Analysis Notes
| 1 |
Those who predicted that Helios was Lori Morning were correct. |
| Where does the atmosphere that Lori needs to breathe come
from in this force shield bubble that was created in hard vacuum?
Shouldn’t she explode any second now? |
| 1:4 |
So we have a choice: Lori transforms and may be able to
save you both, or at least herself, or you both just wait to die. Good
choice, Brainy. |
| Here and elsewhere, Brainy’s spacesuit counts as an
appearance for him. |
| 3:1 |
There is a damaged section of the side of the Outpost,
where the WorkForce ship was ripped away in Legionnaires #81. |
| Dialogue is from Repulse. |
| 3:2 |
Coloring error: Dune should be uniformly brown, like inLegionnaires
#81 when Element Lad fused him into glass. |
| 3:4 |
A sidereal hour is 1/24 of a sidereal day, which is 23
hours, 56 minutes, 4.1 seconds. (For more details, look it up.) |
| 4:3 |
ERG-1’s powers, then, are basically those of Blast-Off
amped up by the energy of Atom’X. |
| 5:1 |
Dialogue is from Cosmic Boy and Invisible Kid. |
| 5:6 |
The wrong H-Dial is drawn here. Lori has Robby Reed’s
dial, with numerous alien symbols on it, not Chris King or Vickie Grant’s
split dial with just the four letters. |
| Just dial the damn thing, don’t integrate it with
your equipment! |
| 6:1-3, 7:2-3 |
Although we never quite see him as such, we’ll presume
that Brainy used the dial and got transformed into who we’ll term
Brainiac 5.1.1 (a minor upgrade). |
| 6:2-3, 7:2 |
These count as appearances for Brainiac 5.1.1 and Lori.
It’s just too bright to see them. |
| 6:3 |
Brainy’s admonition would carry more weight if every
other character in the book wasn’t equally foul mouthed. |
| 6:5 |
Can’t have a “Who will be the cast of Legion
Lost?” mystery without everyone present and accounted for.
(But where are Tenzil and Shvaughn?) |
| 7:2 |
Brainy’s comment paraphrases Mark Twain. |
| The silhouette to the left is XS. The three to the
right are M’Onel (cape and boots), Sensor, and Ferro. The foot
cannot be identified. |
| 7:3 |
The running feet are XS and Ferro, two of Lori’s closest
friends. |
| 7:4 |
Shorted it out? Massive mystery alien technology
which the Time Trapper arranged for Lori to have? Yeah, right.
(Unless... the Time Trapper’s motives are inscrutable. What
if he foresaw this event and arranged things such that Brainy and/or Lori
would be reunited with the Legion in time to be sucked through the stargate?) |
| 8:1-2 |
Dialogue is from Saturn Girl. |
| 8:3 |
If Karate Kid has an actual power, it is to ability to
sense weak points. |
| Chuck’s comment makes it sound like the Legionnaires
are in a running battle, trying to just keep the Outpost intact long enough
for the scientists to do something. (This, of course, led some fans
to term the repair and evacuation scenes as “padding”, since
they didn’t really do much other than provide one last glimpse at
the full cast.) |
| Radio dialogue is from Chuck Taine. |
| 8:4 |
Ultra Boy must be spot welding something that will hold
what Vi is supporting in place. |
| Umbra’s comment echoes that of some fans. |
| 9:2-4 |
What is Jeka doing out there on the hull? Her powers,
admittedly, aren’t of much use in the repair effort anywhere, but
putting her out in space doesn’t make any great sense. |
| Jeka isn’t wearing a transuit, either. |
| 9:4 |
“ERG-1”? What’s heroic-sounding about
that? (Answer: nothing. This is slavish devotion to the preboot,
where ERG-1 applied for Legion membership, was turned down, seemingly
sacrificed himself, and then came back as Wildfire. Since they plan
to seemingly sacrifice Drake in this story, might as well give him the
pre-Wildfire codename, just to throw a bone to some fans. Sure would
have been nice to see it be less forced than this, though.) |
| 9:6 |
The fact that Lori isn’t seen during the later evacuation,
there was a chance that she would be among the Legion Lost cast.
Fandom beathed a sigh of relief when she was not; she apparently made
it onto one of the escape pods as is seen at the Legion’s disbanding
in Legion Worlds #6 (story #2). |
| 10:2 |
This has some echoes of when the moon blew up in the preboot:
Titan took damage from the explosion (despite the extreme unlikeliness
of that occurring: debris escaping Earth’s gravity well, entering
Saturn’s and then Titan’s, and not being identified destroyed
in the several days travel that would take). Here, Brainy may be
exaggerating somewhat, although if Saturn is actually in the vicinity
of the stargate rift, Titan would be the first to be seriously affected;
“imminent” may mean “within an hour or two”. |
| 10:4 |
Just what is Live Wire doing in the Mission Monitor room,
when his powers, like his sister’s, would be of use in the repair
effort? (Answer: positioning himself to be part of Legion Lost.
He’s already been separated from Imra for several months once; twice
would be too much to bear.) |
| 11 |
“Phase-metal”: assuming that tarnium is an element
to itself, it is undoubtedly a radioactive transuranic element.
A phase-metal may well be an element whose radioactive decay pulsates
or changes in phases based on temperature, mass, or other factors.
Tarnium itself presumably does this in a specific or predictable pattern,
and affects dimensional barriers in the process. (Makes you wonder
about the circumstances under which Brande discovered it.) |
| All the free-floating dialogue is from Saturn Girl. |
| 12:1, 12:3 |
Basically, Element Lad will keep the rift from growing,
and Kid Quantum will make it shrink, while ERG-1 protects them from the
radiation. |
| 12:2 |
Well, presumably vaporized. The Legion doesn’t
yet know that they can survive being yanked through the rift, which is
what may have happened to Meta. |
| 12:5 |
Despite Saturn Girl’s comment, ERG-1 hasn’t been
voted in as a member. He has been given a battlefield promotion,
been made a deputy. |
| 13:1 |
Does this dwarf the threat of C.O.M.P.U.T.O.? Of
Mordru? Of the Sun-Eater? If it weren’t for the Legion’s
charter being suspended by the United Planets, Imra wouldn’t be verbalizing
these concerns. |
| 13:2 |
Saturn Girl’s “Yes” is in response to Garth
unspoken thought: “And if we get out of this, maybe we can get married.”
She read his mind. |
| 13:3 |
This proposal came in Legionnaires #78. |
| 13:4 |
Compare to 3:2 and ask where this equipment came from?
Possibly it was removed from the Legion cruiser and refitted to be used
in the Mission Monitor room. |
| 13:5 |
How do pockets of “time-space” differ from “space-time”,
which is the usual terminology? |
| 14:1 |
Cham had four arms in 10:1; now he also has four eyes. |
| 15:1, 15:5 |
Radio dialogue is from Invisible Kid. |
| 15:5, 16:1, 17:4 |
Note the little “+” marks inside the tarnium
shower. These are usually a shorthand for “Ink this as solid
black.” Some of them have been changed to “*” symbols,
as though they were tiny sparkling bits of tarnium, but the intention
may have been that the tarnium shower would bring black with it, to show
it counteracting the white of the rift. |
| 16:1 |
“Assert atomic cohesion on the shreds of reality”?
Ouch! My brain hurts! |
| Radio dialogue is from Brainiac 5.1. |
| 17:1-3 |
Radio dialogue is from Invisible Kid. (It appears
to all be from the same speaker, and Brainiac 5.1 would not get so emotional,
while Saturn Girl would be communicating telepathically.) |
| 17:3 |
This counts as an appearance for ERG-1, since he is just
energy. |
| 17:4 |
Fortunately, he’s just energy, so he should survive
(and end up in Legion Lost, of course). |
| 17:5 |
Failed? Huh? Jan and Jazmin may still be able
to save the day, even without Drake’s protection. |
| 17:6 |
This does bring up a question: once Chuck identified that
the solar system would be toast in 36 hours, was that info transmitted
to Earth (and Titan, and Mars). Could any sort of an evacuation
occur in that time? (Does Earth have spaceworthy cities which might
be able to escape in toto?) |
| 18:1 |
Alert! Anyone who doesn’t get out in time will
be stuck in the cast of Legion Lost! |
| 18:2-4 |
Life Pod 1: Ferro, Cosmic Boy, Gates, and Chuck Taine.
(Or so it appears . Gates was included in the Legion Lost statue,
but later turned up alive, the victim of genetic experimentation.) |
| 18:5-19:1 |
Life Pod 2, part 1: XS, Karate Kid, and Kinetix.
Monstress ends up in Legion Lost. |
| 19:1 |
Karate Kid’s foot is in the foreground of the panel. |
| 19:2-4 |
Life Pod 2, part 2: Leviathan and seemingly either Umbra
or Apparition. (Note that because of the coloring, you can’t
tell if it was Apparition or Umbra who was pushed out by the explosion.)
Since both girls seem to end up in Legion Lost, the readers are
apparently meant to assume it was Apparition who was pushed out, but she
then dove back through the rubble to get to Ultra Boy and Umbra.
As
revealed in Legion Lost #8, Apparition did not go through the rift
with the other Legionnaires, but Saturn Girl created and maintained a
mental projection of her on the other side for several months in order
to keep Ultra Boy under control. (Interesting fan theories included
that she was comatose and being manipulated by Saturn Girl as she had
done with Cosmic Boy, or even that Apparition and Phase had split, with
one ending up non each side of the rift. A cryptic AOL chat comment
about a fan’s seven favorite Legionnaires added fuel to the fire
by saying she would be 50% happy with Legion Lost; four of the
Legion Lost characters were on the list, including Apparition,
who ending up being both present and not present.) |
| Note that Element Lad and Umbra (and Lady Mysa) were needed
for containing Drake’s energy form until his containment suit could
be constructed. As it turns out, neither will have a role in restoring
ERG-1. |
| 19:5 |
Life Pod 3: Amber, Dune, and Repulse. It appears
that Spark should be getting in this pod, so Legion Worlds #2
(story #1) indicates she went back to try to rescue the others. |
| Amber and Dune are never seen again, but Repulse makes
it back to Earth. It becomes an open question whether the others
sruvived, and whether Repulse killed them. |
| 20:2 |
The pocket on the back of Sensor’s harness (see 20:1)
is missing. |
| 20:4 |
What, the Outpost doesn’t have fire extinguishers?
Cheap shoddy piece of Science Police crap. |
| The tops of the heads seen here are Triad. |
| 20:5 |
Garth and Imra are still on the bridge: they’ll be
in Legion Lost. And unspoken here is Brainy’s “You
go on ahead. I’ll go get them. (And then I’ll be
stuck on the other side of the galaxy in Legion Lost, too.)” |
| Of course they’re still on the bridge deck, er, in
the Mission Monitor room. Saturn Girl is the captain of the Legion,
so she intends to go down with the ship, as it were. |
| 20:6 |
“Negative, Saturn Girl.” If we leave now,
we won’t get to be in Legion Lost with you. |
| 21:2 |
There must be some awful gravimetric warping going on inside
the rift, to distort Element Lad’s face like this. |
| 21:4 |
Went out like your brother? Foolishly throwing your
life away against an insect because you couldn’t slow down enough
to work as part of a team? |
| 22 |
We’ll have to assume that Dyrk, Lyle, and Triad made
it to Life Pod 4. Cham goes back to the bridge with Brainy (so that
he can be in Legion Lost). |
| The phrasing here about the Legion being mourned seems
to indicate that this occurs far enough after the Outpost was sucked through
the rift that perhaps the Legionnaires saved the solar system and collapsed
the rift, but it does not indicate anything about survivors — any
of them. |
| Letters |
The Michael C. Lorah letter and its response mention “half-buried
monuments”. This is a reference to The Planet of the Apes
and the half-buried Statue of Liberty in it. |
| In the cover shot, Monstress and Element Lad can be made
out in the upper center and upper right, and the elongated arm in the
lower left would be Chameleon, but other characters cannot be determined. |
| General |
According to DC’s Direct Channel newsletter
for retailers, the Legion Lost cast will be Saturn Girl, Live Wire,
Kid Quantum, Brainiac 5.1, Umbra, Apparition, Ultra Boy, Monstress, and
Chameleon. Element Lad is explicitly also known to be involved,
as is a revamped Dawnstar, and there are strong indications for ERG-1.
Since they were either sucked through the Rift or are unaccounted for
in the escape, Lori Morning and Meta are also possibilities (but ended
up not appearing in Legion Lost). |
