The Legion #22 - Kari and Jeka's Bogus Journey

Released July 30, 2003
DC Comics, Color
22 Pages

Dream Crime Part Four

Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning - Writers
Chris Batista - Pencils
Mark Farmer - Inks
Jason Wright - Colors
Stephen Wacker - Editor

Synopsis

Issue 22's background roll gets us up to speed and features Karate Kid, Ferro, Shikari and Sensor before diving right into the story with Universo himself. Universo is becoming a control addict. What started as a means to escape and take over the UP is growing into the need to control more.  He has Saturn Girl and Dreamer hostage in some kind of telepathy chairs. The rest of the Legion is coming through the portals to Titan and be in person with Universo. 

Shikari and Sensor float through the warp space, Sensor lost and flailing when Shikari comes to her rescue. They fall out of the portal on Steeple and collapse on the ground to be found by a mysterious figure.  

On Titan,  Universo dialogs how he used the threat of Darkseid to disguise his own threat via Dreamer. Saturn Girl starts to resist Universo's influence. He muses about her threat to him and how she was elevated while he was locked away as a child. The construction of Titanet was the way out for Universo, enabling him to find a way out of his prison due to the sheer concentration of telepathic power and his ability to tap it.  

Shikari and Sensor wake up on Steeple with Val and Andy.  Sensor recognizes them immediately, but they have not seen the new Sensor, nor Shikari, so are very confused. Sensor projects an image of her old form to remind them. Jeka gives a quick recap of who made it home from Legion Lost, then tells the news of Universo.  Val and Kari bond a bit and go to reset the Threshold portal that Brainy had sent to them. Andy summarizes his Legion World issue to Jeka and explains why he's not lying on a slab; the priests healed Andy, but he's now stuck being metal permanently. The priests have created some kind of circlet, based on Andy's design, to wear that blocks against mental attacks and hands one over to Ferro.  The four Legionnaires threshold to Titan.  

They appear wearing the circlets around their necks in the Titanet control room to find Universo with the rest of the Legionnaires hovering around the central power outlet. Universo sics his controlled Legionnares on the newcomers; Vi grows, Lyle goes invisible, Jo moves to attack, all three seeing the new arrivals as Apokalyptians. Sensor throws Ferro at Violet's gut, taking her down, then takes down Kinetix, Shikari knocks out Invisible Kid, Val handles Jo before the rest of the Legion swarms in.  Ferro is immune to Wildfire's attack, and Val faces off against Tri-jistu Triad. In the end, M'Onel takes out Sensor, Apparition takes down Karate Kid, and Spark zaps Ferro.  Shikari goes for Universo but he gets the mental upper hand and is shown victorious. 

Commentary

While the art is still an all star hit that really does a great job, the Dream Crime story here takes a bit of a field trip to Steeple so that Kari and Jeka's bogus journey can pick up Andy and Val, which seems to be the main function of this issue.  The one neat thing about the initial Titan sequence is that we discover that Titanet was the way out for Universo. The travel sequence with Kari and Jeka was interestingly laid out, but the call out of reaching out with her arms kind of fell flat to me given that Jeka had already used them to effect earlier.  Then we stop on Steeple for several pages of exposition and plot surprises:

Andy's all metal, all the time, which makes me revisit the whole "why did someone put Andy's helmet back on before healing him" issue.  But hey, at least Andy can design some kind of mind control blocker on the fly and have four of them built in a day. (?)

Jeka does yet another, hopefully the last, overview of Legion Lost for Val and Andy.

Oh, Brainy had somehow sent a threshold way before issue 19 with instructions!  Imagine that!  

It seemed to me that this was a lot of filler that could have been included in four issues if more tightly edited.  This was very likely written with a TPB in mind, and so the gaps needed to get Val and Andy needed to be stretched out a bit more than they needed to.  The whole Brainy/

The action definitely picks back up when the group heads to Titan and the foursome fights their controlled comrades, although it begs the question how they knew to go there when their originally intended destination was Metropolis. 

Other random thoughts:  

Kinetix is controlled by Computo?  Really?  Honestly I even have a challenge with Brainy being controlled. 

Hm...  Titanet seems to be as vulnerable to certain threats as RJ's old stargate system was.  I wonder if the UP will do something about that? Nah....

Good continuity check where Andy needs Jeka to throw him at Violet - Val has his flight ring. 

Grade:  C+.  Great art, but the plot is filler and only is served to grab two characters out of limbo.