The Legion #4 Review!

 

Released January 30, 2002
DC Comics, Color
23 Pages

Moon Rise

Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning - Writers
Oliver Coipel - Pencils
Andy Lanning - Inks
Tom McCraw - Colors
Comicraft - Letters
Mike McAvennie - Editor

Synopsis

Issue 4 begins with Darren the orderly walking into the Earthgov Footstep Drive facility (Not UP, which I find interesting). He walks down a long corridor lined with cells labeled in Interlac and Arabic letters bearing a world name and a number.  He ominously tells them that it will be the last day working.  We finally meet Gates, apparently held captive for the last year as a test subject. Darren prepares to kill Gates when the power goes out. Gates toys with Darren for a bit before popping out of a portal and clocking him, stealing his keycard. Gates pops out to find the Legion in the corridor: Leviathan (Violet), Triad and Brainy. 

Ra's is overseeing the lunar terraforming platform when informed about the Footstep lab issue as he and Venge activate the engine.  Ra's is pleased that another of his plans is underway, the most ambitious yet in only the way a plan of the Demon's Head can be. He changes back into the McCauley form and is told that they have found the location of Legion World so that Venge and the fleet may attack it.  M'Onel will be left for Ra's himself.

We swotch over to see the breakout at the Footstep facility; Cosmic Boy has joined them and Large Vi is apprently ripping the doors off. Brainiac 5 breaks down how they found him as guards attack: They opened up the drive and found Vyrgans "wired" into the drive core.  McCauley's team used Gates as a DNA source to track the teleporting gene and used it to find potential teleporters, kidnapped them and killed the rest.  Since there were so few Vyrgans, they also used Winathians and Carggites.  This story unfolds as the rest of the Legion: Cham, Ultra Boy, Kid Quantum and Shikari, kicks the butts of the lab guards.  Gates is carried away by Briany on his back.  Triad lays it down that they're going after "McCauley" once they've cleaned up the lab.

Interlude 1 - in the Kwai galaxy, the away team approaches the electrical anomaly. They discover tromium crystals,but no Garth, crushing Imra's and Ayla's hopes.  They are suddenly attacked by what appear to be Kwai warriors.

Back with M'Onel, Ra's confronts him and they each know the other; Ra's knows M'onel is Valor. Ra's teases that they are similar in that they both were seeders of potential. Ra's makes the offer for M'Onel to join him.  Ra's shoots M'Onel with a revolver but only bruises him. Apparently the Red Sun light takes time to affect a Daxamite to that degree.  

We shift to Zoe and Cill on patrol.  They debate the terraforming efforts and Zoe's history as a Legionnaire. Apparently Zoe doesn't watch the news feeds... But its too late to argue as some kind of tremor hits and they are lost in lights. 

Interlude 2 - We witness the rape of Xanthu, but thankfully XS and Star Boy are still kicking, combining their powers to stay alive against the Roboticans (one assumes that this force combo is how they got out of the cliffhanger from LW4).

Back on Legion World, Umbra has changed out of her Legion costume into something skimpier, apparently more native to her world, since she's lost her powers, and ruminates about it with Sensor and Brande when the Earthgov fleet appears.  

Then, in a sequence of frames across the next three pages, Venge orders the fleet to attack Legion World, the Footstep liberation team is smack against a squad of SP forces, Ra's shoots M'Onel doing significant damage, and Legion World is caught in an explosion.

Commentary

Super solid issue here.  Great pacing and pulling together of many plot threads laid out since LW1 - The Footstep drive, the disappearances on Cargg, the Vyrgan pandemic, even Valor - in a way that did not seem too ham-handed to me. The role of Ra's in the whole thing is pretty clear, but I do have some questions, which I'll get to below.  I think it definintely became apparent after issue 3, but definitely with issue 4 DnA have come into their own here as Legion writers.  Everyone has some kind of role to play here.  Coipel's art did the trick - decent, not as good as the prior issue, but good on certain panels, not on others (the background guy on page 10 looked like a rag doll when viewing using guided view on digital).  Very minor nitpicks, but I hope interesting discussion topics.  

I liked the way the opening sequence with Gates was laid out.  There was no way Darren was making it out conscious!  :) The Ra's sequence was also well done.  Lots of good foreshadowing going on there.  I may not like the fact that they are using Ra's here, but he's definitely acting like Ra's.  

Vi is big again?  Good lord.  I get that she'd use the big size to rip the doors off, but Cos is there too, right?  

The use of Vyrgans as the engine of the Footstep drive is chilling.  Also used to tie in the disappearances on Cargg with the Vyrgan cover story introduced in LW1.  Not sure about the Winathians tho - I guess the fact they make twins makes it easier for them to breed?  I get the Carggite connection, but the Winath one seemed to be a stretch.

Nice moment with Brainy carrying Gates and his explanation for disappearing, as it calls back to the pre-DnA days.  I am left wondering if we get all the details about the McCauley assassination - when did Ra's take over and how?  Interesting that the Blight swings in and all this happens, which intimates that Ra's murdered McCauley sometime before the Blight hits - maybe during the Blight, and had this idea in mind for the Footstep drive almost immediately.  

The Ra's M'Onel confrontation was well done, and makes the appropriate call out to Wonder Woman and Batman, but to me it reminds me of how out of place he seems in a future setting. I like the take that it takes time under a red starlight for M'Onel to lose his powers.  It doesn't seem to be very DCU canon, but it works here.

I'm gonna keep my comments on Zoe short, but I have a feeling that Cill's comments are basically Dan/Andy/Mike's opinions on the character.  The rest of my comments on the subject don't belong in a review.

The Xanthu interlude was fascinating to me, especially with the Close Encounters worldship in the background.  Nice neat way of showing how Thom and Jenni have stayed alive for the last several days.   

DnA/Coipel sure do like going for the sexy don't they?  Again, not too much of a big deal here, and Tasmia's costume calls back to the Grell design, and Tasmia herself seems a bit tempered here.    

Grade - Solid A.  Any nitpicks I have here are relatively minor.  A lot was packed into 22 pages and it didn't drag.  I found myself enjoying this issue readthrough more than any other so far since LW3.