Legion of Super-Heroes ended with a squad of Legionnaires having given their lives in an attempt to stop a star-gate from collapsing and causing a massive explosion. Except, they hadn't actually died, they were just thrown very far away from home. To a section of the universe they didn't recognize or know, with no immediate sign of what direction home was or how to even get there.
Legion Lost was that group trying to find a way home. Abnett and Lanning actually start with an outsider perspective, as Shikari, a member of an nomadic, insectile species with remarkable tracking/pathfinding abilities stumbles upon the remains on the Legion's outpost while hiding from some vicious little pillbug looking guys named the Progeny. Some crystals left behind by Element Lad explain things to both her and the reader before the Progeny attack her, inadvertently awakening the Legion members.
That establishes early on that the Legion members are a) in a place they don't know, b) in the middle of one group's attempt to exterminate anyone they consider "variant", and c) that whatever Element Lad did to get them to their current location, he didn't make the journey with them.
From there, each issue is filtered through a specific team member's perspective. Monstress in issue 2, Kid Quantum in issue 3, and so on. It's a time-tested approach, but it serves to reinforce certain things (Night Lass/Umbra's increasing hostility is noted by just about everyone else), without seeming too repetitive by approaching it from different perspectives. Lightning Lad feeling as though there's a wall between he and Saturn Girl plays differently if accompanied by Lightning Lad's internal monologue, versus if it's Wildfire or Chameleon observing it from the outside.
Oliver Coipel draws most of the 12 issues, again with Lanning inking him for a rougher, darker look than Coipel's art would in later years. There's not a lot of opportunity for characters to show much emotion beyond glares and downcast eyes, but when Coipel can have Brainiac's cheeks puff out in a frustrated exhale, or two characters can share a laugh, he pulls it off. He's got a good sense for when to focus attention on a face by making the panel widescreen, large without necessarily using a lot of space. Or when to use a lot of space to show the immensity of a spaceship or some mysterious floating pyramid. When a battle between Umbra and the protector of an alien world (with Ultra Boy and Monstress in the middle trying unsuccessfully to play peacemaker) is tearing down a city, his panels shift to diagonal sides, tilted and slanted the like pieces of street being thrown up in the fight.
Pascal Alixe, who handles 3 issues, roughly every third one, doesn't quite have that knack. Tends to stick to 2-3 rectangular panels per row, 3 rows per page. Doesn't use widescreen panels for effect much, and sometimes when he tries to overlay smaller, more focused panels over a larger establishing shot, the ratio's not great. The panels are too close in size, too much overlap, which mostly doesn't give the scale for the larger panel or the focus for the smaller ones.
It also doesn't help Lanning seems to go nuts with the hatching and shading, especially on faces. It makes Alixe's art look much busier than it needs to, when he's already quite good at expressive body language and expressions.
Tom McCraw goes back to darker tones like in the Blight story as the group struggles to hold together in the face of long odds. McCraw and Lanning both pull back on it in issue 8, when it seems like the rest of the Legion's found them and they'll be home soon.
The story comes together nicely at the end. A few characters die, most get home. The team rallies behind their core beliefs to save the day, even though it hurts. I wonder if all of it - the reveal of their enemy, the deaths - had more oomph to longtime Legion fans. I think the beats work, but I don't have the history with the characters (plus I'm old and jaded.) So the deaths don't hit as hard, and I don't know if the turn of the final antagonist outraged anyone as out of character.
When Lightning Lad describes Element Lad as always having been 'spiritual', well, the character got about three panels of dialogue in DnA's run prior to this mini-series. I hadn't seen any spirituality. (Also, got to love Lightning Lad summarizing floating alone in the void of space for literal billions of years as 'experiences' which may have pushed Element Lad over the edge.)
But with (most) of the the lost Legionnaires back, what did they find on their return?
4 comments:
Having had zero experience with the Legion before I read the story, I'm sure I missed a lot of the emotional impact of the big twist, but I grasped the basic idea.
I saw the exact same twist being used in a similar context in something else, but I can't remember where. It's possible DnA re-used it in one of their cosmic Marvel stories, but I just can't place where I saw it.
The bit about Saturn Girl manipulating the others' perceptions for months? DnA did a bit in their Guardians of the Galaxy run where it turned out Mantis has used her powers to make everyone on the team more amenable to joining up.
There was also a bit where Star-Lord thought he'd killed Adam Magus, but not before Magus killed 5 members of the team. It all turned out to be some spell Magus cast to mess with everyone's perceptions.
No, I mean the twist about who the "villain" is and why they went "bad"; I've seen the exact same thing somewhere else but I can't remember where.
Oh, OK. It does seem kind of familiar, but I can't think from where.
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