Legion of Super-Heroes v3 #16 (1985)
by Paul Levitz & Steve Lightle
Crisis has reached the Legion in the most painful way.
At least that’s as far as Brainiac 5 is concerned. This is the 1,000th anniversary of Supergirl’s death, and he’s stuck watching her death in a loop at the Time Institute.
But strangely enough, that is only for Brainiac 5: the rest of the Legion doesn’t mention Crisis AT ALL. There will be an explanation for this discrepancy in a couple of issues.
Instead of being preoccupied with a multiversal event, the Legionnaires are on Titan attending the baptism of Saturn Girl and Lightning Lad’s son.
That is a huge Sun for Titan, it should be way smaller in Saturn’s orbit. Must be an artificial substitute.
Was Levitz considering Phantom Girl and Ultra Boy having a kid? That won’t happen until the latter part of the reboot.
Everyone is here, even Proty II of all sentients. He was friends with Saturn Girl after all.
Well not EVERYONE: Brainiac 5 is mourning Supergirl, so we’re going to focus on the five new recruits. Notice Tellus saying “godfisher” instead of “godfather”, because Tellus is the best.
Good thing those five are on monitor duty, because there’s a huge explosion back on Earth. That Sensor Girl somehow senses before they receive the call.
This is the first story to lay some clues on the powers and identity of Sensor Girl.
Irritatingly, Polar Boy is going to stay behind. The story jumps back and forth between plots, but for reviewing purposes I’ll first follow this one to its conclusion.
Sensor Girl’s no-nonsense attitude works great with Quislet’s manic energy. Too bad they don’t share too many scenes together.
Something doesn’t feel quite right: the bombs didn’t do as much damage as it looked like, and nobody is reacting to the presence of the Legion.
Sensor Girl is awesome, but I really question the decision to avoid telling the rest of the team about her powers. Even knowing her real identity, which I won’t spoil, the reason for keeping the secret feels flimsy to me.
The criminals finally show up again, and she demonstrates another power.
Or maybe two powers.
Then the Science Police shows up and, true to form, they f#ck this up.
And they would get away with it, if it wasn’t for Quislet possessing the Science Police ship and forcing it to crash!
It seems like these are not really Science Police officers. So this turns into, of course, a big dumb fight.
Quislet is a lot of fun.
Technically speaking, this plot ends on a cliffhanger: these were real Science Police officers, but they were mind-controlled by someone we won’t discover today.
Back to the baptism plot: I find it fascinating that it’s explicitly a Christian baptism, on Titan.
We don’t get many reference to religion in the Legion; I assume most of 30th century Earth is secular. But there is a Christian church on Titan.
Is Saturn Girl catholic?
Well… close enough I guess.
The cover story has surprisingly few pages to it. I guess it makes sense, since Brainiac 5 is in no shape to have an adventure, but it’s still weird.
Brainiac 5’s tragedy is not just that Supergirl died. It’s that he always knew she was destined to die and could not change history.
Brainy gets the sympathy of a scientist from the Time Institute, but others are more cynical.
Unfortunately, Brainiac 5 is too depressed to appreciate it.
In fact, not only he later considers leaving the Legion entirely…
…he even considers suicide!!!
I’ve always loved the somber tone of this moment.
He does recover a little, suggesting to the doctor who tried to help him that she’s pushing herself too far when he finds her sleeping at her desk.
Yeah that’s a downer of an ending, but not without a glimpse of hope.
Legion significance: 6/10
Surprisingly light. Issue 18 will touch on the inconsistent effects of Crisis, but as far as this issue is concerned, the event does not touch the 30th century directly.
Brainy’s… I guess we could call it depression.. will develop in the following issues, and we have our first clues about Sensor Girl.
Silver Age-ness: 0/10
Not really.
Does it stand the test of time? 7/10
A fine outing, if a bit disjointed. Despite being the cover story, the Brainiac 5 plot doesn’t really cover new ground with the concept of his doomed romance… it’s well-written, sure, but we’ve seen him angst over this kind of thing before.
Surprisingly enough, the plot on the newbies is the best part! They have a fun dynamic, they’re shown to be inexperienced but not to a ridiculous degree, and there is a compelling mystery around.
My only complains about it are that Polar Boy has been benched for too long at this point, and that there was a missed opportunity to highlight the contrast between Brainiac 5 being so negative versus the youthful optimism of the new recruits.
We are legion
24 active Legionnaires
7 reserve members
11 deceased members
I must confess that I’m at a bit of a loss on the Sensor Girl Mystery. Definitely not Saturn Girl in disguise, as I postulated last time. I’m glad because that would have been such a cheap move for this Era.
Her powers so far appear to be: Precognition. Or at least some kind of hyper-awareness that informs her about events before others find out by normal means, and knowing whether they’ve been noticed or not.
Light and/or color manipulation. Reminds me a bit of Color Kid from the Substitute Legion, but used much more effectively.
Feels like I’m not thinking big enough. Maybe her powers are more like Nemesis Kid or Duplicate Boy. Maybe she mirrors and magnifys the powers of those around her.
If Tellus can sense moods and mental states, and she magnified that she could feel people reacting to the bombing before they get the alert. The light manipulation stuff perhaps comes from little spaceship guy?
If that is true, I still cannot think of any past character that fits. Or I’m way off base lol.
I will continue to not simply look the answer up, but it is getting a little bit more tempting. I might go try to find a couple of these issues you’ve already covered to see if I can pick up anything extra from the entire issue. At worst I’d have a “new” old comic to read. 🙂
A good furtherance of my favourite plot in that Sensor Girl gets to show off some of her powers. And I liked the idea of Brainy’s doomed romance with Supergirl – but then it is teased that Sensor Girl has seemingly similar powers… Not one of my favourite issues artistically though, despite it being Lightle pencils. I don’t often notice inking but I was definitely aware of it this issue.