Legion of Super-Heroes #15 - Dinos and cavemen and tanks, oh my!

[perletwo]

...almost none of which will I be showing you, in order to keep to the new-issue posting limits. 4 pages.





This is where we open, and while it seems fairly static I include it for three reasons: It's as good a setup as we could ask for; I really love Glorith's magical redecorating job on her quarters; and I have no idea why she is wearing Polar Boy's clothes. /jk In any case she follows the voice through the pink cloud to someplace where a torch-waving horde of medieval peasants is yelling "BURN THE WITCH!!!" Green though Glorith is, she realizes this is Not A Good Sign.

The next morning, Dragonwing and Chemical Kid find Glorith's quarters empty, and hit the panic button, insisting Glorith would never have blown off their shopping date without a word to anyone. Harmonia, surveying Glorith's quarters, agrees it's mysterious but not necessarily an emergency. Mon-El, who's still leader for another day or two, agrees; Cosmic Boy, working the board on light duty while recovering from his injuries, demurs, saying Glorith is the meekest new recruit he can remember in years. He's sure she'd have at least posted her status on the board.

Mon-El is all prepared to pull rank and blow the alarm off, when the SP's make a distress call: Timestorm in Barcelona! The Legionnaires scramble for Spain, where they find dinosaurs, cavemen, the aforementioned medieval peasants and World Wars-era tanks all creating chaos. Brainy takes coordination position, dispatching Mon, Ultra Boy, Dragonwing and Chem Kid to run interference while he and Harmonia search for...







"But will I have to stay shielded all the time?" Brainy theorizes that it's the combination of Glorith and the Barcelona locale that triggered the timestorm, else why bring her there? and so she's fine as long as she stays away from Spain. "...at least until we find out who did this...and why...?"

In the only non-action page of the ish, Chameleon Boy summons Shrinking Violet and Lightning Lass to his quarters to discuss their hunt for the remnants of the Fatal Five (not a euphemism). "You mean the aimless chase?" Ayla interjects. "I'm worried there's a reason that we're failing..." is Cham's last word on the subject. I only mention because it brings us nicely up to the Next Issue tag:

NEXT: VALIDUS!

Comments

[silverhammerman]

I couldn't help but laugh when I saw your linked image of Polar Boy, immediately thought "Missing arm, that was so written by Geoff Johns", and then found that I was absolutely correct. It's like his go to move, it's ridiculous.

[perletwo]

Yep yep. Didn't even happen on-page, either; Supes comes to the future with an away-team to hook up with the on the run remainder of the Legion, and Polar Boy's already armless. It's just Johns' shorthand for "Gee, this future sure has gotten dystopian and gritty, hasn't it?"

[ardat_lili]

And Britta put a blue streak in her hair. Dystopia.

[darkknightjrk]

That is kinda funny, but since that arc was my first real exposure to the Legion, I still have a lot of love for it, especially that badass Polar Boy. :D

[perletwo]

*nods* That and the Lightning Saga in JLA/JSA right before it really gave this version of the Legion a massive jump-start, and we got some really nice costume redesigns out of it too, including Polar Boy's vesty ensemble, Dawnstar's more battle-ready bodysuit, I believe it's when Brainy went from a jumpsuit to flak jacket outfit, Vi went back to the minidress look, really a lot of the classic costumes got streamlined. Then Perez got hold of them for Legion of 3 Worlds and tweaked the new designs even further.

[superfangirl1]

Looks interesting and pretty good.

[perletwo]

Yeah, there's as much frenetic action here as there is in the current Legion Lost issue, but Levitz and Portela pace it a lot better. I had no trouble keeping track of who was where and doing what in this one. And it seems clear now that Dark Forces Are Aligning against the Legion, however slowly.

[darkknightjrk]

See, I disagree--I've felt for a while that Lost has been the more frentic and interesting book, while Legion's been slow, plodding, and kind-of pointless since the beginning of the New 52.

[perletwo]

*nods* I think it's a YMMV thing. Characterization's been more on-target in LOSH though, which goes a long way with me.

I think the art styles on both titles might have something to do with it. Portela's pencils always feel very flat and static to me here, and in Pete Woods' art I have trouble following fight scenes; on both titles I've enjoyed issues where they have guest artists in more than the regulars.

[darkknightjrk]

I could see that--the only characters I've really read a lot of in Lost at this point that I feel like I could tell OOC behavior or not are Dawnstar and Wildfire, and they didn't seem all that far off.

[perletwo]

Well, my feeling is that Lost has kind of reinvented Tyroc and Timber Wolf as new characters for the nU. Tyroc was always kind of a cipher and tragically underused, so no harm done there.

But T-Wolf started out in the Adventure Comics days as Lone Wolf, with social isolation broken only by his devotion to Light Lass hard-coded into his character, and that stayed true right up to the Lightning Saga - amnesiac!Brin was happily running with a Gorilla City clan in Africa until the codeword brought his memory and isolation back, and when they were doing their Russian roulette thing with the lightning rods and saying their last goodbyes, his was something to the effect of "I love you Ayla." Lost's Brin is younger and more social, more outgoing, more recklessly alpha-male, and if I'm reading Zero right he and Ayla never happened. It's a dramatic change; not a bad one necessarily, but a noticeable one.

[darkknightjrk]

Oh yeah, I forgot about #0 and Timber Wolf. That is a big change, though I do get why if they were going to change up someone's origin, it's going to be Timber Wolf and his weird robot twin origin.

[lieut_kettch]

So is that Lionel Messi being pulled from the 21st century or a 31st century Barca fan in a commemorative Messi jersey?

[perletwo]

31st century fan, I believe. Their clothing styles are awfully vintage 21st century though; maybe it's a Spanish thing?

[darkknightjrk]

You know, when I saw the solicit for this, I thought the idea was that a 21st Century city would have found it's way into the 31st, which I think would have been a FAR more interesting story, even if this one included dinosaurs.

[perletwo]

If it helps any, Mon-El does hurl a dinosaur into the ocean at one point, Aquaman/polar bear-style.

Brainy's reaction as the dino goes whizzing by? "He did love all those 21st century sports...*sigh*" Evidently he's under the impression that mammoth-tossing is one of our sports?