More yoga poses for Legionnaires and Brainiac 5 starts looking into time travel while the universe is being invaded. Let's look at Legion Lost (volume 2) #4 & Legion Secret Origin #4

Legion Lost (volume 2) #4

I do love tribute covers. And it is great that they're paying tribute to a cover of a Keith Giffen classic (yes, drawn by Kevin Maguire, but Giffen plotted the book). But were there no Legion covers they could work with?

Anyway, because I have to, here's the recap of the drek that came before this. Timber Wolf's been chasing a murderous alien around Minnesota and North Dakota, spreading the pathogen he's been infected with all over the place. He faces off against this killer in a huge shopping mall and it's broadcast across, at the very least, the U.S. Because of the pathogen, he can shoot claws out of his finger tips. Then it's revealed that the killer is only targeting those infected humans who are developing Durlan powers. And the killer is... Yera, otherwise known as Chameleon Girl and Colossal Boy's wife.

Let's place bets now, since we're probably finally going to give Yera some dialogue, on what's the over/under on the number of times she mentions she's married? Zero? One? I'm half expecting writer Fabian Nicieza to completely forget that part of her back story. I am also expecting that artist Pete Woods will at least give me pretty pictures to look at while the story is spiraling down the drain. Oh, and this issue is titled "Coseismic," for whatever that's worth.

We continue with our "tribute" to the original Legion Lost mini-series, with each individual Legionnaire narrating one issue. Dawnstar is up this time. She gets the joyful task of providing the exposition we need to catch up. She also gets the best unintentional double entendre I've seen in a bit:

"I let Tellus do what I never let anyone do: touch me from the inside."

So many jokes about fish fingers...

Moving on, Tellus has become more powerful than Saturn Girl ever was, as not only is he monitoring the afore-mentioned reveal of Yera, he's also watching that unidentified government agent who's trying to figure out what's going on in this book. She's not the only one. Good luck, Major Nicholson!

The Major orders a Case Study Team in to investigate and I'm going to assume the name is a euphemism for something far more direct. She wants the team to be on top of the two Legionnaires speeding to the mall: Wildfire and Tyroc.

They're flying towards The Great Mall of Fargo... which isn't a real place, sadly. I'd love to crack a joke about how there is no "great" shopping in Fargo, but I spent many road trips in my childhood driving down to Fargo to go shopping. Yep, there's a reason why I read tons of comics when I was young.

Yera is nice enough to explain to Timber Wolf, and to us, that her cellular structure is in flux due to the Hypertaxis pathogen that's changing everyone it comes in contact with. She also has only half of her Durlan biomass inside her, which explains why she was murdering other Durlans... I don't think that justifies it, but it does explain it. Yes, this is where we've come: a Legionnaire is murdering humans who have been changed into Durlans to rebuild her body.

Also, and I know I've said this before, but there's absolutely no way she would know there's a Hypertaxis threat. She was "killed" before the Legion figured any of this out. If I took a drink every time a character possessed knowledge they shouldn't, I'd be dead reading this book.

Before Timber Wolf can really respond, she changes back into the killer alien she was last issue, smacks him, and rushes off towards the cops. No surprise, they all start shooting. Also, no surprise, time stops so Brin can figure out what to do.

Also, no surprise, if you bet "under," you win.

Brin pushes "Yera" down and then tries to protect the other alien she attacked last issue. I guess she didn't kill them. The cops just keep shooting at everything and are finally able to hit Brin in the side. They must be the worst trained police as they were shooting at three fairly-close targets.

Luckily, Tyroc and Wildfire arrive and blast "Yera." Tyroc calmly gives us more explanation of the alien form (we learned this last issue, so I'm not going to repeat it) and then he and Drake are shocked by Brin's revelation of who the threat actually is.

The cops also magically stopped shooting. They're still there, and they scatter when the mall starts to collapse under the... again, no idea why these things are happening unless Tyroc and Wildfire destroyed it when they entered. Or the mall was so badly built that all the gunshots destroyed the foundations.

Everyone runs away, the Legionnaires start trying to save the cops who are trying to shoot them, and we have another showdown. The cops order them to stop, wanting them to answer some questions, so Timber Wolf just takes off to hunt for Yera.

Wildfire and Tyroc take out the police pretty easily. After all, between the anti-matter and sonic blasts, they get rid of all the guns and the cameras. Yes... there are police officers in this violent encounter who are holding their cell phones up to capture the action.

I know I've complained about this knowledge problems, but how would the Legion know what a cell phone is?

I'm also wondering why cops would be recording with their cell phones. No body cameras yet, I guess.

The pair take off into the night sky, heading into the city after Timber Wolf. Wait... so the mall isn't in the city? Of Fargo?

We get a really interesting conversation here:

Wildfire: Let's catch her first, Ty.

Tyroc: It's been four days, Drake, and we're no closer to fixing any of this.

Wildfire: I know -- but you kind of expected that, right?

Tyroc: What do you mean?

Wildfire: You knew, didn't you? How bad this was going to get for us? That's why you delayed us before we came back and got so many supplies?

Tyroc: Doesn't matter. The Time Barrier somehow disabled most of our tech -- so I can't access the materials I stored in the Time Bubble's tesseract storage unit anyway.

 

Here are my takeaways from this:

• Either Nicieza doesn't know or doesn't remember that Tyroc's real name is Troy. He's using everyone else's first name...
• Tyroc and, in fact, everyone involved here doesn't understand how time travel works. Spending more time to be prepared and bring everything they might need wouldn't affect the mission at all... after all, you're still going back to the same time. It wouldn't matter if you left right away or an hour later.
• And also, how is being prepared a bad thing? Or a sign that you expected the worst? Shouldn't that just be standard practice? 
• Nicieza has remembered that the Legion has tesseracts... something I'm not sure Levitz wants to use anymore. 

Moving on, we finally reach a point in the book where it makes sense that Dawnstar is narrating the thing. Seriously, she's done nothing so far and we're already at the staples.

Continuing with Nicieza's (or Woods') obsession with putting the Legionnaires into yoga positions, Dawnstar spreads her wings and crosses her legs into the Lotus pose, so she can better use her powers to find Alastor (the villain who's spread the contagion everywhere). Yep, the woman with wings, who flies everywhere while she's tracking things, stops moving so she can focus better.

She also drops a few more story bombs that we haven't seen before:

• Alastor didn't explode in the first issue (even though it really looked like he did) but just changed shape and that's why they can't find him
• Half of Yera was liquefied by pressure of the explosion
• Gates had opened a portal and the lower half of Yera's body (maybe the liquefied part) and Gates fell into it... so what happened to the upper half, which disappeared after the explosion? Was that the liquefied part? And if Gates went through a transportation portal, why were they finding his biological remains in the air?

Full honest disclosure here. I've spent a long time moaning and complaining about bad writing and plots that made no sense for the past... it's been waaaay too long. But I will take the worst Levitz stuff from volume 6 and 7, the worst of the reboot stories when you can tell Peyer and Stern were burnt out, and the worst of the Bronze Age when Conway didn't want to write the Legion, over this garbage.

None of this story makes any sense. The characters constantly know things they shouldn't. Every plot point moving forward just makes this story worse and worse. It is painfully obvious that neither the writer nor the editor has any clue who these people are.

Continuing this trend, Dawnstar realizes that the thunder they heard in issue one wasn't really thunder, it was Alastor crashing to the ground. She now knows he's alive!

If she just now "knows" that he's alive, why has she been spending so much time looking for him the past couple of issues? Urgh...

Dawnstar lets Tellus know that she's located Alastor... as long as he hasn't moved, because she's actually only located where he crash landed 4 days ago. But why have any character actually think during these stories, right?

Where is Alastor? Duluth. Duluth, Minnesota. Some place so far away that Dawnstar hasn't been able to locate him for 4 days. Duluth, which is around 240 miles away. For those not familiar with Dawnstar's powers, she can track something anywhere in the galaxy. Or Earth's pollution is so bad that it's ruined her powers.

Tyroc, who has once again taken his post as team leader, tells Tellus and Dawnstar to find Alastor but not to engage.

Let's get back to the main plot - the trio of Legionnaires locate Yera, but she's been tranquilized. She got shot with darts by the new threat of the book... the Black Razors. So that's the Case Study team. Brin lets out a little laugh, which is the proper response to the horrid name, the costumes that make them look like insects, and then weapons that should be nothing to three powerful Legionnaires.

Instead of the fight, we head to Duluth. Tellus has located Alastor at the University of Minnesota-Duluth, inside the cafeteria. He's just sitting there, drinking a coffee, and feeling sad and angry.

Dawnstar figures the best move is to extract him from the area. So she flies in at super speed, grabs him, and dumps him outside. They start speaking Interlac and they actually use brackets in the dialogue to show it. Sigh... so when the Legionnaires are speaking with each other, they're speaking English, so no brackets. But when Dawnstar is talking to Alastor, it's in Interlac, so they do this: <You're speaking Interlac--?>

To try to bond with him, both Dawnstar and Tellus tell him how horrible humans are and how much they suffered due to the Earth First movement that killed Alastor's sister. We also finally reveal his full name: Alastor Aghini Faud. No idea why they made him Arabic, but I have no idea why they've done most things they do in this book.

The attempt at bonding doesn't work and Alastor lets them know that he's in complete control of his transformation. He blasts the pair but Tellus comes to the rescue with yet another telepathic shield and Dawnstar is certain they're going to be dead soon. Glad her positive outlook is still here.

Why is she so distraught? Alastor also has Carggite in his new form - so he can split into three!

Apparently, I'm not the only one who hates this story. Once again - sales numbers!

In September 2011, Legion Lost #1 premiered with sales of 41,726, ranking 56th in sales. Those numbers have already been lowered because DC offered stores returns for the first two issues of every New 52 release, and it's entirely possible they sold even less.

In December, Legion Lost #4 sold 21,618 copies for a ranking of 94th.

That's a drop of 20,108, or 48%. Ouch. I'm starting to understand why Legion Lost didn't last very long. 

 

Legion Secret Origins #4

This is the text on the cover: "Coming together... in space warfare for the first time!" Wow... just... ugh...

Okay, let's shake off Legion Lost and go into this with a fresh, more positive perspective. We know writer Paul Levitz knows these characters as well as anyone. We know penciller Chris Batista and inker Marc Deering are at the top of their games. We know that last issue was the best of the series so far. So I'm hoping that this one, "Coming Together," will continue that streak.

For some reason that I hope they will clarify later, Brainiac 5 has come to Earth. I guess Admiral Allon and the U.P. fleet didn't think they needed him anymore. It's not like there were attack ships coming through a wormhole... and these ships were slowly getting more and more resistant to the U.P.'s firepower... and Brainy was the only person who seemed to understand what was going on... aside from Phantom Girl... who they also just allowed to head to Earth.

Again, Admiral Allon is just horrible at his job.

Why is Brainy on Earth? To see Circadia Senius, of course. Just as he walks into the Professor's lab, we see Senius kick out a pair of assistants and put Brainy at the controls. Well, to watch the controls. The experiment explodes (which happens every time Brainy is in a lab) but his force-field belt saves them both. Brainy finally introduces himself and wonders what Circadia knows about asynchronous worlds.

Okay, a great intro to the comic. I really like when they get into the techno-babble and Levitz handled it as well as could be expected.

Speaking of Admiral Allon, he's still outside the wormhole. But now, he's complaining that he's just sitting there, waiting for more ships to emerge. He's called Mycroft, of the Security Directorate, to try to rotate the patrols so he's not the only one handling this problem. Yes, an Admiral wants off the most important detail in the fleet...

We get more of the Directorate, Zarl the Coluan and Anisa the Nalorian, talking about how important the Legion will be. We get the next big reveal about Legion membership: Allon's son, Gim, has joined the team. In his father's words, he's always been "more of his mother's son. A real Earther."

Brainy has arrived at Legion HQ, wanting to see Phantom Girl again. She asks him if he wants to join as well, but he says he's too busy. He asks her if Bgtzl has ever discovered time travel but she says they haven't. Then she suggests he joins the Legion, telling him that it would do him a lot of good.

We head to a U.P. council meeting and everyone's worried about the Legion. The S.P. thinks R.J. Brande is building his own private army. Mycroft says the Legion is "fascinating to young people" and runaways are up thirty percent. Are we headed towards Threeboot Legion here?

But the U.P. is fine with the Legion, leading Mycroft to believe that Brande has bought his political capital. He wouldn't be the first, right?

Why does the U.P. even exist here? The Security Directorate seem to be doing everything and making all the decisions. Is the U.P. completely useless? Are they just for show?

At Legion HQ, we meet the newest members. Aside from the original three, plus Triplicate Girl and Phantom Girl, we now have Chameleon Boy, Colossal Boy, and Invisible Kid.

This is as good a time as any to talk about the costumes. I do really like the redesigns and Batista gives them enough similar elements to show they're a team. Lightning Lad is in his Bronze Age double lightning bolts look, which is a plus. And Invisible Kid looks very much like his Reboot counterpart. They've kinda taken the best of all possible worlds and I'm a fan. And Colossal Boy's costume is the worst, which is how it should be.

They have a party to celebrate the new Legionnaires, but it's quickly interrupted by a loud noise. To no surprise, it's yet another assassination attempt on Brande, who was trying to leave with his aides. Construction machines started attacking - there's no person there to kill him, just the equipment is out of control.

The Directorate is watching this... well, I think they're watching the action. They're sitting in front of a bunch of glowing yellow screens. I'm fairly certain there were supposed to be action shots on these monitors, but something got mixed up.

We also get this very curious line of dialogue from Mycroft: "It would be a shame if Brande was killed before assistance arrived." Maybe I'm reading too much into it, and maybe this is an innocent comment, but considering how much Mycroft is against the Legion and Brande, I wonder...

The Legion makes quick work of Brande's construction machines and we get a number of great action pages. And wow - Colossal Boy wasn't knocked out!

Out at the expanding wormhole, Admiral Allon is requesting more ships to assist. The Directorate, which has control over the whole fleet... again, why is there a U.P.?... wonders about sending their entire military.

But Mycroft doesn't want to leave Earth unprotected. So he suggests sending the Legion.

Cosmic Boy makes his first real leadership decision. He splits the Legion into two teams. He and Lightning Lad take one group to the fleet. Saturn Girl and her group stays and watches over Brande.

But Brande refuses (and makes Rokk look like he isn't in charge), saying that if the Legion is going to fight off invaders from other worlds, they need to be more powerful. They need someone like ancient Superman.

Phantom Girl wonders if that's the twenty-first century legend they were talking about. And she says that Brainiac 5 was talking about making time travel work. She thinks they should go back in time and get Superman.

Now that's a much better way to end a comic...
 

If you haven't heard the news, there's a new Legion comic coming on September 2:

https://www.dc.com/blog/2026-06-17/dc-announces-three-new-next-level-comic-book-series

We're going to be talking about it on a future Long Live the Legion podcast episode, so keep your eyes and ears open for it!