March 1987. While the 1984 LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES series didn't focus exclusively on the female Legionnaires by any means, it gave many of them some of their finest moments, such as this exceptional spotlight on Legion founder Saturn Girl (pictured above left). Awakening to find herself a prisoner in a labor camp on an unknown planet, surrounded by virtually mindless fellow captives, Saturn Girl has to use every bit of her intelligence, strength, and telepathic ability to find a way out for herself and three other captured Legionnaires. This is a remarkable story in many ways, not least for its imaginative depiction of Saturn Girl's telepathic journey into the minds of her comrades. More under the cut …
Saturn Girl (Imra Ardeen of Titan) was one of the original Legionnaires, introduced in ADVENTURE COMICS #247 back in 1958. She had actually retired for a while after marrying cofounder Garth Ranzz (Lightning Lad), with whom she'd had two young children, and at this point was only occasionally involved in Legion business, although she and Garth had recently had a nasty run-in with one of the Legion's worst enemies, as seen in the 1986 LEGIONNAIRES 3 miniseries. Nevertheless, Imra in this period was one of the most experienced members of the team, having been a professional superhero since she was 14 years old.
This issue begins with Imra waking up after having been mentally controlled like her fellow captives; while she was out, her telepathic abilities had somehow managed to break the mental blocks suppressing her thoughts and personality. She immediately has a Beverly Crusher "No, it is the world that is wrong" moment:
For the reader, the "Universo Project" title banner on the cover has already tipped the identity of the story's villain: Universo, a former Green Lantern called Vidar, is a power-hungry would-be tyrant with formidable hypnotic powers. However, at this point, Imra doesn't have any idea what's happened or where she is. She proceeds to carefully analyze the physical layout of their prison:
She assesses possible escape routes, but quickly runs into a problem: Although there are no guards other than surveillance drones, Imra doesn't have superhuman strength or endurance, and without her Legion flight ring and transuit, she can't fly or hold her breath indefinitely, which means she won't be able to get out on her own. However, she knows that there are three other Legionnaires among the prisoners: Dream Girl (Nura Nal of Naltor), Brainiac 5 (Querl Dox of Colu), and Chameleon Boy (Reep Daggle of Durla). (Although Imra hasn't made the connection yet, they've all been singled out because they are the Legionnaires most resistant to Universo's hypnotic powers, and thus the greatest potential threats to his plans.) Together, the four of them might be able to contrive an escape, but first Imra has to help them escape the mental blocks that have made them virtual zombies.
With great difficulty, Imra manages to carry her three comrades one at a time to a cave that seems to be unmonitored. She then begins the even more challenging phase of her plan: entering the unconscious minds of each of her friends, something she had always made a point of not doing.
The 1980s saw an enormous improvement in the physical production capabilities of mainstream comics. The color hold and glow effect in the page above would not have been possible when Paul Levitz first started writing Legion stories in the '70s, and this story uses that technology to good advantage.
I'm skipping over some scene changes here; the story cuts away at several points to show what the other Legionnaires are doing and what Universo is up to back on Earth. That's less interesting than what's happening with Imra, as she enters the unconscious mind of Nura Nal:
Production technology is one thing, but flashy effects are meaningless if the story has nothing to say. These telepathy sequences are really visually inventive, and I'm curious how much of this is in the script and how much is the imagination of penciller Greg LaRocque, who outdoes himself here on what I assume was a challenging job.
As for what Saturn Girl is seeing: Dream Girl is a precog whose powers manifest primarily in the form of prophetic dreams. She was also one of the most scientifically proficient Legionnaires, although her intellect tended to be overshadowed by the fact that she was a high-maintenance diva and frequently a huge bitch. Her boyfriend, Star Boy (Thom Kallor), whose image Imra sees in Nura's head, generally took a smile-and-nod approach to Nura's fits of primadonna bullshit.
Did I mention that Dream Girl was kind of a diva? Even in this critical situation, Imra can't help but roll her eyes a bit at her friend's, ahem, robust self-regard.
With Nura freed, Imra enters the 12th-level computer mind of resident Coluan super-genius Brainiac 5:
Brainiac 5 was never depicted as an android or a cyborg, so what did it mean for him to have a "computer mind"? Levitz apparently gave that a lot of thought, and the result is an interesting visualization of Brainy's superhuman intellect.
The blond woman in the circle near the top looks like Dream Girl, which doesn't make much sense: There was no love lost between Brainy and Nura in this era, and it seems unlikely she would be this much on his mind. I have an inkling that that image was originally supposed to be Supergirl — about whom Brainy DID have strong feelings and whose death he had been mourning not that long before — but that Levitz and LaRocque got an 11th-hour editorial reminder that Kara could no longer even be mentioned, resulting in that section being hastily redrawn. (I'm speculating, but it seems reasonable.) The guy with the headband, meanwhile, is former Legionnaire Lyle Norg, the first Invisible Kid, who died in SUPERBOY #203. Lyle was Brainy's friend, and there was sometimes the sense that Brainy had romantic feelings for him, so his presence here is noteworthy.
Finally, Imra must reach the mind of Chameleon Boy. Cham was one of a handful of pre-reboot Legionnaires who were genuinely not human: He was from the planet Durlan, whose inhabitants were all shapeshifters. By this time, it had been established that Cham's normal form (orange humanoid with antennae) was not his true shape, but a common "default" form Durlans used when engaging with humans so as not to freak them out TOO badly. As Imra discovers below, this means that Cham's mind is also completely inhuman:
This is a fascinating representation of the inside of Cham's head. Durlan bodies are unusually malleable — Chameleon Boy's shapeshifting never seems to be constrained by mass or volume, and he routinely becomes creatures of wildly different sizes and forms. So, what parts ARE Cham? Where does his personality reside? An interesting philosophical question, but this is still an adventure story, and Imra is on the clock:
Very impressive. What I find particularly compelling about how Levitz treats Saturn Girl in this story is that he resists the temptation to amp up her powers or turn her into a blond Batman; he stays within the established bounds of her abilities while emphasizing her practical resourcefulness. You also get a sense at several points that Imra is struggling a bit to keep herself calm (she reassures herself that her husband is probably looking for her and that she will be reunited with her kids), since she recognizes that if she panics, she's probably done for. (There's a notable contrast with LEGIONNAIRES 3, by Keith Giffen and Mindy Newell, where Imra does break down after she learns one of her sons has been kidnapped; she's not made of stone.)
It's not hard to see why this series is still considered the standard-bearer for modern Legion stories: Levitz was deeply concerned with the personalities and relationships between the characters — not only within the individual stories, but also across the group's long and convoluted history — but he also managed to come up with imaginative and exciting adventures through which to explore and develop those things. It doesn't always work, of course (although there are few real clunkers in this run), but when it works, it works really well, and even the less-successful arcs are generally interesting. Certainly, the female Legionnaires had never been treated with this level of care and respect before — and most of them haven't since then, either.
