Legion of Super-Heroes vol.3 #25 (1986)
by Paul Levitz & Greg LaRoque
cover by Steve Lighle
It’s time to end THE mystery of Volume 3.
But this is also the beginning of the new Fatal Five, which now include both Flare and new villain Caress.
Flare is kind of cool, but Caress doesn’t seem to be on the same level of the others. Emerald Empress just replaced Mano, whose touch could destroy planets, with a woman with an acid touch.
Not a bad power in itself, but compared to the others it’s kind of lame.
Sensor Girl has left the Legion, and since they’re worried she might join the new Fatal Five they go looking for her.
Dawnstar uses her powers to look for a trail leading to Sensor Girl, but there’s a second attempt being made at the same time that is AMAZING.
1) have Element Lad create a huge artificial emerald
2) have White Witch cast a spell to make the emerald similar to the one used by the Empress
3) have Lightning Lass energize it
4) use THAT magic artificial emerald to track Emerald Empress
Sounds legit.
But FOR ONCE Dawnstar is not being useless, because she leads the Legion to the last known location of Sensor Girl: Shanghalla, the space cemetery where dead Legionnaires (and other heroes) are buried.
Brainiac 5 ponders on grave of the original Invisible Kid. It does make sense that he’d be the Legionnaire buried here he’d mourn the most: other than Supergirl (who definitely isn’t buried here), he was the dead Legionnaire he knew for the longest time.
The original Invisible Kid was also the first Legionnaire to be killed by a member of the Fatal Five, so Mano shows up in an attempt to win a chance to join the new team.
Aaaaand Mano is defeated in two panels flat. I’m beginning to understand why Emerald Empress dropped him.
For once, Dawnstar is not at fault for not finding her target. This allows Brainiac 5 to figure out the solution to the Sensor Girl mystery, SOMEHOW.
Yet another team is looking for Mentalla, since she also disappeared, and the investigation goes through Titan. Nice worldbuilding about Titan exporting telepathic technology to Tellus’ planet!
This is another good show of leadership from Element Lad: he’s covering all the bases, but he’s not leaving Earth unguarded.
He also confronts Saturn Girl on the situation, since she’s the only one who knows the identity of Sensor Girl…
…and she drops THE final clue.
One of the teams DOES manage to find the Fatal Soon To Be Five, and we get a big dumb fight.
This is the moment where Sensor Girl gets to decide whether to join the Fatal Five or stay with the Legion, and it wasn’t really a question.
Instead, the hero who DID join was Mentalla.
It’s a good fight, but the most important moment is the showdown between Sensor Girl and Emerald Empress, who easily overpowers her.
And the issue ends with the cliffhanger of Sensor Girl’s identity… Princess Projectra.
Legion of Super-Heroes vol.3 #26 (1986)
by Paul Levitz & Greg LaRoque
cover by Steve Lighle
The new version of the Fatal Five doesn’t quite have the same visual impact of the original.
With Emerald Empress concentrating on Projectra, Dream Girl proves her leadership skills by having Tellus link everyone telepathically and organize a counterattack.
Polar Boy saves the day!!!
And that, Emerald Empress, is why Tharok used to be the leader.
Meanwhile, Brainiac 5 explains why he deduced Sensor Girl was Projectra: he visited Karate Kid’s tomb, and her powers can MOSTLY be explained as illusions.
I will do a separate post examining ALL the clues dropped along the line, but I think the Legion is giving too much credit to the credibility of this.
Continuing to prove his awesomeness, Polar Boy revives Projectra.
She resumes her Sensor Girl identity, because it looks much better of nebulous reasons.
The Sensor Girl mystery in a nutshell.
Also White Witch leaves for her own subplot.
But it’s finally time: how the heck could Princess Projectra be Sensor Girl!?
What happened is that Projectra realized that she was the reason her planet was f##ked up by the Legion of Super-Villains.
And a magic ritual SERIOUSLY increased her powers: not only she’s much better at creating illusions, but now she can “see trough the illusions of the world”.
In time, during the rest of the volume this will make SOME sense. But considering how quick and vague the explanation of her power boost is, I kind of agree with Colossal Boy.
The reason for the mystery behind her identity is twofold. She had to get past Saturn Girl’s telepathy…
…but there’s also the fact that she killed Nemesis Kid.
The bastard deserved it, sure, but that wasn’t in self-defense and therefor against the Legion code.
I like how that isn’t easily brushed aside. At least for now.
That will have to wait, though, because the Fatal Five are here.
Dream Girl wastes no time showing what she thinks of Mentalla.
The fact that villains didn’t know Sensor Girl’s powers was definitely an advantage.
The Legion is about to lose. The only one who can save them is… Mentalla???
Yep! She uses her mind-control powers to force Flare to destroy one of the satellites in orbit, which the Fatal Five were using to keep the Legion from contacting their teammates.
Turns out Mentalla isn’t a villain after all: she only pretended to turn against the Legion, in order to destroy the Fatal Five from within.
From a story perspective, that’s a nice subversion of the old “a villain infiltrates the Legion” plot.
In-universe, though? Man was that a stupid decision! She gets killed for it.
Sensor Girl then proceeds to demonstrate why she’s more useful than Princess Projectra ever was.
First she tricks Persuader into attacking his teammates…
…and then she does THIS.
But it’s not like the rest of the Legion is useless, since they’re instrumental in defeating Emerald Empress.
Legion significance: 10/10
Projectra is going to be a central figure in the rest of this volume.
Silver Age-ness: 0/10
Not really.
Does it stand the test of time? 7/10
A mixed bag. While I really like the development of Sensor Girl, the resolution doesn’t really hit with me as I’ll talk more in the separate post.
The fights are great (LaRoque continues to be fantastic), and Levitz does a good job juggling the various sub-groups. Perhaps it’s not apparent in my style of review, but it’s very easy to keep track of where everyone is and what they’re doing; that’s not always the case in a team as big as the Legion.
Emeral Empress works great in her new role, but the new Fatal Five are a definite downgrade from the originals… and I’m not just saying that because Validus is my second favorite Legion villains!
Persuader doesn’t get to do much; Flare has a good design but that’s about it. Caress is one of the most forgettable Legion villains I could think of.
The Mentalla plot twist is a very good idea, but it feels like it’s too little too late: she was namedropped last issue and then comes out almost out of nowhere. If only she had done SOMETHING in-between, it could’ve been a classic.
We are legion
With the reveal, Sensor Girl stays as an active member but Projectra is removed from the resigned members. Which means this is the first, and possibly last, time when the “people who have been members” count goes DOWN.
That being said, the full list is now:
24 active Legionnaires
7 reserve members
11 deceased members
2 resigned members (Command Kid, Tyroc)
1 honorary member (Rond Vidar)
45 people have been members
48 people have been rejected
Interesting letters: Levitz goes into detail about the limits of some Legionnaire powers. I think it’s a fair balance: you have to keep SOME consistency, but the writer still needs to have some leeway.
Behold: the worst Sensor Girl theories!
But the letters page of issue 26 is dedicated to the people who solved the mystery.
The very first to solve it was Peter Brewer, who goes through EVERY single female character who has EVER appeared in a Legion story (!!!) and arrives at Projectra by exclusion.
A lot of readers picked up on the clue of her hologram.
(CUT
Making over Projectra into Sensor Girl was a masterful piece of character salvage.
Projectra was introduced as being an illusionist, but everybody in the galaxy knew she did illusions, and she usually used her power poorly – conjuring up monsters right in front of the day’s opponent – who usually ignored them.
Sensor Girl was introduced properly, with no explanation of her abilities and wearing a veil of mystery, literally and figuratively. She used her powers much better than before so it wasn’t apparent they were illusions. My only gripe with her is, why have the Sensor Girl costume be an illusion over her old costume? Why not just wear a new costume? When the big reveal happened, Jeckie’s distinctive hair and face should have been plenty to make her identity obvious without the old costume.
I take issue with your statement that Jeckie’s slaying of Nemesis Kid wasn’t self-defense! Certainly, from hearing her talk at the time, she dressed it up as an execution, but come on – his stated intention was to kill her, and if he hadn’t made the wrong adaptation, he’d have succeeded.
That’s fair.