Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Legion Lost #8

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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.