Legion Lost #8 - She's Got A Secret

[perletwo]

So Legion Lost #8 came out this week, and it's all about sucking the Losties into this big The Culling crossover plot with Teen Titans and Superboy. To that end, Rose Wilson & the Ravagers ambush the Losties at the behest of somebody named Harvest, who, according to telepathic Tellus, scares them.

But that's not what we're going to be discussing in the 2 and a half pages I'm posting here. No, that's Chameleon Girl, how the Ravagers get the drop on her, and what we learn from her musings.





So there's a larger agenda at work here than the hypertaxis virus? That's good, because they blew that one big time. There's a reason the Durlans are big with the Legion Espionage Squad, and it's not all about the shape-changing. They seem to have a natural bent toward the cloak and dagger stuff, the few that leave Durla for the wider 'verse anyways.



Now that is some news to me. When last we saw Colossal Boy in the Legion title, he was working with the Science Police, spending time with his parents, and actively mourning Yera.



The question here is, whose orders? The Legion's leadership was in a bit of a state of flux when the team was sent on the time-travel mission, and the organization somewhat in disarray thanks to the one-two punch of the Justice League of Earth's gestapo imprisonment and pursuit of the team followed up with the Legion of 3 Worlds epic battle.


Incidentally, Rose herself goes up against Timber Wolf, and it's an interesting matchup.

If there's interest in it, I'm thinking of doing a History of Chameleon Girl post in a couple days. It's beginning to look like Yera is going to get a spotlight in this series, so it might not be a bad idea to do a primer.

Comments

[darkknightjrk]

It didn't really register when I read that, but that is awfully interesting. Hopefully we'll get more of what's going on here when The Culling is over.

As for your Chameleon Girl post--I'll never say no to more Legion posts--they're definitely a group that I find interesting, but I haven't read a whole lot to really consider myself a hardcore fan.

[blueprintstyles]

This is the first issue I've red of this series and now I want to read more. Dammit I need to save some money!

[thatnickguy]

Just so I'm not going insane, I'm not the only one seeing what I'm seeing in the bottom left of that second scan, right?

[junipepper]

I... words fail me.







It's never just you! :-)

[icon_uk]

Oh thank God, it's not just me...

[perletwo]

See, this is why I felt safe in staying on-message and not pointing that out. I knew I could count on you guys! - also, note she goes straight from there into the hentai tentacles. Gim has a certain effect on Yera, apparently.

I did consider using the "inna nertz" tag, but that takes it into an even weirder, ahh, area....

[joasakura]

...OH GOD.

well, not now you're not.

[lascoden]

No. No you are not...

[grimmbear]

Her shifting is more fluid now it appears. She can't seem to keep one form for long but now has a fluidity that allows her to mix and match limbs and species. and that is a tail like a scorpion.

[thatnickguy]

1) It's flesh coloured.
2) It's coming out of her crotch.
3) Even though there are three of them, there's ridges.
4) And to top it all off, a mushroom-shaped tip.

Anything I'm missing?

[grimmbear]

Girl please I have seen enough of those up close to know one when I see it. I was just pointing out it's actually a tail not Man's best friend.

[grimmbear]

Actually Now that I'm looking harder at it it's her leg not a tail.

[perletwo]

*peers* No, I'm pretty sure there's at least four limbs there - a thick leg or arm on her left, a thin pincer on the left, a more-or-less human-thickness leg on the right, and a hand is visible behind and above that.

So it's gotta be a tail. A jointed tail. With a remarkably...phallic...end. That is slamming into her (estranged?) husband's groin. Paging Dr. Freud!

[thatnickguy]

*looks at his nickname*
*looks down his pants*

Girl?

Besides, I realize it's SUPPOSED to be a tail. I get that. Scorpion tail. Crab arms, yadda yadda. It doesn't stop the implied comparison.

[perletwo]

The point about her fluidity is interesting. It shows most clearly when he punches her and her jaw sort of melts under it; the style does match how Pete Woods drew her shifting attempts last issue. Since this is supposed to be probably less than an hour after that, I assume shifting hurts, but being in a combat situation she's just pushing through.

[icon_uk]

Sometimes a tail is just a tail....


this is not one of those times...

[kamino_neko]

Yeeeeah. I'm....pretty sure that's her leg, but...ah, yeah. Took me a few moments of looking at it to wipe that image from my mind, and a few more to figure out just what it was.

[glprime]

Not keeping up with this, I only just noticed in these scans her antennae are now bent down and fused into her head. YEESH.

[perletwo]

Yeah, that bugged. Two possibilities: 1) her recent injuries make it difficult for her to maintain her proper shape; or 2) guest artist Aaron Kuder didn't get the memo, or the character style sheet.

Since Tellus is basically one big yellow blob in all his pages, I'm voting for 2. *shrug*

[arbre_rieur]

3) She's a shapeshifter, so she can look like whatever she wants?

[perletwo]

There is that - those of us who're fans of the Giffen-era version of the character were glad to see she was back to being bald and wee-antennae'd when this title started, because the hair she adopted during the Xenophobic-Earth JLE storyline was just weird on her.

But not all that long ago, in the 'death of R.J. Brande' storyline, they made a point of establishing that Brande had a geneticist design a United Planets-friendly 'default' body type for Durlans, the orange pointy-eared antennae'd biped look, as part of his campaign to bring Durla out of the Dark Ages. (I'm not clear on how he imposed this on Durlans at large, but it seems to have taken, since all the several Durlans we've seen since the last reboot conform to it.) Granted, Yera was established last issue as having injuries that make shifting painful for her right now, but she should still default to type.

[cleome45]

Honestly, about the only thing I like here is bald Yera. :(

[kamino_neko]

4) Her default form has been altered by the Hypertaxis virus, even after she was pulled out of Rdrayyj.

[icon_uk]

Tellus appears to be floating in the lotus position, well as close to it as a Hydrakian can manage. Though as you note, I don't think that a Hydrakian is built for that, their hindlimbs are much to short for starters, and I definitely don't think he can fold his forelimbs.

[eyz]

This is a pretty looking book, will pick this up in TPB for sure^^

[cleome45]

Really, really don't care for this art. (Frankly, I was too busy feeling like everyone's face is creepily overrendered to care much about whose tentacle was going where.)

Also, is it time to declare that the Big Two wrecking long-time marriages/romantic relationships in comics (because they just plain don't want them mucking with the supposed innate fanboy need for eternal swinging bachelorhood) is officially A Thing?

I mean, I could live with it, but as with Mon-El/Tasmia, it seems like there's either no explanation or the explanation is bullshit.

[perletwo]

Agreed on the art - Gim is bordering on wossname Franks Scary Rape Eyes territory; see above for complaints about antenna free Yera and blobby indistinct Tellus. (Strangely, on Timber Wolf it kinda works.)

Yeah, breaking up couples seems to be A Reboot Thing. At least with Mon I could handwave it that he subconsciously remembered loving Billie Harpera pre-Zone. But as of the last time we saw them together the anti alien Earth plots had Gim & Yera even closer, not pulling apart.

[cleome45]

[sigh] Yeah. Agreed.

A fan on another board mentioned that breakup-o-rama would be somewhat easier to swallow if it were actually, oh, integrated and developed over the course of the story. But even with that in mind, it seems obnoxious and lazy to just sunder couples right and left, as if there weren't already plenty of single/unattached Legion characters-- both new and not so new.

[perletwo]

Yeah, there's also Cosmic Boy and Night Girl, who were barely visible as a couple, yet were split up when the reboot hit ("I gave up my personal life you you two can have yours" - Cos to Lightning Lad & Saturn Girl, WTF? personal lives are not a zero-sum game!). And breaking up Mon and Shady to put Shady with Earth-Man? There are other non-Earthy aliens on the team who would've made the point just as well as putting him with the blue girl.

*sigh* At least Bouncing Boy and Duplicate Damsel are still happy-marrieds. And I just jinxed them, didn't I?

[cleome45]

I guess I'd hoped that Rokk's outburst about the breakup was more about him being, well... kind of a dick under stress. He wasn't necessarily right to blame his friends for what went wrong.

Also, at least Lydda didn't go rushing straight into the arms of some other dude. We actually got to see her doing some cool stuff at the Academy, even if she was still angry at her ex.

If they break up Chuck and Luornu I will seriously punch something. >: Shhh...

[perletwo]

I know it's probably just because Phil Jiminez liked drawing her that way - he strikes me as a Classic Legion kind of guy - but I kinda like to think in the recent Legion Academy arc, Lydda went back to the funny bouffant hairdo "Mom hated" as a wee passive-aggressive slap at Rokk. :D

[cleome45]

:D

(I like everything about that get-up except the creepy/weird cleavage-beak.)

[icon_uk]

I particularly dislike the Lydda/Rokk breakup, they were cute together.

[jaybee3]

The Shady/Earth Man deal was the biggest WTF of them all and its not like that pairing had ANY fans since Earth Man was maybe the most hated Legionnaire in recent memory (and its not like Levitz did anything real development with him except killing him off as if we were supposed to see that as atonement for torturing Sun Boy, putting Mon back in the Phantom Zone,etc.). I remember a lot of Legion readers on the internet were querying whether Shady was just using Earth Man or she had some ulterior motive (especially given her off-panel split with Mon and very quick hook-up with a guy who was known to be a xenophobe and had sent Mon back to the PZ) but no, he dies and it turns out her feelings were real and deep - something we never saw reason for on-panel.

[cleome45]

Gah, yes. HATED all that. Could've also done without how it led some fans to seriously indulge in misogynist bullshit about how she was a "skank" and what not.

[silicondream]

I'm just amused that "Legion Lost" is actually considered a title worth reusing. (Not that the original Legion Lost wasn't awesome, 'cuz it was, but what were the readership numbers on it again?