The Legion #33 - Farewell Dan and Andy.

Released May 26, 2004
DC Comics, Color
23 Pages

Notorious Part 2

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

Synopsis

RJ Brande is being tortured by Singularity to admit that the Legion is the source of the galaxy's suffering by being the source of Element Lad/Progenitor.  Refusing to break, Brande is sent back to his cell to rejoin Kinetix, Gates and Chameleon, all three bound by some kind of power inhibitors.  They are joined shortly by Garth. Gates and Cham think its a trick, but Brande and Kinetix (who seems to be speaking normally now instead of in ethereal phrasing) sense the truth.   Garth explains what happened and why he's there, but Cham has none of it.  

The trap springs; the Espionage Squad has been with Garth the entire time.  Invisible Kid, Sensor, Apparition and Vi reveal themselves, dispatch the guards, and free their colleagues from the power inhibitors. The alarms start going off and the other half of the surprise attack happens.  Starboy changes the mass of the command ship and it lifts in the air, isolating it from the Credo army. The rest of the Legion attacks the ground forces while Garth's group heads to the command center to confront Singularity directly.  

The team outside makes quick mincemeat of the Credo aerial attack forces, while Superboy and Ultra Boy get rid of the tanks, showing the power of the full Legion and fighting the army to a standstill.  In the Command Center, Singularity seems to be handling the E Squad on his own with Garth the only one left standing as Superboy comes in to save the day, knocking Credo back.  In desperation, with his elite followers looking on, Singularity tries to overload the ship's power system, taking the entire planet and everyone on it with him.  Garth saves the day by turning Singularity into an Inertron cocoon and stopping the overload.

Cham tells the Credo lackeys to get packing and spread the word that the Progenitor just saved their lives.  The Legion is finally reunited.

Back home on Earth, Garth and Imra walk and talk in front of the Legion Memorial.  They agree to take it slow and embrace in front of their statues.

Commentary

And so ends the tenure of Abnett & Lanning on the Legion.  With one of my favorite Legion covers ever.

I gotta say, my gut reaction was that this was a great issue.  In fact, I'd go far to say that if they had placed this storyline immediately after Robotica, I would have enjoyed this run A LOT MORE.  Given the DnA pattern of a 5-6 issue story that started really strong, then ended rushed with an occasional stinker of an issue in the mix, plus only focusing on the same third of the Legion, this two-issue story was (including the plot elements from 32) tightly and effectively done.  It also uses the ENTIRE Legion in a strategic and effective way that makes sense to the story.  Almost everyone is used and/or gets a line of dialog.  Lots of other little elements were done well in the background art as well, especially in reunion panel.  Its just really too bad that they waited 33 issues, literally on their way out the door, to finally tell a Legion story in the context of everything that DnA had built from Lost.   

Thinking about it a little more, its a little TOO tight in the fact that there is a LOT of character stuff glossed over and rushed in that final group page.  It felt like this could have been done better with a third issue, where certain things around the characters could be allowed to breathe a bit more.  

We've talked a lot about the TPB trend, and this is just a sad example of how the trend to create nothing but multi-part "epics" in order to sell collected editions didn't work very well.  If stories like Terrorform and Robotica (not to mention Foundations) were a little tighter and the publication moved around, this story could have been told in the second year of issues versus the end of the line.  So a more engaging arc for the Legion as a whole would have been: Terrorform & Robotica (mainly featuring the Lost cast), Memorial service (setup for Garth's return), then Credo before Dream Crime. Let's face it, the Credo showdown doesn't need Superboy if you have M'Onel.

I read this and think of the wasted opportunities, and wonder just what the Legion editors actually were DOING from 2000-2004 other than sitting back and saying, "Yeah, sure DnA, do that."

And as always, the art crew does a solid job.  Not much odd commentary here as the issue is really solid.

Other commentary:

As suspected, Vi is with Garth, but so is the whole E Squad!  Super cool! (Also - Finally!)

So I get why Sensor's there, but how?  We don't see her as one of the guards coming in.  I guess she can make herself effectively invisible, but she's shown being revealed as posing as a guard.  That was an odd misstep here. 

Why is Dreamer in the bottom panel of Page 8?

Nice to FINALLY see Kinetix and Vi in proximity to each other for the first time in 2 years.  Not like they were shown for years as being the closest friends out of anyone in the Legion or anything...

Star Boy's role - I know he can affect the density of objects, but how is it lifting?  Based on the following panel, I assumed it was M'Onel, but he seems to be lifting a tank.

The final confrontation with Singularity is well done, although a bit hand-wavy, as I'm still not sure what his powers really are, nor what Garth did to him - how is what he did here different from the time-protection from the Darkseid story?  Also, I like to think that the Credo changed their ways in the end, but as we all know from world experience, people tend to self justify events and double down on crazy.  But this issue also helped focus what my actual problem is with Credo - They are just a bunch of fanatics, for the most part without any odd superpowers, so there power is simply overwhelming force with Singularity as their ace.  For a super team like the Legion, this should be childs play to knock over, with Singularity being the force to be reckoned with, as was the case.  So I never really felt threated by them from the point of view of being a threat to the Legion itself.  Credo's victims are another story, but it reinforces the need for a team like the Legion.

The Legion reunion scene was very nice, but a TON of shorthand was going on here: M'Onel introducing Brande and Superboy, Jo and Tinya showing positive feelings for each other after two years, Garth and Ayla seemingly reconciling. 

Grade: A-.  This issue gave me a lot of what I've been looking for in this Legion run, but was a little on the light side.