Alien Legion Footsloggers
Written and Illustrated by: Potts, Zelentz, Ciroco, Austin
Released by: Checker book publishing group
ISBN: 0975380877
This is another classic 80’s series that’s being reprinted for the modern day (and past day) fan. Alien Legion is the brainchild of Carl Potts, an editor for Marvel Comics. According to the introduction Carl had the idea of setting the French Foreign Legion into space, but it wasn’t until he became an editor that he was able to do this. He teamed up with another writer and artists to create this series, and this collection is the first 6 issues of the comic. The best way to describe this series is that it’s a combo of Star Wars, Star Trek, G.I. Joe, with a little bit of Thundercats thrown in. If you like those guys, you’ll like this collection.
This series follow the exploits of the Alien Legion who are charged with guarding distant outposts and protecting the species in their areas. As such, just like in Star Trek, they are not allowed to interfere with species that aren’t yet mature enough. This often means that they can’t use advanced weaponry for fear of influencing these evolving creatures. But their enemies show no such constraints. For example, in the first issue they encounter pirates setting up an illegal mine where a species is currently evolving…and these pirates show no fear of using lasers and other weapons while the legion is forced to use darts. The Legion eventually defeat the pirates and stop the mine, only to uncover one of their archenemy’s is around. The Legion’s ultimate archenemy is the Harkilions, seemingly one species, out to create havoc in the Universe. The other issues follow the Legion as they do battle to protect the innocent.
The writing is decent enough, but it’s a bit confusing to me. Mostly because we just jump into the first issue without any introduction of what’s going on or really any indication of who the characters are or what they’re supposed to be doing. We can pick some of it up as we go along, but…I like my series to build up to it, to introduce who these guys are and give a little bit more of a back story. That being said it’s fairly easy to follow the storyline and discern a bit about what’s going on. And as the series progresses they do give us more of the background on the characters, but it often feels…forced. Like they realize we want to know more so they try to force a bit of plot and story in here and there.
I wish I could say that the artwork was fantastic or spectacular…but in all honesty the best I can is that it fits the time period and is consistent with other works. Some of the artists that worked on this series also worked on Spider-Man, X-Men, Dr. Strange, and Star Wars and this tends to be reflected in how characters are drawn and the shapes and styles they take. Most noticeable to me is that they don’t often use backgrounds within the work. Instead it tends to focus on the characters themselves with just a solid color background. This does help the reader focus more on what’s going on without getting overwhelmed by details in the background. This reprinted edition also does an excellent job of capturing the original colors and marks used when creating the work. For example, in some of the solid color backgrounds, you can see the brush strokes of the markers, which is a rather nice feature.
This is a decent enough series and if you like Star Wars or Star Trek then you’ll likely like this series as well. But this isn’t a series I’ll be picking up more issues of, as it just doesn’t hold my interest much.
