So going to attempt a review on this issue. Going to try to keep it short at to the point. I have tried to remain open to Bendis's Legion. I feel he has fell in to his typical Bendis tropes of pointless banter, decompressed plot, among other things. The first page is a recap by Jon which if you've read any of the 7 previous issues, you probably know what's going on. Now, the next pages each feature a different artist. It's unclear how much direction each artist was given on their page .
The Element Lad page was another waste of space. Banter and the artist doesn't even do a go job of representing Jan's powers. Dream Girl was more of the same, though her dialog was much more interesting. A nice touch of her having an astral projection aspect to her powers. Something similar to Dreamer from Supergirl? But rather than show us, it has to be kept some big surprise what it looks like. Boo!
Projectra. OK, he took her 3Boot name. More dialog. The kicker is the last panel hinting at some type of mystery that with an illusion caster, things aren't what they appear. I'm sure we will come back to that in about 3 years. Maybe. The Chameleon Boy page hints at the relationship between him and President Brand but again, he's telling us something Superboy already told us about on the first page.
The Ultra Boy page is a total waste. BIG FONTS. The next page, is more Bendis banter. What bothers more is coming up.
Lightning Lass is some other mystery when we've seen the Light Lass costume. People have speculated that Ayla has multiple powers and her costume changes to match. We will see. So now we see Wildfire. If we skip back two pages, he was asking Monster Boy and Gold Lantern for back up. There are nowhere in these panels. That's a continuity problem. Notice how the narrator says "two Kryptonians?"
The next page, Mon-El jumps into action. Overall, these and the previous 2 aren't too bad in terms of an action sequence. If we had one artist, it probably would have flowed a little better. The Blok page is problematic. I actually like the art and the fight sequence because this was something Levitz never did with Blok. However, the Interlac is sooooo difficult to read that I couldn't be bothered. Bendis's use of Interlac has been overkill with pages of colored text. And don't get me wrong, back in the day, I could read the script just fine. My eyes aren't as good as they used to be. Other people have translated the text which is Blok's internal dialog that Shadow Lass doesn't do much. Well, we only saw her in the last panel. Another mystery for another year I'm sure.
Saturn Girl's art is pretty, however it is one page of dialog and her striking a typical Saturn Girl pose. I know, I know, it's David Mack's style. It disrupts the flow of action with nothing else occurring on the page. The Timber Wolf page is pretty good. Not much to say.
The Colossal Boy page. Now I have not been really griping on the art choices too much. As I noted, the artists probably were only given so much to work with and since you don't have one artist showing continuity you get this. My problem here is the choice of breaking up the page in 4 panels. The second panel literally shows nothing. And then Dawnstar was obviously successful getting Wildfire out of the ghost trap. Here we just see her flying and doing nothing. I hate when writers can't find a way to make Dawnstar useful.
The Cosmic Boy page was the perfect page out of this issue for me. We actually got some good development here. And it feels like classic Cosmic Boy. Though we have an artist error showing him on other pages. But was it the artist, the writer or the editor? Then
The Brainiac page is garbage dialog. It adds nothing. Sorry. Ferro Lad is on-point and Allred is on-point. He actually drew Ferro Lad in Batman '66 & LSH from 2017. I wonder if he's a fan of the character. Notice the little Saturn Girl head talking to Andrew? That's what I'm talking about.
The double page spread is pretty but given how little we got out of the rest of the issue, I can't be impressed.
I'm not sure what to think of the Rose page. The Phantom Girl page is pretty good.. It gives an OK amount of story as well. She and Mon-El were a couple? Hopefully we see some type of development for Phantom Girl. If this just serves to put her into Ultra Boy's arms, I'm already bored.
The last page confirms what we've all suspected, that Mon is Jon's descendant. The dialog is more of Bendis's non sequitur for the purpose of comedy. Or to confuse.
So while it was great we got to see some individual Legionnaires in action, the concept of numerous artists actually gave a more disjointed product where we may have needed it. Other times, it worked well. I think Bilquis Everly really delivered on my favorite page. The panels were perfect. Mike Allred delivered my second favorite page. The third person narration is actually Chameleon Boy and Brande which I'm not sure adds to the story. I guess it is meant to be the continuity between the pages but it's barely a device to string together origins with the current plot. But, if Cham is recounting the events, why do we see pages like the Cosmic Boy one where he would not be present? I'm guessing we will see something more like this in the next issue as the artist event continues.
I would not have had David Mack's page right in the middle of an action sequence. Part of that page could be used showing Dawnstar retrieving Wildfire, Garth tending to Ayla.
I'm not sure what grade I would give this issue. It definitely has some good parts but other parts just feel sloppy.
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