk you have to be to write dialogue like that.

I also wonder how many times the writers watched the first Christopher Reeve Superman movie (and the only Brandon Routh Superman movie) and thought, "Everyone loves when the villain only cares about real estate!"

It should come as no surprise to anyone that this whole battle ends when Thunder disobeys Invisible Kid's orders, figures out a way to give the Legion the Eternity powers, and defeats the villain.

It should also come as no surprise that the Rock of Eternity is recreated on Rimbor, is nowhere close to the size of the original rock, and they've completely ignored that the Rock is back, in tact, and not part of Rimbor in the future. Once again, the creative team couldn't be bothered to maintain any internal consistency in their own story.

But for the "happy ending", Thunder can go back and forth between the Legion and her home and parents way in the future as she tries to figure out how to bring her powers with her. So she's staying with the team for at least the next couple of issues.

What makes no sense to me is that, by this point in time, the creative team must know this book is heading towards cancellation and a restart. Why not wrap up as many stories as they can?

Legionnaires #75 

So one of the two things keeping Legionnaires even slightly more engaging than Legion is the fact that Tom Peyer isn't writing it. Who's the guest writer this issue? If you guessed Peyer, you'll understand my pain.

And, much to my pleasant surprise, he turns in a surprisingly decent one-issue story. Wow! It's not enough for me to take back all of my criticisms of his work, but I will commend him when he does get something right.

Or should I be focusing my ire on McCraw?

Anyway, the premise of this story is that there's some evil ship pretending to be the founding members of the Legion flying around a far-away planet and killing the citizenry. So everyone on the planet is deathly afraid of the Legion and, especially, Saturn Girl, Cosmic Boy, and Live Wire.

When one of them gets off planet and would rather commit suicide than face Spark, the original three go and investigate. They uncover that it's all a huge plot by the king to quell any rebellions and they quickly wreck the ship, throw the king out of palace, and (hehe) make the angry and abused mob swear not to kill their monarch.

I must be honest - I do sometimes love when the Legionnaires are so naive they don't have an even basic understanding of how other beings feel.

Anyway, the art is top notch, again, as Jeff Moy turns in another great issue. The story works and the three actually act like real people, not just glorified cardboard cutouts and, in Live Wire's case, a jerk. And they resolve the "Live Wire's mad he's at the Outpost away from Imra" storyline. I think this might be the first issue where I get the sense the creative team is looking to wrap stuff up before the end of the series.

The single best part of the book, however, is the one page that will probably get glossed over - the final page. We see effigies of the Legion and king being burned in the background. But in the foreground, we see one young girl staring up at the Legion poster with a look of... dare I say hope? Could this planet play a larger part in the future?

Well, of course not, but it was a nice idea.

LSH #119 

Is this a Phil Jimenez cover here? Wow... yet another artist who I wish they could get to draw the Legion. Why are they teasing us with these covers? I guess it's like those old George Perez covers over some horrible Steve Ditko Legion.

So let's talk about what kind of logic goes into writing a comic book that's struggling in sales. When you're trying to improve sales, you add characters that will get people to buy the comic. At DC, you add Superman or Batman and sales go up.

Of course, if you just want to keep the book struggling, you add characters from another book that's been cancelled - in this case, L.E.G.I.O.N.

There are really only two interesting things that happen in this issue:

• We see that Gear has been repaired and, I guess, is part of the team. Unfortunately for him, he ends up being the unlucky being who has to listen to Apparition and M'onel tell their story of one adventure with the L.E.G.I.O.N.
• We learn that Brainiac 5.1 cheats at video games.

Aside from that, this is a complete throwaway book that doesn't really accomplish anything and, honestly, just makes two heroes look bad. Are we supposed to like M'onel and Apparition more when it's revealed that they were perfectly fine with working with a planet of cannibals and did nothing to stop it? Yes, I know that was L.E.G.I.O.N.'s standard operating procedure, but anyone who didn't read that book would just think they're horrible.

Let's keep limping along...

Legionnaires #76 

Wow - XS is back. We haven't seen her in a while, have we? But glad we're getting flashback issues about the L.E.G.I.O.N.

We start in a hospital as the Legion is trying to save an energy being in a crystal... oh no, I remember this... no...

To explain how we got here, we go back to Mordru's planet, where everyone is recovering and we actually get a little character development from Umbra. Wow - finally something that shows who she is.

Dirk Morgna starts seeing some weird, invisible energy being floating around with his new vision powers. Mysa uses her magic to see the energy pattern and she says it seems familiar. That makes no sense, but let's continue. A U.P. officer shoots it, because they're all idiots, and the energy blasts back.

Umbra contains it in a darkfield and then Element Lad changes the dust around it into a crystal. Mysa continues to talk about how it's a familiar presence and then finally gives the big reveal: it's what remains of Atom'X, the member of the Amazers who was killed by Mordru back in Legionnaires #49.

On Medstation One, where they've got Atom'X energy in the crystal, Saturn Girl probes for consciousness and finds that there are actually two people in the energy: Atom'X - Randall Burroughs and Blast-Off of the Workforce - Jahr-Drake Ningle.

Oh no...

The Legion pulls together all the equipment, doctors, and scientists they need (wouldn't want to call Brainy or Lyle, huh?) and they put together a suit to put the energy into.

We get more of Umbra's personality as well, as she keeps referencing her home planet, her culture, and her desire to no longer disgrace herself. As much as I like seeing this, couldn't they have done this before? Ever? Or just make this consistent so we're getting it for every character?

My only big problem with this is that Umbra is being written as almost someone who's got multiple personalities. There's nothing consistent here and it's just making her into a much more unlikable character by the end. Why do this? They're almost turning her into another Andromeda and I don't understand how this makes any sense, especially with everything else they've done with her character before. It also makes no sense for M'onel to hang out with someone so xenophobic.

The energy flies into the suit and it starts moving around. It's a nice red and orange and ugh... and what does it decide to call itself? Drake Burroughs. Which makes no sense but ugh..

Look, I've made no secret that Wildfire is my favorite character but this just seems like a weird way to bring the character back, especially because there was no build up to this at all. I may have missed it, but after a scan over the Mordru story, I don't think they ever named Atom'X or Blast-Off, so just throwing these names out is forcing a round story into a square plot.

This really doesn't work for me at all.

LSH #120 

I screwed up and wrote one extra issue this week, so enjoy this bonus... or I'm just rushing to get the end of this...

So guessing by the new Phil Jimenez cover, we've lost Alan Davis for good and he's taken over. Can't say I'm shocked that Davis was done, but it's still a shame that the interiors look so much worse than the interiors.

We also see that Scott Kolins is inking his own work here, so we'll be able to judge if it's him or the inkers that have kinda lowered the quality of the book.

The first half of the book shows the Emerald Eye breaking 4 of the Fatal Five (Mano is no longer a member) out of Takron-Galtos. It actually works as we meet all of the members and they bring back a text piece, pretending to write the marketing plan for the prison. It's a great call back to some older Legion stories... but, yet again, I'm just going to complain that the font they chose is so bad that it's almost unreadable.

We also learn that Takron-Galtos tortures some prisoners (Thanok) and forces other to perform slave labor (The Persuader). Wow. Once again, are you trying to make us sympathetic to the villains? To those two, at least. The Emerald Empress killing everyone near her doesn't really help her cause.

The Eye reveals that it broke the four out so that she can serve the Empress and better focus its skills. Makes absolutely no sense, even less by bonding with the Empress, but they needed to get them back together and chose the simplest way to do it.

To the Legion Outpost we go, where Gates is ranting about how horrible the Legion is while wanting to spend time with Brainiac 5.1 while the rest of the Legion is on vacation. Yet again, we're throwing out character development to return everyone back to their original personalities. Didn't Gates grow a little and accept the usefulness of the Legion? Also, it's a shame that Brainy is so dismissive of Gates' ideas to feed hungry children. That's not a good look. Maybe he's the future version of a <insert political joke here>.

As they continue to bicker, the Fatal Five (is the Eye a separate member now?) arrive and Gates rushes to fight them off. Thankfully, Brainy joins to help.

Here's one of those moments where the hero is a complete idiot and does something they should never do. To set the scene: The Emerald Eye, the Empress, Thanok, the Persuader, and Validus have just broken into the Outpost to loot and destroy. Gates, whose only power is teleportation, does exactly that and faces them. Why? Why would he do this? He spends so much time ranting about how bad the Legion is but yet rushes into certain death to protect the ship, which he earlier moaned about costing so much money. If it was Ultra Boy or M'onel rushing in, I'd be fine with it. But Gates?

Unfortunately for Gates, they needed to have Brainy save the day, so he gets to be the cannon fodder. Of course, Brainy saves him and escapes. Even worse, Gates then apologizes for rushing into the fight without thinking and Brainy says he envies that Gates acts without thinking. What?

By the end of the issue, Brainy and Gates have escaped and the Fatal Five have taken over the Outpost. Which, of course, means nothing because there are security codes and backups to prevent someone from doing this. Right? I mean Brainy and Lyle woulda thought of that. Right? You mean my work laptop is more secure than the Legion Outpost? Wow this book just gets dumber and dumber.

Luckily we only have five more Legion issues to go.

Our Legionnaire in the spotlight this week... Matter-Eater Lad!!!

I've spent a lot of time talking about Matter-Eater Lad before. He became a key member of the 5YL Legion and, since he was one writer's favorite character, got a completely undeserved amount of attention and solo issues. I'm not writing this to offend Tenzil Kem fans, honest. But no one can tell me that the 5YL Legion, with its dense plot lines and mysteries, needed to give him 3 complete solo issues. I'd say the same thing about any Legionnaire.

I also think that his issues in 5YL were so drastically different from the rest of the series that they landed with a thud. I know many found them funny but I didn't. I just found those issues as tributes to the silliness of a lot of the Silver Age stories and were tonally so askew from what the book had become that I looked upon them with dread instead of delight. I will admit that I may be holding that against poor Tenzil as well, which obviously isn't the character's fault, but it does sour my take on the character.

This might offend the fans now - I never thought he should be a Legionnaire and I always felt that Tenzil was a product of the Silver Age that didn't work any other time. Heck, even when he was showing up during 5YL, I just could never justify his membership. His superpower is that he can eat anything. That's it. He's not a great fighter. He's not super smart. He's not a leader. He's not anything else. Funny, maybe, but that's it. But there's only one Legionnaire that I have a harder time with and he's the one no one ever brings back. Poor Condo...

One reader commented that Tenzil represents the Legion at its core - someone who's better than his powers and someone who works to be their best. And the Legion has always been about super-heroes who aren't obviously strong but have a different kind of strength.

So, Bouncing Boy?

My memories of M-E Lad are of him miraculously saving everyone from Omega and then disappearing. He spent a long time catatonic and when he was finally cured, he never came back in any meaningful way. Sorry, but I just don't have any emotional connection to him at all.

But having said all that, I will still argue that he deserves to be in any Legion reboot moving forward and I'd love to see a good creative team turn him into someone that I want to read about. As I've said before, every character is someone's favorite and they should be handled with that level of respect.

Instead of the down votes that I know are coming from this take, I'm going to ask you to do something else - tell me what issues I should be reading that show me just how valuable M-E Lad is. He was a joke in 5YL, he was a playboy and a jerk in SV6, so please don't use those. I actually think his best is during PZH, when he's the chef and team supporter. I like this role for Tenzil and actually think it's the perfect place for him.

But what Silver/Bronze age issues show just how important M-E Lad is and how he's central to the team? Make me do a deep dive into something I've glossed over.

With that, the gauntlet has been thrown down! Let's hope some of you come back next week as we continue the death march to the end of these books.