The Legion #32 - No-No. Notorious.

Released April 28, 2004

DC Comics, Color
23 Pages

Notorious

Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning - Writers
Chris Batista - Pencils
Chip Wallace & Jay Leisten- Inks
Sno Cone - Colors
Jared K. Fletcher - Letters
Stephen Wacker - Editor

Synopsis

Garth speaks with Gym'll about his current condition, unable to sleep and in crystalline body (and uniform) of Jan Arrah.  Everyone is scared of who he MIGHT become, even himself. He goes for a walk and finds several Legionnaires in the threshold room, with odd readings coming from the portal to the second galaxy.  A tattered and damaged M'Onel bursts through with a Kwai navigator, but they are immediately followed by a team of Credo (remember them?), including one Kwai, who kill M'Onel's navigator and attack the Legionnaires. The fight gets ugly, and Garth zaps a Credo who overpowers Umbra.  The rest of the Credo recognize Garth as the Progenitor and flee back through the portal.  

Recovering, M'Onel gives us the backstory. The rest of the team, Chameleon, Kinetix, Gates, Brande, are all Credo prisoners. The Credo have been growing at an alarming rate and are expanding their crusade.  When Brande tried to reason with Singularity they were taken prisoner.  Now that they've seen "The Progenitor," the Credo will be bent on finding them.  The full Legion minus Garth goes to find their colleagues, with M'Onel in his Valor uniform and Kid Quantum running the show again. They quickly encounter Credo and go to meet Singularity.  The encounter quickly boils down to a negotiation - The Legion gets is team members back in exchange for the Progenitor.  

Back at Legion World, Garth immediately offers to agree to the demands, both to get the hostages back as well as have a chance to convince Singularity about the truth of Jan.  Kid Quantum absolutely refuses to let Garth do this, but Garth leaves anyway.  Vi has an idea.

Garth turns himself in to Singularity, who lied about his conditions of release.  Garth is captured and thrown in with the rest of the prisoners for execution the next day.

Commentary

Very mixed feelings about this issue.  First, we are finally getting in to Garth's headspace in a major way. He doesn't sleep at all, and he's stuck in a foreign body for over a month. So it has a great start which then merges into the Credo fight.  The fight itself was OK and it starts with a bang - M'Onel is trashed and comes out taking everyone by surprise - so much so that Shikari gets distracted and her fellow Kwai gets murdered.  Then we see what's banged up M'on - a bunch of Credos.  Hmmm, well, ok.  Then the fight starts, including a fellow Kwai on the Credo side.  Kari asks about why he's doing this, but all we get from most of these folks is Credo babble.  Having Garth end the fight and reveal himself to the Credo was a good plot point, but then we get into the backstory, where I had some problems.  First, we have two of the most powerful beings in the universe on this team - M'Onel and Hypertaxis Kinetix - and they get easily overpowered?  Maybe there's too much red sun mix in the second galaxy making him more vulnerable?  But typically Credo isn't a hostage taking organization, so I was left wondering why Singularity didn't just kill them outright. They didn't know about Garth when they captured Brande's team.  

I also am not a fan of the Credo as a villain.  For as dangerous as they are shown, they don't jump off the page at me in the way that they are supposed to.  Take the M'Onel fight for example - I just don't see those four or five Credo to be a match for M'Onel.  Between that and their gets-old-quick babble, I just don't see the threat.  

The confrontation with the Legion and Singularity seemed to just be a checkbox in the story to put out the hostage swap offer, as the entire Legion goes to Credo, then right back home again.  Jazmin has a nice speech and they spend a couple of pages talking at each other but nothing really HAPPENS.  Garth, good lad that he is, offers to concede to Credo's demands, is told not go to see Singularity, and leaves to go anyway with no one really trying to stop him.  Nice leadership, Jaz.  I suspect that whatever Vi was telling Cos has something to do with Garth leaving unobstructed. If I had to guess, I'd say that she's on Garth, which would be nice as DnA would have remembered that Vi isn't a one trick pony. After four years.

As they have been for so long, the art team is amazing here and easily the best thing about this issue. I guess its an OK, better than average setup issue, but outside of the art, it left me wanting.

A few other observations:

So as soon as I saw the title - Notorious - the Duran Duran song of the same name started playing in my head.

Gym'll acting as a de facto psychologist is interesting in the context of him calling in a colleague for that function earlier in the reboot, but it was way out of character. And whatever happened to Ryk'rr?

For it being "Halfway through the night cycle" there sure are a lot of Legionnaires up and about!

Brin is training cadets?  Wow, you'd think that would be the role of an older, more established Legionnaire we don't see a lot of like Vi, Star Boy or XS.

I had to chuckle at Superboy not reading the breifing. Shades of Bendis in reverse.

Interesting point - For the FIRST TIME in this run, in fact I think for the first time since Widening Rifts, we finally see the Mark XI Legion Cruiser first introduced in LSH (v2) 307 on page 10.  That cruiser model was used consistently in v2, v3 and v4 of the Legion, and throughout the reboot until the end of the LSH and Legionnaires series.  Coipel drew a more plane-like shuttle moving forward, so it was nice to see an old familiar friend again.

The Credo command ship having landed ON the city was an impressive, simple visual of the Credo's power and brutality.  

Wow, Singularity's planet has a Satan too!

Why is Vi never a normal size?  I mean seriously, the girl is never normal sized.  But at least we get to see her smaller again.

Grade - C+.  I really wanted to like this more than I did.