One of my favorite HQ designs
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Love the symbols per character, quite a daring concept for such a huge group.
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Same!!! I actually look at that entire one every time I read it…
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Good call. Lots of overtime for the crew…
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My plan is to post our monthly reading tomorrow sometime during the day. I’m still cogitating on some of what to include.
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Oh never mind … but is that some sort of unique super-power??
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I don’t think we ever did review issue one… Please feel free to share your thoughts on both issues of Future State: Legion!
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Thanks for the link!! I still can’t figure out who some of the Legionnaires in Future State are supposed to be, but I guess I knew all the important characters, so that’s fine :“”") “Brainiac 7’s” design had me rolling tbh xD
I already posted this in the Discord, but I’ll just say it again (with edits for clarity), to sum up my thoughts on Future State:
I think it had potential, but relied too much on people’s memories of evil Reboot Jan to be believable imo. Bendis Jan said like two lines in the 12-issue before this, one of which was explaining that all his people were dead so where are the Tromians in Future State coming from? Did I just miss that? :“”") Either way, I didn’t think there was enough emotional weight to Bendis Jan turning evil and “betraying” the Legion, just because Bendis Jan hadn’t really done anything in the 12-issue-- it relied too much on readers’ pre-existing feelings about Jan from previous eras.
In general I feel like the emotional beats in Bendis Legion that aren’t about Jon require you to already know and love the Legion to feel anything about them…Like Bendis drops in a lot of funny fun facts about some of the Legionnaires and their societies (like Gim’s people being born adult, or Tinya crossing four dimensions) but I never felt like I really knew his version of the Legion, maybe partially because he kept dropping in all these mind-blowing reveals about them (For example, in issue 11 out of 12 we find out that Mon-El has a ton of children, which for me caused a huge shift in interpreting his character, thus shaking up one of the very few well-established personalities we had by then). Forget about the barely developed interpersonal relationships, like how we didn’t even know Mon and Tinya were dating until they broke up, and I remember some kind of editorial error (I think it was an error, or they were implying cheating) that said Shady and Mon were “coupling” even though in the previous issues it said that Shady was with Rokk and Mon was with Tinya. Overall, it kinda kept me feeling like I didn’t really know these guys and anything unexpected/surprising about these guys could drop at any time, even by the end of the 12-issue.
All that to say, I agree with Jimbo that Bendis Legion hadn’t earned their “Five years later” yet; for me the problems with Future State aren’t with Future State itself but rather an extension of the problems in the preceding 12-issue.
Otherwise I thought Future State was a fun story, and personally I didn’t mind the art-- as long as they mentioned who was who. There were quite a few parts that I thought were really great craft-wise, like that part where Luornu tells Blok that she doesn’t like to merge anymore and there’s just a blank panel after the first two (ouch), and that page where the upper panels are in the shape of Imra’s helmet. Also, I dig the skinny little feet everybody has, they’re cute lol
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Yeah I still remember how shocking it was when this first came out. After the wonderful sleek lines of the 12 issues of Legion, we got this.
But I agree that this particular artist definitely is good at creating a certain believable world. His figures evoke emotion, it reminds me a little of how Mervin Peake drew his characters for Gormanghast / Titus Groan in a way that revealed their inner selves.
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Oh wow!! 
I love those drawings haha, I’ll have to check out Mervin Peake’s work now!
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His use of the English language as an artist is really fun.
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