One step closer to the end, so why are we introducing new villains and shaking up the book? We look at The Legion #36 & 37
Wow - a Kevin Maguire cover to grab our attention. I love Maguire's art, but this one just doesn't work for me... oh, and once again, we have a Legion cover that doesn't actually happen inside the book.
In case you forgot what happened last issue, some bad guys stopped all technology in the middle of Metropolis and shot the U.P. President, and now the Legion has to figure out how to save a bunch of people, rescue Dreamer, stop the flying prison called Oasis One from crashing to the ground, and stop Brainiac 5 from going crazier.
Writer Gail Simone has really upped the stakes for this one, hasn't she? She's joined by artists Dan Jurgens and Andy Smith to see if the Legion can get out of all these problems.
Reporter Trudy Truesoe is our narrator and she's stunned while she watches Apparition try to save her wounded mother. U.P. President Winema Wazzo is lying there, bleeding all over, and there's no one who can help her. Nothing's working. Not even Violet, who is not only one of the Legion's most powerful members (when did that happen?) but also knocked out and lying on the ground.
This is our first two-page spread, showing the chaos, but all I can think is:
- What's going on with Chameleon's arm? And his foot?
- Why are people wearing glasses in the 31st Century?
- Did someone tell them to draw Timber Wolf and Ultra Boy like they're members of a bad boy band?
- Just how big is Violet? How big can she get? This seems... wrong...
Tinya orders Jo to save her mother - since he can still fly, he can get her to a hospital. I can only hope he's smart enough to get to somewhere that still has active technology working.
Timber Wolf rushes into the crowd and instead of helping the most people, which is what Ultra Boy was talking about doing, he decides his best option is to go searching for one baby. Umbra lets us know that the things on Brainiac Five's face are personality inhibitors (no idea how she knows that with such certainty) and asks for help. And Cham broke part of his body when Violet landed on him last issue and now he can't shape change.
So everyone's useless now.
Umbra smacks Brainy to snap him out of his craziness and then he starts hearing voices. That's not good.
Apparition takes over, ordering Trudy to start looking for people with medical experience and to get the injured up onto the stage. Then she heads off. Brainy tells Cham to wake Violet up (hope she's not really injured so this could cause permanent damage) and that they need to figure out the center of this phenomenon. So he's back... kinda.
To Oasis One. The Persuader finds himself unshackled and free. His daughter lies on the floor in front of him, so he walks over and is about to slam his boot into her face. She says, "Father..." so he stops, tells her to never call him that again, and leads her out. What's going on here?
They run into Karate Kid, who's ordering all the convicts to be good while the S.P.s whisper all the exposition we need in case we missed last issue. Good guards!
Elsewhere in Metropolis, our main villain, Devil, gets Dreamer to, while barely conscious, throw a syringe full of the drug that's keeping her sleepy at a wall covered with some of the Legion's Monitor Board symbols. It hits... one of them... and Devil is happy that they have a new target.
On Legion World, Chuck, Gear, and Wildfire talk about their plans to save everyone. All the technology is inert, not powerless, so boosting their power won't work. They plan to send the Recruits down, near the impacted zone, and see if they can get inside.
I can only imagine what kind of whiplash any new readers of this title would be going through by this part of the book. Just a few issues ago, Chuck and Gear were comic relief in a Keith Giffen-penned story and it looked like they were incompetent buffoons. Now they're running everything. Just bizarre how inconsistent this title has become. You'd almost think the editorial team had given up because they knew the book was ending soon...
The team of Recruits going down - we have Nightwind (remember her from a couple of columns ago?) and Doctor Gym'll. And other characters I don't recognize.
Back on Earth, and to no surprise to me, Ultra Boy did not get the President outside of the zone and, instead, brought her to a hospital that has no power and can't help her. Man, he's dumb. None of the doctors are capable of doing the slightest thing to help her because, without technology, they didn't learn any practical medicine. That's... bad training, right?
On Oasis One, also to no surprise, the convicts don't want to take orders from Karate Kid to save themselves, so the battle starts. Which is when The Persuader arrives and tells them to start following Val's orders. If they survive the crash, then they'll kill the Legionnaire.
Back to the center of the chaos - Timber Wolf has found the baby and then starts discussing what they need to do to help as many people as possible. Violet's awake again (with blood running down her face) and the Recruits have arrived. And Ultra Boy's back.
The sight of the Legionnaires, and the need for help, brings out the best in the crowd. They want to volunteer and are looking to Trudy for guidance. Really? That's who they turn to? So she starts ordering them around.
At this point, I think everyone's had personality transplants, so I'm just rolling with it.
Back to the prison - we finally learn the daughter's name (Lialla) and, somehow, they're able to splash Oasis One down into a river? lake? some body of water.
Arrow, the sniper from last issue, (the one with the antique rifle and not a bow, because that would have been too on the nose) decides to start shooting at Dr. Gym'll to make sure there are no doctors to help the people on the ground. I get that he's using an antique gun because he knew the technology was going to be shut off, but you would think that one of the Legionnaires would follow the gunshots and stop him. Since, you know, he doesn't have any powers.
Timber Wolf bursts into a room after hearing screaming and is greeted by Devil. No idea how he got there, or why he focused on one scream, or how this makes any sense. She shoves her pitchfork into his chest and we learn that's whose symbol Dreamer hit.
I gotta give Simone credit that she's aiming high for her Legion story. But she's missing as often as she's hitting here and I think, instead of telling a good story, she's trying to shove everything she can into four issues.
And now a Greg Land cover? So they decided that, just as they were about to cancel the book, to hire big name artists for the covers? How does this make any sense?
Why no, I'm not going to image search to figure out where Land got the faces for this cover. I don't want to scrub my computer today.
The issue begins on Karahdia. We learned in issue #35 that most of the Legion was on this planet trying to stop a civil war between two races that evolve at an amazingly fast speed. Which leads to my question of what happened before the Legion arrived and why not sit back and wait for the next evolutionary jump which will result in better peace-keeping skills... and is there not a Prime Directive in the U.P.?
The Karahdians are red or blue horned aliens who seem to have decided to come together to fight the Legion. So that's good?? Since they're really worried about these aliens getting off planet and attacking other planets, no one can leave to assist with what's happening on Earth. That's inconvenient.
Chuck and Gear are nice enough to recap everything in two panels (another great bit of exposition) and I think we're all a little surprised that Chuck is in charge and doing a good job.
We head back to Earth and Trudy is writing in her journal... which is kinda funny to me. Is hand writing a skill that anyone would have in the 31st Century? Does she carry this everywhere? Why would anyone carry a paper journal in the future?
Brainiac 5 is also acting normally again and thinking through the problem, so I guess Umbra smacking him across the face fixed everything. Or they just didn't want to deal with this subplot.
Elsewhere, Devil spends an entire page revealing everything to an injured Timber Wolf. I guess a pitchfork to the chest doesn't kill him. Makes him appear to be about 35, but doesn't kill him. Devil's mood swings like a pendulum, ending in her kissing Brin before she finally asks for info about Legion World.
At the crash site of Oasis One, Karate Kid has to face off against all the prisoners who want to escape. He says he wasn't mentally prepared before, so that's why he was close to losing.
Apparition is walking around the recovery area, making sure everyone's doing okay. Dr. Gym'll, who was shot last issue, is being taken care of by Trudy. But he doesn't think his outlook is good. I guess flying is easier than I thought - Gym'll, who had never used a flight ring before, got shot and was somehow able to land and get help.
Violet keeps trying to repair the buildings and has gone mute. Cham leads the Recruits, investigating what happened. He's able to identify the bullet casing and he's somehow able to remember that Tinya phased and the President didn't - maybe the bad guys were trying to kill Legionnaires.
Back to the villains - Dreamer is still unconscious and Devil tells Canary that Timber Wolf died before giving her any information about Legion World.
We soon learn that Timber Wolf isn't dead, just pretending. He's torn a piece off of Devil's costume so he can identify her by scent. I guess being close to her, and kissed by her, wasn't enough. He also mentions his healing factor. Did someone tell Simone to make him as much like Wolverine as possible?
Karate Kid keeps defeating convicts. I love a good Bruce Lee-style fight scene as much as the next person, but this is only slightly unrealistic. Slightly. In fact, he beats so many of them that they're ready to give up.
Which is when Violet and Ultra Boy show up. No idea why. No idea how. But they're there and Karate Kid is ready to offer the criminals a deal.
Arrow and Lantern (the other bad guy) have started attacking Cham and the Recruits. Cham tries to get them to listen and back away, but Nightwind tells him that Recruits never listen to authority. Which makes no sense, but I think they're trying to make her look tough. Arrow hits Cham with a bunch of throwing stars and Nightwind blasts him and Lantern with her wind powers.
Cham lures the villains back towards them when they see an unconscious cadet on the ground. She reveals herself to be Infectious Lass and Arrow and Lantern are down, bent over and throwing up.
Back to Devil's apartment and her big plan is revealed. She wants to get herself, Canary, and Dreamer onto Legion World just as the rest of the team heads back from Karahdia. Then she'll use Canary to shut down all the power and the Legionnaires will be killed in the threshold.
It would be nice if we had any reason why she wanted to kill the Legion. Or if we knew how she knew the Legion was on a different planet. Or how she knew they wouldn't rush back to Legion World until they got onboard. Or how Dreamer's powers would have any effect on technology. Or why Canary is going along with this. Or why the villains have similar names to Justice Leaguers. Or why The Persuader refuses to accept his daughter. Let's hope everything's resolved next issue.
Our next Legionnaire in the spotlight... Impulse/Kent Shakespeare!!
There are a couple of things that I find most fascinating about Kent Shakespeare. The first, as evidenced by my first sentence, is that I think most people (including myself) know him more by his "real" name than by his superhero name. When people think of Impulse, I doubt they picture this guy.
The second thing is that I think he's really the only character created during volume 4 who seems to have survived that mess and fans still want to see more of him. I don't think people are clamoring for Kono or Celeste but there is still some fascination about who Kent is/was and who he was supposed to replace.
Here's what inker Al Gordon had to say about Kent, in an interview in 1997:
"Gordon said that he wanted to create "a sort of Superman substitute." Yet he also wanted to create a character that started out "like a lot of us" – implying comic fans specifically. Before he got his powers, Kent was pretty smart, pretty awkward. When he gets his powers, it's a bit of a shock, but out comes his less timid personality. Still, Al says he thought Kent was always "a bit philosophical" after receiving his powers, considering what it meant for him to become so powerful."
I think this different take on a character, this hero who was the audience's way into the story, is what made him stand out. He was Superboy without the baggage and without the god-like powers. He cared about the kids at his hospital. He wore glasses (even though it made absolutely no sense).
You see by the second picture that more modern takes on Kent have embraced the Superman connection and turned him into the 31st Century's version of everyone's favorite Kryptonian. I can't say I'm a fan of that, but I am glad to see that he hasn't disappeared into DC limbo.
I think he'd be a great character to add to any Legion relaunch/reboot in the future and there's so many things they could do with him. Yes, the Legion might not need another super-strong white guy, but they could definitely do with his personality.
It's crazy to write this, but next week is my last reread of the reboot Legion. It's been a long and wild ride so far and I'm alternately looking forward to and feeling sad about closing this Legion chapter.
Then, the week after, it's my insanely long reboot retrospective. I'm trying to be brief but it's hard. We're talking 10 years of comics, so there's many, many subjects to cover. Please keep an eye out for the new article announcements on Reddit (u/drake_burroughs) and BlueSky (@jaymckiernan.bsky.social).
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