Legion Lost #10 review

The Legion Lost team get back to the future, but it's a future too far. A time bubble liberated from their enemy, Harvest, takes the heroes a few years beyond 3012, where they find ... no one. A catastrophe has devastated the Earth and the populace is nowhere to be seen.

Legion Clubhouse provides no clues, so the heroes decide to go back just a few years, to their own time, where the rest of the Legion can help avert disaster. Some hope - the time bubble shoots them directly back to 2012, where a strikeforce answering to Homeland Security, the Metamericans, is waiting for them.

Harvest is an interesting villain - when he's not on the page. In person, he's a corny megalamaniac, but as a backstage presence, he's rather effective. He's seemingly manipulating the Legionnaires throughout this issue, and may even have some hold over Chameleon Girl. She certainly knows more about him than she's telling, and other members are starting to notice. Leader Tyroc, though, is too busy freaking out internally over a grave he saw in his boyhood, and its connection to some prophecy or other, to demand explanation.

While there are disagreements, writer Tom DeFalco steers clear of heavy-handed fallings out. Even the biggest moment of intra-team tension has a point to it. Recent signing DeFalco is getting better at capturing the members' voices, while bringing the skill for plotting he honed at Marvel. The new antagonists here don't grab me immediately - just how many secret factions connected to Steve Trevor does the US Army have? - but we've not seen the box-ticking Trip (White Guy), Wideload (Big Black Guy) and Gunner (Girl, Probably Gay) in action yet. I suspect I'm just an old fanboy who can't get excited unless superhumans wear colourful costumes.
They do look drab though, don't they?

Drab, but very well-drawn, Pete Woods really is a force for good on this title, making every scene inviting to look at. It's a treat seeing him tackle the 31st century, even if it is a grubbier iteration than we're used to. And his Legionnaires have plenty of heroic character. Then there's the way he moves people around panels, in this case Chameleon Girl and Timber Wolf.
Brad Anderson's colours work in tandem with the softness of Wood's art to give this book a uniquely attractive look among the DC line.

Legion Lost #10 is the best issue in months, thanks in large part to the end of the truly awful Culling storyline. While Harvest's influence is still felt, the Legion are once more the stars of their own book, and with luck they'll quickly kick his arse to Takron-Galtos. The only disappointment is the ending, which aims for high drama but elicits merely a smile - I see no reason to worry. DeFalco and Woods have me convinced that this is a Legion team who can handle anything. 

Comments

  1. "Harvest is an interesting villain - when he's not on the page." Well said.

    I'm a little sick of all these Legionnaires having secrets from each other, though -- I hope we'll be getting a little sharing in the near future.

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    1. Ditto - the team should be open with one another, and keep secrets from the villains.

      I'm OK with the occasional Traitor Within The Legion Lad or Lass, mind.

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  2. 'Trip'
    'Wideload'
    'Gunner'
    dear, dear and here's me trying not to be embarrassed about still reading comics at my age [er, whatever age that is, cant remember right now]. DeFalco certainly likes his corny code-names, dosent he. I cant help but feel he is injecting some soft irony into his plot with these characters, not that the book isnt reverentially self-ironic in itself; we thankfully have the end of the Culling and the boring Alastor virus and we're quickly plunged with indelicate haste and not some keen sense of urgency in order to save this book into some time-travel-gone-tits-up-dystopian-future that even the X-Men when they were being ravaged by Millar wouldnt have hesitated to cock a snoop at.
    Yet so far...it works. The plot has already caught hold and taken root and the Lost LSHers are slowly fracturing under the weight of being Lost so long. DeFalco does fine-tune his arguing heroes into a cohesive whole that can work really well. His time working for Marvel hasnt been wasted , using his marked characterizations as a way of advancing/explaining plot points as he goes along. With him as this books writer, it could actually survive the next round of DC cancellations; lets hope so.
    But Pete Woods - sorry. The horrors of THAT Wonder Woman mini-series [the one which must never be named, lest we all become Medusa-like monoliths red with shame] have left me with bad memories of his art. I cannot picture anything he does anymore without recalling THAT horror!

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    1. Aaaargh, Karl, not The Mini-Series That Shall Not Be Named, Urk.

      I'm glad you're enjoying this too. Join me in my campaign to bring back DeFalco's greatest creation, the Human Cannonball?

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    2. doe you guys mean the amazons attack mini, if so rest assured that story is gone along with cry for justice and the rise of arsenal

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    3. Yeah, but look at the Amazons we have now, they're like that all the time!

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    4. true but who knows we may get a good explanation or a new writer soon, depending on azzreallo's super story not being a hundred issues

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