Seven heroes from the 31st century have traveled back to the present day. Their mission: Save their future from annihilation. But when the future tech they brought with them fails, they find themselves trapped in a nightmarish world that, for them, is the ultimate struggle to survive!
Rose Wilson and the Ravagers of NOWHERE has set their sights on the Legionnaires and intend to rid the world and future of them. This crossover tale includes appearnces by Superboy and the Teen Titans.
Also in this volume, the Legionnaires must face Metamerican, a new villain, and his army of Metamarines which are bent on eliminating the Legionnaires in the present so they may never protect Earth in the future.
Fabian Nicieza is a writer and editor who is best known as the co-creator of DEADPOOL and for his work on Marvel titles such as X-Men, X-Force, New Warriors, and Robin.
His first novel, the Edgar Award-nominated SUBURBAN DICKS, a sarcastic murder mystery, is on sale now from Putnam Books.
The Dicks will return in THE SELF-MADE WIDOW, coming June 21st.
(C+) 67% | Almost Satisfactory Notes: A rotten, stinkin' ending, culminations with expedients, a labored chew, insipid too: a sloppy joe of trash ingredients.
This volume was going oh-so-well right up until the final three issues.
Clearly they were writing this aware that they needed to tie-up lose ends in order to finish off the series. And it looked like they were going to be able to do just that once the Culling ended and the team could focus on getting back home and solving Alastor dilemma again..... Then they introduced a new (unbelievably lame.... like, SO unbelievably lame!) villain riding a talking dragon and everything fell to pieces.
It fell apart so much that they needed to bring in even more characters from other titles to convolute the story further; Superboy, The Ravagers, even friggin' Harvest and his gang of baddies had to show up to confuse this mess even more. And if that wasn't enough... Here comes the Echo police???
It all became pointless in the end. They tried so hard to explain away all of the newly introduced threads and how they were somehow interconnected that it made absolutely no logical sense at all. It made everything that came before it irrelevant and destroyed a perfectly mediocre Legionnaires story arc. At least this volume stayed true to the LSH characters, and it did contain a neat back story for Timber Wolf in its Issue 0. But, wow! Did the finale of this series EVER bomb!!
Surprisingly, I liked DeFalco's work here better than in the original volume. He has a strong handle on writing about a large cast of character, and he manages to constantly embed that characterization in the (frequent, long) action sequences, keeping them lively. He also does a lot to introduce mystery into the book.
My only qualm is that it's more inconclusive than I'd like, as it doesn't close out the Harvest thread, it leaves open Tyroc's fate, and it left Gates' time-travel thing muddy.
Oh, and there was the whole "Culling" thing at the beginning which was at best semi-comprehensible because DC didn't include the whole story and didn't even bother to describe what happened in between the LL issues -- which is unfortunately par for the New 52 course.
The Culling: A mix of TT, Superboy and Legion Lost. Infuriating because there's no conclusion. The Big Bad escapes and there's no clarification as to who he is and whether he's mad or justified in his horrific actions. I do like the various teams and how they come together though. Read up to #12 - ooh, so the future has changed. Is that due to the actions at The Culling? Because they stopped Harvest or let him live? Secrets, secrets everywhere. This team haven’t been honest with each other at any point. I don’t know who to trust. #13 - 16 a fight with the Big Bad which could change the future. Nathaniel Adyms comes from the future to stop it. I think he becomes Harvest 🤔. I honestly don't know if the end makes sense.
The Legion get taken by Harvest to fight. After that an escapee from the future threatens the world. Oh, and there's another big bad too. This is an action packed volume, with only some character bits in it. I suspect some of it was written so you would have to start reading Teen Titans and Superboy. A good read.
There's a lot in this volume so hard to know where to begin!
Firstly the culling... yeah the less said about this the better, its purely a crossover for crossovers sake.
The following issues post the culling seemingly try to resolve the main plotline of this book, but it does so in a little arc where thats like a little side part of it. Like there's a general story going on with them being hunted by some new metas and then its like 'oh yeah, the whole reason we are in the century, let's just resolve that' and was rather lack luster. Issues weren't bad but yeah for a way to solve the whole crux of the story it felt weird.
Then the final issues introduce a new big bad, cross over with ravagers and superboy, and brings Harvest and all the culling lot back for a 'world ending event' that gets literally 0 explanation. You dont know who this villian is except they do bad things, you dont know what the world ending weapon they are building is, except that its bad. You dont really know why Harvest is helping out, but they are.
A lot is happening in this volume, WAY to much and I feel it lost what it initial set out to do as a series.
I liked the 0 issue a lot, and like a lot of these characters but yeah, waaay too bloated.
This series really did not need to get involved with the whole Knowhere plotlime going on, it did, and it derailed it
This 2nd and final volume of Legion Lost contains issues #8-16 & #0. The first couple of issues are part of "The Culling" crossover event between Legion Lost, Superboy, and The Teen Titans. All of these heroes are captured by a villain named Harvest and are made to fight one another with the intention that the survivors will be new additions to Harvest's personal army that he calls Ravagers. Add Caitlan Fairchild, who was once part of Gen 13 in the Wildstorm Universe prior to New 52, and a new character named Ridge into the mix.
After all of the heroes part way, the members of Legion Lost finally start making some headway on the mission that they were sent back in for during volume 1 of this series. Over the course of this book, we finally get a look at the past of some of the main characters. Because of this, we finally get to know the characters a little bit and get to see why they act the way they do. Due to the series being cancelled, we don't get to the past of a couple of people and never get to know them and the ending seemed rushed. Writer Tom DeFalco did the best he could to tie up any loose ends and to answer quite a few questions that had arisen over the course of "The Culling" and the events that led up to it in the short time available before the series ended. I don't fault the writer for the end being rushed. The series was being canceled and he did everything he could possibly do to make the ending satisfactory. The writing on the book gets 3.5 stars from me.
Aaron Kuder is the person that provides the pencil work for the first issue. The rest of the book was drawn by Pete Woods. Kuder is the better of the two artists. Pretty much everything in his issue looks great, Woods has his moments of greatness, but the quality of his art falter in many places. While his art is enjoyable as a whole, it is easy to pick out the discrepancies in the art because one panel will be full of clear detail and look amazing while the next panel will look rushed and the following panel will a view from such a great distance that the details become unclear. I give the art 3.5 stars.
This ended up being a 3.5 star book that gave a mostly satisfactory end to the series. Hopefully the few unanswered questions will be addressed somewhere else during the course of the New 52. I can't recommend this to everyone, but if you read "The Culling" event because of Superboy and/or Teen Titans and want to know a little more the other people involved, definitely check this one out because you'll find out a little more about Harvest and his people and see questions that arose in thise other titles answered here.
What the ........!?! After issue 8 the story continues elsewhere, but it does not say where to look. (I´m guessing "Teen Titans, vol 2")
What the ........!?! After issue 9 the story starts and continues elsewhere, but it does not say where to look. To make things worse: This issue starts in the middle of a battle and ends before the battle is over. (Still guessing "Teen Titans, vol 2")
Issue 10 and we are back on track!
....but everyone really do talk a lot while fighting right?
...and they are fighting a space-super-barberian om a talking dragon.
By the way: Why is this collection called "The Culling" It does not include that part of the story... "Harvest" would be a more fitting title.
...and there are more loose threads now than ever before, and this was the end of this title right?!?
I'm not a huge fan of the Legion in any of its forms, but I have to say I enjoyed this volume, and it made me appreciate some of the characters a bit more. The story bounces around a lot, with a couple of minor villains making for 1-2 issue stretches, and the zero issue focusing on Timber Wolf is underwhelming, but it all wraps up with a fairly intense battle with multiple factors and groups coming into play, actually making it feel like it was a high stakes situation. And there was a little more resolution to the whole Harvest storyline, although still not true closure. But all in all, a fair number of decent to good action sequences, and the characters grew on me more than expected. If you're a fan of the Legion, you'll probably like it more, but even those who aren't won't be let down.
Kind of fun. I read it because of the crossover with Teen Titans, which I've also been reading.
The writing has some oddities in this volume. Tellus suddenly talks like Yoda, which he didn't before, I'm pretty sure. Many of the characters respond to orders with the same modern (and not terribly mature-sounding) construction: "Like I would stay behind!" or, "Like there's any chance of that!" or, "Like I would ever let you go alone!", etc.
Also, the word "implode" is used to mean "explode" twice. In one case, a narrative text box gives us the marvelous sentence, "The forgotten armored transport suddenly implodes, bursting outward!" Guys, that word does not mean what you think it means.
So, theory: I think maybe Captain Adym becomes Harvest. Tiiiime traaaavel!
Disappointing end to this series. The subplots from the first book are rushed to completion here, and most of it doesn't make sense. Everyone has a secret. Yawn.
Additionally, being part of the Culling crossover with the Teen Titans and the Ravagers is pretty lame, and just adds to the overall *meh* of this story.
I really loved the characterization of Timber Wolf and the rest, though, and they did seem like the Legionnaires we've always known (except for Tyroc, who has always been a bit of a blank slate). So that was a nice plus. The art was great, also. Too bad the script by DeFalco was so flat and boring, but then he was trying to shoehorn a major crossover plus plot threads by the writer on the first volume. So there's that.
2.5 out of 5. Legion fans should read it just because.
I liked how this links up a couple different titles, Teen Titans, Legion of Superheroes, Superboy, and Ravagers, but it looks like 16 issues is all they got. Now I'm wondering what's going to happen with Harvest and his "diabolical" plans. Hopefully it's wrapped up on Ravagers because I'm not reading Superboy or Legion of Superheroes.
This got a little convoluted in the end with the time travel stuff, but overall it was a cool arc with some decent characters.
I'd like to give it more stars for the good work of Misters DeFalco and Woods and the Legion. The ending just doesn't grab me, (maybe it doesn't make sense without reading the crossovers?)... and I hadn't made the time to read the rest yet. Still, the Timber Wolf origin story stands alone quite nicely and it was a heck of an effort.
El naufragio narrativo que significó la saga The Culling (uno de los mayores desaciertos de los New 52) termina de hundir una colección que daba para más.