The easiest way to defeat a Legionnaire is with a rock and we get to the dreaded "multiple inkers" stage at the end of a series... let's reread Legion of Super-Heroes (vol 7) #14 & Legion Lost (vol 2) #14

Legion of Super-Heroes (vol 7) #14

In order to preserve my sanity, I've decided that writing these articles is a public service. If I can prevent one person from reading these books and suffering the way I have, I've done my job.

Okay, as much as I complain, LSH isn't actually that bad. Maybe it's because I'm comparing it to Legion Lost, but there are usually a few good things in each issue. Why do I suddenly feel like those are famous last words?

The quick recap is that Element Lad, Chemical Kid, and Cosmic Boy are chasing after space pirates, some of which are from Braal, so Rokk struggled fighting them. And they knocked him out with a rock.

The rest of the Legion is flying all over the galaxy to make sure the Fatal Five aren't reuniting.

Except for Brainiac 5, who's keeping the traitorous Comet Queen sedated and stuck in a plastic tube while he tries to figure out why she helped the Dominators. Even worse, only Duplicate Damsel has a problem with this.

"Overwhelmed" is written by Paul Levitz with art by Scott Kolins. 

Cosmic Boy's injuries were far worse than I thought... or were made clear in the previous issue. So now it's Jan and Hadru going after the pirates by themselves. They got Brainy to upload an algorithm to their ship's computers that would detect strange magnetism in the galaxy and give them a destination to head to. Isn't it cute when 31st Century technology is about the same as our own?

Rokk's been dropped off at Medicus One, where Dr. Gym'll is working on him. The Legion shows just how important he is to the team - only Night Girl is there to make sure he's okay. Wow. I would've thought at least a few more would care enough to check in on him. Dr. Gym'll notices that there is no "ambient magnetism reading," which he states is unlike Rokk. 

But since that's a dangling subplot thread that may or may not be picked up again, let's rejoin Element Lad and Chemical Kid. They've found the pirates' base and since they flew down using their Flight Rings, they haven't set off any alarms. I always want to know how far away they had to leave their cruiser and fly using Flight Rings alone. How fast can Flight Rings fly?

The creative team has decided to use another color for Jan's powers so now he's glowing pink around his hands. Chemical Kid, finally, talks too much and Jan punches some rocks. Not sure how any of this is effective, or why they didn't call for help, but when has Element Lad ever focused on teamwork over individual success... that's sarcasm, my friends.

The Braalian villains show up and use the exact same trick on Jan - they smack him in the head with a rock. Really?

Back at Legion HQ, which Kolins, like everything he's drawing, has made blocky and harsh-looking. Brainy is examining Comet Queen's brain and he discovers that it's scrambled. Wow, if only someone had thought that maybe it wasn't a good idea to add a new Legionnaire who literally had her entire memory wiped away.

He learns that Comet Queen was programmed when her mind was wiped by Saturn Queen so that she would "make sure" Brainiac 5 "died."

Now that's a good reveal. I mean, it makes no sense that Saturn Queen would want Brainy gone, unless you just accept, as so many Legion writers have in the past, that he's the single most important Legionnaire and target number one.

Oh, and if you were wondering who Brainy was telling this revelation to, is it any shock that it's Dream Girl? At this point, can they just start dating so her constantly showing up in the lab makes the tiniest bit of sense?

Back to the pirates' lair, which is, of course, entirely metallic so the Braalians can control everything. Chemical Kid grabs the unconscious Element Lad (at least I hope he's only unconscious) and flies him as far away as he can. He gets somewhere "safe," and uses his ring to send a distress signal.

They remain hiding as the Braalians bury them under massive amounts of rock. Hadru uses his powers to light up the small chamber they're in while reminding himself that he's a Legionnaire and not a trainee.

Do you remember last issue when Mon-El sent Sun Boy and Phantom Girl (and a few others) to go check and make sure the Persuader's axe was still locked up? Well, they've finally arrived and are being lead through some sort of storage facility by its director, M'wim. They're not on Takron-Galtos because of all the break-outs that occur there. If only they could make the biggest prison in the galaxy safer, right?

We get yet another awkward moment where a female Legionnaire reminds a male one not to touch her. This time, Sun Boy grabs Tinya's shoulder, telling her to move on. And she responds with "No touching, Dirk... you know that... unless I ask."

Okay, here's a heavy aside because these moments are just so strangely written.

One part of me feels like Levitz got a memo about unwanted physical contact and different rules in the workplace and ran with it. Another part of me feels like he's trying to show the female Legionnaires are showing their strength by enforcing their bodily autonomy.

But each moment is just so awkward and badly written that it just ruins the moment. When Dream Girl tells Brainiac 5 not to touch her while she's asleep and dreaming of the future, you're left wondering if that's happened before - is Brainy someone who would touch sleeping women? And if it's happened in the past, why are any women friends with him? And is that now part of Brainy's personality - he's a sexual pest?

Having someone tell Sun Boy not to touch them makes far more sense, especially the way his character was written in the 70s and 80s. But having Tinya throw in the "...unless I ask" just opens up this conversation to all sorts of questions. Do they have something going on behind the scenes? It's the pause and the word choice that messes up everything. If she had just said, "Don't touch me without consent," you get the point and it's very direct. But the way this is written, there are so many other meanings.

Should Jo be worried?

Okay, the point of this whole scene is that the axe isn't actually there. It's an illusion or hologram. M'wim can't believe it. But Sun Boy knows anything is possible with the Fatal Five.

Oh, and before I forget and I know I'm going to rant about the art later, I did love the fact that Phantom Girl is floating for this entire scene. Just a nice little touch.

While they're buried under the ground, Chemical Kid uses his powers to "jump start" Element Lad. Jan wakes up and is ready to fight back. Let's just hope he doesn't need medical assistance, right? I mean, a rock to the head sent Cosmic Boy to the hospital. Maybe's Jan's just tougher.

The pair use their powers together to light up fuel tanks, causing a huge explosion. Element Lad then just turns the oxygen in the Braalians' space suits into hydrogen and they collapse with nothing to breathe.

As they get ready to wipe out the rest of the pirates, the rescue squad of Night Girl, Lightning Lass, and Shadow Lass have arrived. I guess that means Rokk's okay... and that Night Girl is a Legionnaire now?

Also, Ayla's blonde now. Or the colorist made a mistake and the editor missed it.

We do get the cheesy ending where they talk about how special Legionnaires are, so that's nice.

Much like last issue, the only thing of any note is the continuing Fatal Five subplot and the rest of this just feels like filler until we get to that. The entire story was just more of "let's make sure everyone knows how special Chemical Kid is" instead of an actual story.

And I'm not sure how, but I think the art got worse. Everyone's still boxey, Sun Boy's boots looked like they belonged on a ski slope, and there was a harshness that I didn't enjoy. But it didn't look like a bad Ditko impersonation, so that was good. Kolins can do so much better than this, and that adds to the disappointment. 

Once again, you can tell that they're seeing what they can do be removing inkers and having the colorists (or the pencillers) handle everything. And it's not working yet.

 

Legion Lost (vol 2) #14 

Every time I open the next issue of Legion Lost, I think to myself that there's no way it could get worse. I want to be positive here. I want to write about good comics. I'd love to throw praise at Pete Woods every single week and tell everyone just how damn good he is.

And every week, I remind myself that the pile is getting smaller and I'm almost done this self-imposed torture.

"Desperate Times" is written by Tom DeFalco with Pete Woods and Ronan Cliquet on pencils and Scott Hanna, Richard Friend, Marc Deering, and Wade Von Grawbadger on inks... with special thanks to Ron Frenz. So let's just assume he's handling breakdowns.

Longtime comic readers know that when there is a multitude of inkers on a book, it means two things: someone missed the deadline or the artists are getting ready to bounce. Or both.

Since this is Woods' last issue on Legion Lost, let me spend a paragraph talking about how good he was on the title. The character redesigns, pre-The Culling, were all really good and I thought he made Tyroc, Wildfire, and Dawnstar look excellent. I don't blame him for giving Tellus hands - I'm fairly certain that came from the writer/editor. He was the one consistent part of the book that dragged the usually bad stories out of the sludge. His covers were always top notch and he brought an energy and excitement to the book. Unlike other artists, who seemed to suffer without a credited inker, Woods' work got better. So here's the open call for any readers - is there another Pete Woods book I should check out that would have a good story? Let me know in the comments.

Back to the reread...

We're in Arizona, where the team has gathered because a Time Bubble showed up out of nowhere. Inside is Captain Adym, the head of Echo, which is a shadowy group inside the Science Police that's been spying on the Legion because of their time travel research. He's come back to take control of the Legionnaires and give them a new assignment - stop some threat that's going to cause a breakpoint that will threaten the fabric of reality.

Oh, and to make things more... I was going to write interesting but that's not it... Chameleon Girl is working with Echo and was sent back to terminate the Echo agent who went back in time, Tyroc is supposed to be someone who dies in the past, long before he was born, and Wildfire's mask was found in the future and dated to be from the 21st Century.

I'll also point out that Tellus is carrying some secret and Gates believes he's going to be the cause of the death of his teammates. Only Dawnstar and Timber Wolf seem to be secret-free these days.

Last issue, Wildfire headed off into space to determine whether this massive threat, one that destroyed an entire planet, was headed towards Earth. This threat, Lord Daggor and his dragon Thraxx, have landed and are ready to wipe out the planet. They also beat up Wildfire a lot and threw him to the ground.

One of my biggest complaints about this book, for both original series writer Fabian Nicieza or DeFalco, is that neither of them seemed to have a clue who the Legionnaires are. We get more of that when Dawnstar asks Tellus how serious Wildfire's injuries are. Wildfire. The energy being. Who doesn't get injured. She leaves Drake in Tellus' "care" and heads off to fight the big space warrior.

Oh, and to compound it, Tellus says that Wildfire is recovering and will be better soon. What, exactly, is recovering? Is his energy getting stronger? His suit is already broken and they can't repair that. So what's happening?

Just when you think this couldn't get dumber, Daggor reveals that he's there to see "if this world can serve our master's pleasure." Okay, so there's an even bigger boss at the end of this? The guy who's destroying the Legionnaires isn't the main bad guy?

Captain Adym, or Adam, or Atom, or... man, DeFalco's not even trying for any originality here... figures that the Legion doesn't have enough firepower to stop Daggor and Thraxx. So he calls for reinforcements. If only he had, you know, gotten a large group of super-heroes, a Legion, perhaps, from his time and brought them all back with him.

We move to New York City, where Detective Jocelyn Lure receives an Echo distress call. If only I read Teen Titans and had a clue who this person was. Adym's also called in some other villains who they don't identify and I don't care to look up. We saw them back in The Culling, so they suck.

The battle continues and Daggor summons some sort of probe from under the ground. He calls it his weapon and a thousand robots emerge to fight the team.

Let's try to make sense of this. Daggor, who has shown that he doesn't know what Earth is, and only headed there because of the images he got in Wildfire's mind last issue, and is testing it for his master, also fired off a probe full of thousands (they're multiplying) of robots that no one noticed. Did he fire the same probe into the planet he destroyed last issue? Did he fire the probe to Earth after that? How did no one notice?

Just as I'm ready to give up, Harvest (the villain from The Culling) arrives and starts fighting Daggor and Thraxx as well. And he's nice enough to identify those crappy villains too. As he puts it, "Psykill! Warblade! Leash!" Harvest says that he wants a truce with the Legion so they can stop this new alien threat.

Hmmm... a house ad for Wonder Woman by Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang. I kinda wish I was reading that instead.

In Brooklyn, Lure is gathering the Ravagers, including Superboy, and needs their help fighting this new villain. So they head off through a teleportation portal. Actually, they follow Superboy, who's dragged into the portal. For reasons that don't make any sense to me because I have no desire to read that book, Superboy doesn't want to help people in danger. No what I'd expect from a Superboy.

Right after everyone arrives, Harvest speaks Kryptonian to Superboy and takes over his mind, using a subliminal trigger and turning him into a violent weapon.

More fighting, more "we have to help them because we owe them," more silliness, and then Lure telepathically brings Adym up to speed. He wonders why anyone would make a Kryptonian clone because they're so unstable.

The ground opens, Thraxx and Daggor are happy, and a weird machine suddenly appears in the desert. Gates starts yelling and telling the Legion they have to get out of there.

This is the machine that gave him his scars and the Legion is destined to die here.

I'm going to be honest - there's a part of me that wants to go back and figure out exactly when Gates got those scars and point out that, once again, nothing makes sense here. But I'm not going to. Why should I spend time to figure out this story when the writer and editor weren't bothered?

So the Legion just became guest stars in their own, soon-to-be-cancelled book. None of this makes any sense. Every single subplot is garbage. No surprise, I'm not writing as much because... well... why? 

Better news and better stories: The latest episode of the Long Live the Legion podcast is a deep dive into the character or Supergirl. And Laurel Gand. And Andromeda. We're joined by our Certain POV network partners, Case Aiken and Keith Lehtinen! Check it out wherever you get your favorite podcast or on YouTube!