Question for those reading Legion of Super-Heroes and Legion Lost
Thor_El
Posts: 136
Exactly how closely tied are these two series to the Nu52? My understanding when this whole reboot happened was that the Legion was sort of disconnected from the alterations to the timeline. Essentially, the history Johns re-established during his run of Superman and Levitz' issues pre-Nu52 continued without any change.
I know the Legion Lost crew is stranded on Nu52 Earth, but are they aware that the timeline has been altered? Or do they act like this past is the one they've always known?
I miss reading the Legion, and I'd like to jump back onto the books, but my disdain for the reboot remains, and if they're tied to the new 'history', then I'm going to have to continue to pass.
I know the Legion Lost crew is stranded on Nu52 Earth, but are they aware that the timeline has been altered? Or do they act like this past is the one they've always known?
I miss reading the Legion, and I'd like to jump back onto the books, but my disdain for the reboot remains, and if they're tied to the new 'history', then I'm going to have to continue to pass.
Comments
Legion Lost, on the other hand, is a mess. DeFalco has been, IMO, utterly horrible to the book and characters. I'd refer to him as a despoiler or defiler, but that would be an insult to Lord Foul.
Short answer, the LL crew don't seem to recognize that they're in an alternate time stream, but they're awefuly close to the events that are happening and I don't believe that any of characters present are really known for their love of 21st century history to be able to recognize when an event deviates. Legion characters make few, if any references to the distant past. There was one reference to a flashpoint effect making time travel unstable/impossible, but I believe that may actually have been in the series immediately pre-flashpoint.
I'd say pick up Legion without fear. It pretty much follows where "When Evil Calls" left off and there's some serious crap going on (good crap, I better add!) that I can't talk about for fear of spoilers. Legion Lost? It's up to you.
The book's been a mess from the get-go.
It's disappointing that Levitz finally found a way to make Tyroc work after 40 years, and then he was shunted off into the hands of the Hack Squad to be ruined again.
Admittedly, I was biased against the title from the get-go, having a long-standing dislike of "Legionnaires stranded in the past" stories. And time travelers chasing time travelers to save the future is a REALLY tired concept.
But to me, it has seemed very un-Legion-y from the first issue.
Numbers don't go low enough to score DeFalco's cliche-ridden crapfest.
Two additional observations:
1 - DeFalco is not the person to write this story. (duh).
2 - I'd rather see DeFalco get cut than the book get cut. Feel free to use whatever interpretation of the verb that you choose.
I have not continued to read all of the books in the new 52, but I did read every Number 1 and I thought Legion Lost was better than 90% of them.
To answer the original question the team from the Legion Lost are aware they are in an altered timeline. One of the reasons they could not get back to their timeline is because it was hard to get past the "Flashpoint event".
1 - Nicieza, while telling a competent story, didn't have a handle on the characters. This is especially true if we assume that they were pre-divergent timeline characters.
2 - DeFalco, possibly has a slightly better handle on the characters, but doesn't seem capable of producing a quality script. His editorial staff seems to be even less qualified.
3 - The book, in the grand scheme of things is almost entirely irrelevant.
It's barely relevant to the main Legion book (maybe makes sense - the characters have been forced by necessity to move past their grief).
It's irrelevant in the larger DCN52 - so much so that the first arc was relegated to Minnesota in order to keep it isolated from the rest of the world (and consequently to keep the whole Hypertaxis event from becoming something that would, by necessity, need to be addressed in every book (something that should still happen as Minnesotans travel to other places as well) as people begin to undergo hypertaxis more and more frequently in every setting for a DCNU52 book. Some if this is simply a gripe about the utterly flexible idea of linewide continuity - we want to sell more books - let's have a crossover! vs. Green Lantern showing the JSA cleaning up post Sinestro Corps war with no analagous mention in JSA. Bringing it back here - does Wildfire's anti-energy really not trip any kind of warning bells for any of the Firestorm Protocol entities or Captain Manhatt... er, Atom?
It's irrelevant to itself - The team, so utterly bent on protecting the Earth and keeping themselves undercover, have decided to relocate to New York and just ignore the virus that was mutating poor unsuspecting Minnesotans?
My disappointment with the title is more a general problem with The New 52 which is I am not sure they thought everything out before the book started. That being said the hook of the book is still there for me.
I really am curious what this book looks like to someone without the years of Legion baggage I have.
Despite my years of reading these funnybooks, I've only had a very cursory interest in the Legion until the past couple years. Don't get me wrong, I know who is who for the most part, and have my favorite characters, but I never actually read the book with any regularity. Now I'm pretty much gobbling up whatever I can find.
What I've figured out thus far is that with Legion, I like stories that feature characters I like. Legion Lost doesn't have many characters I've ever cared much about. I like Dawnstar, and Gates, but that's really about it. Was never big on Timber Wolf or Tyroc. So the book hasn't been a "must have" for me in the way that the regular Legion book has.
I did pick up the collected trade, and will read it soon to see if there's any better coherency when it's read as a complete story. Who knows? I may end up liking some of these characters before it's done.