Legion of Super-Heroes v3 #58 (1989)
by Paul Levitz & Keith Giffen
cover by Steve Lighle
The conclusion of the Emerald Empress mini-saga.
Last issue ended with the cliffhanger of the Empress taking Polar Boy hostage, in exchange of being left alone.
What you expect from a superhero: telling the others to stop the villain no matter what, even at the cost of his own life. And then the heroes don’t attack immediately, figuring out a way to stop the villain without killing the hostage, because that’s how superheroes work.
What you actually get: instant surrender!!!
At least Colossal Boy has the decency to DO SOMETHING, finally returning to active duty.
Sure it doesn’t work, but at least it was something!
This entire thing was kind of pointless: Emerald Empress has decided that the secret of immortality is not on Earth anyway, so she just leaves.
Speaking of Dawnstar, remember how last time she was in the infirmary because of the injuries sustained fighting Emerald Empress?
Now she’s injured because she had sex with Wildfire (or tried to).
Yeah who would have thought that having sex with A LIVING NUCLEAR REACTOR would have health risks???
Because we can’t ever have Wildfire be happy.
And we’re back to the old dynamic.
I’m just saying, Wildfire, find yourself a nice Daxamite girl and just leave this toxic relationship as soon as you can.
And speaking of troubled relationships: Colossal Boy is arguing with his wife, because she doesn’t agree with him going back to active duty so soon.
All while doing the Durlan equivalent of posing for the camera.
But there’s a deeper reason behind it, because Yera is getting insecure about whether he still finds her hot. She DID marry him pretending to be another woman.
I’ve been VERY critical of Keith Giffen’s artwork since his return, so let me say something positive: I really like how he emphasizes just how alien Durlans are.
Also this panel has BY FAR the absolute best face drawn by Keith Giffen in this era.
Meanwhile Emerald Empress is getting existential about her rapport with the Emerald Eye of Ekron.
Now she’s looking for immortality on a planet where everyone is dead, because this is Element Lad’s planet. So while this is a nonsensical part of her plan, once again I have to praise Giffen because he really sells the quiet devastation of the doomed planet.
Although the moment would hit differently if Element Lad DIDN’T LOOK LIKE THIS.
The Emerald Eye has always been incredibly powerful, but it really feels like it received a massive power-up off-screen recently.
Despite that, Element Lad puts up a great fight!!!
Meanwhile Sensor Girl insists that she shouldn’t join the fight right now.
Since both Dream Girl and White Witch left the team, apparently both powers of having premonitions AND vague mystical senses went to her!
Also we get the first good look at her new costume. I don’t hate it, but it’s a MASSIVE downgrade from her previous costume.
The fight continues, with Emerald Empress borrowing more and more power from the Eye and turning into a giant.
Even absorbing the Emerald Eye to replace her injured eye.
I still can’t wrap my head around just how awful Dawnstar’s new costume looks.
Really, I can’t find anything positive to say about it… it doesn’t look like it belongs in the setting, it doesn’t look practical (when was the last time you saw a superhero lose a shoe in battle?) and honestly if they wanted to go with fanservice it doesn’t even look sexy, not even with that sideboob.
Wildfire would act like this regardless of who was the leader, because Wildfire, but how would anyone else follow Polar Boy’s leadership at this point?
Time for Quislet to try something different. His power is to possess objects, so could he possess the Emerald Eye?
It doesn’t work, but at least he buys some time.
Alright, now we’re talking! The uber-powerful supervillain brought to her knees by literally the smallest Legionnaire, that’s a classic!
Aaaaand then the Emerald Eye destroys Quislet’s ship.
The Empress teleports away, and while Quislet survived… he can’t stay outside of his ship for long, and the Legionnaires can’t repair it.
And so Quislet unceremoniously leaves the team, returning to his home dimension.
Godspeed, you weird energy imp. You deserved way better in this team.
So we didn’t just lose the only fun-loving member left… we also just condemned him to being killed by his own people.
God is this Legion era depressing.
Wait wait wait… what do you mean you have 17 members???
Yes there are 17 Legionnaires that appear in this story, but you’re leaving out Saturn Girl!!!
No you won’t get back to 3 members, Polar Boy, but you’re not done losing them.
Also, to answer Lightning Lass: it’s both bad luck AND bad leadership.
But now we move to the epilogue: apparently absorbing so much energy from the Eye has been killing the Empress. There has been no reference or hint to this whatsoever.
So after making such a mess looking for immortality, Emerald Empress now wants to die.
Sounds legit.
And for some reason Sensor Girl knows she has to play a role in her last moments. See what I meant? She’s taken over the roles of both Dream Girl and White Witch!
Seriously: she knows about the lore behind the Emerald Eye? THAT’S WHITE WITCH’S ROLE!!!
I do like the idea of having the actual queen who renounced her throne to be the one to deal with the fake empress who made up her title…
…but this comes so much out of nowhere that even the characters point it out!!!
And if Sensor Girl could sever the connection between the Empress and the Eye so easily… couldn’t she do it BEFORE THE EMPRESS KILLED SO MANY PEOPLE???
And losing the Emerald Eye means the Empress CRUMBLES INTO DUST.
And that’s actually her death as far as this continuity is concerned.
We’re inching closer to the end of this era: next issue will be a standalone, after which we’ll have an issue of Secret Origins and finally the 4-part saga that will finish Volume 3.
Be warned that we won’t start Volume 4 until January, both because there are several odds and ends I want to talk about before that… and I like the idea of starting the Five Years Later era in the fifth year of the site.
Legion significance: 8/10
The death of the first Emerald Empress will have a huge impact on Volume 4.
Sadly, that’s more significant than getting rid of the only Legionnaire who was having any fun.
Silver Age-ness: 0/10
Does it stand the test of time? 4/10
This one was SO CLOSE to actually being good. The idea that Emerald Empress was significantly more powerful than usual and was after immortality because absorbing too much energy from the Eye was making her sick (and presumably more unstable than usual) would’ve been a perfect explanation for everything… if it didn’t come up at the last possible moment!
Her final moments with Sensor Girl would have been way more significant if the Legionnaire had participated in the fight; instead, their entire relationship is based on the fight they had way too many issues ago. This once again elevates Sensor Girl by downgrading the other members, especially people who have abruptly abandoned the team.
Speaking of which, this is an unsatisfying end for Quislet: not only his fun-loving attitude is considered his downfall from everybody (a sign of the times to come), but we run the darkness into the ground by pointing out he’s probably killed by his own people as soon as he gets back home.
We won’t see him for either Volume 4 and two of the following reboots (except a couple of homages and cameos), and even in the “retroboot” he’s basically unremarkable.
As if that wasn’t enough, this story is also yet another low blow against Polar Boy and Dawnstar… is being Dawnstar again.
We are legion
With Quislet leaving and Colossal Boy returning, we are now down to just 18 active members (despite what Blok says).
18 active Legionnaires
7 reserve members
7 resigned members
1 on sick leave (Mon-El)
12 deceased members
45 people have been members
50 people have been rejected
Interesting letters: I completely agree with Roy here. It’s not the first time the Legionnaires are shown to be too selfish to care much about people outside of their clique… remember that Brainiac 5 seemed the only one to really care about the supposed death of Rond Vidar… but now they’ve almost reached the point of parody.
It’s kind of funny to see readers in 1989 wanting Barry Kitson working on the Legion, since he will be the star of the Threeboot in 2005.
Although I was NOT a fan the issues after issue 50, I was a big fan of this little arc and especially this issue. I personally took it that she was always looking for a way to die and that the immortality search was a bit of a red herring in that she was looking for a way for an immortal to die.
Additionally, I always thought the Sensor Girl “reveal” was part of the twist ending. To be fair, I think I read the Gemini story in 5YL that impacted a big bad similarly first and this afterwards so maybe have read into it a bit. (Sorry if that was vague, trying to avoid spoilers.)
But on Quislet, I whole heartedly agree with you. The fact that they abandoned him was cold. I at least get that they had Brainy’s perspective on Mon-el not being likely to survive, but the Legion frankly didn’t seem to care (beyond) Wildfire. Polar Boy just considered it as and Legionnaire quitting and being down about that rather than “let’s help our fellow Legionnaire”!!
I’m quite fond on Polar Boy and feel for him that he won leadership in an era DC seemed determined to create nothing but downer stories and he seemed to suffer for it. And reading lines like, “let the Emerald Empress goooo” just exemplify their desire to MAKE him a bad leader.
I loved 5YL but this last set of Baxter stories and 5YL really hurt them in the long run.
Even still l, thanks for the reviews, I love revisiting these stories and seeing these new takes on this (still in my mind) classic run.
I was never a fan of Quislet, since he always seemed like he had been created as a cutesy sidekick in case the Legion ever made the jump during that era to a Saturday morning cartoon show. (He was like Herbie the Robot for the Fantastic Four show.) I always assumed he was created when Paul Levitz let Steve Lightle create any Legionnaires he wanted to induce Lightle to stay on the title, and when when Lightle left the title anyway, Levitz couldn’t wait to get rid of him just like when he inherited Tyroc, whom he also didn’t want to write. (He should have had Quislet depart for Marzal.)
Sarya’s surprise death at the end of this issue actually seemed a believable move for her character, which had never developed much anyway since she had first appeared. So it made sense for the title to free up the Eye to find another Empress.
I had forgotten how awful Keith Giffen’s faces were during this era, and also how stupid those costumes with the gigantic shoulderpads were that he designed. (He must have been watching too many episodes of “Dynasty.”) Otherwise I very much liked the art.
With better art and better foreshadowing, this arc could have been so much more than it was. I assumed in the end that Sarya wanted a secondary way of being immortal, separate from the immortality “gifted” to her by the Eye, which came at the price of being under its sway, constantly drained by it. With a secondary source of immortality, she could have broken away from the Eye without dying. Did she die from how drained she was or did she die from aging catching up to her? How old was she and how far past normal mortal death was she? If the story only had more details, this could have been a real horror story.
Still better than the “Head of Ekron” nonsense.
Poor Quislet. At least his appearance in the retroboot means his return home wasn’t fatal. It’s too bad more wasn’t done with him, although he did get to fly alongside Superman in ‘Last Stand of New Krypton”.
I really liked Sensor’s Girl new costume, by far the best of the new bunch my opinion. However I agree that it is a downgrade from her previous one.