Legionnaires 79

Legionnaires #79 Reboot » Post-Zero Hour Cover by Olivier Coipel, et al Story title Legion of the Damned Part Two: Damned if we do! Previous story Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #122 Next story Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #123 Publication date 10 November, 1999 Cover date January 2000 Creators Writer(s) Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning (DnA) Penciller(s) Olivier Coipel Inker(s) Andy Lanning Letterer(s) Comicraft Colourist(s) Tom McCraw Editor(s) Mike McAvennie Cover artist(s) Olivier Coipel (pencils) Andy Lanning (inks) Patrick Martin (colours).

Legion of the Damned Part Two: Damned if we do!

Chameleon relates the Blight's arrival at Earth to his four newly-arrived teammates, Cosmic Boy, Brainiac 5.1, Apparition and Monstress:

Flashback 1: One Month Ago

Shortly after they'd left to check on a drifting freighter, a trade convoy had been coming through Stargate KF1122, the main Earth Stargate just outside the Moon's orbit, when immense ribbons of energy, the Blight's teleportation tendrils obliterated them, then smashed crashed through the combined attempts of the Legion, Science Police, Amazers and Workforce to prevent them touching down and soon "entwined" Earth - in total, taking less than five hours - before the Blight themselves emerged when victory was already assured, recognised by Sensor as the creatures who destroyed a Lycidian Moon. Many were believed killed in the process, but soon reappeared as the Blight's slaves, who the remaining people came to call the Blighted. He finishes by telling them about President Brande's resistance movement.

Present

Brainiac 5.1 is briefly absorbed by the old puzzle about what had destroyed the moon, but the others are shocked, and Monstress tells him to shut up. She asks about Live Wire, Saturn Girl and Gates, and Chameleon responds that Gates was missing, Saturn Girl had been taken three weeks earlier, and Live Wire was "destroyed this afternoon". Apparition then asks about Ultra Boy and is told that he was one of the Blighted. He then asks what happened to them to cause them to be missing for a month, and B5.1 confirm for Chameleon that, with the Stargates down, it took them a month to return from their mission to rescue a freighter.

Cosmic Boy then says they knew something was wrong, with no Stargates and no communications, "and after what happened to us at the Outpost...". He asks what Chameleon means by "taken", and Chameleon then points out the Blights' interment camps - and their headquarters, the Stem.

In the Stem itself, those captured in the attack in part one are being processed after interrogation. The Blighted Umbra points out the sedated XS, the only metahuman among them, which leads to her being sent deep for power-tapping. Half-conscious, she registers only a dull feeling of revulsion and horror as one of the humans is killed by a Blight member, the others are sent for "final processing", and she is sent deep for power-sapping.

Flashback 2: Outpost

Apparition dreams of her and her three teammates' arrival back at Earth, her violent frustration at being separated from Ultra Boy, which drove her teammates - already stretched by spending days at a time calculating system-to-system hops without Stargates, adding up to a month in cramped conditions - nuts.

When they finally arrived in the Sol System, they boarded the Legion Outpost - oddly, still in Earth orbit as when they'd left, rather than its' usual position - and found it deserted, but with a strange vegetative growth on the command deck. They found the systems still online, and were shocked at the scale of the planetwide catastrophe. They found precisely one Legion signal - Chameleon's flight ring - before realising they had triggered a booby-trap, as energy spikes raced from Earth towards the Outpost. They race for their shuttle, as they were knocked out of orbit by the exploding Outpost...

Present

...she wakes up. She finds Chameleon hadn't slept, traumatised by the previous month. Irrationally convinced Ultra Boy is not "truly gone", she says she won't give up on him, and they "have to do something. Anything." She asks if the answers lie in "that... that Stem". Chameleon says he hopes so - they don't have much choice - and time to wake the others, and find out.

XS, being carried down the Stem by three Blighted, begins to regain full consciousness as a small telepathic voice calls out to her. She says she's Jenni and asks who the voice is - it can't remember, it's dark, and it's scared, and doesn't know where it is. XS says she thinks they're inside the Stem, and she can barely hear it - it says it was calling for ages before she answered, but Jenni says she was "tranked", but she's now metabolising the sedatives faster than they're entering her system. She then sees several Legionnaires "hung like slabs of meat", but, as it tells her that's what "they do here", and that's why she should escape, the voice grows louder, and she begins to recognise the telepathic "voice" moments before she sees the source being transported in a similar ball of sap - Saturn Girl.

Immediately, she bursts out, grabs Imra from her prison, and sprints away at super-speed.

Meanwhile, Cos' team are approaching the Stem, as Brainiac 5.1 baffles them with botanical jargon while looking for a way in. As they get near, however, they see a group of Blighted gathering...

The Blight desperately search for the escaped XS and Saturn Girl inside the Stem, but Jenni, forced to stop, vibrates them invisibly until they pass. Once they are gone, however, the exhausted and defeated Saturn Girl tells Jenni to go without her, and roughly implants what she had learned of the Blight into XS' brain before collapsing.

Outside, Cos' team watch as the group of Blighted, including Ultra Boy, Star Boy and Umbra, get the "scent" of the two escapees, and aim to find and destroy them...

Roll Call

Legionnaires

NB: Legionnaires who appear only as "Blighted" are listed under "Villains"

Featured:

• Apparition (also in flashback 2)
• Brainiac 5.1 (also in flashback 2)
• Cosmic Boy (also in flashback 2)
• Chameleon
• Monstress (also in flashback 2)
• Saturn Girl
• XS

Cameos (in process of being Blighted):

• Ferro
• Kid Quantum
• M'Onel
• Triad

Behind the Scenes:

• Sensor (flashback 1 only)

Villains

• Blight
• Blighted
  • Element Lad (flashback 1 only)
  • Evolvo (flashback 1 only)
  • Kinetix (flashback 1 only)
  • Lori Morning (flashback 1 only)
  • Spark (cover only)
  • Spider-Girl (flashback 1 only)
  • Star Boy (also in flashback 1)
  • Ultra Boy (also in flashback 1)
  • Umbra
  • Violet (flashback 1 only)
  • several unidentifiable

Other characters

Cameos (in process of being Blighted):

• Atmos

Planets and Settings

• Earth
  • Metropolis

Notes

Errata

• The shuttle the returning Legionnaires use bears only the vaguest of resemblances to the Legion Cruiser they departed in in Legionnaires #78

Solicitation

LEGIONNAIRES #79

Written by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning; art and cover by Olivier Coipel and Lanning.

The battle against the menace of the Blight heats up in Part 2 of the 4-part "Legion of the Damned." After being stranded in space for a month, Cosmic Boy, Monstress, Apparition, and Brainiac 5.1 return to Earth and find the planet completely dominated by the alien race known as the Blight. Along with Chameleon, the remaining Legionnaires make a plan to storm the Blight headquarters, in the hopes of freeing their teammates -- and the rest of the planet -- from the Blight's control.

32 pages, $2.50, ships on Nov. 10.

Cover images

• 

  Published cover

See also

• Legion of the Damned
• Legion Publication History - Other issues published (late) 1999-2001
• Legion Publication History - Other issues of Legionnaires
• Post-Zero Hour Chronology

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