Fabian Nicieza Archives

Legion Lost #1

Written by Fabian Nicieza, art by Pete Woods

Rating: 2 of 5 – Uneven

In a Line: “Accessing the sensory patterns of this time period without the transuit filter — is like to see, hear, and talk while inside a pool of mud.”

#140char Review: Legion Lost #1 aren’t the only ones lost. Fast-paced issue w/a slew of chars whizzes by with little effect

CK Says: Consider it.

Legion Lost is a wobbly comic that I suspect improves greatly with any foreknowledge of the characters within or the events of Flashpoint.

The story? A team of superheroes from the future pops back into our present in a malfunctioning time traveling bubble, in pursuit of a villain carrying a contagion. They’re too late to stop him, thus their dilemma becomes how to retrieve him and retreat to chronal safety. However, there are some potentially deadly kinks in their plan.

Scripter Fabian Nicieza hits the ground running and never pauses for a second, wobbling be damned. I appreciated the non-coddling pace and the way his characters always restate the implied question of “what the hell is happening.” I came away with all of their powers and most of their names, if not their relationships with each other.

However, I wouldn’t call the experience pleasant.

Adding to the rushed tone is Pete Woods’s artwork, which looks like it tumbles out of his pen a mile a minute. I’m not sure what gives that impression. Maybe that the action doesn’t always track from panel to panel? Or maybe that the focus of his panels is always crisp and perfect, with perspectives and details bending away at the sides to thicker, heavily-inked lines.

(Also: the weirdly amalgamated logo is awful.)

I understood the book, and even enjoyed some of it, but it doesn’t seem worth returning to next month. I didn’t get the sense it was necessary to be telling a story with these largely charmless characters, and the story that was told wasn’t compelling enough to make me want to track down a seemingly difficult backstory.

Still, it seems like someone fresh from Flashpoint with some fondess for The Legion of Superheroes would be invested in the events that unfold.

Updated Apr 16, 2025! X-Force comic books in a definitive issue-by-issue collecting guide and reading order for omnibus, hardcover, and trade paperback collections. Find every issue and appearance! Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated April 2025 with titles scheduled for release through November 2025.

X-Force was born in an act of pure marketing. Over time, it became synonymous with the idea of a team of X-Men that aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty.

Artist Rob Liefeld grew to be one of the hottest artists in the industry as he drew the final year of New Mutants. Comics were reaching the early height of the speculator craze, and Liefeld wanted to take the team in a new, more X-TREME direction. Thus, New Mutants ended and X-Force was born – a team of proactive young mutants lead by Cable, for whom the ends always justified the means.

Liefeld didn’t last very long on the title before defecting to Image, but X-Force as the proactive X-team has remained part of the X-Men brand ever since. Fabian Nicieza continued writing through Liefeld’s departure until issue #43, setting the tone and voice for many of the recurring characters.

Generally, the X-Force cast consisted of some combination of Cannonball, Boom Boom, Warpath, Sunspot, Rictor, Shatterstar, & Siryn, as mentored by Cable and Domino. The cast also sometimes included Feral, Dani Moonstar, & Karma. (Though Wolfsbane is associated with these characters via New Mutants, at the time she was appearing in X-Factor and Excalibur.)

In 2001, X-Force took a detour to reality TV-inspired, mature-readers X-Statix, followed by brief return by Liefeld and his familiar cast in 2004.

The title returned to popularity and acclaim in 2008 as a team of covert team killers lead by Logan and authorized by Cyclops. This team included connections to earlier incarnations with Warpath, Domino, Wolfsbane, & (eventually) Boom Boom, to which it added Wolverine (X-23) and Archangel. Elixir and Vanisher supported the team.

After that series ended with the “Second Coming” crossover, X-Force returned under the coveted “Uncanny” adjective. There may have never been a series more deserving! Rick Remender penned a fierce, all-time classic story that began as a hunt for Apocalypse but turned into much more. Remender brought Psylocke to the X-Force brand and turned her into its marquee star, along with Grant Morrison’s Fantomex and a team that included Wolverine and Deadpool.

In Marvel Now, Marvel launched not one but two X-Force titles at the end of 2012. Cable & X-Force was a familiar, 90s-tinged version of the team. A new volume of Uncanny X-Force lead by Psylocke and included Storm, Bishop, Spiral, Puck, & Fantomex. Both books were later consolidated into the darkly comedic X-Force (2014) with both Cable and Psylocke, as penned by Si Spurrier.

The title went on a brief hiatus from 2015-2018. The 2017 ResurrXion line replaced it with a familiar-feeling Weapon X title starring Warpath and Sabretooth. Marvel briefly revived the classic Cannonball & Boom Boom cast in 2018 for a 10-issue run by Ed Brisson that followed his Extermination mini-series.

In 2019, the entire X-line launched into the Age of Krakoa from the clean start of Jonathan Hickman’s House of X and Powers of X. This recast X-Force as a combination Krakoan FBI & CIA in a title anchored by Wolverine, Quentin Quire, Domino, and Forge, among others.

DC New 52 Review: Legion Lost #1

Legion Lost #1

CK Says: Consider it.

X-Force – Definitive Reading Order and Collecting Guide