The Legion #13 - Review!

 

Released October 23, 2002
DC Comics, Color
23 Pages

Meanwhile...

Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning - Writers
Kev Walker - Art
Jason Wright - Colors
Comicraft - Letters
Mike McAvennie - Editor

Synopsis

Brainiac 5 and Computo continue their parley. We get another recap of Computo's history, with the callout to LSH 98-100.  A history that conveniently omits the part about him trying to murder Triad.  

On Legion World, Jazmin gives the order to attack.  Triad orders Chuck to open fire. Warworld appears in orbit next to Legion World. Star Boy keeps everything light so as to not interfere with Earths' gravity.  RJ and Brin have a nice discussion where RJ offers Brin Legion membership.  

Computo tells his story after the LSH 100 - he was apparently restarted during the Imperiex war and afterwards drifted for a thousand years at the edge of what would be UP space.  

Our next "meanwhile" moment has us visiting our friends in Credo.  They are facing off with a creature called a Psiclone, who easily takes out the initial Credo toadies until Singularity shows up.  The Psiclone's society is sheltering Progeny and is therefore the enemy of Credo.  Singularity takes him out with little problem. 

Back to Earth, we're still going down the Computo history lession and we learn about the Great Shutdown of the 25th century and the Metallo virus making all sentient machines shut down so a cure could be found. But no one looked for a cure.  And that is why Computo created Robotica.

Switch to Colu - two Coluans died trying to compute the Earth shield weaknesses.  Orn Fex reiterates the exposition that Sharn must inject some code to kill the Robotica/Computo AI.  The exposition shows that the Coluans were responsible for the aforementioned Metallo virus.  

Back to Metropolis, Shvaughn and Kinetix sneak around avoiding Robotican patrols as well as techno-terrorforms. Kinetix explains that because humanity is no longer the prime species on the planet, the Terrorforms are aligning their evolution to the new one.  Kinetix is as well in a creepy shot.  

Back to Brainy and Computo - Computo expounds that he created Robotica from rejected technology and he views himself as some sort of savior. He attacks Brainy.

On LW, the attack continues, but no progress seems to be made.  In fact, the fleet comes under fire from the planet.  Legion World gets hit, then boarded by robotic terrorforms.  In the Titanet node, Imra calls to tell the bridge they are under attack and are shortly attacked by a mecha.  

Kid Quantum is eager to attack but is losing hope.  

Computo whinges that technology is just disposed of easily and suggests that this is a revolution of technology. Brainy posits that organics are afraid of the tech because they do certain things better to eventually replace organics. Computo is trying to make techs as equals to organics.  Brainy finally answers that Computo is his son.  

Commentary

The streamlined efficiency of the prior two Robotica issues ends with this issue.  This issue, which chronicles the attack on the Earth, has a metric ton of exposition and it kind of stops the story momentum dead in its tracks to explain everything.  We jump to so many different locations and hear so much explanation for every detail, the book became a chore to read.  I guess some of this was necessary, but most of the explanation is a history lesson that is designed to justify Computo being an angry adolescent who wants his daddy. He creates the island of misfit toys then wants to exact revenge.  Or something.  Then we even go to the Kwai galaxy as we need to know what's going on with Credo for some reason.  I'm really surprised that they didn't really bring up the fact that Computo almost killed Triad.  There are important story beats through these items, but the flow is all over the place, which I guess is to be expected by a book named "Meanwhile".  I was very reminded of the V'Ger story from Star Trek The Motion Picture, but this wasn't as interesting.

We have yet another guest artist.  The art here is not as good as we've been getting used to with Coipel.   

The RJ/Brin scene was nice.  I enjoyed it a lot, from Brin's complete lack of recognition of Brande to RJ recognizing what Brin did to take care of Tinya.  Fun little turnaround with RJ using the Think Fast tagline, but it kind of didn't work.

Was the Imperiex War a thing in the DCU?  I don't remember if that's real or not, but there is no editor call out on it.  

Kinetix's thought bubbles are different from before.  The evolved terrorforms are creepy as hell.  Kinetix's transformation was FAST.  

So Gates says they are being boarded, then Imra calls to say the same thing.  That could have been much tighter, story-wise.

Also note - this is the last issue where Mike McAvennie has solo editor credit, as he gets fired from DC around this time.  He then went to ply his amazing storytelling and editing talents to the WWE.

Overall Grade - C+.  Too much exposition stops the story dead and not much really happens.  Art was substandard.