You Win Some, You Lose Some
It was nice to finally read the early Legion stories, having read the '95 Legion Quest leading up to the Age of Apocalypse a couple of times already. The amazing thing is Claremont does an even better job of capturing Legion's cacophonous mindscape than the '95 writers. We had last heard from Gabrielle Haller during the From the Ashes storyline, in the regular X-Men series, so it was nice to finally get that strand picked back up again. Xavier has plenty of his own problems as well, dealing with old flames (Haller and McTaggart) and recent physical attacks leaving him physically/mentally off his game (not an ideal time to tackle David Haller). It's bizarre anyone believes any of Legion's personalities, making the characterization feel a bit skewed - though everything is skewed and anarchic thanks to Sienkiewicz's artwork (no offense to McLeod or Leialoha, but their style would have ruined this storyline). The ending is rather hurried and forced, which we probably should have seen coming: Claremont does a great job setting up unconquerable conflicts, when it comes time to resolving them, he does rely a smidge on the deus ex machina (I'm tempted to say "too much," but I'm enjoying his writing more than most, so I tend to let him slide a bit - it is rather classical, after all). The brief overlap with Secret Wars II is not as burdensome as it seems like it might be from a distance, so no readers should feel they are obligated to read a whole lot of other issues before continuing half-way through this collection (I'm just glad the issues are in here, and not missing since they are included in the Secret Wars II Omnibus). The Gladiators conflict is a tad weak on the whole, Strong Guy's first appearance isn't really spectacular, Illyana is starting to become the go-to girl in every situation, and Warlock has already become more annoying than interesting, so things are going to need to get somewhere different soon, as I'm sure they will. The future encounter seems a little forced and irrelevant, almost like they are trying to foreshadow the Infinity War, but at least they are starting to resolve the long-standing "hey, what about Karma?" thread. We are nowhere near where we started back in issue 1, but Claremont does not forget about anything (or anyone), so we should be in good hands.