Emerald Empress
2970 - Sarya is born on Venegar.
2985 - 15-year-old Sarya, while exploring ruins of her home planet, discovers the Emerald Eye of Ekron. Becoming its new host, she begins to take control of all piracy in her sector.
2992 - 22-year-old Sarya's criminal empire is so expansive, she has to be stopped by the Legion.
2995 - 25-year-old Sarya is released by Rokk Krinn to join Tharok's team to help stop a rogue Sun-Eater. They are able to escape, becoming the Fatal Five
2997 - 27-year-old Sarya & the Fatal Five attempt to assault Legion headquarters. They are defeated by Val Armorr single-handedly & imprisoned. She goes into withdrawl when seperated from the Emerald Eye of Ekron
3000 - 30-year-old Sarya recovers the Emerald Eye of Ekron when Salu Digby is corrupted by it and falls under the influence of Mordru. She escapes to distant space, carving her own empire.
3003 - 33-year-old Sarya helps Tharok engineer the escape of the Fatal Five. They begin rebuilding their criminal empire.
3006 - 36-year-old Sarya & the Fatal Five wage all-out war with the reunited Legion, and are eventually defeated.
The world of the Legion of Superheroes has perhaps born the brunt of DC's penchant for continuity shenanigans more than any other part of it's history, so when you add to that the tendancy to completely rethink villains with most of their appearances, it actually becomes almost impossible to nail down any sense of the Fatal Five having any consistent story at all. Still, they are suprisingly prolifict concepts in DC, appearing in modern times (somehow) almost with the same regularity they appear in the 30th century.
The real fun here is that each of these five characters represents a pretty solid villain in their own right, so we're going to expand on them all just a little bit, and in doing so will get a nice spectrum of treats to throw up against our team of future teen heroes.
The real fun here is that each of these five characters represents a pretty solid villain in their own right, so we're going to expand on them all just a little bit, and in doing so will get a nice spectrum of treats to throw up against our team of future teen heroes.
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Emerald Empress's StoryThe Emerald Empress appeared for the first time along with the rest of the Fatal Five in issue #352 0f Adventure Comics in 1967, an invention of (notably 16-year-old) Jim Shooter. Like the rest of the Five, Sarya didn't have much of a backstory, she was simply introduced as "the most wanted female criminal in the history of the universe, guilty of every crime from murder to space-piracy!" She was written with an absolutely gleeful wickedness, and I'd be willing to bet Shooter absolutely loved getting to write her so differently from the admittedly very cookie-cutter ladies of the Legion.
Her real claim to fame was the Emerald Eye of Ekron, a mysterious floating eye artifact that allowed her all sorts of magical powers, from strength and flight to growing to gigantic height, and most commonly a sort of green-lantern-like construct ability, giving her fantastic utility. While other versions of the Emerald Empress would appear in modern time, the Eye itself would also be referenced in other stories, including influencing Salu Digby during the 1994 reboot timeline of the Legion. During the series 52, we actually see that the Emerald Eye is part of a cosmic warship, the Head of Ekron, which is constructed from the diembodied head of an ancient member of the Green Lanterns. While we can probably safely leave out the head of Ekron, or indeed any backstory for the Eye at all, we actually really like the idea that this mysterious artifact has elevated it's young host to this position of intergalactic criminal empress, and even helped her escape by corrupting her captors. It's the sort of massive, intergalactic scope that the Legion of Superheroes excells at.
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