Barbelith Underground > Comic Books

A re-thinking about the Lightning Saga:

Is it me or did anyone else get a weird 12 monkeys/Philip K. Dick vibe from this story. There's definitely that feel of heroes going back through time to valiantly change the future and merely just fulfilling the future.

This reminds me similar to the New Romanticism music in the early 80s and Emo subculture today. The heroic ideal in Romanticism is prided over everything else. Great men and women should be heralded in the face of an accelerated culture. Emo does something similar, where emotion is prided in the face of accelerated culture that seems to dehumanize others.

The Legion seemed to exemplify this ideal when we look at Lightning Saga as a whole. The Legion had come back through time to basically die. We have 7 heroes with emotional ties to each other. Dawnstar and Wildfire are two characters that have a very emotional relationship that can never succeed. Jeckie and KK have a doomed relationship...even from Jeckie's standpoint. Starman and Dreamer have a doomed relationship. Heck, even Braniac 5 had a doomed relationship with Supergirl.

These are all doomed relationships that is going to end with death. There seems to be this death urge in these characters. None of them have solid relationships or even relationships that are good for them. This isn't Garth and Imra's relationship...they all have very dark relationships to each other.

They go back through time to die. That's the overall purpose for this series. They are going to do something ultimately heroic for a greater purpose. From this respect, this is very emo hardcore or very new romantic: emotional people who are young that aren't meant to have happy lives.

While I read the story, I kept thinking about how much they are sort of like the "Endless" from the Sandman series:

When the Legion were sent back through time, they seem to embody different parts of the Endless =

* Destiny: Dream Girl...she can see into the future and is the most cryptic of the Legionnaires.

* Dream: Sensor Girl...she can give people their desires and their nightmares through illusions.

* Destruction: Wildfire...he creates a link from the past (Red Tornado) and can create or destroy with this energy bursts.

* Desire: Dawnstar...the hottest of the Legion in the past and she seemed pretty hot and heavy with the Thanagarian.

* Despair: Timber Wolf...he despairs for a life he can not have in the world (i.e. racing with Apes).

* Delirium: Starboy...both are completely insane and see the truths of the world in unique ways, but never seems to make sense.

* Death = Karate Kid...he's a killer in hand to hand combat and he died.

The Sandman series gave us an archetype of the Emo subculture (and, posibly, Goth too). Is this Legion meant to be an emulation of this archetype too? And for what purpose?

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