X-Men Legacy #19-24 – “For We Are Many”
As the second wave of Marvel NOW launches hits the stands, one of the more interesting products of the first wave draws to a conclusion. While the sales of X-Men Legacy rather suggest that it would not have been long for this world anyway, it feels as if Simon Spurrier’s story has come to its natural conclusion anyway. There’s no sense here of things being cut short; on the contrary, this seems to be the pay-off of everything the series has been building to this point.
The previous volume ended with Legion’s precarious mental stability having been wrecked yet again by a telepathic attack from X-Men, also unleashing the evil Xavier persona that lives inside him. In this volume, Legion confronts that persona, literally pulls himself together, briefly gets to inherit his father’s role as the leader of mutant kind – and it all goes wrong anyway, as he duly turns into the predicted “World Worm”, which will absorb all mutants into an even bigger gestalt.
The final resolution is genuinely surprising – though Legion does finally get control of all his various powers, he also comes to the conclusion that he’s simply too dangerous to live, and wipes himself from history, surviving as a memory that only Blindfold retains. It’s presented as a final act of defiance from somebody refusing to submit to his destiny in the only way he can.
Leave aside the continuity issues that flow from that ending. (The most obvious is “How did the Age of Apocalypse happen without him?”, but that story was a time-travel paradox to start with, so what the heck.) Spurrier’s afterward acknowledges that some people will hate the ending because it’s a self-cancelling story, and thus one that doesn’t “matter”. As he points out, many readers have been trained to judge stories by how much impact they have on later stories.
But it’s worth remembering where that attitude came from. Traditionally, one of the basic features of a story is that the characters should be changed by their experiences. In ongoing series, that poses a problem: Spider-Man can’t be meaningfully changed by his experiences month after month. So many a story appears which purports to matter but in fact is never mentioned again, and its failure to have the promised impact in the later narrative cheapens it in retrospect. This is the (basically valid) idea that became garbled into the belief that a good story was one that got mentioned lots. Of course, there are plenty of ways of doing stories that matter to the characters without them being vital in continuity. They can matter to a minor character who’s never heard of again; a common ploy in 1980s fill-ins. They can matter to a supporting character or villain whose status quo can change over time, or even to a disposable member of the starring team who doesn’t have to be locked into a status quo.
Or you can do something like this, where Legion’s overall story may turn out to be self-cancelling, but that doesn’t detract from the fact that he’s been through a – god, there has to be a better word for this – journey of self-discovery along the way. Legion’s self-negation (the story is terribly keen not to cast it as suicide, but it effectively is) is the result of a quest for self-control culminating in the most drastic act of self-control he can muster. It works.
And these final issues are nicely constructed on a number of levels. Legion’s narrative monologue about the meaning of death in issue #20 is nicely placed to set up his feelings on the topic several issues before his decision arises, but without seeming forced. The idea of the fake Xavier persona as Legion’s symbolic son, and Legion absorbing outside mutants into an even greater “multiple personality”, all contribute to the sense that his final brief triumph comes in the context of an inversion of the story’s core themes, and one that will surely prove temporary.
You can certainly make a case that Legion’s narration often verges on preachy, and maybe spells out the subtext a bit more blatantly than it needs to. I run hot and cold on Tan Eng Huat’s art; sometimes there are clever jagged images, such as Legion and Blindfold’s astral forms in the final two issues, but there are also confused visuals like the World Worm itself, and a tendency towards generic blandness in the real world backgrounds. And while the more garish colouring is presumably intended to symbolise Legion’s mental turmoil, the book sure isn’t easy on the eye.
But this version of X-Men Legacy has to go down as a success. Legion has been around since the 1980s, but until this series, he was a plot device far more often than he was a character, and certainly not somebody you would have thought of as a potential protagonist. With this book, he’s been retooled into a viable lead, and given a story of his own that still built on the chaotic history he had accumulated. It’s good to know that Marvel remains interested in the more eccentric versions of their genre, but more surprising, and impressive, that Legacy so often made this unlikely premise work.
It’s not just the AoA though- is Destiny still dead, for example? The ending left a lot of questions.
I didn’t read this series, but the “self-cancellation” bit seems like it could be interpreted several ways as its described here. Maybe Legion simply erased the memory of his existence from the world but not his actual existence? Either way, he certainly has some room for revival similar to X-Man or Joseph.
Maybe he could team up with the ghosts of Prof X, Rogue and Wanda. Call it Charlie’s Angels.
I’m kicking myself that I missed the last round of 69p Legacy digicomics. I really enjoyed the first couple of issues, and couldn’t really afford to buy ’em in print. Hey ho. Always another sale.
//\Oo/\\
I quit this after the first few issues — did he ever stop being inexplicably Scottish?
“Maybe he could team up with the ghosts of Prof X, Rogue and Wanda. Call it Charlie’s Angels.”
Ha! Though, I don’t think Rogue or Wanda will be dead that long.
Really liked ths book. Well done to the creative team.
That said, if AOA and AOX didn’t happen as remembered, then what did happen? Magneto and Frenzy’s memories of the AOX are both important aspects of these characters’ current status quo. Are the Elder Gods he destroyed now alive again? Has Illyana got her soul? And what was the deal that llyana came to with Legion? And the twins? Have they gone back to being slaves? Is the boy alive or dead?
Some clarity on these issues would be nice.
On a different note, the “evil Xavier” as Legion’s son – do we think he might be related to evil Xavier from BFTA?
The recent Matt Fraction DEFENDERS series cancelled itself out in its final issue as did the final 3rd or so of the Jurgens THOR series.
I can’t help but wonder if there will be a surprise addendum in the upcoming Legacy 300 that has been solicited, that brings him back in some form or another.
I thought this was a lovely, weird series that ended exactly when it needed to. I thought some of the monologuing in the last couple issues got tiresome, but I thoroughly enjoyed the *voice* of Legion. He felt very distinct.
It was jarring to go from this to the new X-Force, which was awful, and whose voice belonged to a deranged Marrow.
The Vertigo version of Shade the Changing Man did something similar, sort of undoing the series’ events except for a few key (and rather grim) consequences.
And yeah, the new X-Force….well, Paul will likely review its first arc down the line, but I felt like Spurrier was doing a bad Warren Ellis impression.
I though X-Force #1 was pretty average. We’ll see where it goes, though.
I really wish they’d just kept CABLE & X-FORCE. That book seemed to be carving out a fairly distinctive identity until, whoops, guess what, canceled. The new #1 was awful.
X-Force #1 was atrocious! Marrow’s incessant “violence is my music, baby; I just feel the beat, baby” narration was so totally unbearable.
I suppose the good thing about Legion wiping himself out means that no other books have to acknowledge it.
Rogue is apparently dead in Uncanny Avengers, yet from reading the other X-titles, none of her former team mates seem to have noticed or cared, despite some having worked with her for years.
What’s up with that?
Maybe because they all know she’ll be back within a few years, and realize mourning a non-permanent death would be a waste of time?
“Rogue’s dead, everyone!”
“Yawn. Whatever. Call me when she come back”.
I just shrugged off the Uncanny Avengers deaths as part of what is shaping up to be an alternate timeline / time travel story that moves at a snails pace.
Yeah, considering that apparently all mutants are now on another planet as of the most recent Uncanny Avengers installment, it’s clear a reset button is looming at the end of the arc.
Isn’t “Bad Warren Ellis impression” kind of a redundancy at this point?
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