1. Brainiac 5.1 changes his name back to Brainiac 5 during this story.2. Although actually an alien race, they act uniformly as Villains and are listed as such.
3. This “Saturn” badge is only tracked when seen separate from Saturn Girl’s uniform, or when explicitly commented on.
4. Identified as “Vanquisher Conquest Machines” in the earlier issue.
| Cover | Wildfire is the only current cast member not seen here. |
| 1 | Note that what seems so clear to Imra in her thoughts is so hard to express in speech. |
| 2:2 | We tend to take it for granted that ship doors automatically open — “Whshht! Whshht!” — like on Star Trek. That Brainy’s hasn’t worked up such a standard control really highlights the tech level they are working with. |
| 2:7 | Should the readers be glad the writers are admitting up front that they are pushing these metaphors, or should we be rolling our eyes a little that they recognized the heaviness of the hammer but used it anyway? |
| 3:5 | Garth may not come from a sophisticated background, but he isn’t stupid. Imra is using the Legion and her leadership position to avoid him and her personal responsibilities. |
| Garth should really cut back on the hair gel. | |
| 4:3 | An unstated implication here is that the Legionnaires were depending on the output of the hydroponic farm to feed them if their stay in this part of the universe continued indefinitely. The severe damage is potentially even greater than Garth is letting on. (Good thing there are are only three issues to go!) |
| 5 | Observe the “X-Wing” and “V-Wing” fighters. Just a bit of Star Wars influence. |
| In Legion Lost #11, Jan says he had the Progeny search for the Legionnaires, that he wanted to meet them all again. The Progeny’s utter destruction of species and entire planets is at odds with what Jan says. Either he is shading the truth, or the Progeny were overzealous in carrying out his wishes. | |
| The Legion tends to add a new destroyed or majorly damaged planet to its mythos every two years or so. Prior to Zero Hour, the last few were Orando, Gemworld, Luna, and Earth. In the postboot continuity, there have been Angtu, Trom, Dryad, Gil’D, and now the Barontyk homeworld. | |
| 6-8 | This presumably takes place in the same space as the training bout in Legion Lost #4. |
| 6:1 | The swatch of magenta on Shikari’s claw appears to be a printing error. |
| 6:3 | There is a word or two missing from Shikari’s dialogue here. Maybe it should read “…So I am wanting to make myself and my fighting edge more kick-nass.” |
| Given the usual word substitution for “nass”, I guess Shikari qualifies as a real shit kicker. | |
| 7:5 | Wildfire was always a bit of a hothead, so him at least understanding if not approving makes sense. Note as well, though, that he only joined the crew later on, so he wasn’t one of the original ones Imra created Tinya for, nor did he even really know Apparition, and thus the impact of Saturn Girl’s illusion is not quite as strong for him. |
| 7:6 | Are the angry with Imra for creating the four Legionnaires and falsely inflating their hopes? Or are they really angry about the Apparition situation but aren’t quite able to express that, so they divert the anger into the more easy to express and process channel? |
| 8:2 | Shikari’s line about doesn’t quite work, since people learning English (and we assume that Interlac is largely like English) typically mess up idioms by choosing a word with a similar meaning, not a similar sound. While the homophone method of messing things up is kind of standard for comics, perhaps Shikari’s race or powers are involved here. She may perceive the meaning of language as more in the sound than the structure, and she lets her powers guide her in the language acquisition process. She may tend to cut them off when they get to the right “area” but before they pull out the right word, so she sometimes gets the wrong term by trying to do consciously what she should be doing unconsciously. |
| 10:1 | Chameleon just brushes across the surface of a deeper question: was “creating” Apparition the right answer, even for a moment, or would it have been better for Saturn Girl to just shut Ultra Boy down until hen could have been dealt with properly. (But in the end, would it have changed anything?) |
| 10:2 | Do they know what Chameleon is capable of? Would it behoove the leader of the Espionage Squad to be upfront about the full scope of his abilities? |
| This is apparently Umbra’s view of Chameleon, with her hair framing the panel. | |
| 10:5 | Saturn Girl did the “talk through” trick with many of the Legionnaires: Kid Quantum, Live Wire, Brainiac 5.1, and she tried to do it with Umbra. In fact, she probably did it with the all, but we only saw some of the interactions. |
| 10:7 | Typo: Kid Quantum’s first name is “Jazmin:”, not “Jasmin”. |
| 12-13 | A subtext of this scene is that Brainiac 5 works best when he has Invisible Kid to bounce off of and to inspire him via competition. Brainy’s strength is in pure research, while Lyle’s is in application; Brainy has had to do both roles, and he doesn’t find it easy (but neither will he admit that). |
| 13:2 | <Didn’t Brainy choose the name upgrade himself?> One or both of the writers had expressed a similar sentiment about the “upgrade” name about the time the series premiered |
| 13:3 | It’s a classic fear of scientists and tech workers: not just that what they are working on will be a failure, but that they will be exposed as a sham, or that any bit of non-work effort they spend will be found out and will cost them dearly. There may be a connection between those who work extended hours and this fear. |
| 13:4 | This scene should prove to be a turnaround point for Saturn Girl in this series. |
| 14 | Note that this is the first of the three species destructions where we see any of the members of the race. As well, the first one involved the Progeny destroying the planet from space, perhaps never setting foot on it; the second one took two days of on-planet warfare; this one took six days. Either the Progeny are getting slow or tired, or else the species are getting “better”; based on the mass migration seen later in the issue, each species may be delaying the Progeny as much as possible in order that the others can have a better chance of escape. |
| 15:1 | This is the first close-up we have seen of the exterior of the Legion Lost ship. It has never been clear how large it actually is; this would indicate that it is at least several hundred feet across. The non-smooth exterior is reminiscent of the exterior of the Death Star. |
| 15:2 | Observe how much talking Saturn Girl is doing this issue. She is making a concrete effort to interact with the others directly; the only thought captions from her are when she is alone. |
| 16:3 | While Saturn Girl was next to Apparition in Legion Lost #4 (<was she?>), the lever was all the way across the bridge. Saturn Girl made Apparition seems to pull the lever, but she made someone else do the physical deed, unconsciously. |
| 17 | This scene reminded a number of fans of “A Cold and Lonely Place” (Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes #<281>), where Saturn Girl was stranded on an ice asteroid with Timber Wolf and others, and the two shared a kiss and presumably an attraction brought on by their love for the twins, Lightning Lad and Light Lass. |
| 19 | This fleeing collection of ships has some echoes of the premise of Battlestar Galactica in it. |
| 20:2 | This raises an interesting question: what are the odds that the Legion Lost ship should be moving directly counter to the fleeing mass of ships? Randomness would make them much more likely to encounter the ships at an angle. (If at all: space is big. Unimaginably big. If this diaspora is in a narrow channel, then the odds of them even intersecting it are unbelievably remote.) The answer, of course, is that the Legion Lost ship is heading toward the Rosette, and not by chance, since Legion Lost #10 reveals that Saturn Girl has had some kind of low-level mental connection with the Progenitor; under her command, the ship may have been heading toward the source of that connection. As for the fleeing ships, they would not be fleeing merely in one channel, but in all directions away from the Rosette. Anywhere along a sphere surrounding the Rosette, the Legionnaires would have encountered fleeing ships and the pursuing Purge Fleet. |
| 21:2 | “Yaw”: side-to-side movement. |
| 21:3 | The juxtaposition of Shikari and Saturn Girl’s bosom here brings to mind the earlier “Do not hold your breast” comment. |
| Letters | The response to the final letter promises that Live Wire will be cover-featured before the series is over. #1 was the group shot (and the interior focused on Shikari), #2 was Monstress, #3 was Kid Quantum, #4 was Apparition, #5 was Brainiac 5.1, #6 was Umbra, #7 was Ultra Boy, #8 was Chameleon, #9 is Saturn Girl, #10 will be Wildfire, and #11 is Element Lad. The leaves Live Wire as #12, which is also the issue where one member of the cast will commit a major sacrifice so that the others can return home. This does not bode well for Live Wire surviving into the Legion Worlds series |
