Analysis Notes
| General |
Throughout this issue (and the rest of this storyline), we encounter some very odd bits of Coipel’s style, including lots of shadows and some difficulty drawing faces, which made him unpopular with segments of fandom. On the up side, though, he brings a very different, organic yet non-fluid look to Chameleon’s changes, and his art style is arguably appropriate to the story where the styles of Jeff Moy and other “clean” pencillers would not. |
| 1:3 |
This holosign was probably used to welcome tourists arriving at Metropolis Spaceport. |
| 2:1 |
This one month jump in time, plus the grittier, downtrodden nature of the story, had a lot of fans thinking back to the Bierbaum/Giffen era, which started “Five years later...” |
| 3:5 |
“Underground railroad”: during the period of American slavery, abolitionists helped escaped slaves flee to freedom in the North. Harriet Tubman is a key figure from the Underground Railroad. |
| 2:1-2 |
This bit about Brande sounds like an extreme rumor, although Legionnaires #79 indicates otherwise, and if anyone would be able to something like this, it would be Brande. |
| 4:2 |
Opening a stargate in an atmosphere is a dangerous event, having only been done once before, to overcome insane Daxamites in Legionnaires Annual #2 |
| 4:3 |
This bit has echoes of Aliens: “I’ve got movement everywhere!” |
| 5/6 |
Karate Kid, Umbra, and Ultra Boy. With great evil comes great loss of fashion sense (and huge shoulder pads). |
| 8:1 |
This is presumably Karate Kid’s leg, doing a floor sweep to cut Shvaughn’s legs out from under her. |
| 9:4 |
Durlans were established to not be topologically consistent — and thus able to open holes like this without damaging themselves — as far back as Legionnaires #23. |
| 9:9 |
Note the use of “me”: the Blight are apparently not a mass consciousness like the Borg. |
| 10:1, 10:3 |
It isn’t clear why the Blighted Ultra Boy is coming up from under the floor. Perhaps there was an unseen hole that Live Wire blasted him into in 7:2. |
| 10:5 |
Boot to the head. (Based on coloration and placement, Live Wire is kicking Jo in the face.) |
| 10:6, 10:8, 10:10 |
The water is pink because of the Blight energy coruscating through the sky. |
| 10:11 |
Blighted Umbra is overwhelming Shvaughn with darkforce tendrils, like she tried to do with Garth in 7:7. |
| 11:6 |
From Brande’s comment, there are other resistance people — by extension, Legionnaires — still free. |
| 12:5-6 |
This doesn’t look good. It looks fatal, in fact. |
| 13:2 |
Note the absence of the Blighted Karate Kid from this scene. Is he present but blocked from view by other characters, or did they leave him behind? |
| 14:5 |
Hmm. Maybe the choke-weed is a special sort of imprisonment transport, breaking down the organic components and transporting them to the Stem via a non-teleporting method? |
| With the specific mention of the absence of Lyle (Invisible Kid), the question has to be raised whether the Blight really got him, or if he is in hiding somewhere. |
| 15:1, 16 |
Well, at least it doesn’t appear that the Stem got built on top of either Legion headquarters or the United Planets council chambers. That might have implied a certain culpability on their parts in the invasion. |
| 17:6-7 |
These are the Blighted Ultra Boy and Umbra, trying to finish their mission. |
| 17:8 |
Unknown who the third one is, but he is using a flash panel. |
| 19:1 |
According to editor Mike McAvennie, the red-haired girl is Blighted Kinetix, but her Blighted appearance in Legionnaires #79 in her usual costume and the slightly different hair color here indicate that this is not Kinetix. Instead, the yellow-and-black striped outfit combined with the fact that the Uncanny Amazers were due on Earth just after Legionnaires #78 points to this being a Blighted Insect Queen, albeit without the unusual legs she typically sports. |
| According to McAvennie, the other two character here are no one in particular, being just random people the Blight have assigned to patrol duties; the Blighting process apparently grants the ability to fly. (With the other girl being Insect Queen, this unnamed girl might be a Blighted Konk, with longer hair than she used to have, and the guy might be Science Police office Dvron, who at least has the right color hair.) |
| 19:2 |
The dialog caption here makes little sense. |
| 19:4 |
The Blighted Star Boy used his powers to make himself impervious to the stun grenades. |
| The shadowy figures are the Blighted Insect Queen and the unnamed Blighted male. |
| 19:6 |
These pieces of office furniture apparently have legs and feet/wheels. We usually see levitating furniture in the 30th century. Perhaps these were jury-rigged after the Blight invaded and cut the power needed for such frivolities. |
| 20:3-6 |
Actually, Thom has mass powers: the ability to add mass (allegedly drawn from the stars) to objects. However, mass and gravity are tightly linked; changes in mass change the gravity produced by an object and how it “sits” with regard to the gravity wells produced by other nearby objects. If Thom can add mass, he can probably sense it at a very fine level, and can by extension sense gravity fluctuations. While Durlans can mimic the appearance of objects, they cannot duplicate the internals and the inherent properties of those objects. Thus, Thom scanned the room for mass/gravity anomalies and found a chair that was different from the others. |
| 20:9 |
“OZARK”? What an odd SFX to use. |
| 21:2 |
The caption about the stargate is left over from this spot on page 21 in Legionnaires #79. Very odd, and very bad editing. |
| 21:4-6 |
Some fans were especially incensed by this bit, feeling that a Legionnaire should never broach the code against killing. On the other hand, (a) Chameleon doesn’t kill anyone, so nothing is truly violated, and (b) from a storytelling perspective, the only reason to have such a code in place is so that it can be poked at. |
| 22 |
Some of the “dirty” appearance of the four Legionnaires in this panel is indicated in Legionnaires #79, where it is said that they have been travelling for a month in the Legion cruiser, a situation that is not going to result in the tidiest of appearances. Mostly, though, this is just Coipel’s art style coming through a little too strongly. |
