Long Live the Legion

The Legion #38 I usually like Kevin Nowlan's artwork, but this cover... woah... I can't stop staring at Karate Kid and wondering if this drawing is more than a little offensive. We've reached the end of an era, the end of the second-longest version of the Legion, or "reboot" or whatever you want to call it. Tune in next week for the overly-long and wordy retrospective of the entire ten-year-long saga. For those of you who've forgotten what happened before, a group of villains named after Justice Leaguers, Devil, Canary, Arrow, and Lantern, have somehow used Dreamer's powers (connected with Canary's) to shut down all technology in a huge part of Metropolis. They shot the U.P. President, who also happens to be Apparition's mom.  They caused Brainiac 5 to go crazy (the things on his face were actually mood-altering devices) but, luckily for him, one slap across the face from Umbra restarted his computer and he's fine again. I guess it's true a...

  The Legion #32 And we're back! I hope everyone had a great holiday, no matter which holiday you were celebrating, and we're ready for an amazing 2025. My boundless optimism in the face of everything going on in the world will annoy my friends and family, but I can live with that. It's the Legion way, right? My only New Years wish? That DC Comics gets a Legion title up and running in 2025. And if they get me to write it? That would just be gravy... Let's stop this review to go over a little inside knowledge about comic books. How do you know when a title is about to be cancelled? Here are some not-so-subtle clues: The cover artists get replaced by whomever is the cheapest and youngest talent the publisher can find The creative team leaves very, very quickly and never get to wrap up any of their subplots Tony Harris and Tom Feister are no where to be seen - instead, Eric Wight handles this cover. It's pretty... generic... and doesn't really grab the attention th...

  The Legion Secret Files 3003 Before we get into the issue, I wanted to share some sales numbers: The Legion #26 -  26,589 The Legion Secret Files 3003 - 19,198 The Legion #27 - 25,622 Why did more than 7,000 fans decide not to buy Secret Files? Did they know something I don't? Oh well, for the second week in a row, we have a big issue to go through, so let's get started... DC is really milking Legion fans for all they can get. Your creator credits: Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning (DnA) writing. Leonard Kirk, Tony Harris, and Tom Feister on pencils. Robin Riggs, Harris, and Feister on inks. A boom tube opens and Orion, Barda, and Firestorm emerge. And fly... somewhere. Yep, that's the first two pages. We join Trudy Trusoe, host of "The Earth Spins," which I'm guessing is a news show on... something... She's going to get a guided tour of Legion World so Shikari shows up to take her through a threshold. We get tons of background information on Shikari as she ar...

The Legion #21 It's part three of "Dream Crime," the latest multi-issue story from writers Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning (DnA) and artists Chris Batista and Mark Farmer. For those who missed last week, we left off with Saturn Girl and Dreamer on Titan, the former for rest and relaxation to get a grip on her PTSD and the latter to figure out if she can link her precognitive powers to the Titanian communication net and help the U.P. predict threats. Dreamer, in issue #19, sees that Darkseid has come back to wreak havoc while Saturn Girl, in issue #20, is being mentally attacked by Universo. Since it's Universo on the cover of #21, I'm guessing Darkseid is just a trick. But with DnA, I honestly wouldn't be shocked if they just went with both and completely destroyed the Earth. We're now establishing the front page of the book as 4/5ths pictures of the Legionnaires with a text piece explaining what's happened before and 1/5th the first panel of the book. We ...

The Legion #17 The return of the villain we all wanted to see again... well, some of us did... well, not me... but Ra's Al Ghul is back. I guess the Legion doesn't have enough of their own villains they could use. Or writers Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning (DnA) are under strict orders to not go more than a couple of issues without having someone from the 21st Century show up in the book. We have another guest artist this issue, Alejandro Barrionuevo, and this is his first published artwork for DC Comics. He's been working consistently from 2003 until present day and has worked on some big books for both DC and Marvel. So I've got high hopes for this and the next issue. We begin in some sort of prison and M'onel and Shvaughn Erin are heading into a maximum security facility to go have a chat with Ra's. Shvaughn explains how Ra's has numerous lawyers on retainer and they've been fighting for his civil rights, such as the right to not be held in stasis. M'...