Comic Thoughts: EGOs and re-envisioning

by Luke McCullough · Published February 23, 2015 · Updated February 23, 2015

Making my way through my comic backlog is always exciting, I get to read books and crossovers that I heard people ranting and raving about months ago. I tend to read 3-6 months behind, which gives me both the joy of beginning on a good series and slogging my way through an awful one. I also miss things, since I don’t always remember which new series I have ordered the first issue of, or get random number ones and no others. But, my comic shop is good to me and they usually grab the right books for me.

This last pass through the comic backlog I came across EGOs, which had a blurb or something that attracted me to it in previews, and I am glad I did. EGOs is something that mixes together two things that Image does well, science fiction comics and superhero re-imagining. Though science fiction comics at Image have really only found their space in the last few years.

EGOs is a book that really should not be as good as it is, mainly because it is a riff on a book that has always been a niche book to begin with. EGOs is a re-imagining (might be my own word, but think how Midnighter and Apollo of the Authority are really just Batman and Superman, respectively, with a different twist on where they come from. Re-imagining == same character idea, different twist) of the Legion of Superheroes. An almost throw away idea out of the crazy period of Superboy. He travels into the 31st century and meets a bunch of teenage superheroes who were inspired by his exploits. But, the idea had legs and ever since they were published those same thousand people who read the original stories have bought Legion books over the years, what I am trying to say is that among greying elder readers of comics Legion books have always been had an audience. The Legion has gone through a number of revamps and retcons, like most of DC, but the base story is the same, a group of teenage superheroes trying to save the galaxy. And, since they are teenagers, there is drama, infighting, dating, etc. It has a sprawling cast of heroes from literally hundreds of worlds and manages to tell stories not to silly even though the powers are all over the place, one kid can manipulate gravity and one other kid is good at karate (no I am not kidding). I have tried a number of times to get into the various incarnations, but other than Mark Waid’s run in the mid-2000s I have never really got into it.

So, a book that takes the Legion idea and tries to tell a more accurate, both in motivation and science, story seems like it would be too much ‘inside baseball’ that you would need to know the whole Legion to get the just of the book. But, EGOs manages to strip the idea down and avoid a lot of clichés, it is an interesting take on the idea of superheroes and galactic-sized stories.

Review: Worth a read.

Luke McCullough

Luke was born in a small town in western OR, and by the time he graduated high school had moved around enough to never feel like his identity was tied to anyone place. After college in PA, he worked a for a big company outside Seattle, WA doing small parts of interesting projects. And now is employed doing interesting things for a smaller company based in NY, NY. He currently lives in Arlington, MA. Reading and writing have been a passion his entire life, though it has only been more recently that writing has been a focus for him.