It's the series finale, the first and final battle between the Blue Flame and the Legion, and a shallow dive into the run in general... let's look at Legion of Super-Heroes (Volume 6) #16 and Paul Levitz's Legion comeback!

 

Legion of Super-Heroes (Volume 6) #16

I remember, way back in the late 70s and early 80s, having numerous conversations with a fellow comic book fan over which body part was the hardest to draw. We finally agreed that hands flummoxed numerous big name comic artists. For example, if you look at his earliest work, John Byrne really struggled with making hands look realistic.

Then, in the 90s, when I saw how many artists avoided drawing feet, I started to reconsider my decision.

This cover confirms my original theory. Hands are tough.

For a quick recap, all you need to know is that the Legion is battling the Legion of Super-Villains on a mysterious planet called Utopia. The LSV's leader, Saturn Queen, working with a new villain I'm calling the Blue Flame but has never been given an actual name in the comics, is focusing their energies on Earth-Man, to try to turn him back towards villainy.

"Endings" is written by Paul Levitz with art by Daniel HDR & Marc Deering.

We need a big recap here for one character... sorry... Adding Earth-Man to the Legion, a decision where we saw a dastardly evil character join the team, could possibly be a great redemption arc. He joined the team, started dating Shadow Lass (shudder), and has seemed to move away from his previous xenophobia and embrace the Legion's ideals. Then, a few issues ago, he was offered Earth as a reward for betraying the Legion and helping the LSV. You could argue that he's been the central character of the Legion for these 16 issues.

A good story would show either his return to evil or his turn to heroism. It would be Earth-Man's own internal battle that would move this story forward. His choice is key to the final showdown. A bad story would gloss over everything and remove his own agency.

We begin this issue with the Blue Flame telling Saturn Queen to enter Earth-Man's mind and "bring the new Yuga of chaos upon all!"

(In case you're wondering, a Yuga is a term in Hinduism to refer to an age of time. So the Blue Flame, who for some reason is Hindu, wants to usher in a new chaotic Yuga to the universe.)

Earth-Man tells Saturn Queen that she's not going to enter his mind... again... like she did a few issues ago. She tells him "it's not your mind, anyway... it's mine..."

So we sprint away to Oa, to Sodam Yat, the second-last Green Lantern in the universe, who's watching over this conflict and realizes that it's finally time for him to act. He's going to send the power of the ring, the power of his will, to help Earth-Man (who was a Lantern for a minute or two) defend Oa. This is how Yat will fulfill his destiny. Thank whatever deity got Levitz to actually identify him, because if they hadn't put his name in a text box, I never would've remembered it.

Who's the last Green Lantern? Mon-El, who's somewhere on Utopia fighting the LSV. Why is he not involved with this, along with Dyogene, the alien who gave both Earth-Man and Mon-El the same ring? No idea. Why call back a character we haven't seen in this book in over a year? No idea.

Somewhere else on Utopia, Zymyr, the LSV member who can teleport people through a warp, has started bringing other villains who escaped from Takron-Galtos to help fight the Legion. If only they had done this last issue so it would make sense that Radiation Roy and Spider Girl showed up.

Luckily, Colossal Boy, Invisible Kid, Polar Boy, and Phantom Girl are there to fight all these new LSV members. And defeat them easily. I guess neither side understands why teamwork rules. Brainiac 5 lets us know that they can't communicate with Legion HQ (because of what Cosmic King did in Adventure Comics... or maybe because they're in a parallel dimension) and he's surprised Cosmic Boy hasn't arrived yet. If you remember, the entire Legion has left Earth to join this fight but about a third of them are nowhere to be seen. Or they forgot about them...

The Blue Flame is now flying over the planet, making grand proclamations, and says that they were created to end this current Yuga and start a new one. Last issue they were complaining that Saturn Queen still had to destroy Utopia and then destroy Oa and nothing could start until then.

So yes, in case you're confused about this, the LSV has only completed a third of their plan. They need to destroy three planets. They've destroyed one. So the stress levels aren't actually as high as you think.

Dyogene shows up and the Blue Flame blasts him with their lightning vision. Not flame vision because, you know, that would make sense. The Blue Flame gives another big speech, talks about how they're the curse of the Oans and the end of all things. And then they blast Dyogene again, sending the little alien flying.

Elsewhere, Saturn Queen struggles to take over Earth-Man's mind because he's being helped by his friends: Dream Girl, Star Boy, and Harmonia Li (they don't explain who she is in this scene, but that's pretty normal by now). They're all touching him and, somehow, that's helping.

Last issue, Li and Star Boy were staying in their home dimension, keeping the gate open, to make sure the Legion could get back home. I guess they don't need to do that anymore. I also have no idea how Dream Girl and Star Boy could help anyone during a psychic battle... wouldn't it have been nice if Saturn Girl had shown up?

I'd comment that I don't know how Li can do this either, but we learned last issue that she has whatever powers Levitz wants her to have, so I'm guessing this is just further proof of it.

Saturn Queen says she's more powerful and then the Blue Flame shows up to attack Harmonia Li because... ah, who cares...

Earth-Man says he's a Legionnaire and stands up against the Blue Flame. The following dialogue, "...and I will take your own power, and use it against you," is supposed to be Earth-Man's, but it's pointed at Dream Girl so if you're confused by this, you're not alone. I figured it was yet another example of Nura being written as the strongest Legionnaire there and then realized it was just another editorial mistake.

Dyogene and Mon-El show up and Mon states that the Legion stands together. Earth-Man tells him to stop protecting him and that "we are Legion."

Somehow, and again, this doesn't make a lick of sense, Earth-Man is bathed in green flame. And so are the rest of the Legionnaires. He blasts the Blue Flame with this green fire and defeats them. Yep, that was it. Just one blast from Sodam Yat's lantern powers and Earth-Man's ability to copy... mystical powers??

Brainiac 5, somewhat anti-climatically, punches Saturn Queen and knocks her out.

Mon-El places his cape over Earth-Man, who has died. Shadow Lass cries, stating that "he was a champion." She grabs the body and yells at Mon-El, telling him that she doesn't need anyone.

With the mission over, Mon-El takes off his Lantern ring and gives it back to Dyogene. It's time for him to return to the Legion. Dyogene says that he's going to stay on Utopia and rebuild the Lantern Corps there.

Brainy asks Harmonia what she's going to do and she says that she's going to see if she belongs with the Legion.

The final page, which contains a long, boring Harmonia speech about strength and... blah... blah... blah...

 

Well that was a gigantic load of excrement.

I've been trying to figure out which version of the Legion this series most reminded me of. It wasn't any of Levitz's earlier work. It was the Threeboot Legion, especially Jim Shooter's issues. Most specifically, the very strong sense that the writers had far longer stories planned and they had to wrap everything up because of a big DC event. Or they were just unable to plot anything that made sense and were more content in reliving their glory days.

Since no one involved in the creation of this book cared about crafting a good plot, I'm not going to do my usual list of questions that didn't get answered. Let's just be happy it's over and move on to the next series.

But now, here are my thoughts on this very troubled run on the Legion and Adventure Comics:

I don't know why I'm always obsessed with sales numbers (maybe it's because DC seems to be as well), but these numbers should give you a sense of how sales of both the Legion and Adventure Comics looked at the time.

 

Now I'm no expert, but I'm guessing that losing half of your readership in a year and a half isn't good.

Looking at the Legion numbers, it's fairly clear that they experienced the same thing almost every comic experiences - everyone buys the first issue and sales drop at a steady rate until you reach the number of "true" fans that will support the book. I'm guessing that they would've loved to have stayed near 30,000, been happy with staying near 25,000, and started panicking when they dropped under 23,000.

The sad part for me is the knowledge that 23,000 seems to be the number the Legion always ends up at. Reboot, Threeboot, Retroboot, New 52, Bendisboot... they all end up hovering around 23,000. If the new Legion series can't stay far above that, I worry they'll suffer the same fate.

I also think it's pretty clear that the direction they took the Legion towards just wasn't working. If it makes you feel a little bit better, a lot of DC (and Marvel) titles were suffering from the same kind of drop. Let's face it - sales were bad enough that DC once again decided to reboot the universe and we ended up with the new 52. This shows it's not an isolated problem - it's company-wide.

The biggest disappointment is one that maybe we, as comic fans, should be more used to. Paul Levitz' return to the Legion was hailed as the return of the team's greatest writer. He was "going home," so to speak, and was ready to bring them back to prominence and popularity.

Instead... we got this.

Maybe we shouldn't be surprised any more? How many famous creators have gone back to the well too many times and the fans were disappointed?

 

I also wanted to spend a little time going back through the series and giving some big picture comments. Don't worry - we're back to the single issues next week.

Let's start with the positives!

The Good

(This is gonna be short...)

Some of the artwork:

The early Legion issues by Yildiray Cinar and Wayne Faucher really look good. I think they did an amazing job bringing the series to life and working within the Legion universe that had already been established.

And I actually liked Francis Portela as a back-up artist as well.

What else can I say about Phil Jimenez that I haven't said before? He's brilliant, he elevated mediocre stories to ones that I could wholeheartedly enjoy, and he gave Adventure Comics a much-needed shot in the arm.

 

Some of the flashback stories in Adventure Comics:

There were moments, especially when the Legion went back to Superboy's time, when Adventure was really compelling. I especially liked the first one where the team goes back and Superboy shows them around Smallville (#12). Or when Brainiac 5 won't tell him why they were back in the past... wasn't it nice to have Brainy written as a good person and not a sociopath?

 

The Legion of Super-Heroes Annual #1 & The Legion of Super-Villains Special #1:

Were they perfect? Nope. Did both have problems? Yep. But they were both high points for this run. It was great seeing Keith Giffen draw the Legion again and the return of the Emerald Empress should've been a much bigger deal than it was. And seeing Saturn Queen put together her team and launch a huge, multi-issue epic was one of the strongest issues of the run.

 

Some plot choices: 

Ummm... (thinking...)

Okay, for the most part, the Academy students were interesting choices and I actually would've liked to have seen more about them. It's a shame that the two I hated the most were the ones who got shoved to the forefront. But if you told me we'd get a New Mutants-type book starring Gravity Kid, Variable Lad, Power Boy, Lamprey, Glorith, and the three teachers, I'd be in. If it was drawn by Jimenez, I'd definitely be in. 

 

The Bad 

Some of the other artwork:

Most of Adventure Comics, aside from Jimenez, looks like it was drawn by people getting their first work in comics.

  

Most of the flashback stories:

Superboy coming to the future for R.J. Brande's funeral made no sense. The entire retelling of Lightning Lad's death was just as silly, especially to stretch it out for so many issues. You have the perfect opportunity to tell something different, to show a different side of some classic Legion stories, and you just do this? Why not show Ayla preparing to go to Earth and pretend to be her brother? Or how Garth's death affected the other Legionnaires?

 

Most of the plot choices:

Can anyone explain how it made any sense to push Saturn Girl and Lightning Lad to the forefront in the beginning and then have them quit the team? I get that there are a ton of characters to write (especially when you're irrationally focused on Harmonia Li), but why get rid of two of the founders and most recognizable characters when you're trying to entice new readers?

Desperately trying to shoehorn the Green Lantern Corps into this series did not work at all. I can see the reasoning - those books were selling amazingly well at the time so I'm sure they thought it would increase sales. But they never seemed to understand how to make it work and they should've pivoted the ring off Mon-El the moment he was elected leader. Why not put the ring on someone else?

Why cross the new Legion into Adventure Comics for a few issues and then focus on the Academy? If the stories were too big, and there were too many characters to work with, why have those Academy stories?

Also, having the Ranzz/Ardeen twins kidnapped by a Darkseid acolyte who lived on Avalon was a really strange tale that didn't work on most levels. Even worse, it was the first warning that Levitz no longer cared if stories followed any sort of logical progression.

 

The Ugly 

I know Scott Clark is a fairly popular cover artist (and interiors, I think) but those Adventure covers are just painful to look at. I'm not too sure if he ever took an anatomy class. Everyone looks like they haven't consumed water in a week and their spines are about to shatter. I also didn't know 16-packs existed...

Cosmic Boy and Saturn Girl hooking up while drunk. Who thought that was a good idea? Why do it when there would be absolutely no payoff? I know we're trying to make this series more adult, but this was so incredibly wrong on so many levels.

The Academy issues spending so much time on the least-likable characters (Chemical Kid and Dragonwing) and not letting us get to know anyone else really dragged those stories down.

Also, the way they showed that the Academy was not a pipeline to the Legion, and that there really was no reason to go to the Academy since you were just going to be shuffled off to the S.P.s, did such damage to the whole concept of a Legion Academy that even the students were wondering why they were there. When you combined that with the other horrid storyline where Cosmic Boy kept complaining that there weren't enough Legionnaires, all logic got thrown out the window.

To wrap up both series with moronic death scenes that were empty or emotion just showed that they didn't know what they were doing. Why kill Earth-Man when every Legion fan hated him? And without having any buildup to get us to care? And poor Variable Lad, who was the student who was least likely to be involved in anything, to be killed in a way where they didn't even make it clear it was him... just tragically bad writing.

Every single long-running storyline in Legion, from the introduction to Earth-Man to the Durlan assassinations to the final battle with the LSV seemed rushed and badly plotted. I think there are points in each one of those stories where I really got the sense that Levitz plotted out at least one or two more issues and had to shorten the stories for one reason or another. Or he just lost track of where the story was going and tried to wrap them up without worrying if they made any sense.

In fact, I think that might be the most horrible part of these comics. Not that some of the Legionnaires were so badly written. Not that they seemed to run away from anything futuristic or cutting edge with the technology. Not that they kept repeating action points and events over and over again (Colossal Boy getting knocked out, Wildfire's suit getting destroyed, Dream Girl beating everyone up).

These stories were just so badly plotted. Again and again nothing made sense and you couldn't help but scratch your head and wonder if anyone cared.  

 

The Offensive 

Earth-Man.

Everything about this story was so ill-conceived that it's almost shocking that this got approved. Let's look at it in depth:

• The Legion is forced to admit him as a member so they can keep their HQ on Earth.
• He is deemed worthy of having a Green Lantern ring.
• He starts dating Shadow Lass.
• He rejects the ring after he uses it to shut down all the personality controls Brainiac 5 put into the Flight Ring.
• He helps arrest the xenophobes he was working with previously (and yet the people who forced him onto the Legion are still fine and in power).
• He helps protect the Titanians from the anti-alien protesters because he's now more of a Legionnaire... I think??
• He disappears for a bit before getting offered the Earth by the LSV if he betrays the Legion.
• He doesn't betray them, and kinda disappears again, until Saturn Queen tries to take over his mind to do... something...
• He is empowered by a Green Lantern, fights off the LSV and the Blue Flame, and dies.

In order for everything here to work, we have to ignore everything we know about the Legion (who never would've taken him), Shadow Lass (who never would've dated him), Brainiac 5 (who isn't this much of a control freak), and Earth-Man himself.

At no point does he get a "aha" moment to show that he's changing his ways. At no point does it make sense that he'd date a blue-skinned alien (no matter how skimpy her outfit) when his entire personality has been "Earth is for Earthlings only." At no point do we see that the Green Lanterns needed to keep the ring on him and he was the only one who could stop the Blue Flame. Why put it on Mon-El if Earth-Man was the only person who could wield the power?

And at no point is there ever a moment where any reader thought, "this Earth-Man guy is a good Legionnaire and I'm gonna be sad if he dies."

So even his death is stupid.

I've tried my damnedest to be positive throughout this. Heck, I've even had readers tell me that I've been too nice about this run. But this last issue broke me.

What did you think? Please let me know your thoughts on volume 6 and the Legion's second run in Adventure Comics. And come back next week where I try to explain the New 52 and we read two first issues!