Sunday Splash Page #307

 

"Orbital Dynamics," The Legion #8, by Dan Abnett (writer), Andy Lanning (writer/inker), Olivier Coipel (penciler), Tom McCraw (colorist), Comicraft (letterer)

So after all of the events of the preceding weeks - Blight invasion, section of the cast hurled across the universe, Legion disbanded - Abnett, Lanning, Coipel and McCraw bring it back together in another ongoing series, starting with the rough arrival of the survivors of Legion Lost on an Earth different from the one they last saw.

Abnett and Lanning use the familiar play of bringing a 20th Century threat into the 31st Century, although Ra's al Ghul was a clever choice. His goals had shifted somewhat - not so concerned with preserving Earth, but with countless inhabited worlds know, it probably seemed less of a priority - but he's played as having all the advantages of years to prepare.

A little curiously, Ra's being traditionally a Batman foe, M'onel is set as his opposite. There's a whole thing that's only referenced about M'onel having been responsible for seeding life over the course of some amount of time on many of the worlds that made up the United Planets. So I guess that's the point of contrast: M'onel spent his time trying to help life to grow, but on its own terms, while Ra's wants to push life forward, but at a pace he determines, with little regard for cost.

After that, the book shifts to paying off at least a few plots that had been running in the background. The odd robot attack that was so fixated on Brainiac 5.1 in their first issue of Legionnaires, comes to a head with an artificial intelligence based invasion of Earth. It feels a bit like a reprise of the Blight invasion, although with most of the cast locked out of Earth, rather than trapped or turned to the other side. Shadow Lass, who had been written as withdrawn and hostile since being taken over by the Blight, gets a spotlight issue where she returns home to try and address some issues. Timber Wolf, who escorted Phantom Girl and her exceedingly powerful baby to Earth, joins the team. Though nothing ever comes of his apparent attraction to her, or whatever started to brew between Ultra Boy and Saturn Girl in Legion Lost.

(Nor is there any payoff to Phantom Girl's mother having her declared incompetent in Legion Worlds as part of a scheme to steal her grandchild. I would have at least liked to see the lady get punched in the jaw for that shit.)

Coipel remains as the primary penciler for the first year and change, still inked by Lanning, but with a smoother hand. There are still a lot of shadows and heavy inks, but the characters don't look as weary and battered. They're mostly back together, mostly feeling good, things are looking up.

Kev Walker starts to take the reins during the Robotican invasion story, and then Chris Batista handles the arc about a villain seizing the control of the vast telepathic communication network the UP were using. Those two artist don't have a lot in common stylistically, but much of the Universo story is an illusory world he tries to use to keep Saturn Girl occupied, so it looking much cleaner and smooth adds to the artificiality of it. Comparatively, Walker's art evokes the roughness of Coipel's during the Blight story. Characters even look a little wilder, if not quite as dark. Tom McCraw keeps the shades and tones a bit less washed out here than in some of the other books.

The third year of the book is more of a mixed bag, as Superboy (Conner Kent, Kon-El, '90s Superboy) is brought there from the past, but also Abnett and Lanning bust out a Darkseid story. Superboy is somewhat interesting, as he laps up the adulation of the public, no longer being compared to Superman and found wanting, probably because these people all figure he's just young Superman. But he also catches a lot of flack from Cosmic Boy in particular about being reckless and careless. Part of the problem of people thinking you grow up to be Superman, is they also expect you to behave like Superman.

This could theoretically have been used as some form of character development, but back in Geoff Johns' Teen Titans, we got the whole thing about Luthor being the human half of his DNA, and then Superboy-Prime killed him.

Abnett and Lanning left the book around issue 30 or so, and so ends our time in the Year 3000. It's back to the rapidly approaching dystopian hellscape of the 21st Century for us.

Sunday Splash Page #306

 

"Open Grave Space," in Legion Worlds #4, by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning (writers), Duncan Rouleau (penciler), Jamie Mendoza (inker), Tom McCraw (colorist), Comicraft (letterer)

A six-issue mini-series started a couple of months after Legion Lost concluded, Legion Worlds was an overview of what several other members of the Legion were getting up to in the year since several members of the team died in the big gate accident, and the Legion of Super-Heroes were disbanded under orders of the United Planets.

Each issue focuses on a different planet, and different Legionnaires, and is drawn by a different artist. This includes, to my surprise, Steve Dillon drawing issue 5 (which focuses on Karate Kid and Ferro Lad, hanging out on the equivalent of a monastery planet.)

The gist is, the United Planets aren't so united at the moment. The "stargate" system was taken offline after the Blight's tampering caused the massive failure that threw the cast of Legion Lost to the far side of the universe. Which makes travel and shipping difficult, which has ripple effects. The lightning siblings' homeworld of Winath relies on weather control technology, but it's harder to get parts to sustain it, and with longer shipping times, it's harder to sell produce.

Beyond that, a lot of it is setting up status quo for the next ongoing series. The new president of the U.P, a Leland McCauley, has his own team of superheroes, for which Mon-El decided to be frontman. Certain members of the Legion are working under-the-radar to be ready for the next big problem. There's some sort of advanced, artificial intelligence code working to purposes the people on Earth aren't sure of (though the people on Xanth sure as hell know.) Phantom Girl's pregnant with Ultra Boy's kid, and hanging out on his homeworld to hide from her domineering bitch of a mother. Which is also how Abnett and Lanning work to bring a new Timber Wolf into the picture.

Despite being build-up, each issue does also function as its own distinct solo adventure, with each character or characters having come to some sort of decision about what they're going to do next. The mini-series concludes with the lost Legionnaires reappearing in orbit above Earth, and that's where next week's entry will pick up.

Sunday Splash Page #305

 

"Silence Speaks Louder," in Legion Lost #8, by Dan Abnett (writer), Andy Lanning (writer/inker), Oliver Coipel (penciler), Tom McCraw (colorist), Comicraft (letterer)

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?

Sunday Splash Page #304

 

"Silent, But Devastating," in Legionnaires #80, by Dan Abnett (writer), Andy Lanning (writer/inker), Oliver Coipel (penciler), Tom McCraw (colorist), Comicraft (letterer)

Probably should have done Legionnaires first, since Abnett and Lanning's first issue of that appeared before their first issue of Legion of Super-Heroes, but oh well.

I don't know if there was a functional difference in the two Legion books over most of their run. if one was the "big events" and the other "small character stuff". For the 4 issues before both books ended, there's not really any difference in evidence. Abnett and Lanning's first Legionnaires serves to both get a handful of Legionnaires off Earth, so they can return in the midst of the Blight's conquest and go "WTF?", and also to set up something that wouldn't be paid off for a couple of years.

The Legion defeat the Blight, and then the books deal fallout from the invasion. Earth and several other worlds are heavily damaged, and the United Planets are reluctant to risk exposure by helping. There's also a power play to oust Legion booster R.J. Brande, and ban the Legion entirely, in favor of superheroes who are legally adults (and presumably more amenable to how the adults running the U.P. want things to be.) There's some push and shove around a failing stargate, and several members of the team are killed in a massive explosion.

(I assume the cast's ages were reset by Zero Hour, since I can't imagine they would still have been teenagers after the Five Years Later thing I know Giffen and the Bierbaums did years earlier.)

So let's try and talk about artists. That first Legionnaires issue was drawn by Jeff Moy, who I think had been drawing one or the other of the Legion books for a while. The art's very clean, kind of a early Bryan Hitch (when he was imitating Alan Davis) look. Tom McCraw's colors are bright. It's futuristic adventure and teen melodrama, but things are mostly OK for the heroes.

Then the Blight story starts, and Oliver Coipel steps in as penciler. Lanning inks his work heavily, thick outlines for characters, lots of shading lines on faces and bodies. Everyone looks ragged and underfed, worn down. The cities, when we see them, are shattered and sometimes barely distinguishable shapes. If there are people in those shots, they're tiny scurrying dots, like early mammals in some artist's depiction of the extinction of the dinosaurs. It's a long way from the approach Coipel would take on, for example, his Thor run with JMS, where there were a lot of panels spent on showing the grandeur of a new Asgard, and the gods tended to look very clean and neatly defined.

Angel Unzueta (with Jamie Mendoza as inker) handle the last two issues of Legion, while Adam Dekraker and Lanning draw the last Legionnaires finale. Dekraker's closer to Moy's style, albeit with a tendency to give character a look of shock that's almost a duck-face (pursued lips extending noticeably from their face.) Unzueta's got a little manga to his art, less exaggerated Humberto Ramos. In either case, the characters look more composed than during the Blight arc, closer to the optimistic teens they were before. McCraw lightens the colors up again. A lot fewer panels overwhelmed with shadows, less dark purple. The costumes pop off the page again. Things were bad, but they're going to fix the damage, if the United Planets will let them.

Sunday Splash Page #303

 

"Hide and Seek," in Legion of Super-Heroes #122, by Dan Abnett (writer), Andy Lanning (writer/inker), Oliver Coipel (penciler), Tom McCraw (colorist), Comicraft

Welcome, to The Year 3000! I don't have much Legion of Super-Heroes stuff, and it's all from the Abnett/Lanning team, but we're giving it the next 5 weeks here on Sunday Splash Page.

After a main feature story in Legion of Super-Heroes Secret Files #2, Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning took over writing both Legion of Super-Heroes and Legionnaires. I know, I'm struggling to conceive a world where the market supported two Legion books. Although it only did that for another 4 months, so maybe I shouldn't bother.

Most of the brief runs on both books were taken up with the "Blight" storyline. A fore swoops in and takes control of the Earth, isolating by disabling the stargates. The Blight takes control of members of the Legion, using them to bring captives to "The Stem" a mysterious tower where no one is sure what's going on. A few Legionnaires are left hiding in the shadows, doing their best to bring civilians to safety, but running low on hope, until reinforcements arrive.

Abnett and Lanning used a similar outline for Annihilation: Conquest when they were writing for Marvel about 7 years later. It's not a perfect mirror. The Blight are a species so advanced the only thing left to conquer was death. So one of them seems to have contacted Entropy itself, turning them into essentially vampires. The Phalanx didn't have much of a goal until they encountered Ultron's consciousness and were subsumed. And he was trying to work towards the perfect melding of organic and technological. But the heroes being scattered, outnumbered, cut off from any retreat. Faced with former friends forcibly converted to enemies.

The Legion, being the Legion, find a way to free a sort of sentient energy species the Blight had enslaved, enabling it to reach the next stage in its life cycle in a brilliant display of light and color (although it doesn't really come off in the art. A few panels of a cream-colored ribbon traversing a stellar sky.) Whereas the Guardians of the Galaxy and Nova basically wrecked Ultron and did their best to wipe out the Phalanc, so different strokes for different folks.

There are a lot of characters, but Abnett and Lanning tend to break the team up into smaller groups and focus on one or two. Maybe write an issue from one specific character's perspective. I don't know most of the casts' backstories, but I get enough about their powers and personalities for it to work. There's a fair amount of romantic drama and general angst flying around in the background. Saturn Girl and Lightning Lad thinking about marriage. Ultra Boy being a little too clingy with Phantom Girl. I didn't feel wildly invested in all that, but it adds depth, and helps to illustrate the personalities.

Random Back Issues #91 - The Legion #2

Shikari, artists don't like it when you point that out.

The Legionnaires who got tossed across the universe in Legion Lost are back on Earth, with a disbanded Legion, a new president of the United Planets, a new team acting as protectors (including their buddy Mon-El), and someone trying to kill them.

That someone is the new team. Who could have guessed characters called "Brainstorm", "Repulse", and "Abyss" might not be on the up-and-up? Despite having the numbers advantage, the Legion doesn't know the powers of their opponents and get their butts kicked, necessitating the ol' strategic withdrawal.

President McCauley, the one behind this, is busy making sure Mon-El sticks close to him, and away from his old friends. The Legion are wandering through tunnels with technology even Brainiac-5 can't analyze. Umbra's also worried because her shadow powers cut out halfway through the fight.

Mystery for another issue, the bad guys caught up again, with reinforcements. The Legion are still doing better, except for the mysterious Venge. He acted like an aide to the president earlier, but he's strong enough to toss Ultra Boy around, immune to Saturn Girl's telepathy, and all Wildfire can manage is to ruin his suit. Quantum's able to slow his 'personal time field,' and the Legionnaires make their second strategic withdrawal of the issue.

Into a sewer tunnel. A sewer tunnel that serves as outflow for a major reactor. Kind of sad that even in the 31st Century they're still using polluting energy sources. But at least the administration recycles, because the outflow tunnel is also where they dump bodies. Like. . . President McCauley. So, who's hanging out with Mon-El? I'll give you a hint, he's a villain from the 20th Century with strong facial hair game. (I do not, however, remember off the top of my head who Venge is.)

The team seems caught between a lot of gallons of ultratoxic coolant water and a long fall without flight rings - although between Ultra Boy, Wildfire and Chameleon, shouldn't they have enough fliers to carry the rest? - but it seems not all the Legion have retired.

[6th longbox, 140th comic. The Legion #2, by Dan Abnett (writer), Andy Lanning (writer/inker), Oliver Coipel (penciler), Tom McCraw (colorist), Comicraft (letterer)]