135 The Legion By Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning Vol 1

I have to say I'm rather surprised that DC has published this book.  At this time, I mean.  They just started collecting the Legionnaires and Legion Of Super-Heroes books earlier this year.  This book shouldn't be out already.  I thought it would all get collected chronologically.  But I'm wrong.  And I'm happy.  I particularly loved this run on the book.

According to the afterword in the book, both series were losing readers and Abnett & Lanning were brought in to spark new interest with a new direction.  Now, if you've read any of my mini-reviews, you know one thing I hate is when a new team is brought in to give a book a "bold new direction" and they start things off by discarding what's come before them.  Well, Dan and Andy did just the opposite.  They had a big idea, but they lead into it.  Quickly, but without throwing anything away.  Their first story introduces the Blight, their second story sets characters in place for the Blight storyline and then BAM, we're smack in the middle of the story.  And it's a good one.  And from there they start making the changes they want to make in the book.  All the changes are plot dictated and very organic.  And that, my friends, is how you change the direction of a book.

I remember being kind of upset when this book first came out.  Olivier Coipel's art was so ugly to me.  But as the story progressed, I realized he was the perfect artist to draw the whole Blight storyline.  It works incredibly well.  It holds up to this day.

I love the Legion.  I love this book.  I'm so glad DC is showing the Legion some love right now.

The Legion By Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning Vol 1

Writer: Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning

Artist: Olivier Coipel, Adam Dekraker, Jeffrey Moy, Angel Unzueta, Chuck Wojtkiewicz, Andy Lanning, W.C. Carani, Jaime Mendoza, Dexter Vines

DC Comics

058 Legionnaires Book One

When this run of Legion of Super-Heroes first started, I wasn't really having it.  Sure, I read every issue, but I just wasn't happy with it.  The Legion of Super-Heroes had two series going.  The main book featured the Legion and the second book, Legionnaires, featured younger clones of the original team.  Then DC decided "fuck it, let's start over."  And both books were rebooted and we started over at day one again.  We got new adventures, new motivations, new characters.  I wasn't happy because my team, a team I'd been reading since I was ten or eleven years old, was suddenly gone.  They were replaced with these imposters.

But over time, this title really grew on me.  It wasn't bad.  It wasn't done half-assed like another reboot I've complained about a lot on this blog.  And the characters slowly became old friends again.  There were new characters whom I adored (XS!!!  Monstress!!!!).  There were reboots I didn't particularly care for (Projectra.... um, no.)

What's weird re-reading these stories, especially in this format, is seeing how quickly the basis of the Legion was thrown together.  This volume reprints six or seven issues of each series and it's crazy how quickly they added and subtracted members in less than the first year of the series.  Sure, it kind of makes sense they way they did it, but it was still pretty quick how many characters were introduced after the team was formed.

It's weird to me that Mark Waid was behind the reboot of the team into this AND the reboot of this team into the next iteration.  This one worked.  The one after this so did not.  I'm anxious to see the next volume of this book.

Legionnaires Book One

Writer: Tom McCraw, Tom Peyer, Mark Waid

Artist: Stuart Immonen, Lee Moder, Jeffrey Moy, Brian Apthorp, Scott Benefiel, Yancey Labat, Chris Renaud, Ron Boyd, W.C. Carani, Philip Moy, Tom Simmons

DC Comics