Week of 14 September 2011

(SPOILER ALERT: This post contains spoilers. Don't read it before you've read the comics.)

LEGION LOST 1 (2011/11)
"Run From Tomorrow Part One: Present Tense"


ROLL CALL:

Chameleon Girl, Dawnstar, Gates, Tellus, Tyroc, Wildfire

CUTE BOYS: Brin, Troy (lookin' hotter than ever with his new hair and sexy uniform)

The Legionnaires arrive in the present day in Red Lake Falls, Minnesota in pursuit of a bad guy named Alastor, who has brought some kind of unspecified plague into the past. Alastor, apparently some variant of shape-shifter, turns into a monster and threatens the town, until he is stopped by a little girl who reminds him of his dead sister.

With flight rings disabled and transuits malfunctioning, the Legionnaires struggle to repair their damaged time bubble. Tyroc retrieves Alastor and they take him onto the bubble, intending to return to the 31st century. But alas, the time bubble is destroyed. When the smoke clears, Alastor is gone. Gates and Yera are also both missing,m with no trace except "organic residue" falling with the rain. And the Legion is stranded in the past.

This story starts in the middle of things, a technique that litcrit types call in medias res. It can be done well -- witness the Universo Project storyline in LSH 32-35 (1987/03-06) -- but it can also be done sloppily. Only the future will tell, but at this point...it feels sloppy. We'll see.

BITS OF LEGIONNAIRE BUSINESS:

Alastor. There is no previous Legion villain with that name,. However, way back in Adventure 314 (1963/11) they fought a guy named Alaktor, a scientific genius who transferred into Superboy, Mon-El, and Ultra Boy the minds of Nero, Dillinger, and Hitler. That Alaktor bears a bit of resemblance to the new guy, Alastor -- except for the turning-into-a-monster thing. Could it be that the creators meant him to be the same guy, but messed up the name? (Considering that "Akka" turned into "Atta" recently, and the general level of DC copyediting nowadays, it doesn't seem impossible.)

The mix of Legionnaires is interesting. Tellus, of course, has recently been in the 21st century...the pre-Flashpoint 21st century. Will he remember the earlier time? Will they choose to make a big deal out of it?

Three boys, two girls, and two BEMs (Bug-Eyed Monsters, for those of you who aren't longtime science fiction fans). But Brin and Troy are the only "normal-looking" ones -- to one degree or another, Dawny, Gates, Tellus, and Yera are all obvious nonhumans. If this is going to become a "space" book, as scuttlebutt suggests, then alien-looking characters could be an asset.

A character from the Legion's time brings a devastating plague to the present. Haven't we been through this before? When Karate Kid and Single Sis were traipsing around Earth during Countdown, maybe? And that certainly ended well....

Gates and Yera. I don't believe they're dead, not for an instant.

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