Reboot: Legionnaires #23

Legionnaires #23 (March, 1995)
title: "Flight"

writers: Tom Peyer

penciller: Jeffrey Moy
inker: W.C. Carani
lettering: Pat Brosseau
colorist: Tom McCraw

assistant editor: Mike McAvennie
editor: KC Carlson

cover: Jeffrey Moy
reviewers: Siskoid & Shotgun

Mission Monitor Board:  
Andromeda, Apparition, Brainiac 5, Chameleon, Cosmic Boy, Invisible Kid, Kinetix, Leviathan, Saturn Girl, Shrinking Violet, Spark, Triad, XS

Guests: 
Live Wire, Obin Der, Winema Wazzo, alien victim, android majordomo, Club Stargate bouncer

Opponents: 
Ambassador Roxxas, Leland McCauley, Lightning Beasts (flashback), Mekt Ranzz (flashback), White Triangle members
Recap: 
Previously... The Legion has taken on new members. There's the shy Shrinking Violet, the outgoing Kinetix, and the xenophobic Daxamite, Andromeda.

Synopsis: Invisible Kid invents the Legion flight ring, so a celebration is in order. The female Legionnaires decide to go on a girls' night out, on which even Andromeda goes after being told she should make friends regardless of her feelings. They all wind up waiting in line at the very exclusive Club Stargate, where a group of human rabble-rousers attack an alien. Andromeda tries to deal with them, but seeing they were a white triangle pendant, only tells them to leave and never come back. Why is a mystery.

Meanwhile, Saturn Girl and Cosmic Boy almost kiss in virtual reality, and Live Wire has bad dreams telling him his long-lost brother is dead.

Commentary: 
Shotgun
A filler comic like I’ve never seen before. I’m not complaining though. I actually enjoyed it a lot more than I would have thought. Also, I feel absolutely girly right now as most of what I have to say today concerns outfits and apparels. First and foremost: the FLIGHT RINGS! These are so great. Invisible Kid keeps on delivering. I love how he joined force with Brainiac 5 without the latter even realizing to create such an essential item to add to everyone’s arsenal. It showed me that everything in the comic series happens for a reason. It gives this issue an interesting twist since I kept asking myself how everything will be used in the future. So they have a day off and the girls are going out for… Wait… Are they going to have a dance party???!!!! And I’m not invited… That’s just rude! I must say that it’s a lot of fun to see the girls by themselves. I keep forgetting that they’re all teenagers, but this whole issue helps to build up their personalities. I’m really interested in Triad’s outfits – Again, easy to see that her different selves have clashing personalities. One of them is obviously more daring, while another is totally conservative.

Then we have the one that’s just in the middle. I can’t help but feel sorry for poor Violet! Her first outfit was more than fine. I understand what Kinetix was trying to do (damn, I wish I had this kind of power by the way. All of the outfits I would create!) but that was really intrusive of her. It is something to change it once, but you've got to know when to stop. Violet will have to learn to step up for herself though. She could’ve easily stopped Kinetix before it went too far.

Alright, enough with the clothes. Let’s move on to… romance? Oh well, it’s just one of these times when I can’t leave my femininity behind. I detect a love triangle forming within the Legion. Wait no… I mean, more like a love rectangle? Square? Anyway, there seemed to be something between XS and Cos before, and apparently Triad saw that too. Of course, we also know that Saturn Girl and Live Wire used to be together before the Reboot. It explains why the moment between Saturn Girl and Cosmic Boy surprised me (and probably a lot of the readers at the time too). I must admit that I totally ship it though! I don’t care if it’s just to tease the readers, if it’s going to happen and fail miserably or if the writers are going for the long run, I actually ship it! Also interesting to learn that Leviathan’s affection toward Kinetix seems to be mutual. I’m curious to see where this’ll all be going. I must say that I’m actually surprised by the amount of romance included in these comics. I wouldn’t have guessed that. Even after the “Hot or Not” project, I thought the romances were only a side thing that they rushed in to make the characters more realistic. I like it but in small quantities. Nothing wrong with a couple of fillers, but I prefer to see the kids in action during a mission than flirting with one another to be honest.

Siskoid
That last sentence might surprise readers. The girl half of this should be liking the romance and fashions and the boy half want more action. In point of fact, it looks to be the reverse. I LOVE these interludes - kind of an annual thing - and am more interested in Legion relationships than action beats. In this case, I will say that it misses the mark a little bit. An issue with pacing? Just not enough happens. As soon as the girls gain admittance into the club, the issue ends, and every other thread leaves us hanging, from the mystery of why Andromeda lets those racists jerks go to what Apparition's mom is doing in the club scene, to Cos and Imra's near-kiss, to Live Wire's prescient(?) dream. The art is similarly loaded, and while Moy is at his cutest, it's sometimes hard to discern the Legionnaires in those crowded panels, especially since they're not wearing their regular uniforms. (By the way, I think the second time Kinetix changes Violet's outfit (to her great shame) is by accident. Why can't she control it? Another thread that needs to be pulled.

The one complete idea is the introduction of the flight right, which I knew had to come sooner or later. I was more surprised to see Star Wars playing on the telly. How thousand-year retro!

But yeah, I love that Invisible Kid once again showed up Brainiac 5, and you can see the jealousy set in. "Flight" is about soaring, and the ring is only one component of that theme. The kids letting their youth flags fly is equally important. But it's not necessarily a feeling carried all the way through. This was an okay character-building issue, but not a great one.

Science Police Notes:  

• The first flight rings were unveiled in Adventure Comics #329 (February 1965), still relatively late in Legion history. Before that, the Legionnaires used rocket packs (as they did in this continuity) and later flight belts, but only when necessary.
• The Daxamite Obin Der and Triad use the expression "for Valor's sake", a first hint that Valor (in some continuities, Mon-El) is remembered in this timeline, probably from his adventures in the 20th Century, quite possibly as the mythical Seeder of Worlds. It is unclear whether Valorium was named after him.
• Roxxas (unnamed) appears for the first time in the Reboot as a member of the racist White Triangle (also unnamed). In a previous continuity, he was the assassin who committed the genocide of Element Lad's people, and "Five Years Later", killed Blok.
• The blue-skinned, eyeless android servants were a fixture of the 5YL era.

Milestone: 
Invisible Kid creates the first flight rings in the Reboot continuity, using an element created by Brainiac 5 called Valorium.