The Legion #17 - Abnett & Lanning try to handle loose plot threads! (Part 1)

Released February 26, 2003
DC Comics, Color
23 Pages

Revival of the Fittest Part One

Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning - Writers
Alejandro Barrionuevo - Pencils
Lanning - Inks
Jason Wright - Colors
Comicraft - Letters
Stephen Wacker - Editor

Synopsis

This issue starts with a cold open of M'Onel and Shvaughn Erin visiting a prisoner in an as yet unspecified location to meet Ra's al Ghul, who has used the last thousand years to amass a legal army that was apparently able to force the bureaucracy to pull Ra's out of the stasis chamber he was in at the end of Legion # .  Ra's hand, previously sliced off by Gates, has apparently grown back.  He is confident that he will be released given that his rights are being violated from being held without trial.  He's also concerned about his clones. M'Onel asks Ra's for help for a situation.

A few hours earlier on "The Murdered World of Xanthu" XS and Star Boy are discussing the impending revival of the world while Thom pines for Nura and the Terrorforms hover in the distance - he feels that since they spent so much time there dealing with Robotica, she'd want to be there to help it back.  The two discuss for a bit until Insect Queen and Atmos deliver some assignments and XS rushes off to meet with Kid Quantum and Sensor. Via M'Onel's voiceover, he tells Ra's that the Terrorforms turned 1/5 of the population of Earth into seed pods and have been hanging around useless since the Robotican crisis resolved. Brainy's idea is to take the seeds and Terrorforms to Xanthu and have the Terrorforms release their energy to restore the seeds back to human form coordinated by Kinetix.  

Then things all went sideways.  The energy release reactivated a dormant Robotica drone that was missed by the bomb squad, which follows its programming and starts killing the revived humans. Star Boy goes on the attack but Thom seizes up in a strange purple energy leaving Sensor to deal with the threat. She starts whipping the drone with her tail, disabling the drone, but a stray shot hits a terrorform, releasing an explosion of Hypertaxis energy that takes out Sensor and Kinetix. Having been taken to Legion World, Kinetix is fine, but Sensor is dying.  M'Onel wants Ra's to help save Sensor in exchange for a change in Ra's conditions.  Ra's offers to help but needs to see her in person, as he has the genetic and Hypertaxis knowledge to save her. 

Back on Legion World, Sensor is in bad shape genetically.  A worried Cham looks on as Brainy, Lyle and Dr. Gym'll try to help. Some kind of sheath has wrapped itself around Sensor. Tinya with Cub comes to check in on Sensor and Cham talks himself into the fact that they will save Sensor. The reminder of Cub's need for medical attention makes Tinya run from the situation through the station just to find Jo and Imra in a friendly embrace as Imra departs for Titan and draws all the wrong conclusions, as Imra tried to ring Tinya before leaving. Tinya phases out before they see her. 

On the Command deck, RJ addresses the assembled Legionnaires about his envoy status to the Kwai galaxy when Triad interrupts to tell the group that M'Onel is bringing a manacled Ra's aboard. M'Onel, Shvaughn and Ra's arrive with a bunch of other SPs and they zip through the transit tunnels in the artificial satellite aboard a floating barge.  Ra's bites down on his lip and spits some kind of red substance on a nearby SP guard throwing everything into chaos to initiate his escape attempt. He knocks Erin off the transport barge and is rescued by M'Onel as the emergency sirens blare. Ra's' barge goes out of control and slams against the tunnel wall in a fireball. 

Commentary

First of what looks like a two parter.  So it looks as if we're finally handling the Terrorform situation.  I'm not a big fan of the whole concept at all, nor with the use of Ra's, so I'm going to hold my nose and plunge in here.  

Outside of the core concept of the plot being savagely ridiculous, the story moves along pretty well.  We get some good reprise of the Thom/Jenni interplay from Worlds as they try to heal Xanthu via the Terrorforms.  Decent enough concept to help deal with the dangling plot thread of the people seeds and the Terrorforms, but it still seems to me that Robotica could have fixed the place up again as they did Earth.  Also it seems to me that Sensor is a bad choice for a team member here and only seems to be around in order for DnA to Do Something To Her(TM). One needs to plan for bad contingencies therefore needs to have a power player around.  Sensor doesn't fit that bill. Once the background narrative is done and things start to go wrong, the issue starts to pick up steam with the jeopardy to Sensor and the threat that Ra's presents and provides. Some good interplay between the characters here.  I really like the Shvaughn/M'Onel interplay since Legion Worlds.  DnA has a good chemistry going there.  But I really don't know where they're going with Thom/Nura, so some of these little character moments end up spinning some plot wheels that go nowhere.  We also get more of the Tinya/Jo mess that doesn't help the book. The cliffhanger of Ra's being incinerated in a fireball provides to be rather effective given Ra's penchant for coming back from the dead, however the ending is dulled by the preview image for the next issue showing M'Onel and Ra's fighting (one would assume they are one of the clones being stored).

Barrionuevo's art is a nice change from what we had before, but its not at the level of Coipel by the end of his Legion run.  I don't know if I've been as happy with the art generally since McCraw left the Legion.  

Hmmm.  So mass genocide attempts can be staved off via legal injunctions in the 31st?  Okay. THAT's a bit ridiculous given what he did and, like Hypertaxis in general, a rather horrible background point on which to hang an entire plot. 

So did the hypertaxis energy only transform Humans?  I guess that makes sense, but I'm assuming 1/5 of the population of Earth is not just human in the 31st century. 

The sequence with Cham fascinates me, as DnA seems to be falling into the same mode as the prior writers around Sensor and Spark.  Cham always seems to spend a lot more concern around Sensor than he does Spark.  Again, this is something which I'd expect the writers to follow up on since they referenced a possible Cham/Ayla relationship in LW2, but its been over a year since that point and we've seen maybe two or three panels that hint at it.  Its a nice callout to the relationship Cham and Sensor had in the prior run regardless. 

I found the whole jargony procedural of Ra's coming through the threshold was unnecessary.  It could have been page space for story.  I know that's DnA's thing for background dressing, but it seemed to me to be unnecessary and we could have inferred that they were taking precautions - not that it would have mattered anyway.  

Ra's apparently knows a ton about the makeup of Legion World despite having been held captive.  That's very interesting in and of itself and implies that he has spies in and around Legion World itself.  This could be a really interesting plot thread. 

I never took Shvaughn as being religious, but her explanation at the end makes me assume she was raised a nice Irish Catholic girl.  

Holy crap - there were a LOT of apostrophes in this issue:  Ra's al Ghul, M'Onel and Gym'll in addition to the possessives!  And we still have one more issue of this!!! 

Overall Grade: B-.  Decent art and a story that starts to move halfway through is saddled by the underpinnings of the plot.