Legion of Super-Heroes (v3) #58

The Legion of Super-Heroes (v3) #58 (March, 1989)
title: "If Thine Eye Offend Thee"

writer: Paul Levitz

penciller/co-plotter: Keith Giffen
inker: Al Gordon
lettering: John Costanza
colorist: Carl Gafford
asst editor: Art Young 

editor: Karen Berger 

cover: Steve Lightle
reviewer: Russell "Bilingual Boy" Burbage

Mission Monitor Board:  
Tellus, Magnetic Kid, Blok, Quislet, Timber Wolf, Lightning Lass, Polar Boy, Colossal Boy, Wildfire, Dawnstar, Element Lad, Ultra Boy, Invisible Kid, Sensor Girl

Guests: 
Yera

Opponents: 
Emerald Empress



Synopsis: 
In Metropolis on Earth, the Emerald Empress and the Legion continue their stalemate. Polar Boy orders the Legionnaires to stand down, but when they do the Empress decides to destroy the Fusion Powersphere anyway. Luckily for Metropolis, Colossal Boy surprises her and she is unable to carry out her threat. Tired of fighting the Legion, she departs Earth.

At Legion HQ, Dawnstar tells Wildfire that she loves him, but because his touch burns her, he decides to walk away from hurting her. She is heart-broken, but decides to move on from him, doubling her efforts to find the Emerald Empress.

Elsewhere on Earth, Colossal Boy has a fight with his wife, Yera. She doesn't understand his life of adventure, and he doesn't understand her need to be "on the stage." They make up, trying to overlook their individual passions.

On Trom, Emerald Empress has decided to give up on her search for the secret of immortality. Instead, she decides to rest on the deserted planet. This does not sit well with Trom's lone survivor, Element Lad. He battles the Empress fiercely as Ultra Boy battles the Emerald Eye of Ekron. They are putting up quite a fight when reinforcements arrive.

Elsewhere, Sensor Girl tells Invisible Kid and Timber Wolf that they don't have to rush to Trom. Invisible Kid asks her if she is afraid of the Empress, and Projectra strongly denies this. She knows that soon enough the Empress will come to her.

On Trom, the Emerald Empress absorbs more and more energy from the Eye and grows proportionately larger. She knocks out everyone except Quislet, who then tries to inhabit the Eye. Quislet finds that it resists him, the first inanimate object he ever came across that he could not possess. Instead, he takes over a headstone and knocks the Eye into orbit.

Quislet asks the Empress to surrender, and she laughs at him. Then the Eye returns, destroying Quislet's ship. The Empress vanishes.

Quislet possesses another headstone to say good-bye to his fellow Legionnaires. Without his ship, Quislet can't remain in our dimension. He has no choice but to return to his home world.

Somewhere in space, the Emerald Empress is now desperate to die. She goes to Sensor Girl and asks to be freed.

Sensor Girl eventually decides to grant her request, hiding the Empress from the all-seeing, all-knowing Eye. Sarya of Venegar promptly withers away to nothingness, shocking Projectra and us.

Commentary: 
This issue has a lot of things going for it, but still reads as something of a disappointment. I think I would have liked more follow-up from that last page shocker, instead of so many pages of mindless fighting preceding it. We never do learn how or why the Eye of Ekron "possessed" the Empress, or where it went after Sensor Girl "blinded" it. I would have liked more of that, frankly.

Speaking of Sensor Girl, it seems like Paul Levitz has lost his way with her characterization and power set. Perhaps this is the effect of working with Keith Giffen? She seems more obscure and less well-defined here. Specifically I am referring to the scene where she says she "knows" that the Emerald Empress will search her out. A few issues ago she told Polar Boy that she didn't have telepathy or future-vision, but here she is (again) saying something that is extra-sensory. It's as if Levitz and Giffen want to portray her as some sort of mystic or oracle or something. It just seems false.

The only other criticism I have of this issue falls squarely on the shoulders of Keith Giffen and his designs. Here we get the brand-new, creepy yet interesting Sensor Girl mask.....no face at all, which is similar to The Question. That's fine, I guess, but we then have that design diluted several pages earlier when Colossal Boy's wife uses the exact same look! This is laziness on Giffen's part, pure and simple. Likewise, has Element Lad changed his uniform again, already? His suit doesn't look like what he was wearing just a few issues ago. Maybe that's due to a different inker (Mike DeCarlo before, Al Gordon now) or coloring. But the whole sense of "uniformity" is lost when members are changing their uniforms every other mission.

Is this the same uniform as that shown above? 

The scene between Dawnstar and Wildfire should have been more poignant and sadder than it was. I don't know if that is because the characters are so basically un-likeable, or because Levitz and Giffen had more important stories to tell so didn't want to spend a lot of time on this. As written, it seems ho-hum.

I am happy to see Quislet go, I cannot tell a lie. He (it?) was never one of my favorite characters, possibly because we never got any real characterization for him. I'm sure it's partly the "people prefer dogs to pigs" syndrome, but I don't care. I didn't like him, and I was happy to see him go out in (sort of) a blaze of glory.

That cover by Steve Lightle is another winner. However, Sensor Girl in her original uniform looks so much cooler than the others in their one-size-fits-all togs. Does anyone disagree with me? However the placement of Quislet is a little bit off; I never quite see him the first time I take the image in.

Science Police Notes:  

• Sensor Girl is still in her original uniform on the cover. 

Status: 
This story has not yet been reprinted.  

Milestone: 
Quislet leaves the Legion in this issue. The Emerald Empress dies in this issue.