(Photo source: ComicBookRealm)

Legion Lost: Fabian Nicieza, Pete Woods, Travis Lanham, Brad Anderson

Ah, the pivotal fight with Alastor begins! Tellus and Dawnstar face off against a triplicated Alastor-mutated-with-carggite-DNA and we learn quickly how tough that makes the villain. It’s up to Tellus to dig into Alastor’s mind telepathically and try to bring him down. In that, we actually get to see a lot of really cool stuff. I love how Nicieza wrote Alastor’s internal monologue during these scenes with Tellus almost talking over him, or echoing him. I felt that was a slightly different take than we normally see. It made the exposition more tolerable than it is usually. The action in this issue was also very enjoyable, as we switch between the battle, and Tyroc, Wildfire, and Timber Wolf as they try to secure the re-discovered Chameleon Girl. This issue doesn’t necessarily focus on “failure” like the other issues of January have so far. At least…not on the failures of the heroes…but more on the those of the villain. In fact, the heroes kind of win out in this one - not to spoil anything. Instead, though, we do get to see some of the limitations of the Legion team. For example, Dawnstar’s physical limits, Tyroc’s hypersonics limits, and even Tellus starts to sweat against Alastor’s efforts. That much was fun to see. And there were TWO surprise faces we see in this issue!! TWO!! I’m really excited about this, and can’t wait to see where it goes. For Nicieza’s second-to-last issue, I can foresee quite the ending coming into being. The art is still fantastic, but the driver of the semi we see actually looks a lot like Timber Wolf, and that threw me off. I thought he had stolen another vehicle. I had always liked the art for Timber Wolf in this book, because he never really looked like anyone else. I thought the truck driver could have looked more cliche like a truck driver. But oh well. The big page with Wildfire showing what he can do was beautiful. I really loved that spread, along with the “tree” of human faces on the next page. There was a lot of “symbolic” art in this issue what with the telepathic battle, and I always enjoy symbolic, metaphoric art.

Legion Lost #5: Another great issue, and it did a good job of shuffling back and forth between the three locales: Dawnstar’s fight against Alastor, Tellus’s telepathic battle with Alastor, and the other three on the team. I loved the introduction of the other two surprise faces we see in this book, and I’m truly excited to see where this goes in future issues. My concern is with another writer picking up where the previous left off…are we going to see the same kind of quality and skill in storytelling as we have so far? I guess only time will tell. Next issue is Nicieza’s farewell.