1 out of 5

I should probably just stop buying Chuck Dixon stuff.  I know he’s made his mark on some important titles, but maybe he’s like a Chris Claremont – the time has come and gone.  …That’s ridiculously unfair, though, because I haven’t really read enough of Claremont (or, really, anything Dixon beyond a couple things I haven’t liked) to make such snap judgments, but then again, weee snap judgments are what the kids pay for.  HACKS, I say, scribed here upon my madly popular review site.  …ADDENDUM, though, I say, and then addend: Dixon does seem to actually hop on to surprising and quirky projects, whereas Claremont keeps riding X-Men soap operas.  Was this a review of something specific?  I can’t remember.

Right.  Alien Legion.

Look – I haven’t read all the Legion stuff.  Just the 19..85? series, or whichever the first one was, because that seemed like the important one, and maybe someone whom I respect suggested it.  I didn’t quite end up vibing with the series – it wasn’t written too well, mainly due to horrible mishandling of a giant cast – but I honestly appreciated the attempt of it to sorta bring true hard sci-fi / fantasy to comics: the roster sheets, the glossary, the world-building.  I really liked the characters, even though their dialogue was eye-rolling worthy.  And that truly is an accomplishment – that a creation (by Alan Zelentz, Carl Potts and Frank Cirocco) made an impact despite the quality of the writing.  The original Legion felt fueled by creative energy; translation of that energy was uneven, but I was still moved by the blast.  Something something.  The point being: I was pretty excited for Titan to publish a new Legion series.  Titan is a recent publisher-to-watch for me (their newish comic book arm, anyway), with high quality printing and a slew of fun creator-owned titles coming out.  ‘Alien Legion’ doesn’t really turn me off of Titan, but it is disappointing how far off the Legion mark it is.  Maybe it matches the 1987 (?) volume 2 run in tone, but Dixon’s all-out action extravaganza doesn’t capture a lick of the thought-bubble filled character drama of the original book.  I appreciate tossing in character bios and a glossary in issue one, but it feels like such an afterthought when reading the book as opposed to a compliment.  All I really get from Uncivil War – mind you I’m quitting before the conclusion – is that Dixon loves Jugger Grimrod, the Wolverine of the Legion.  I mean, fuck this book – Sarigar (our stoic leader of the Legion) and Torie (one of Sarigar’s more trusted officers) are in it for all of three seconds, and with no personality.  The plot is something about a rescue mission which turns into a fight, but with Larry Stroman’s spastically confusing artwork and Dixon’s quick-edit style of changing characters and scenes panel to panel, not only is exactly what’s going on hard to discern, but it’s so scattershot it’s hard to care.  I think I’m thinking of the right Stroman if I say he worked on Peter David’s original X-Factor run… and if so he’s had this very loose, long-lined style for a while, but it’s not a great match when your pages are overstuffed with too many things going on.

To top this off, the lettering is done by someone different each book, which is strange, but it was like the editorial staff really wanted me to stop reading this book with Tom Williams’ letters in book 3, which are about half the font size of the other two books and honestly required me to hold the book closer to read it.  Probably (maybe?) a printing error, but, y’know, nail in the coffin.