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THE LEGION #2
"Fight or Flight"
Highly Recommended (9/10)
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DC Comics
Writer: Dan Abnett
Pencils: Olivier Coipel
Writer/Inks: Andy Lanning
Colors: Tom McCraw & Digital Chameleon
Letters: Comicraft
Editor: Mike McAvennie
Price: $2.50 US/$4.25 CAN |
Recently, I've been reading the controversial Giffen/Bierbaum era Legion, and while I'm enjoying parts of it, I've found that a lot of it makes no damn sense. So far, however, The Legion combines that darkness, adult tone and feel of real danger for the Legion with clear plots and stronger characters. In this issue, we get a fantastic battle between two super-teams, a great chase sequence and some more mysteries about what exactly is going wrong within Earthgov. Together with Coipel's art, which is an acquired taste but a style that I'm growing to like more with each issue, this may turn out to be the strongest version of the Legion since the very early days of the post-Zero Hour reboot.
The super-team conflict is a
classic bit, and Abnett, Lanning and Coipel waste no time in getting to it this
issue. The Oversight Watch is a good team, with some interesting powers and
distinctive visual designs, and it was a lot of fun seeing the Legion take on a
team that also uses tactics and backs each other up, sort of a dark mirror of
themselves. Coipel does some really nice work on the fight, particularly
Brainstorm's telekinesis and Umbra's shadow manipulation.
But then, Coipel's work seems
to be improving with every outing. He does some really nice job on the grimy but
high-tech underside of Earth, as well as giving us some impressive cityscape
shots. And though I haven't warmed up completely to his work on faces for
characters, I have to admit that I'm enjoying the range of emotions his
characters are capable of, and I'm impressed by his ability to do different body
types (contrast Ultra Boy with Chameleon, for example) and solid musculature and
anatomy.
The Legion is on the run, and
Abnett and Lanning pace the issue so that we really feel that. A few skirmishes
or run-ins take place between dashes for safety, but there's definitely a
feeling that they're outmatched until they can find out more or get more allies.
The story keeps moving, taking the readers along at the same pace as the
characters, with a few quick departures to set up enemies and allies for down
the road.
Right now, The Legion is full of the same possibilities and potential that I saw in it when I first started collecting after Zero Hour. Abnett and Lanning have done a terrific job of tearing down the team, putting them through enormous stresses, and now they seem well on their way to rebuilding them wihtout losing the edge and excitement that we saw in "The Blight" storyline, Legion Lost or Legion Worlds.
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