Legion of Super-Heroes v4 123
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Contents
Legion of the Damned Part Three: Damned if we don't!
Synopsis
Flashback 1
"Who were they? They forgot themselves long ago."
The Blight no longer remember what they were once called or where they came from - the data being no longer "relevant". "All that really matters" is that they were once an incredibly advanced race who became bored with the "perfection of their ordered lives"... until they made the mistake that let Entropy consume them all.
The Stem, present
XS tries to block out the images of the Blight's origin which Saturn Girl dumped in her head before passing out - she wants to know the information, but first she needs to escape the Blighted with Imra, with four of them - Element Lad, Ferro, Atmos and Spark - bearing down on her, and the visions trapping her in fugue trances.
Focusing hard, she manages to snap out of her trance and run, fast enough that "the world becomes static around her". 3.6 seconds later, she makes it outside the Stem with Saturn Girl slung over her shoulder... and can't hold back the visions any longer...
Flashback 2
The future-Blight had their every need provided by "their High Sciences" - but, from the ruling castes, the "Scientists of the Elite Guilds" were bored and frustrated by the lack of problems to solve.
On the day they eliminated the last diseases, Guild Master Atrophos addresses the Guilds meeting to announce this, claiming it had all become too easy, and there was nothing they could not do - they could "bend time, outrun light, engineer [their] food and heat from latent molecules... and live a dozen lifetmes", before asking "What next"?
He proceeded to pick up on "the final boundary" - Death.
Leading them in their quest for immortality, he led them "straight to Entropy", who gave them Eternal existence... for a price.
Outside the Stem, present
XS manages to pull herself back to reality again... to find herself surrounded by Blighted. Broken, she gives up... just in time for Saturn Girl to wake up. As Ultra Boy picks Jenni up, Imra orders them to back away from her, and reinforces the point by knocking them all out with a huge mental blast.
With all the Blighted down, Saturn Girl asks if XS can run, she needs her to, but Jenni, wracked by the visions Imra saddled her with and everything else, can't... but, fortunately, Cosmic Boy and his small team of free Legionnaires - Monstress, Brainiac 5.1, Apparition and Chameleon - arrive just at that moment, as XS fuges out once more...
Flashback 3
The "price" was simple - the Blight were trapped in a state of entropic decay by their deal, needing to feed off other races to maintain their existence. With their world gone, they used their "few remaining warships" to travel from world to world to sate their hunger.
Becoming insane over the course of many years, despising the life they fed upon, they eventually found and enslaved the Doda, a benign network of tendrils which grazed on the "life force bloom" of inhabited planets. The Blight corrupted it to be their transport. After a chance encounter with the Legion, they saw the Earth/Post-Zero Hour and its' richness of lifeforce for the first time....
Legionnaires in flight, present
XS wakes in Monstress' arms, as Chameleon directs the flying team to a Resistance shelter. XS asks if they won, and Monstress replies "for the moment". As XS apologises, saying she "didn't expect a ride home", Monstress says that they hadn't expected someone escaping as they tried to break in either. XS says how hard it is to break out, but they did it, quoting the "No-one ever returns from the Stem" saying at Imra, who simply replies, "We did, Jenni. We did."
Separately, Cos confirms with Cham that they've arrived at the shelter, and orders everyone inside - it's "time for a Council of War".
At the entrance, Chameleon says that they should be safe for a while as he levers a heavy slab up - they'd discovered that the Blight's sensors had difficulty penetrating ceracrete, so they'd lined all their shelters with it.
As the others head down the ladder, he stops XS for a moment, saying it's good to see her, and guilty over "let[ting her] and the others get captured...". She reassures him - they knew the risks, and it wasn't his fault - and it's good to see him too, she finishes as she hugs him, tears streaming from his eyes.
The Stem
Elsewhere, the Blight send out everyone they can spare to hunt down the Legionnaires, with only a skeleton crew left to manage the Stem. There, M'Onel is being fed upon by the Stem's seeding membranes, as he had been for three weeks, since he was ambushed and captured by Blighted Legionnaires. Weak and nauseous, he had been despairing, as he had in his time in the Stasis Zone - but he suddenly senses a chance to escape for the first time in his captivity. Snapping his bonds, he attacks his jailers - but is quickly brought down by "Lord Atrophos", who proceeds to ask why M'Onel hadn't been restrained.
One of the Blighted replies that he had broken free - unBlightable, he "is more difficult to handle". Atrophos is unhappy with the answer, saying that he's central to his plans, and demanding that he is restrained and narcotized immediately. He tells M'Onel that he is the answer to his prayers, and will "light a fire across the universe" that will end the Blight's curse and "destroy all life everywhere". M'Onel says he'll never help, but Atrophos coldly says he's not being offered the choice.
Metropolis, Lantar Sector, next day
A Blight Attack Mode, including a Blight, and several Blighted including Radion, Particon and Kinetix search for the Legionnaires. Spotting a lone Blight apparently brought down, the Blight goes to help - and finds that it's Chameleon. Monstress and Brainiac 5.1 attack the Blight, and as the Blighted respond to the attack on their "master", most are knocked out by a sonic boom from XS and a volley of metal from Cosmic Boy, who directs Apparition to deal with the others. Calling it a "pleasure", she knocks one down and is raising her fist to knock her out... until she sees the figure Kinetix and freezes. Cos shouts a warning at her to phase, and she turns to see Particon firing at her, while Kinetix attacks. She phases just in time, and the attacks of the two Blighted instead knock each other out. Cos tells her it's too dangerous to let herself be distracted, and she apologises, saying that "seeing Zoe" had thrown her.
Saturn Girl then reassures Cos that she'd prevented any of them from signalling the Stem, and XS hopes "Brainy's done the job", just as he shouts "Got it". The Blight, pinned by Monstress, rants that they will "become of us or die", and shouts to put it down, which Monstress does... followed by a two handed whack that knocks it out.
B5.1 says that he thinks they've successfully retrieved what they wanted - a Blight identity signature so they can move about at will in the Stem safely. Cos says that, if XS' story is true, they need to destroy the Doda to shut the Blight down - but Saturn Girl thinks in response that, while she "wishes she could tell them", she may need to "betray them all."
Roll Call
Legionnaires
- NB: Legionnaires who appear only as "Blighted" are listed under "Villains"
Villains
- Blight
- Atrophos (also flashbacks)
- several unidentifiable
- Blighted
- Atmos
- Element Lad
- Ferro
- Karate Kid (possibly)
- Kid Quantum (Jazmin Cullen)
- Kinetix
- Particon
- Radion
- Spark
- Star Boy
- Thunder
- Ultra Boy
- Umbra
- many unidentifiable
Planets and Settings
- Earth
- Metropolis
- The Stem
- Lancor sector
- Metropolis
Solicitation
LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #123
Written by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning; art and cover by Olivier Coipel and Lanning.
The secrets of the Blight are revealed in Part 3 of the 4-part "Legion of the Damned." But will that information help XS, the super-speeding Legionnaire who's in for the run of her life -- against her own mind-controlled teammates -- inside the Blight headquarters known as the Stem? Also, is there a traitor in the Legion's midst?
32 pages, $2.50, ships on Nov. 24.
Images
Cover artwork
Solicited cover art
Published cover
Reprints
Legion of the Damned, Part Three: Damned if we don't! has been reprinted in the following:
DC Comics Presents: Legion of Super-Heroes #1 (error version)
DC Comics Presents: Legion of Super-Heroes #1 (corrected version)
See also
- Legion of the Damned
- Legion Publication History - Other issues published (late) 1999-2001
- Legion Publication History - Other issues of Legion of Super-Heroes v4
- Post-Zero Hour Chronology
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