Legion of Super-Heroes vol.3 #24 (1986)
by Paul Levitz & Greg LaRoque
The cover is a blatant lie. Both the Legion and the readers won’t know the answer until the cliffhanger of next issue.
That doesn’t stop the Legionnaires from enjoying lots of theories!
Yes Timber Wolf, it’s ridiculous to think that one of your villains comes from your future. It’s not like you had TWO TIME TRAVELERS AS MEMBERS.
Whoever she is, Sensor Girl has been missing. And she’s not the only one: there’s trouble at Legion Academy.
And it’s not jus because Myg has joined the Academy after issue #13.
No idea of who the other Academy students might be, but they HAVE to be more interesting than Myg.
The trouble is that Mentalla, who joined the Academy after being denied Legion membership in issue 14, has gone missing as well.
Brainiac 5 is still supporting the Supergirl Theory (what else is new?), and we have an EXTREMELY rare mention of the Anti-Monitor.
Can you really blame Chameleon Boy for the accusation? After all Brainy DID create a Supergirl robot in his sleep once, way back in Superboy #204.
Element Lad defends Sensor Girl’s position as a Legionnaire…
…but in private, he recognizes that all this secrecy and speculation is not helping his team.
This leads to him having a one-on-one conversation with Sensor Girl.
Wait, wasn’t she missing according to Wildfire?
Great job, Element Lad.
The issue ends with the revelation of who is behind the mask… NOBODY!
In other plots, we check on Emerald Empress, who is living in style.
Despite her talk about wanting to create a new improved version of the Fatal Five, she’s still trying to recruit Validus.
You think the Legion auditions are tough? The Fatal Five auditions are BRUTAL.
You have to love Emerald Empress’ distaste for Mano. But since when is Tharok “gone”?
Meet the new Fatal Five recruit: the fire-based Flare…
…who is mostly seen in her flame form, but that’s not her natural one.
Tellus puts a stop on the speculation that Sensor Girl is a telepath.
Quislet catches Dream Girl potentially cheating on Star Boy. (!!!)
Mon-El and Shadow Lass’ relationship is going much better, with the two sharing a moment after all the chaos from the previous issue.
This is a GREAT scene, both from artistic perspective (look at those effects with the shadows!) and from a character development one.
Legion significance: 5/10
Progressing the Emerald Empress plot, whose conclusion will coincide with the resolution of Sensor Girl’s mystery.
Silver Age-ness: 0/10
Not really.
Does it stand the test of time? 8/10
Definitely a breather after the previous issue. It’s juggling several plots that individually don’t really move the story much, but it’s still a very competent story. Raised slightly by that marvelous Mon-El and Shadow Lass scene!
We are legion
24 active Legionnaires
7 reserve members
11 deceased members
Interesting letters: another round of Sensor Girl theories!
If the first one is right… holy crap, puberty was quite generous with Invisible Kid’s sister!
This one is among my favorites. I really liked Harbinger during Crisis, and she was utterly wasted in any following story; this one had potential!
I wonder: did Levitz have Shrinking Violet mention Saturn Queen because of this letter?
Tharok was “gone” since he and the Dark Man collided and vanished in LSH # 271. Although he did appear in the Crisis villain war issues, but presumably that was from an earlier time period. He did re-appear in the opening storyline of the Legionnaires series, but without any real explanation, other than that Leland McCauley “found him in another dimension”.
We have become so spoiled about superpowers that one of the letter writers seems to have forgotten that Harbinger had several powers, including splitting into about a couple dozen duplicates of herself, flight and, IIRC, some sort of energy blast.