Volume 7 was the last Legion series written, mainly by Paul Levitz with some contribution by Keith Giffen on both art and story. It was an interesting time for the Legion, and readers! Between volume 6 and 7, something happened to the Legion Lost team of Tyroc, Chameleon Girl, Timber Wolf, Dawnstar, Wildfire, Tellus and Gates. Legion Lost's appearance in the 21st century appears to be part of their mission but in vol 7, they are presumed dead. Maybe there is a reason for this divergence but I will touch upon that later. Colossal Boy has resigned, presumably because of the presumed death of Yera. Quislet has completely disappeared and nothing more is said about that. I find it to be a shame that the truly alien looking members of the Legion are gone.
In place of those 9 members, 4 of the Academy members are moved up: Chemical Kid, Comet Queen, Dragonwing and Glorith, with Harmonia also becoming a member. Rumor is that Levitz was told to bring some new blood onto the team. Honestly, I would have liked some new blood in volume 6, besides Earth-Man. I wonder if Levitz would have moved on some of the other Academy members from Adventure comics knowing he needed to add new characters in a few months. What I do know is that when Fabian Nicienza took on Legion Lost, he was given his pick of Legionnaires and he got whom he wanted. Fabian confirmed this for me on twitter.
What we got with the volume 7 team actually turned out to be one of the most diverse Legion teams ever.
Technically, we do have 3 alien members: Chameleon Boy, Shadow Lass and Comet Queen (her race was always unspecified). It is worth pointing out that there are 9 female members and 10 male members. We've rarely seen such an equal M-F ratio ever. Also, we have two members of African descent: Invisible Kid and Glorith, and two of Chinese descent: Harmonia and Dragonwing. As a side note, Glorith was actually half-African, half-Tamaranean. That could have made an interesting backstory.
Furthermore, not all the females have defensive powers. With Dragonwing, Harmonia, Glorith and Lightning Lass, the females can actually take front and center in the action. Unfortunately, with Levitz writing, they really don't. Supposedly dealing with the death of Earth-Man, Shady has been relegated to training the 4 Academy recruits. This takes 4 females out of the mix for stories. It's a shame really and and it feels like lazy writing. As I have said before, what did Chuck and Lu teach the kids anyway? If they weren't ready, they should not have been promoted. Moving on.
Speaking of Chuck and Lu, most of the Reserve members make an appearance or two in this volume, except maybe Night Girl who gets a handful of panels and less dialog. Tenzil does not appear at all. Granted, they are used as parts of the story but I hate how Levitz doesn't always the develop the characters he has and chooses to fall back on Saturn Girl and Lightning Lad.
There is good and bad in this volume. Over half the first year shows the Dominators as the main villain. And then the last 6 or so issues of the series, they fight the Fatal 5. We just didn't get a good range of intrigue here. Levitz seems to focus the most on his favorites from vol 6, Jo, Tinya, Cos, Mon-El and Brainy. Tinya seems to be written poorly though, ineffectual and slightly out of character. She gets elected leader, then bails! Harmonia and Dream Girl do get a little bit of story. I will say that Levitz can write the hell out of Duplicate Girl though. If he liked her that much, and with Night Girl supposedly training the Academy, I'm not sure when he just didn't move Lu back into active membership.
The story where Lu, Chuck, Thom and Grava go to rescue Brainy and Nura was pretty bad. We get two throwaway characters with Otaki (another Asian female!) and Mwindaji, a male POC. Levitz could have created some new characters with engaging powers but he did not. The biggest disappointment in this story was the apparent betrayal of Comet Queen due to some telepathic suggestion by Saturn Queen. Ugh, is all I can say.
Dragonwing does get a kind-of solo story and Levitz does try to develop Chemical King a bit, by pairing him with Element Lad but that is really the most we see of Jan until the final arc.
The last story in the book starts off with a collaboration between Levitz and Giffen, though it was quite apparent that some of the issues, issue #17 for example, was very much Giffen on plot and art, with Levitz providing dialog. If you read the issues back to back, you can clearly perceive the difference in storytelling. I think this may have contributed to putting those final nails in the coffin. The deaths of Star Boy and Sun Boy along with the desertion by Tinya Girl just really put a bad taste in a lot of reader's mouths. Polar Boy is barely focused on at all this volume until he helps save the day at the end. Likewise, it's Garth, Imra and Jeckie who swoop in and basically help defeat the Fatal Five. It feels very unsatisfying as a reader that our primary protagonists are so ineffectual. Kinda feels like the end of Earthwar were Garth and Imra, who are on Reserve status, pitch in and along with Superboy and Karate Kid who just came back from the past, help to bring down Mordru. Ironically, the end of this series feels very much like the last year of the Baxter series: Mon-El with grave injuries, technology going crazy, deaths. Lots of Levitz tropes abound.
In retrospect, Levitz was not blazing any trails with volume 7. Obviously Giffen was brought in to shake things up, but it was too late and he didn't stick around as the cancellation was announced shortly after he joined up. I think there was a lot of potential with the cast, but Levitz was not up to task. He could have given us a spotlight issue on Harmonia or Glorith. Everyone assumed Glorith was going to go bad because of her name but we didn't have enough background on her to even care if she did go bad.
So, going back to my original point about divergence. At the very end, we find this is the Legion from Earth 2. Not sure how that happens since Earth 1 and 2 were drastically different but I guess that helps to explain how everyone is back to normal in the Justice League America story with the Legion guest starring. It's like it never happened. Really, volume 7 should have never happened.
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