No comments on this yet?

I liked the previous issue, except for that expository dialog (which unfortunately, was in the preview) but not this one so much. Dialogue seems off (at least partly because people are calling each other by code names more than they should be) and since this is the lead-in to a crossover it has unknown villains fighting the team for unknown reasons. (DC: Don't make a new writer's second issue be a crossover.)

There's also a bit too much team infighting, but to be fair, that was inherent in the premise of the book; these aren't really core Legion members.

And I didn't care for the retcons about Yera's marriage breaking up or about the trip not being about Alastor (you really think that they wouldn't have told everyone on the team what the reason for the mission is?) And what prophecy? You're going to have a prophecy about an event that happened 1000 years in the past?

The new 'reason' for them to be in the past that isn't Alastor sounds dubious to me, but the writing of the previous issues did make it seem like there was some other agenda going on, so it's not totally out of left field, I guess.

Up here in Cow Hampshire, we don't get comics until Thursday mid-afternoon (they have to be trucked up from civilization, AKA Massachusetts), so I won't be able to comment on it more in-depth until later.

With Yera and Gim, we have the fourth couple broken after Legion Of 3 Worlds.

Lydda-Rokk
Tasmia-Lar
Ayla-Brin

Why DC don't let Geoff Johns continues the good job and let Paul Levitz destroy all the beloved characters of the olf fans?

Without count all the legionnaires out of game :

Saturn Girl
Lightning Lad
Sensor Girl
Matter Eater Lad
Quislet

Replaced for heroes of third category as : Dragonwing, Harmonia, Glorith, Comet Queen.

Why? Why?

I dropped Legion Lost because of Yera and Gim's broken relationship.

I wouldn't count Ayla-Brin. That had already been broken up years earlier and only was back because of a change by Johns in the first place, and it was broken up for another fan-favorite pairing.

And Lydda-Rokk was broken up by Geoff Johns.

So, in a thousand years, relationships haven't changed a bit.
That's encouraging.
:rolleyes:

Superheroes are even worse than the regular people, like police officers?

DOES Levitz need to move on?
Who would DC get?
The LOST writers aren't very popular.
Johns wasn't either.

I don't recall Johns endearing himself with LSH fandom. The Lightning Saga seemed to be more of a vehicle to bring back Kid Flash & Legion of 3 Worlds was used to bring back Kon-el.

Personally I think that Paul Levitz & Keith Giffen as a team writing the Legion is greater than the sum of the parts.

I liked the art in this and Tyroc and Brin butting heads isn't too surprising given Brin's post-Three Worlds treatment and Tyroc's traditional personality. It is a little strange to see everyone defer to Tyroc with Wildfire having been a past leader and having more seniority. I'd like to assume he was handpicked off-panel for the mission to explain this trend.

I'm never a fan of the Spanking New Bad Guys showing up and defeating people who have been fighting for years, but I understand that's the M.O. for new characters. I would have preferred at least a few Legionnaires fighting back and winning. At the end of the day, they were all psychically knocked out to fulfill the plot need so why not a few 'wins' before then?

Gates was saying "ain't" a lot. I thought that was jarring. We've never seen the character speak like that before, though perhaps it's to make him sound more like the 'curmudgeonly, yokel revolutionary.' I should bite my tongue - at least he's alive and getting some use!

A necessary story/issue to get the ball rolling on the Culling, which I'm curious to see what that is really all about. I want to write more positive things because the issue wasn't all that bad, but at the same time there's been so many "just okay" Legion books that it's killing my steam a bit. Nothing has really floored me over since Three Worlds, with the last Legion Annual and Jiminez's initial Academy issues coming closest.

The fact that Beast Boy and Terra showed up at the end of Superboy #8, with Terra stating that "in the Culling everyone's an enemy" leads me to believe it's a death tournament.

It's very frustrating DeFalco (or Fabian, if it was his idea) decided to ruin Gim and Yera's marriage behind the scenes and for no reason at all. What utter BS. I don't regret my decision to quit reading this stupid comic.

I fell into the same trap I fell in regarding Titans.

I was only buying Legion Lost because it was a Legion associate book, and I've been blind to the bad quality. Gates' dialog should've been a gigantic tip-off.

No more.

Well I suppose separated couples could always work things out and come back together again.

What frustrates me is that these have all been passed off as a fait accompli. A story arc unfolding over time that showed the disintegration of one of these iconic relationships would be much more compelling and the dissolution would probably be easier to accept in the long run.

MFC, I think it's time to face it: An awful lot of writers and editors at the Big Two are hung up on the idea that the fantasy of Eternal Swinging Bachelorhood is what sells. To their minds, long-term marriages or relationships are just icky.

:rolleyes: No more Peter/MJ, no more Clark/Lois, etc. They've determined, rightly or wrongly, that "ESB" is what sells and now the phenomenon is going to spread everywhere.

For the record, I agree with you that an actual story, instead of hamfisted, implausible explanations after the fact, would make it all somewhat more bearable.

Darlings, I have been defending Legion Lost since issue 1, but even Auntie Anita must admit that #8 was a steaming pile of poop!!

Anita that's a terrible word.

Steaming.

I think it's more laziness on the part of the writers than any idea that ESB sells. The fact is that unmarried characters are easier to write. I remember when Barry Allen first got married writers complained that it limited what they could do with the character. So naturally they killed Iris Allen off (of course they brought her back eventually, but hey, this is comics, right?)

I've really gotten tired of modern comic book storytelling with major events/crisises at the top of my list of peeves. It used to be that deaths were relatively rare events. With a a story arc named "the Culling" I'd assume that there will be more than one or even two deaths this time around.

Since around 1986 or so (starting with Crisis On Infinite Earths) both DC and Marvel comics have been event-driven (as opposed to plot or character driven). Blame the fans who seem compelled to buy two copies of every "event" comic that comes out.

I've gotten very tired of the writer complaint that they're so limited by couples who stay together.
What's really boring is reading about or watching people who never mature, who never establish any real relationships, married or not.

In all of the Legion years, there've been, what, 3 or 4 marriages of leading characters and the only ones still married are no longer Legionnaires - Imra & Garth and Lu & Chuck.
Val died almost immediately after he and Jeckie married, or that's how it seemed.

Jo and Tinya married in another reality, IIRc, which doesn't count anymore.


Anyway, I loved Gim's looks in LOST this month, even if it wasn't really him.
sigh
If he'd been drawn like that through the years, he'd have been a much more popular character, I think.

Just sayin'.

Yera doesn't seem to have trouble shapeshifting now. Continuity error, or has she been lying about that?

Remember that the two current Legion books are grouped with DC's other teenage character books. (What do they call it...Young Justice?) That's why we're getting more stories featuring young, less experienced Academy students and fewer stories involving established characters with more mature relationships...unless you count bedroom scenes.

The most mature relationship we've seen is Chuck's and Luornu's, and they're pretty much just the parent figures of the Academy students. As heroes, they're has-beens.

[snip]

Okay, I'll bite, Hermit. Why is it somehow easier to write unmarried characters?



Well, I never bought multiple issues of Crisis I, but as I've said before: If I could go back in time and un-buy the whole damn thing, I would.

I mean, portions of it have merit, but in retrospect supporting it (not to mention the horror that was Secret Wars-- ick.) was about the worst of all possible messages I could have sent to the people in charge.

Maybe because there are far fewer cliches for hack writers to fall back on with married characters?

I wonder how many comic book writers are married? Maybe many of the present ones feel they don't have that much personal experience to draw on.

cleome45:

Because courtship = hero's quest = enjoyable root of conflict. Marriage = happily ever after.

Hermit, Chaim, sorry. I have to disagree with you both. There are about ten billion cliches attached to single heroes. I mean, I'm enjoying Mark Waid's Daredevil stuff, and yet a big part of me knows that there's no point in feeling any real interest or any warm fuzzies about the romantic subplot. We all know by now that Matt and the Woman du Jour won't be happy for long. They'll break up, and there's about a 99% chance that she'll be maimed or die horribly at some point. That's pretty much "a thing" with modern-day superheroes. Hell, are ANY of Daredevil's exes still alive?

And I'm not even going to comment about the total lack of maturity indicated by the idea from the people in charge that "happily ever after" is the only way to go in depicting a long-term relationship. They can give us "mature content" that includes graphic violence, ham-fisted political metaphors, and boobs hanging out everywhere. But, no, they can't devote a few panels every couple of issues to a married or long-term couple because... uh, it's too grown-up and ewwww... so totally not fun. Or something.

Bleah. If the Legion creative team is that damn bored with the whole idea of people waking up every day next to the same person, I'd rather see the characters written out of the narrative altogether (like Garth and Imra) than constantly kicked around (and given bizarre, inexplicable or badly explained personality transplants) in the name of "edgy" eternal singledom.

My thing is if Yera and Gim broke up then why did he quit the Legion? The process of detachment had begun. Yes, he surely still had feelings for her, but it doesn't make sense that he would just walk away from his greatest support system and source of his sense of purpose.

cleome45:

I'm not disagreeing with you at all. Good writers don't settle for the trite cliches, and those are the types who are able to make married super-heroes work. But way too many out there are lazy and want to write by-the-numbers.

Actually, I completely agree with you on all points. In fact, the point I was trying to make is that single characters are easier to write because of the wealth of cliches available to writers whose emphasis is on big events rather than traditional story elements such as plot and characterization. The fact is that well-written comics featuring married characters do exist (see Animal Man), but that DC and Marvel have been hell-bent on outdoing each other with huge headline-grabbing company-wide world-changing events ever since the 1980s and as long as that kind of stuff sells (and it does, unfortunately) I don't see the trend changing anytime soon.

If Levitz had to be replaced by anyone, I say Chris Roberson.

Star Trek/Legion wasn't award winning, but he's got a clear love of Legion lore. He brought back Kent Shakespeare and Laurel Kent even if he couldn't call her Laurel.

His work on I Zombie is amazing and it's clear he knows how to write gay characters.

If not Chris, then Jeff Lemire. Because he's, he's just great.

I thought the first six issues of Legion Lost were enjoyable and I applauded the special focus on those handful of Legionnaires featured. LL#7 seemed a rough transition issue for the new writer and #8 was just plain disappointing. Historically, the Legion has always faired badly with team-ups, seeming to be always second class heroes and characters even in their own titles (I'm thinking specifically of the JLA and Teen Titans meetings), so I haven't really been looking forward to this "Culling" crossover. While the Legion Lost team didn't get totally schooled (yet) by their 21st century opponents, they of course seemed to get the worst of it. I'm all for our heroes having challenges and adversity, but it's no entertainment to me to view them for multi-issues as someone else's doormat.

The Yera/Gim revelation was an unpleasant surprise. Weren't the two of them all cuddles on a balcony some months back in the Legion title before Lost occured? The switch from the Alastor mission to something more sinister smells of the new writing team simply ignoring the previous Lost storyline premise on a whim.

hey looks like I might be right on this one... see LSH #8

I don't think anyone has talked about the actual issue except for the Yera and Gim's relationship. Which I am bummed about. Violet's Story was my first issue ever.

Anyways! HELLO Aaron Kuder!!! Great art man. He had them looking young but not like little manga brats. Loved the combination of big swooping dynamic action and detail.

This has been my favorite issue so far of the entire series. Good old school action, with lots of info being dropped. The villains were interesting...I thought the Legion would wipe the floor with them. Wildfire, Tyroc and T-Wolf should be able to take almost anybody. But Defalco did great here as well. This issue has turned this series around for me.

With this issue, Lost jumped ahead of LSH in terms of quality IMO. Whereas LSH is dragging, Lost is getting better and better each month. There's a way to go still but it's moved into 'eager to see next issue territory'.

What's so good? I'll tell you:

- killer art, like Jorge says. Aaron Kuder made it exciting! Best Legion art thus far in the new DCnU.

- SUBPLOTS!!! There are a lot of them. And thank goodness! I want something to hold my interest here. Its a very Claremont X-Men approach to have five subplots / secrets referenced in one issue but that's better than the directionless feeling it had before.

- tension! The characters are not seeing eye to eye yet is doesn't feel forced to me; instead it feels very natural.

- the 'new' + using other DC characters. A great combo of both, which takes advantage of the premise of the series while carving his own identity.

This was a solid issue!

And eh, who cares about the Gim / Yera relationship at this point? Yera hasn't been interesting since 1987. Even the Chamelon Girl thing felt lame. Maybe this subplot can rectify that.

It's all pretty horrible. Although I liked John's Action Comics story, I didn't go along with everything he did -- and Legion of 3 Worlds seemed like it was conceived just to bring back Bart and Connor.

The worst thing Levitz did was introduce these bland new characters from the Academy instead of finally giving the 80s Academy members their due. I'd much rather see Nightwind that Harmonia. Paul just isn't bringing anything good to the Legion. I think it's time for Legion Lost to end - and these guys to wind their way back to the future somehow -- even if it means waiting 1,000 years in the Phantom Zone.

Well, to be fair, Matter Eater Lad and Quislet have been out of the game for quite some time and Ayla and Brin's relationship ended decades ago, though there were hints of them being "back" some months ago.

I do agree that the new wave of Legionnaires are third rate though. Except for Glorith who I would love to see more of.

Yera didn't seem to have any trouble at all shapeshifting this time around.

Could it be she's just ignoring the pain since she's in battle, or has she been lying about that too?

And if so, who have her her orders? One of the Legionnaires (maybe Brainiac 5?), or could it be someone else in the UP?

You know, I could see Cham in Yera's role.....hiding a secret more important mission from the rest of the team is something that fits his personality a lot more than hers...and I also think it's a storyline that wouldn't really damage him as a character because he has proven time and time again that he's as trustworthy as any other Legionnaire. So as readers, we know that it must be something altruistic he's doing, and it would make sense for the other Legionnaires to forgive him because of their history with him.

Yera on the other hand was introduced to the team not only lying to them for months, but replacing one of their own members while Vi was being held captive by Micro Lad. Accepted wisdom is that Yera was a dupe in that storyline, so it's more acceptable that she hasn't faced any consequences for it. Now her relationship with Gim has dissolved and she is taking on some secret mission which has to be hidden from her teammates.

Frankly, unless this is written spectacularly well, she easily has the potential to come out of this looking really bad. The last thing the Legion needs is a wannabe Mystique - a shapeshifter who can be their ally but can't really ever be fully trusted...

Oh God... a wannabe Mystique?

And who co-created her? Dave Cockrum. It'd be a mythology gag from hell.

The follow-up to Lost #8 appears in TEEN TITANS ANNUAL #1. It's the beginning of The Culling, and the big bad guy, Harvest, claims he brought the Legion to the 21st century.

Didn't DC just do this thing with a bunch of characters in a big crossover gladiatorial slaught-a-thon last year?

I'm not any more attracted to the idea now than I was then.

Thank goodness for Cobie's post, otherwise I would have thought I was going crazy.

For me, LLOST didn't get GOOD unti issue 7 and issue 8 was also very enjoyable (with the possible exception of Gates' weird new speech patterns).

I'm intrigued by the secret Yera mentions, and as for her and Gim's breakup? LONG overdue. That entire relationship was forced from the get-go and at worst a complete slap in the face to the characters of Gim Allon and Salu Digby. Though I learned to accept it (and even Yera) over time, it never rang "true" to me... just seemed a way to get Gim a galpal. Thank goodness that nonsense is undone!

Homewrecker Lad!

What?!?! A whole thread on LL #8 and absolutely NO mention of Yera growing a gigantic monster PENIS with which to slam "Gim" into the ceiling?

What? You didn't notice?!? Well, whip out your copy and turn to story page 9, panel 4 and look again, bunkies! Then, facepalm and report right back here!

(I mean, REALLY! Bleeding Cool even pointed this out in one of their articles last month! )

So did scans_daily, Lardy.

Yeah, that was kind of weird, but I was so busy being annoyed at the sudden retcon of their relationship that I didn't really care.