Characters / Legion of Super-Heroes: Silver Age

Superman Main Character Index
Title Character
Clark Kent/Kal/El/Superman
Supporting Cast
Lois Lane | Jimmy Olsen | Ambush Bug | Steel
Villains
Central Rogues Gallery (Alexander "Lex" Luthor, Bizarro, Vril Dox/Brainiac, Cyborg-Superman, Darkseid, Doomsday, Lobo, Mister Mxyzptlk, Mongul, Phantom Zone Criminals [General Zod]) | A-L | M-Z (Superboy-Prime)
Spin-Offs
Supergirl (Kara Zor-El/Linda Danvers/Supergirl, Supporting Cast, Rogues Gallery) | Power Girl | Superboy (Conner Kent/Kon-El, Jonathan "Jon" Samuel Kent, Supporting Cast, Rogues Gallery) | Legion Of Superheroes (The Founders, Silver Age, Bronze Age, Five Years Later, Postboot, Threeboot, Retroboot, Rebirth, Other Heroes, The Fatal Five, The Legion of Supervillains, Other Villains, Supporting Cast)

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Triplicate Girl/Duo Damsel/Triad/Una/Duplicate Damsel

AKA: Luornu Durgo, Marie Elkins

Homeworld: Cargg

Abilities: Able to split into three bodies (as Triplicate Girl/Triad); two bodies (as Duo Damsel); or unlimited bodies (as Duplicate Girl). (5YL Only:Project force fields)

Triplicate Girl is Luornu Durgo. Born on the planet Cargg, she has the natural ability to split into multiple bodies. Luornu is trained in her planet's foremost style of fighting which allows her to take full advantage of three forms fighting simultaneously. This ability has varied over the years and she has used other names such as Duo Damsel, Una, and Duplicate Girl. Her romantic partner and later husband is Bouncing Boy. In Reboot Legion continuity, Luornu uses the alias Triad. This version is the only Carggite whose bodies each have a distinct personality. She was originally Brande's Girl Friday, but joined the team almost immediately after they were formed. In Prime ("Threeboot") Legion continuity, Triplicate Girl is the only inhabitant of her planet.

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• Action Girlfriend: During one of the periods where Chuck/Bouncing Boy had lost his powers, she split and dealt with muggers who'd attacked them. This was hard on Chuck's self esteem, although he bounced ba—recovered by successfully defending himself in a similar situation and realizing that he wasn't useless.
• All Love Is Unrequited: Held a torch for Superboy and Invisible Kid I.
• All of the Other Reindeer: In 5YL, at least, Carggites regard one of their race losing a body as a mortal sin nigh-unto blasphemy/murder. As such Luornu had some bad reactions from a few others of her kind, particularly after she (apparently) lost a second one.
• And I Must Scream: Glorith brought back one of Luornu's bodies after killing her and de-aging her over and over again in order to break her.
• Badass Teacher: Due to the Legion Code at the time banning married Legionnaires, she and Chuck became Reserve Legionnaires and trained students at the Legion Academy.
• Bash Brothers: Unsurprisingly, she makes a really great team.
• Broken Bird: One of her counterparts later in the FYL Legion's era.
• Dark Secret: One of a conspiracy of four Legionnaires dedicated to avenging Superboy's death (long story), by killing the Time Trapper. She didn't even tell her husband about it.
• Doppelgänger Attack: Luornu frequently takes a level in badass by training in "Tri-Jitsu", a Carggite martial art focused around invoking this trope by tactically splitting and recombining.
• Doppelmerger: Luornu has the power to split into multiple bodies. When she re-merges into one body, she gains the memories and knowledge that her divided selves obtained. She is also practiced in the art of "Tri-Jitsu", which involves attacking the enemy in a trifecta with marital arts while splitting and recombining.
• Driven to Madness: In one incident, Princess Projectra was hit by a "pain plague" that would have killed her by agony if the Legion hadn't quickly put her into a device that would allow another to absorb the pain for her. Even so, the pain was too strong for any one Legionnaire to handle, and—you see where this is going. Even so, the pain still drove both herselves temporarily insane.
• Duality Motif: She can split into two people, and in some versions has two eyes of different colors. This is strange since 1) she had the ability to split into three before one body was killed, but didn't have three eyes, 2) it's a planetary power and other people from the planet don't have this, and 3) when she splits, each body has two of the same color eyes, making it impossible for her to pretend to not be split when she is.
• Empowered Badass Normal: In 5YL she discovered that long-term exposure to the force field belt Brainiac 5 had given her had resulted in the power to project Deflector Shields.
• Escape Artist: To a degree, since she can make a duplicate to undo bonds, or get outside of a cell, or stop a deathtrap she's trapped in and so forth.
• Face–Heel Turn: One of her duplicates fell in love with a superhero, Nam-lor, whose power aura screwed with her mind and turned her evil. He went along with "Lelith"'s thefts to try and snap her out of it, but when she tried to get him to kill Bouncing Boy, Nam-lor realized that the only way to save her was to leave her. After a couple of days, the duplicate returned to normal. In the meantime, poor Lournu felt like you would if your arm or leg turned against you. In 5YL, this duplicate apparently never turned completely back to normal—when they were together she existed as a voice in Luornu's head and when they were separate she cheated on Chuck, whom she held in contempt. This duplicate was thought killed, which was actually a bit of a relief for Luornu. After being discovered and freed from Glorith, however, the duplicate finally came to appreciate the life she...they(?)...uh, Luornu had. The equivalent of centuries of torture can do that to a gal.
• Fights Like a Normal: As splitting is her only superpower, she's received training in martial arts, weaponry, stealth, technology, etc. in order to be an extremely effective member of the Espionage Squad.
• Girl Friday: Luornu was introduced as R.J. Brande's secretary and assistant in the reboot (it turns out that being able to be in three places at once is really useful for an assistant), but left to join the Legion within a few issues. Brande took her under his wing after she escaped a Bedlam House on Cargg.
• Give Geeks a Chance: Had a bit of a thing for Lyle Norg, and eventually fell hard for Chuck Taine, an overweight, humble, Fun Personified type of guy.
• Happily Married: To Chuck "Bouncing Boy" Taine. They were the first Legion couple to get married. In every continuity where they're married, they've never been shown as anything but absolutely crazy for each other.
• Heart Is an Awesome Power: Her power is useful for doing chores and pretty fun in bed, but not much good in combat. At least, not until she became a master of Tri-Jitsu, a martial art based around the fact that you have six arms, six legs, and three potential points of attack to coordinate from. She is also an expert infiltrator. Go somewhere and be seen to walk back out ... after leaving two of your selves hidden somewhere. Gather information from three different places at once, then combine to share and correlate it. She can also split to escape bonds or have an attack go between herselves.
• Human Aliens: Pretty much identical to a human except for the splitting.
• Interspecies Romance: Luornu is technically an alien, as opposed to a descendant of human colonists like many Legionnaires, thus her relationships with non-Carggites count as this.
• Last Of Her Kind: Threeboot Triplicate Girl started out as an amnesiac in the ruins of a world called Cargg, and eventually duplicated enough to repopulate it. She/they sent one of her as an ambassador to the United Planets, who became a Legionnaire... but can't go home again. See Stranger in a Familiar Land, below.
• Literal Split Personality: Postboot, each duplicate embodies a different personality aspect, in a Three Faces of Eve pattern. Specifically, "Lu-Orange" as the shy Child, "Lu-Purple" as the Seductress, and "Lu-Neutral" as the Wife holding them all together metaphorically. Taken to an extreme shortly before the start of the "Emerald Vi" and 20th-century arcs, where Shrinking Violet and the Emerald Eye split the three personalities into separate bodies with distinct character redesigns, who were not able to recombine. The Preboot and Retroboot versions of Triplicate Girl are more Single Minded Triplets (see below). Threeboot is a whole other story originally but works out similarly to the Single Minded versions.
• Made of Plasticine: A villain who can neutralize powers managed to catch her mid-split, and it turns out their bodies are really fragile at that point. Fun!
• Mind Hive: 5YL canonizes the notion that Nam-Lor's aura permanently altered the personality of her other self into a hedonistic Jerkass who existed as a voice in her head that Luornu had to threaten with repression to control. This subplot inspired the similar characterization of Reboot Luornu's "Purple" duplicate.
• Power Perversion Potential: A mild example; early in her relationship with Chuck Taine, she split into two people and each of her selves kissed Chuck on both cheeks at the same time, which he seemed to enjoy.
• Really Gets Around: Played with and averted in Threeboot's who's-who segment; Cosmic Boy put her up to it to study the personalities of Element Lad, Sunboy, and Ultraboy.
• Retcon: 5YL pioneered the notion that three separate personalities are natural among split Carggites, but with societal repression causing this to be considered mentally abnormal in the modern day. Some later versions of the Legion continued with this trend.
• Self-Duplication: Probably one of the more interesting variations. Luornu used to be able to split into three distinct bodies, each with their own will and personality. After the death of one of them at the hands of Computo, she could only split into two bodies.
  • Luornu finally received a major power upgrade. She now has the power to split herself into an apparently endless number of identical bodies no matter where she is. It is not yet known if there is an upper limit to her duplication ability.
• Single Minded Triplets: Some versions.
• Stranger in a Familiar Land: Threeboot Triplicate Girl is shunned by her other duplicates back home because of how she's changed from her experiences on Earth.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Computo's return left her paralyzed with terror and unable to mobilize against him, due to the trauma she'd suffered when the villain had killed one of her selves.

Phantom Girl/Apparition/Phase

AKA: Tinya Wazzo

Homeworld: Bgztl

Abilities: Intangibility, travel to Phantom Zone.

Born on the planet Bgztl, Tinya has the natural ability to become intangible and phase through objects. It has been implied that Bgztl is part of the Phantom Zone. Her romantic partner and later husband is Ultra Boy. During her brief time in the 20th Century, she became a member of L.E.G.I.O.N. named Phase. In Reboot Legion continuity, Tinya uses the name Apparition. She was the daughter of Bgztl's representative to the United Planets, and joined the Legion almost immediately after they were formed. This version has a child with Ultra Boy named Cub Nah. Phase is explained as her long-lost Carggite duplicate.
In Prime ("Threeboot") Legion continuity, Tinya is still Phantom Girl and her planet occupies the same space as Earth in another dimension. Her predecessor Linnya Wazzo used the code name Phantom Girl as a member of The Terrifics.

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• Awesome Anachronistic Apparel: She's got bell bottoms in her Grell-era outfit.
• Brutal Honesty: Always very frank and straightforward with her opinions.
• Continuity Snarl: During the TMK era, Tinya was killed in front of Ultra Boy; about the same time, L.E.G.I.O.N. had an amnesiac Bgtzlian from the future—"Phase"—suddenly appear, with the obvious implications. However, Jo and Tinya were reunited shortly before the first reboot, while "Phase" was revealed to be Tinya's long-lost sister "Enya". After the reboot, "Enya" never existed... so it turned out that Tinya was half-Carggite (Triad's race), and her illegitimate father secretly abducted and sold her other two selves before anyone found out—and one of them became Phase, who merged with the then-bodiless Tinya while she was trapped in the 20th Century. Not quite as bad as Wonder Girl, and the Threeboot swept the whole thing under the table, but still...
• Dimensional Traveler:
  • She (and other Bgtzlians) can travel into the Phantom Zone at will. Everyone in the Phantom Zone gains Flight, Psychic Radar, and Telepathy as part of the nature of the place.
  • In Pre-Crisis days and in the Threeboot, Earth and Bgztl occupy the same physical space, but different dimensions. Tinya is the only one of her race who can cross between them. She can even hold conversations with one side while in the other, which can confuse on-lookers, and ruin potential relationships.
• Ethereal White Dress: Her costumes are always white. Add her power (phasing through things) and she can be mistaken for a ghost girl.
• Girlish Pigtails: In the Grell era outfit.
• Human Aliens: Bgztlian, but close enough to human (and/or Carggite) to interbreed.
• Hypocrite: Retroboot Tinya repeatedly brings up that she hates people touching her without her saying so. Yet she goes around hugging people all the time, see No Sense of Personal Space below.
• Intangibility: Like all natives of the planet Bgztl, she possesses the ability to shift to another dimension, allowing her to phase through solid matter. As a veritable phantom, she cannot be harmed by conventional means of attack. It also enables her to access the Phantom Zone.
  • In the Threeboot version it's explained as Bgztl being a planet in another dimension which exists in the same space as Earth and her shifting her mass between our dimension and that one as a unique power. She's visible in both worlds (which gets awkward in the one she's not paying attention to) and is solid and can sense in only one at a time. This solves the floor problem (and causes a new one when someone has to go to the core of a planet) when you realize that she can't avoid the planet by shifting to a dimension with an identical planet in the same place.
• Interspecies Romance: She's a Bgztlian in love with the altered human Ultra Boy.
• Most Common Superpower
• Nonhuman Humanoid Hybrid: The Reboot version of Tinya was discovered to be half-Carggite, and her permanently-phased self re-merged with one of her bodies which had been flung into the 20th Century in order to come back to corporeality and marry Ultra Boy.
• No Sense of Personal Space: A relatively mild case, but Tinya really, really likes hugging people. The Legion, Brainy aside, are fine with it though.
• Not-So-Imaginary Friend: In the Reboot, Apparition is seemingly killed in an accident, but Ultra Boy is able to see and interact with her. Later, her mother and eventually Saturn girl were able to see her as well. During the events of Final Night she was restored to materiality.
• Official Couple: With Ultra Boy in most continuities. Trying to change it is rarely met with any enthusiasm.
• Power of Trust: Early on in his career, Ultra Boy pretended to have been hiding a criminal past and "betrayed" the Legion in order to infiltrate a group of hidden infiltrators. Only Phantom Lass believed that he hadn't truly betrayed the team. She covertly helped him out with his plan and it worked perfectly. In light of her faith in him, the two of them started one of the most stable relationships in the Legion.
• Rebellious Princess: In Postboot, she's the daughter of her planet's ambassador and earns her way into the Legion virtually as soon as they're announced to the world for helping to defeat a terrorist attack on the United Planets. Her mother's not pleased with either this or her romance with Ultra Boy.
• Shapeshifter Mode Lock: Her Reboot self was permanently dispersed for awhile.
• Spirit Advisor/Not-So-Imaginary Friend: Tinya became this for Jo in Postboot, after she was incinerated by the White Triangle. She got better.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: She wasn't fond of Timber Wolf or Dawnstar, the former because she thinks he's rather dense, and the latter because of her arrogance.
• Tragic Intangibility: During her interim as a ghost Postboot, her intangibility was active permanently. This meant whenever she wanted to hug her boyfriend, she'd pass right through him and when she wanted to rest her head on her mother's shoulder, she'd fall to the floor. All this emphasized she wasn't just another weird alien, she was actually dead.
• Trapped in the Past: Thought killed in a shuttle accident, she was actually sent into the 20th Century and stripped of her memory, operating with L.E.G.I.O.N. as Apparation. And then she was just dead. And then she wasn't. But only after Zero Hour had doomed everyone. Until they all came back again. Comics!
• Uncanny Family Resemblance: She looks almost identical to her ancestor Linnya, who is a member of The Terrifics team.
• Uneven Hybrid: Cub, Tinya's son with Jo in the Reboot is half-human, a quarter-Bgztlian and a quarter-Carggite.

Chameleon Boy/Chameleon

AKA: Reep Daggle

Homeworld: Durla

Abilities: Shapeshifting

Chameleon Boy is a Durlan. His physiology allows him to change shape into anything. This makes him a useful member of the Legion Espionage Squad. It is later revealed that his father is R.J. Brande, who bankrolls the Legion.

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• Big Brother Mentor: Cham eventually becomes this to the Batch SW6 Legionnaires.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: Even in their natural form, Durlans can move their organs around inside their body to protect them. Cham survives a shot to the head this way.
• Black Bead Eyes: His Threeboot counterpart has these in his normal form.
• Character Development: He started out as a jokester who used his shapeshifting for fun, but after becoming the head of the Legion Espionage Squad and learning he was RJ Brande's son, he developed more of a moody and cerebral nature, while still keeping a sense of humor.
• Cloud Cuckoo Lander: His Threeboot counterpart.
• De-power: After he was released from Takron-Galtos, he discovered that the power-neutralizing cuff they'd put on his antennae had somehow permanently disabled his shape-shifting abilities. This necessitated a dangerous trip to Durla with his father to gain them back.
• Fantastic Racism: As a Durlan, he gets a lot directed his way. In fact, that's the reason he joined the Legion: to provide a positive example of his people to counter that and the Legion was pleased to be able to play their part for that goal.
• Great Detective: Probably the best investigator in the Legion and a mainstay (and later leader) of the Legion Espionage Squad. His Threeboot self has a consulting role with the SP.
• Hate Plague: Got exposed to Mordru's blood crystals, which filled him with blind hatred for Superboy. He then proceeded to capture Superboy and shapeshifted himself to fool Brainiac 5 and Lightning Lad into thinking Superboy had gotten free. Superboy managed to escape (for real) and restore him to sanity.
• I Am Who?: Congratulations, your father's the richest man in the galaxy! Who, er, abandoned you as a baby and hid his identity from you your entire life, even after meeting you in person and knowing exactly who you were for years!...Why aren't you more happy?
• Interspecies Romance:
  • Flirts a lot with the ladies of the Legion, and he's the only Durlan member. His pre-Crisis self fell for two Identical Stranger human women (one of whom was from another dimension).
  • His Reboot self had a thing going with Spark, but events kept interfering to get in the way for quite a while.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: In Preboot, it turned out that Reep was the son of R.J. Brande, who was actually a Mode Locked Durlan.
• Magic Pants: In Threeboot, after his teammates get new uniforms, Cham decided to alter his costume's design. That's when it dawns on Star Boy that Cham's costume is a part of his body, meaning he's been walking around naked the entire time.
• Master Actor: To back up his shapeshifting.
• Nephewism: Pre-Zero Hour following his mother's death and his father becoming ill, amnesiac and mode-locked Reep and Liggt were raised by their mother's sister Ji.
• No Biological Sex: Threeboot Chameleon is androgynous.
• Older and Wiser: In the Five Years Later continuity, Cham becomes the mentor to the younger "Batch SW6" Legionnaires.
• One Twin Must Die: Pre-Zero Hour Durlans forced twins to fight to the death in the Right of Survival as "only through death can the choice of the gods be surmised". Reep won the right of survival by killing his twin Liggt but regrets it and feels remorse over his sibling's death for the rest of his life.
• The Quiet One: Due to the cultural differences between himself and the others, as well as his own natural reserve, he started out as this.
• Replacement Goldfish: After his Unwanted Rescue, Princess Projectra hooks him up with Janice Warren, an heiress who looks uncannily similar to his lost love Elwinda. Eventually, they fall for each other, but nothing seems to come of it in the end.
• Shapeshifter Mode Lock: If exposed to Cancelite, a Durlan is frozen in whatever form they were taking at the time until it wears off. He also temporarily loses his powers due to illness.
• Superpower Lottery: Indirectly. The universe is full of strange creatures with a wide array of abilities, and Chameleon Boy can shift into any of them.
• Timey-Wimey Ball: Continues to exist even after his SW6 counterpart is destroyed, at least for a while.
• Token Non-Human: For most of the Silver Age, Chameleon Boy was the most alien-looking out of all the Legionnaires. While a few had weird skin colors, only Cham was bald, with pointy ears and antennae.
• True Sight: His antennae allow him to instantly memorize someone's form perfectly,as a result he can also tell when someone's in disguise by how their form subtly changes.
• Unpleasant Parent Reveal: The unpleasant part being that Brande had known Cham for years without making a peep about it.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: Like all Durlans, Reep possesses the ability to transform his body's size, shape and color to mimic any person, creature or object in the universe.
  • Master of Disguise: Obviously.
  • Rubber Man: The team's resident stretcher when Jimmy Olsen isn't around.
  • Shapeshifter Baggage
  • Shapeshifting Squick: Given a nod in Threeboot, in which one character suggests that Chameleon is not attracted to non-shapeshifters.
  • Sizeshifter: He can't shrink or grow as small or big as Shrinking Violet or Colossal Boy, but this is one of his abilities as a shapeshifter. The fact that a different Durlan was able to pose as Violet (thus shrinking to microscopic size on numerous occasions) might suffice to give some idea of how small he can get.
• A Tragedy of Impulsiveness: After his discovering his long-lost father was secretly RJ Brande, who'd been funding the Legion for years, he made one of the few impulsive decisions of his life and took several Legionnaires on a mission to spy upon the Khund, which ended up getting them led into a trap with no apparent hope of rescue on a frozen asteroid. They were rescued in the end, but a) everyone could very well have died b) Light Lass and Timber Wolf broke up their long-standing relationship over a Mistaken for Cheating incident that also harmed Saturn Girl and Lightning Lad's marriage, and C) he very nearly touched off an open war between the United Planets and the Khunds, and therefore was sentenced to Takron-Galtos for treason...with all the other criminals the Legion had busted and his powers neutralized.
• Unwanted Rescue: Once became stranded in another dimension and fell so deeply in love with Elwinda, a native princess, that he would have chosen her over his old home even if he wasn't stuck. He was about to marry her when his teammates managed to yank him back into our dimension. Cham was displeased, to say the least.
• You No Take Candle: Early in Postboot, when he's just learning to speak Interlac. And kept up much longer than necessary as a form of Obfuscating Stupidity.

Colossal Boy/Leviathan/Micro Lad

AKA: Gim Allon

Homeworld: Earth (Preboot/Threeboot); Mars (Postboot)

Abilities: Giant growth

Colossal Boy is a human member of the Legion. Exposure to a radioactive meteorite gave him the ability to grow incredibly large. His mother is President Allon, and his wife is Chameleon Girl. In Reboot Legion continuity, he is a member of the Science Police who takes the name Leviathan when he joins the Legion. This version dies in battle against Doctor Regulus. In Prime Legion continuity, he belongs to a race of giants and has the power to shrink to normal size. Everyone calls him Colossal Boy, but he insists that his name is Micro Lad.

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• Amateur Sleuth: Since he had actual police training, he was one of the better detectives on the team.
• Amicable Exes: With Gigi Cusimano.
• Arch-Enemy: Tarik the Mute would probably qualify for this, as he held Gim's parents hostage and posthumously attempted to kill his mom.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: He can increase his size up to twenty-five feet.
• Bait-and-Switch Tyrant: Although he was portrayed as being out of his depth as the Legion's leader without Cosmic Boy advising him, he never quite crossed the line into full Umbridge-ness.
• Composite Character: Threeboot Micro Lad is a combination of Preboot Colossal Boy and supervillain Micro Lad.
• Friend on the Force: SP Officer Gigi Cusimano, an old flame of his.
• Game-Breaking Injury: Following an injury at the hands of Starfinger, 5YL Colossal Boy suffered intense pain whenever he grew. This ultimately necessitated leaving the Legion and taking a less-intensive job with the Science Police.
• Gentle Giant: He is known for having a big heart no matter what his size.
• Happily Married: To Chameleon Girl aka Yera, a shapeshifting Orange-Skinned Space Babe. It started a bit strangely, and there have been a couple of hiccups, but they're very much in love. Plus, it ain't like her shapeshifting powers stop working in the bedroom...
• Hopeless Suitor: Had a thing for Shrinking Violet for a long time. When it seemed to have finally been reciprocated, she turned out to be someone else entirely.
• I Have Your Parents: Tarik the Mute transmuted his parents into glass and forced him to give away Legion secrets on pain of shattering.
• Informed Ability: Leviathan is said to be a top S.P. officer, which implies awareness that losing a teammate is part of the job, yet he gives up the leadership position mid-mission when Kid Quantum I is killed in action.
• Interspecies Romance: His teenage crush on Shrinking Violet (an Imskian) seemed to be going nowhere for years until she suddenly started accepting his advances, and over several months they developed a relationship so deep it survived the revelation that "Violet" was actually a Durlan by the name of Yera who'd replaced his longtime crush.
• Love-Obstructing Parents: Averted. Once they get over their shock (the marriage was secret), Gim's parents adore Yera. But they do want any kids to be raised Jewish.
• Martyr Without a Cause: In Postboot, his "heart's desire" is to die to save the lives of his teammates (It Makes Sense in Context - see My Greatest Failure, below).
  • Which inspired one Elseworlds, "Superboy's Legion", to feature him doing just that - dying in the fledgling Legion's first encounter with the Fatal Five.
• My Fist Forgives You: Socks Element Lad in the face after learning that the "Shrinking Violet" he'd fallen in love with and married was an impostor, and that Element Lad was the one who'd discovered it without telling him. Element Lad concedes that he deserved it.
• My Greatest Failure: In the Postboot, he was appointed the Legion's leader for one mission that ended in the death of Kid Quantum; he immediately abdicated in favor of Cosmic Boy and never forgave himself. (See Martyr Without a Cause, above.)
• The Neidermeyer: In the Postboot, Leviathan was introduced as one of these (since he was a former Science Policeman in that continuity). The Haughty is soon Broken.
• Ret-Gone: When Glorith ages the SW6 Gim to death, his adult version vanishes, cluing the Legionnaires in to the nature of SW6 as time-displaced versions of themselves, rather than clones.
• Sizeshifter: While training as a Science Police officer on Mars, Gim Allon was affected by the emanations of a meteorite that impacted nearby, giving him the ability to grow to enormous size and strength.
• Super Cop: Gim trained to be a police officer before becoming a Legionnaire, even after he became a hero he continued his training and became an officer.
• Super-Strength: Even at normal size, he's considerably stronger than a typical human.

Invisible Kid I

AKA: Lyle Norg

Homeworld: Earth

Abilities: Invisibility

Born on the planet Earth, Lyle Norg developed a serum that allowed him to become completely invisible. This made him an important member of the Legion Espionage Squad. Norg was killed by Validus of the Fatal Five. In Reboot Legion continuity, Lyle Norg' survives and is romantically involved with Chemical King. In Prime Legion continuity, Lyle Norg is known for struggling with his father who is in the Science Police.

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• Amazon Chaser: Threeboot Invisible Kid develops a crush on Gazelle after seeing her in action.
• An Arm and a Leg: Threeboot Invisible Kid loses an arm after his flight ring explodes, and gets an alien one grafted on.
• Boy Meets Ghoul: Shortly before his death, he fell in love with a mysterious, ethereal girl named Myla. After his death, it turned out she was a ghost all along. However, it seems he ended up in the same place she did.
• The Chains of Commanding: Served as Legion Leader during possibly one of the worst years ever: the Legion was temporarily outlawed by Universo when he took over the Earth, the Khunds invaded, the Sun-Eater attacked, the Fatal Five were formed to fight it and became an ongoing criminal concern, Ferro Lad became the first Legionnaire to die (and stay dead) in order to destroy the eater, Doctor Regulus attacked for the first time, and the Dark Circle cult and Mordru the evil wizard revealed themselves, with the latter nearly taking over the entire UP. Small wonder Lyle scaled back his Legion activities and spent most of the rest of his life doing relaxing work in the lab after his term was up.
• Dead Person Impersonation: At one point, it seemed that he wasn't dead and had been trapped in another dimension all along, but that was just a demon impersonating him.
• Dying Moment of Awesome: After having deduced that the Tharok's separated brain components were controlling Validus during his rampage, Invisible Kid tries to destroy them, only to be caught in the massive giant's grip. With his dying breath, he crushed the components, even as he himself was crushed. The rudderless Validus instinctively fled.
• The Everyman: Threeboot has him as an obvious audience identification character.
• Fantasy-Forbidding Father: Threeboot Lyle's father Lon seems to be a subversion of this at first, encouraging his son's scientific exploits and even supplying him with alien tissues to experiment with. Turns out he's turning Lyle's research in to his Big Brother-type bosses in the Science Police.
• Gadgeteer Genius: In the Postboot continuity, Brainy was more the pure scientist, doing things like creating antigravitic material as a side effect of an experiment, and Lyle was more the engineer, doing things like taking said metal and producing flight rings from it.
• Happily Adopted: Reboot Lyle Norg was raised by the Foccart family.
• Invisibility: He can turn himself and his clothing invisible at will. His invisibility cloaks himself from many types of detection: ocular, auditory and telepathic.
• Naïve Newcomer: Threeboot's first arc is told almost entirely through his perspective and is about how alien everything is to him.
• New Meat: Threeboot again.
• Professor Guinea Pig: See Super Serum, below.
• Science Hero
• Super Serum: The source of his powers. In the Threeboot, he gives the serum to the Science Police in exchange for them leaving the Legion alone- but not before somehow encoding it with a virus that gives the Legion a backdoor into SP computers after it's analyzed.
• Teen Genius: Threeboot Brainy goes so far as to say that Lyle's plan involving the virus mentioned above was the cleverest thing a human had done since the discovery of fire.
• Teen Superspy: Postboot, this was his pre-Legion job, and he goes on to found the Legion Espionage Squad with Triad, Apparition, Shrinking Violet, and Chameleon. He also leads the Squad in most continuities where it exists.
• Word of Gay: Postboot.

Brainiac 5/Brainiac 5. 1

AKA: Querl Dox

Homeworld: Colu

Abilities: 12th level super intelligence; force-field projection (Postboot only)

Born on the super-intelligent planet Colu, he is a 12th-level intellect considered a genius even by their standards. This makes him an incredible scientist, inventor, and strategist in combat. His ancestor is the super-villain Brainiac, and he takes this name to redeem his family's lineage. His longest romantic partners have been Supergirl, Andromeda, and Dream Girl.

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• Adaptational Sexuality: Following decades of his various counterparts being attracted to men and women, the Bendisboot Brainy is openly acknowledged and referred to as demisexual.
• Amazing Technicolor Population: Totally green-skinned. Just ask Supergirl.
• Ambiguously Bi: Postboot Brainy shows attraction to both Andromeda and Invisible Kid.
• Arch-Enemy: That would probably be Pulsar Stargrave, a green-skinned villain of uncertain origins, who may be the original Brainiac, time-tossed from from his last battle with Superman into the 30th Century. He claimed to be Querl's father at one point, and is a brilliant scientist.
• Badass Bookworm: He's the Legion's brains, but he can also throw down when he has to, and is rarely a hindrance when things get physical. Given who some of his teammates and enemies are, this makes him a certified badass.
• Barrier Warrior: Brainiac 5's primary invention is his personal force-shield generator. He wears a belt that projects an impenetrable forcefield around himself; can sometimes extend the field to do more creative things with it.
• A Birthday, Not a Break: In a two-part story taking place in issues 378 and 379 of Adventure Comics, he and fellow Legionnaires Superboy, Karate Kid, Duo Damsel and Princess Projectra get poisoned on his birthday while trying to fulfill the Coluan birthday tradition of drinking kono juice in ivory cups, leaving them twelve hours to live. Brainiac 5 narrowly avoids dying on his birthday along with the other four Legionnaires when Ultra Boy uses the Miracle Machine to revive them just before their twelve hours are up.
• Brains and Brawn: With Supergirl, Preboot, and again in New Krypton.
• Breakout Character: Quite possibly the best known member of the Legion.
• Character Development: In the Levitz era, Brainy eventually outgrew most of his Insufferable Genius characteristics to become wiser, more thoughtful and more humanist in perspective. Subsequent portrayals have mostly ignored this.
• The Chessmaster: His super-intelligence is sometimes played this way.
• Create Your Own Villain:
  • Computo, his AI creation, eventually rebelled against him and became a recurring foe, even killing one of Triplicate Girl's selves.
  • During one of his crazy periods, felt like he wasn't getting the credit he deserved, so he used the Miracle Machine to create the unstoppable Omega, a living agglomeration of all hatred, everywhere, demanding to be named Ruler of the Universe in exchange for the secret of stopping him.
• Dark Secret: One of a conspiracy of four Legionnaires dedicated to avenging Superboy's death (long story), by killing the Time Trapper.
• Deadpan Snarker: Being around other people is like being stuck on the short bus for him, so this is a natural result.
• Flat-Earth Atheist: He is an atheist, even though the Legion has met -and sometimes fought- gods, and Superman personally met one of God's agents.
• Future Me Scares Me: Threeboot Brainiac 5, who finds difficulty in working with his (adult) retroboot alter ego.
• Gadgeteer Genius: He is able to create very advanced technology such as time machines (such as the Time Cube, Time Spheres and Chronexus), Flight Rings, artificial intelligences, and Force Shields. Brainy is also knowledgeable with medical technology as well, having invented the anti-lead serum for Mon-El and curing Matter-Eater Lad of his madness.
• Green-Skinned Space Babe: Supergirl thought so, anyway.
• Guile Hero: Often portrayed this way.
• Insufferable Genius: More often than not, depending on the writer. In the Postboot continuity, he's so fed up with the other Legionnaires pestering him for help that when the Emerald Eye grants his heart's desire, he becomes invisible and inaudible to everyone but himself and simply goes about his own projects without interference. This is most apparent in Legion of Three Worlds, where Retroboot, Postboot, and Threeboot Brainy all have to work together and just can't stop arguing (albeit for different reasons; one of them is distrustful of an older Brainiac 5 because he's never trusted any adults before and isn't about to get in the habit of it).
• Irony: He was always one of the loudest voices against using the Miracle Machine to fulfill the Legion's desires, both out of the danger involved and because the Legion might go soft if they did. Then he goes nuts and uses the Machine to make Omega, the most dangerous thing in the universe, for entirely selfish reasons.
• Kick the Dog: His plan to kill the Time Trapper involved bringing the comatose body of Jaxon Rugarth aka the former Infinite Man into his presence. Rugarth was the innocent victim of a science experiment Gone Horribly Wrong, and Brainy knew or suspected that the outcome might include his death.
• Legacy Character: He is introduced as the great-great-grandson of Superman villain Brainiac, was so popular that writers eventually created Brainiacs 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, and 13.
• Love Makes You Crazy: Querl is so obsessed with Kara that he once built a Supergirl-alike android in his dream.
• May–December Romance: His Retroboot counterpart during New Krypton is still in love with Supergirl, even though, at that point in time in the 21st Century, she's still a teenager and he's an adult. Of course, Querl doesn't admit this to Kara because she had yet to actually join the Retroboot Legion.
• Missing Mom: In Postboot, it turned out that Brainy was traumatized by the memory of his mother, Brainiac 4, abandoning him just as soon as she'd finished giving birth. Brainiac 4 was a statuesque blonde woman, by the way. Also a sociopath, who took on several wildly varying identities before eventually leading the Dark Circle and trying to kill Querl, all in pursuit of finding something that would provoke an emotional reaction in herself.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The many times when one of Brainy's creations becomes a problem for the entire Legion (see: Computo).
• Non-Action Guy: Depending on the continuity. He's always preferred to be mission control, but in some (especially Preboot) he can still pack a hell of a punch.
• Overnight Age-Up: Following the assault on Glorith in the final dozen or so issues of v4 prior to Zero Hour, he was aged into an old man and had to wear Powered Armor to even get around.
• Powered Armor: Briefly wore something like this after being aged by Glorith.
• Required Secondary Powers: He has a force field belt that (before Crisis on Infinite Earths, at least) was explicitly noted to have the ability to automatically generate breathable air whenever creating a closed shield. Even before he invented the transuits, it was stated that he didn't need a conventional space suit for this reason.
• Science Hero: His only real power is his brain, after all.
• Science-Related Memetic Disorder: Goes crazy with remarkable frequency. The apparently decorative wires on his face are, in Postboot continuity, part of a mental limiter that keeps him from becoming so intelligent that he becomes hopelessly focused on matters of cosmic knowledge, useless and/or insane.
• The Smart Guy: Fit the role in every Legion continuity.
• The Spock: Since very early on. Brainiac 5 is usually portrayed as being anti-social, cold towards others, aloof and self-involved. The reasoning for this is his heightened intelligence which always surpasses those around him, making it difficult for him to relate communication his point to others.
• Stuff Blowing Up: In some continuities, the frequency with which his experiments explode is a Running Gag.
• Summon Bigger Fish: Notably employed against the Time Trapper.
• Super-Intelligence: Querl has a "12th-level intellect" (each level of intelligence represents a separate thought track, allowing him to think about or solve twelve equations simultaneously), which grants him superhuman calculation skills, amazing memory and exceptional technical know-how. This increased intellect gives him superior calculating abilities, an encyclopedic memory and innovating scientific knowledge.
• Take Over the World: Think bigger. Try the universe.
• Teen Genius: When he was a teen.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: Brainiac was the prime mover of a plan to kill the Time Trapper. This not only violated the Legion Code against killing unless in the defense of others or oneself, but also resulted in the seeming death of the Infinite Man, the tragic victim of a scientific accident. Upon being censured for this by Polar Boy, Brainiac 5 left the Legion.
• Troll: He's subjected hilariously to a Wonderful Life plot in a side story in one of the Postboot issues. When it appears that everyone else really would be better off without him, he decides he would rather go on existing just to make them miserable.
• Writing Around Trademarks: After DC introduced Brainiac, the makers of a toy computer called "The Brainiac" complained. DC had to place a trademark notice for the toy computer in the comic, and made Brainiac a robot with a computer mind. This made things complicated for Brainiac 5, who could not be a descendant of Brainiac and was retconned as the descendant of a humanoid who Brainiac adopted and who later rebelled. The animated version simply made Brainiac 5 and all Coluans robots, with Querl based on the original's code. In 1988 (the original change was in 1964), Brainiac was retconned back into being a living Coluan (fully confirmed in 2008) making this moot.
• Year Inside, Hour Outside: His Glorithverse counterpart. During an Annual which acted as a recap of events in Legion history altered to fit the new continuity, Glorith kissed Brainiac 5 for a few seconds after he discovered that she'd been manipulating the Legion the whole time. Due to her time manipulating abilities she made the kiss last an eternity, effectively driving him insane in order to make him forget this revelation.

Superman/Superboy I

AKA: Kal-El (Clark Kent)

Homeworld: Krypton

Abilities: Super-strength, speed, senses, flight, and invulnerability

Superboy was originally the identity that Clark Kent adopted using his powers to help others as a teenager in Smallville before he became Superman. His exploits as both Superboy and Superman was what inspired Cosmic Boy, Lightning Lad, and Saturn Girl to form the Legion of Super-Heroes. The three of them would later travel back through time to meet him, after which they brought him to the future and made him a member.

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For tropes regarding Superboy, see Superman (The Character).

Shrinking Violet/Virus/Veye/LeViathan/Atom Girl

AKA: Salu Digby

Homeworld: Imsk

Abilities: Able to shrink to microscopic size; giant growth (Postboot only)

Shrinking Violet is Salu Digby. Born on the planet Imsk, she has the natural ability to shrink down to sub-atomic sizes. During the Five Years Later era, she was romantically involved with Light Lass and briefly used the codename Virus. In Reboot Legion continuity, Shrinking Violet also gains growing powers and takes the name Leviathan in honor of her fallen teammate Gim Allon. This is later shortened to simply Violet. In Prime Legion continuity, she uses the codename Atom Girl.

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• Alone Among the Couples: One night she was bummed that every lady in the Legion was seeing someone else in the Legion while Duplicate Boy was all the way over on Lallor, so Matter-Eater Lad decided to take her on a friendly date. After he swept her off her feet, she gratefully kissed him—and then DB teleported in and tried to start a fight.
• Arch-Enemy: Micro Lad went and made himself hers. First he tried to usurp her place in the Legion by beating her in a fight, spent some time in the Legion of Super-Villains as her opposite number, after which he joined an Imskian rebel movement and had her kidnapped, stuck in a sensory deprivation tank for a year, and impersonated. In the end, she got the joy of spitting right in his dead damn face. Not through her own doing, mind.
• An Arm and a Leg: In 5YL she loses her leg during a battle with the Khunds and has it replaced with a prosthetic until she can spare the (rare, during 5YL) downtime to get it regrown properly.
• Batman Grabs a Gun: As a member of the Imskian military.
• Birds of a Feather: Pre-kidnapping, she tended to be closer to her fellows in the Legion Espionage Squad better than the others; post-kidnapping, she gravitates more toward strong, confident types.
• Butch Lesbian: In the Five Years Later continuity, down to the buzz cut.
• Alternate Me Scares Me: Batch SW6 Salu is intimidated by her tougher, more bitter 5YL counterpart, at least until she gets to know her better.
• Capture and Replicate: The original version is victim of this. She is kidnapped by Imsk-native radicals and replaced in the Legion by Yera, a Durlan actress who used her native shapeshifting abilities to assume Violet's identity (the radicals had told her that Violet wished to go on a secret vacation). Yera's charade is later exposed and the real Violet is rescued.
• Do Not Call Me "Paul":
  • Her friends rarely ever refer to her by her birth name "Salu", and she seems to prefer going by either "Violet" or "Vi."
  • In the Threeboot she is a brash Action Heroine, who hates being called Shrinking Violet. She's Atom Girl.
• Eye Scream: During the Braal-Imskian War she found herself forced to defend a heavily-injured Cosmic Boy from her fellow troops. While doing so, the delirious Braalian managed to injure her face, blinding her eye and leaving a scar. Ultimately, she had the eye replaced, but kept the scar.
• Fantastic Racism:
  • Thanks to Imsk's occasional conflicts with the UP, Imskians can be poorly regarded by some UP citizens.
  • After her experience of being impersonated, she has a pronounced dislike for shapeshifters, at least when they imitate her.
• "Fantastic Voyage" Plot: Between her powers and her transuit, Vi's a natural for these.
• Heroic BSoD: In one story, an accident while training in the gym led to her nearly being crushed, and she not only developed a fear of her own power, but she was traumatized to the point where her sanity lay in the balance. Brainiac 5 managed to help her by taking her to a planet of giants while she was asleep—they got into a situation where she was forced to use her powers to save him, and then she was fine.
• Human Aliens: As an Imskian, yes.
• Interspecies Romance: Whenever she dates a human, or rather any non-Imskian.
• Irony: Prior to her kidnapping, Salu's social anxiety kept from from developing her friendship with the other Legionnaires as much as she'd've liked; post-kidnapping she's much less shy, but her experiences and newly impetuous attitude threaten to isolate her from them.
• Legacy Character: Postboot Salu changes her codename to "Leviathan", or more accurately "LeVIathan" after gaining Gim Allon's powers alongside her own in the aftermath of the "Emerald Vi" debacle.
• Locked into Strangeness: Salu picks up a lock of green hair in the aftermath of being freed from the Emerald Eye.
• Long-Distance Relationship: Spent a long time engaged in one with Duplicate Boy. She pined for him on Earth, and all the way over on Lallor he spied on her with his telescopic vision and occasionally teleported by when he had free time and felt like it or when he saw her with a different guy so he could try to punch him out. Maybe not the healthiest relationship.
• Love Triangle: Her original version was in one with Duplicate Boy and Colossal Boy. She choose the former.
• Masculine–Feminine Gay Couple: Was the Masculine Butch Lesbian half of her relationship with Lightning Lass in the Five Years Later Legion. This aspect was downplayed in the Retroboot though they were still ostensibly a couple (more blatantly but still without it said outright).
• My Country, Right or Wrong: A downplayed case, the planet Imsk has some issues with the United Planets, which can occasionally cause tension between her and the rest of the team. When Imsk actually goes to war with Braal, she feels obligated to leave the Legion and join their military, though she eventually becomes highly critical of the war and eventually rejoins her friends after being dishonorably discharged for protesting.
• My God, What Have I Done?: During the war against Braal, Violet was one of the officers (Chief of Security, specifically) who oversaw the development of an experimental damper device intended to neutralize the inherent magnetic fields within the Braalian's bodies which granted them their powers. When the device was tested at Venado Bay it did that, and also maimed thousands of Braalian soldiers in nightmarish ways, leaving most dead or crippled. Violet was appropriately horrified, and openly protested the damper's further use, eventually getting thrown in the stockade for refusing to back down. She keeps the scar on her eye (given to her by a delirious Cosmic Boy at Venado Bay) as a symbol of her protest.
• Nonindicative Name: Costume-wise. Her SW6 counterpart is the first version of herself to adopt a purple uniform. She, uh, herself (???) prefers green.
• Scars Are Forever: After Imsk separated from the UP, she joined its army and gained a scar across her eye in the attack on Braal—at a delirious Cosmic Boy's hands. She chooses to keep it, even after being ordered to remove it by her superiors.
• Shrinking Violet: Trope Namer.
  • She lived up to this trope in the post-Zero Hour reboot.
  • Her original/post-Infinite Crisis incarnation started out somewhat shy (she is not completely comfortable around other people) but Took a Level in Badass after being abducted, and became rather aggressive.
• Sizeshifter: In all continuities, Vi and other Imskians are able to shrink from standard humanoid body sizes. In the Postboot continuity, after Salu is finally freed from the Emerald Eye, she also gains Gim Allon's abilities to grow.
• Sociopathic Hero: Threeboot.
• Spiteful Spit: Gives Micro Lad's corpse one. After all, he was one of the ones who stuck her in the tank.
• Symbol Motif Clothing: One of her costumes was designed with a "vine" motif, which is the way some violets grow. It also incorporates an "S" and a "V".
• The Tease: After recovering from her kidnapping, Violet flirted with a number of Legion guys who she'd once regarded as out of her league (to Sun Boy's pleasant surprise), but soon looked for more lasting relationships.
• Took a Level in Badass: Following her capture and torture at the hands of Imskian rebels, she got a lot tougher and angrier, as well as taking an intense course in martial arts that left her one of the best hand-to-hand fighters in the Legion.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Her ordeal made her a stronger person, but it also made her a good deal more brash and sarcastic, showing less of the gentle, kindly personality she'd had before. She mellows out somewhat after a while.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Postboot Vi after she bonds with the Emerald Eye, especially after she accidentally causes Leviathan's death with it.
  • Evil Costume Switch: Vi switches to an Emerald Empress-themed battle bikini after the Eye is revealed.
  • Gollum Made Me Do It: The Eye sometimes materialized a duplicate of Salu to represent its influence.
  • More than Mind Control: The Eye actually influences her personality slowly over time.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Emerald Vi — her attempt to reforge the Legion into her emerald-themed minions to find a way to resurrect Leviathan spirals out of control to the point that she causes half of them to be trapped 1000 years in the past, while she and the Eye only escape because of the mess the rest of the Legion had to deal with.

Bouncing Boy

AKA: Chuck Taine

Homeworld: Earth

Abilities: Inflatable body, invulnerability (Preboot); expert mechanic (Postboot)

Bouncing Boy has the power to inflate himself and bounce around like a giant ball. This combination of invulnerability and velocity makes him a surprisingly useful combatant. Born on Earth without any powers, he received his abilities by accidentally drinking a super-plastic formula he believed was soda pop. He has shared a long-term romantic relationship with Triplicate Girl of the planet Cargg, one of his fellow Legionnaires whom he eventually marries. In Reboot Legion continuity, Chuck Taine has no powers and is the Legion's mechanic.

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• Acrofatic: It helps that he can bounce.
• Badass Teacher: Due to the Legion Code at the time banning married Legionnaires, he and Luornu became Reserve Legionnaires and trained students at the Legion Academy.
• Be the Ball: Already rotund, he can inflate into a large ball that gathers momentum as it bounces. Whether his body actually inflates—as in, takes in air—or his individual cells expand, decreasing his overall density while increasing his overall dimensions, is not explained.
• Big Beautiful Man: Artists have drawn him with a fair amount of muscle over the years, making him appear beefy instead of simply fat. And even without that, fans find him attractive and utterly adorable.
• Big Eater: Subverted. Chuck is implied to have a big appetite but it's never really seen on panel, save for the incident where he drank the experimental formula that gave him his power. He didn't bother to look down at what bottle he was reaching for.
• Big Fun: Bouncing Boy's addition to the Legion of Super-Heroes provided a vehicle for humor.
• Bouncing Battler: He combines this with Be the Ball. One story revealed that he'd studied advanced mathematics to learn to aim multiple bounces just right.
• Brought Down to Badass: Even in the periods when he doesn't have powers, he still has Legion training in self-defense, piloting, and investigation, and proves quite formidable on his own. His experience with trajectories makes him an expert user of Weaponized Balls, as well.
• Demoted to Extra / Ascended Extra: Like Matter-Eater Lad, Chuck was deemed too silly for the Postboot Legion, so he was recast as a non-powered mechanic contracted to the Legion. However, he proved popular, so during the DnA era he was promoted to "Chief Engineer" and joined the main cast... with his rather unique spaceship, the Bouncing Boy.
• De-power:
  • Got hit by a matter shrinking projector ray that not only neutralized the serum, but also knocked about twenty pounds off of him.
  • In order to mock him, the sadistic Computo restored his powers so he could futilely try to rescue his friends. The foul computer said the restoration would last half an hour, but it was really only a few minutes.
  • A rebellious scientist working for Prince Evillo brought back Bouncing Boy's powers...
  • ...only for them to apparently go away on their own. But then they came back after he threw his body into an energy field.
• Determinator: Bouncing Boy was rejected by the team five times before they let him in the sixth time. After later becoming semi-retired and becoming a reserve member, he eventually became a mentor to younger members and an occasional leader.
• The Everyman: A perfectly regular guy, whom fortune smiled upon. His modesty and sense of humor make it easy for his students at the Academy to relate to him.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: He's a guy and he bounces.
• Fun Personified: Pretty much his job for most of his career with the Legion. During the Preboot era, he was the Legion's self-appointed "Morale Officer".
• Happily Married: To Luornu, preboot and retroboot. They were the first Legionnaires to get married, they've never been shown as anything but absolutely crazy for each other.
• The Heart: He helps keep the Legion grounded, since in many ways he's what they're fighting for.
• In a Single Bound: Or Bounce, in this case.
• Innocently Insensitive: Not having been close to Luornu during the first Computo crisis or a full-time member when it happened, he was legitimately baffled about why she was terrified and refused to confront the evil computer when it returned. In his favor, he immediately felt like a heel and began comforting his wife after she told him.
• Interspecies Romance: With Luornu, who is technically an alien, as opposed to a descendant of human colonists like many Legionnaires.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: After his powers came back the second or third time, he kept them secret so he wouldn't be pressed back into full-time Legion membership. He'd rather devote that time to Luornu.
• Heart Is an Awesome Power: Yeah, he seems silly, but think about it: he's pretty much physically invulnerable, can accelerate to outrageous speeds when he bounces, and then he slams into you in a massive attack from above. A 200 pound mass moving at 80 miles per hour generates an awful lot of kinetic force...
• Lethal Joke Character: Even the Legion can underestimate him sometimes. But more importantly, so do supervillains.
• Mr. Fixit: Postboot was too serious for Bouncing Boy, so it had Chuck Taine as the Legion's resident mechanic/engineer.
• Nice Guy: Often referred to as "the happiest Legionnaire", and he spreads the joy by being an all-around...swell guy.
• No-Sell: When he's in the air, he's not grounded, so electrical attacks don't harm him. His earned his way into the Legion by beating a villain who used electric weaponry which stymied Saturn Girl.
• Pinball Projectile: He is one, most of the time.
• Relationship Upgrade: Although he'd been been going on friendly dates with Luornu, their relationship took a sharp upturn after one of her duplicates had apparently turned evil, when he stayed by her side as her confidante and helped her find the truth.
• Super Serum: He gained his powers by drinking an experimental formula he was supposed to be delivering instead of the soda he'd just bought.
• Those Two Guys: The role he and Matter Eater Lad filled in the Postboot.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Told his origin story to a group of Legion rejects in order to encourage them. In hearing that he'd been invited into the Legion after beating a supervillain, Mentalla decided to outdo him and joined the Fatal Five in the hopes of betraying them from the inside. It worked, turning the tide in their next battle, but Emerald Empress killed the young psychic.

Sun Boy/Inferno I

AKA: Dirk Morgna

Homeworld: Earth

Abilities: Solar energy generation and manipulation

Born on Earth, he gained heat and light powers after being exposed to a massive amount of radiation by Doctor Regulus, who blamed him for ruining his life. His Batch SW6 counterpart is called Inferno. In Reboot Legion continuity, Dirk Morgna has sun powers but does not become a member of the Legion. The Prime Legion continuity version of Sun Boy is killed by Superboy-Prime during Final Crisis.

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• Ace Pilot: Sun Boy was an above-average pilot and frequently piloted the Legion LX-811 space cruisers.
• Arch-Enemy: Doctor Regulus, who inadvertently gave him his powers when trying to kill him, gained solar powers of his own and frequently confronted Dirk and his allies.
• Blinded by the Light: He can make himself as bright as the sun.
• Broken Ace: 5YL depicted him as an intelligent, talented Legionnaire, who beats himself up over his failures because he's secretly haunted by his childhood with a strict father who demanded perfection from him. This is why he eventually cracked and defected to the Dominators and Earthgov. Word of God is that if they'd had more time on Legion, young (that is, SW6) Dirk would have confronted and overcome this issue.
• Brought Down to Normal: Retroboot Sun Boy lost his powers not long before Lo 3 W
• Carpet of Virility: His Preboot counterpart. Fans often joked that Dirk really needed a chest wax.
• Chest Insignia: Luna in its full red glory, with yellow moonbeams radiating fro—Wait, wait...Oh.
• The Chew Toy: His deaths throughout the various versions of the Legion. His FYL counterpart was rendered a perpetually burning corpse before he was shot in the head, the Threeboot Dirk had his head completed destroyed by Superboy-Prime, and now his post-Flashpoint counterpart dies from a crushed skull and then has his body cooked and devoured by the natives of the planet his team crashed on. At least he was able to go out like a hero.
• Chick Magnet: One of the few Legionnaires with no associated long-term love interest. Just a lot of short term ones.
• Create Your Own Villain: Inferno bullies Cera Kesh so badly that it leaves her emotionally vulnerable enough for the Emerald Eye to latch onto her, turning Cera into the new Emerald Empress.
• The Dead Have Eyes: Even as a scorched, desiccated, conflagrant, Wildfire-animated revenant, he's still got himself them fine baby blues. Aw, yeah, ladies◊.
• Demoted to Extra: Postboot, though he still gains his solar powers (albeit for only a short time, and less controllable- while he has them, he glows so brightly that he needs a tinted transuit to keep from blinding or burning people).
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: FYL Dirk has this in spades, which is why he became a pawn of the Dominion.
• Face–Heel Turn: In 5YL, Sun Boy becomes a willing pawn of the Dominators.
• Freudian Excuse: The FYL Dirk had a really crappy childhood due to an absent mother and a jerkass lecherous father who taught Dirk that all women want a man who is a jerk and that if you don't win you're nothing, which instilled in Dirk the sense that being amorous and boastful would help him get women and that he had to be better than everyone else. To be fair, it worked.
• Gender Flip: Subverted. A female Inferno appears on the WorkForce in the Post-Zero Hour continuity, but she turns out to be a different person than Dirk Morgna.
• Handsome Lech: Considered among the most attractive of the male Legionnaires, and pulls ladies like a black hole.
• Heroic BSoD: Retroboot, after he's imprisoned and tortured by Earth-Man. He gets better after seeing his Threeboot counterpart get murdered by Superboy-Prime.
• Hidden Depths:
  • This cheerful party dude happens to be taking advanced physics courses.
  • He may like his fun, but he's absolutely dead serious and driven about Legion work (too much for his own good sometimes), and can be a fearsome foe when pushed too far.
• Ignored Epiphany: SW6 Inferno swore he would become a better person and avoid the same fate as his older counterpart... only not.
• Interspecies Romance: Dated Laurel Kent, who's got a smidgen of Kryptonian in her. Not! She was a Manhunter android, which technically still makes this apply.
• Jerkass: Inferno was an insufferable, lecherous pig.
• Manchild: During Dirk's dreams of his failed tenure as leader following the Black Dawn incident, his inner thoughts revealed that he believed his teammates were leaving because they were all jealous of him for being so awesome.
• Mercy Kill: In 5YL, after being reduced to an eternally-burning husk of his former self, he got shot in the head by his lover Circe.
• Never My Fault: How he got his powers. Dirk's father is a scientist, whom Regulus worked for at his research reactor. One day when Dirk and another worker delivered supplies to him, Regulus looked away from an unauthorized experiment to snap at them, whereupon it exploded, injuring Dirk and killing the worker. Upon being fired, Regulus blamed Dirk and used robots to attack him, shoving his unconscious body into the reactor.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: At one point he went on so many missions in succession that he started becoming paranoid and short-tempered with the other Legionnaires, even going so far as to use his powers against them. It turns out that he was suffering from "space fatigue", causing pressure on his brain. After this, a rest break was mandated for a Legionnaire after every five missions.
• Parental Neglect: FYL and SW6 Dirk. Averted in regards to Threeboot Dirk, whose parents were very understanding and openminded towards the Legion's goals. Though, this ticked Dirk off somewhat, and he left the Legion because he felt he was only a member because of his parents and not because he wanted to be with the team for himself.
• The Power of the Sun: Sun Boy can internally generate an almost limitless supply of solar energy, from the smallest candle flicker to a blistering furnace. He is also immune to virtually all forms of heat and solar radiation, even more so than a Kryptonian or Daxamite.
• Primal Fear: Has a fear of the dark. Fortunately for Dirk, his powers compensate for this fear, and it rarely presents a problem for him.
• Protagonist Journey to Villain: Sun Boy undergoes one of these in the gap before 5YL, becoming disillusioned in the face of Earthgov's attempts to discredit the Legion and selling out to them. The turning point, according to Word of God, was when he learned about the upcoming execution of the Tornado Twins for "sedition" and silenced his protests when reminded that he could lose his wealthy position in Earthgov.
• Really Gets Around: Has had a lot of girlfriends, though this stops at Postboot and Threeboot Dirk.
• Redemption Equals Death: His Five Years Later counterpart decided to finally do some good, only to have the people of Earth reject him for being a sell-out. He's then caught in a nuclear blast and his powers are warped to the point that he's rendered a perpetually burning corpse until his lover Circe puts a bullet in his skull. His body then gets hijacked by Wildfire.
• Space Madness: As mentioned above.
• Spoiled Brat: FYL and SW6 Dirk were this.
• Temporary Bulk Change: Cera Kesh's first act as the new Emerald Empress is to torture SW6 Inferno by throwing his cruelty back at him, using the Eye to give him acne and make him fat. It wore off once her concentration was broken.
• Took a Level in Badass: Threeboot, after quitting the Legion.
• Toxic Friend Influence: SW6 Inferno had this effect around Live Wire, who was always something of a jerk, but around Dirk he acted out even more.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Was revealed to be one of these in FYL, trying to live up to his father's standards in life (including when it came to sexual conquests), and never feeling good enough.

Supergirl

AKA: Kara Zor-El (Linda Lee, Linda Lang)

Homeworld: Krypton

Abilities: Super-strength, speed, senses, flight, and invulnerability

Supergirl is Kara Zor-El, daughter of Zor-El and Allura In-Ze and cousin to Superman. Kara was born in Argo, a Kryptonian city which initially survived Krypton's holocaust. Kara's parents sent their daughter to Earth to meet Superman when Argo City's environment lost its capacity to support life. After a long period of secret training, Kara's existence was revealed to the world, and she took up the "Supergirl" moniker officially. Her exploits also inspired the Legion, who made her a member of the team.

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For tropes regarding Supergirl, see Supergirl (The Character)

Star Boy/Starman VIII

AKA: Thom Kallor (Danny Blaine)

Homeworld: Xanthu

Abilities: Gravity manipulation, formerly pseudo-Kryptonian abilities including lightning vision and flame breath.

Born on the planet Xanthu, he has the special ability to increase any object's gravity or density or mass. His romantic partner and later wife is Dream Girl. He has also been a member of the Legion of Substitute Heroes.

Just prior to joining the Legion, his spaceship passed through the tail of a comet and as a result gained a number of abilities similar to those of Kryptonians, including superhuman physical abilities, flight, superspeed and two distinct powers: lightning-vision and fiery breath. These powers eventually faded, leaving him with only his inborn gravity control.

Following Infinite Crisis he traveled into the past, where his schizophrenia went untreated. He took the civilian identity Danny Blaine and became a member of the Justice Society as Starman.

In Reboot Legion continuity, Star Boy is the Legion's replacement for Kid Quantum. Xanthu later leaves the United Planets, and Star Boy joins the Uncanny Amazers. In Prime Legion continuity, Star Boy is portrayed as black.

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• The Ace: Postboot only.
• Always Need What You Gave Up: He never trained his gravity power properly, and neglected it completely after getting Kryptonian-esque abilities. As such he had no control and ended up nearly killing himself when he was caught in a situation that forced him to use it.
• Batman Grabs a Gun: Thinking he had no other options at the time, he grabbed a guy's sidearm to kill a violent criminal shielded from his powers. Eventually, his fellow Legionnaires busted him for not thinking flexibly enough during this life-threatening situation.
• Big Eater: The Retroboot version.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Retroboot again (though only occasionally)- doesn't hurt that he's schizophrenic.
• Breath Weapon: Passing through the tail of a comet temporarily gave him flame breath.
• Carpet of Virility: Alongside having grown his beard, as an adult Thom is a very hirsute adult on par with probably Timber Wolf for his amount of chest and body hair.
• Charlie Brown from Outta Town: Following his expulsion from the Legion, he temporarily joined the Substitute Legion alongside Dream Girl, wearing concealing armor and calling himself Sir Prize.
• Crime of Self-Defense: Kenz Nuhor, a jilted lover of Dream Girl, attacked him out of jealousy, using a special shield to turn his gravity powers back onto him. Knowing he was doomed if he didn't defend himself, Thom picked up the blaster of a fallen bystander and shot down Nuhor. Although he was legally cleared of any crime, a Legion court-martial proved that he could have solved the problem non-fatally (by aiming his power above the shield, dropping an overhead tree branch onto Nuhor and pinning him down with it), and as killing is against the Legion Code, he was expelled. He then joined the Substitute Heroes before ultimately being allowed back into the Legion proper.
• Dangerous Forbidden Technique: After he gained pseudo-Kryptonian powers from a comet, he completely stopped using the gravity powers which had given him so much grief as a youth. Unfortunately, his plans to get captured by a group of criminals and take their operation down from the inside went awry when he discovered that those extra powers had worn off. Forced to use his untrained gravity power, he brought the house down on the villains...and himself. It took months to heal, and even longer to figure out how to use the only power he had left.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: His post-Flashpoint counterpart spent most of the series on the sidelines due to an injury with it clear he was contemplating retiring from the Legion, when just as he tells Dream Girl he's going to help with the latest crisis he's crushed by a falling building before Nura can even blink.
• Flying Brick: Part of the temporary power set he got from his trip through a comet tail.
• Foregone Conclusion: Invoked but averted. Postboot Star Boy learns that the Starman that succeeded Jack Knight in the 21st century is him in his future, but Jack tells him that the future can always change. Lo and behold, the future Starman later turns out to be Retroboot Star Boy instead.
• Freakiness Shame: His formative years involved more time spent getting poked and prodded in laboratories and doctor's offices than at home, thanks to his power. As such, he grew up feeling like a freak.
• Gravity Is Purple: His early costume was purple, and his later "starfield" costume was often depicted with purple accents.
• Gravity Master: Most versions of the character could only make things heavier. The Retroboot version can also make things lighter.
• Human Notepad: Retroboot Thom's starfield costume doesn't just look fancy, it's also a functioning map of the Multiverse, cooked up by three Brainiac 5s.
• Insanity Immunity: One of the reasons Retroboot Starboy went back to the 21st century was because while his schizophrenia would be nigh-uncontrollable there, he would at least be immune to attempts to read his mind. Very helpful given some of what he was doing.
• Legacy Character: Retroactively. Though not originally conceived as such, later continuity connected him to the Starman mythos.
• Lightning Bruiser: Part of his temporary pseudo-Kryptonian power set.
• Mutants: Apparently gestating and being born on an orbital observatory exposed him to cosmic energy of some sort which gave him his powers.
• Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: Retroboot Thom during his time among the Justice Society, sort of. By 31st century intellectual standards, he's nothing special. By 21st century standards, when he's head's together, he's one of the smarts of the team.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: The Postboot Star Boy crashed a spacecraft once, so all his friends thought he was a terrible driver.
• Purple Is Powerful: He was wearing his purple costume while he had his Superpower Lottery abilities. Even after he lost those, gravity manipulation is nothing to sneeze at.
• Race Lift: The Threeboot version is black; all others are white.
• Running Gag: His Preboot self has an unfortunate tendency to crash spaceships, starting when his powers brought down the observatory he was living in as a toddler.
• Shock and Awe: Passing through the tail of a comet gave him Lightning Vision, which combines this with Eye Beams.
• Superpower Lottery: Postboot, Star Boy manifested Super-Strength, Super-Speed, Nigh-Invulnerability, and Lightning Vision, from (unbeknownst to anyone) being caught in the tail of a comet. These extra powers faded after the battle against Mordru.
  • This was also true in Preboot continuity. Star Boy's first appearance showed him having many powers, while his later appearances showed the gravity powers. This was explained away with a story explaining that he had had the gravity powers from birth and the others were temporary.
• Super-Speed: While temporarily empowered.
• Super-Strength: Ditto.
• Super-Toughness: Ditto again.
• They Would Cut You Up: It didn't quite go that far, but he notes with contempt that the scientists on Xanthu, fascinated with his gravity power, did a lot of very invasive and unpleasant tests and experiments on him that had him running away from home at sixteen and swearing never to see a doctor again.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: Broke the Legion Code when he blew away Kenz Nuhor in self-defense. The fact that he was allowed back in later is probably an acknowledgement of the unfairness of that decision.
• Weaksauce Weakness/Bizarre Alien Biology: In Threeboot, he's more or less diabetic because people from Xanthu can't break down sugars properly. Unlike most Weaksauce Weaknesses, this is only mentioned in a throwaway scene and never actually used against him.

Ultra Boy/Emerald Dragon

AKA: Jo Nah

Homeworld: Rimbor

Abilities: Able to use one power at a time—ultra-vision, flight, strength, speed, or invulnerability

Born on the outlaw planet Rimbor, he gained powers when he was swallowed by an Energy-Beast and survived. His powers include flash-vision, flight, invulnerability, penetra-vision, superhuman strength, and superhuman speed, although he can only use one ability at a time. This makes him incredibly powerful but also very limited. His romantic partner is Phantom Girl. He has also used the names Emerald Dragon and Reflecto. In Reboot Legion continuity, Ultra Boy is originally a member of Workforce. This version has a son with Apparition they name Cub. In Prime Legion continuity, Ultra Boy is romantically involved with Shadow Lass.

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• Amnesiac Resonance: Ultra Boy remembered he was a good guy when amnesiac and taken up by pirates.
• Arch-Enemy: Glorith and Pulsar Stargrave.
• Boisterous Bruiser
• Color Character: For a while he worked in the 20th Century under the name of "Emerald Dragon".
• Competitive Balance: The RPG Sourcebooks clearly make his vision-based powers and Eye Beams more powerful than those of Mon-El or Superboy, while his ultra-physical abilities are lesser than theirs. The comics aren't as clear about this.
• Compressed Vice: One story shows that he has a mortal terror of being eaten by a massive beast once more. He overcomes his fear to save his friends in the same story, however.
• The Cynic: Jo tends to be more pessimistic and cynical than the others, with Colossal Boy even describing him as a depressing person at one point. His relationship with Phantom Lass helps alleviate this, until she disappears.
• Dating Catwoman: With Spider Girl in v4.
• Depending on the Author: The level of power of his abilities seems to be dependent on what the author wants to do with him.
• Eye Beams: In his initial appearances, his "Penetra-vision" was expressly able to melt lead and inflict burns on Kryptonian beings (specifically Krypto), this making his Eye Beams more powerful than Superboy's. ^note Until X-Rays were better understood, Superman's (and naturally Superboy's) X-Ray vision could melt/pierce stuff like Heat Vision is supposed to, but couldn't melt lead because X-Rays can't penetrate it. Eventually Heat Vision became a separate power from X-Ray Vision. Once Heat Vision and X-Ray vison were officially made different powers, his Eye Beams were renamed to "Flash-vision" and ret-conned to be a separate power from Penetra-vision. It's unclear if it's still considered more powerful, but very likely considering his Flash-vision is one of the unique powers that put him on the team.
• Flight: As mentioned below, he usually flies using his Legion ring, but he can fly way faster on his own if he needs to. He also demonstrates at one point that he's skilled enough to outmaneuver Mon-El and Superboy.
• Flying Brick: To a degree; the twist is that he can only use one of his powers at a time... but his Legion flight ring takes care of flight for him, so he tends to have a slot open.
• Frame-Up: Pulsar Stargrave framed him for the murder of his ex-girlfriend at one point. Fortunately, Chameleon Boy was able to exonerate him.
• The Infiltration:
  • His qualification mission for joining the Legion was to travel back in time to 20th Century Smallville and find out Superboy's real identity without compromising his own.
  • Early in his career, he became aware of secret group of invaders, and fake a criminal record and betrayal of the Legion in order to infiltrate them. Every Legionnaire but Phantom Girl believed that he was rotten to the core, and her faith in him led to a relationship when the plan was revealed.
  • In general, his past on Rimbor gives him the acting chops to infiltrate criminal gangs with ease.
• Innate Night Vision: Since he has the same (or superior) visual powers as a Kryptonian and they can see in the dark, then by implication his penetra-vision can do the same.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Some versions of him are a bit rough around the edges, with his heart of gold occasionally being downright hidden.
• Kryptonite Factor: He's harmed by a mysterious "X-radiation", which acts like Kryptonite for him, though he almost never encounters it.
• Logical Weakness: Unlike Kryptonians and Daxamites, he can't use his Super-Speed to break the time barrier because his speed and invulnerability are exclusive and the stresses would destroy his body.
• Magical Eye: He has "Penetra-vision", which is a blanket term that rolls together Telescopic Vision, Microscopic Vision, X-Ray Vision, Hyper-Awareness (sight-related), and (in his earliest appearance) his aforementioned "flash-vision" before it was a separate power...not all at once, fortunately. In his initial appearance it's explicitly more powerful than Kryptonian or Daxamite X-ray Vision since it can see through lead (which Superboy and Mon-El cannot) as well as melting it (X-Ray and Heat Vision used to be considered the same thing). However it cannot see through inertron, which is too tough to penetrate and wasn't invented until after his first few appearances. (Superboy and Mon-El usually can't see through inerton either, unless the writers forget).
• Master Actor: He's part of the Legion Espionage Squad due to his acting skills, and can infiltrate gangs easily.
• Nigh-Invulnerability: On roughly a Kryptonian or Daxamite's level. Some sources note that this ability combines a Healing Factor/immunity to poison as well and treats it like one power (akin to Superman's typical invulnerability). Some sources also indicate that this ability is also ineffective against radiation.
• Not-So-Imaginary Friend: In the Reboot, Apparition is seemingly killed in an accident, but Ultra Boy is able to see and interact with her. Later, her mother and eventually Saturn Girl were able to see her as well. During the events of Final Night she was restored to materiality.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: In the 5YL continuity, Ultra Boy reveals that he plays dumb to throw off his enemies.
• Official Couple: Phantom Girl's unwavering trust during his self-assigned infiltration mission eventually led to one of the most stable relationships in the Legion.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: If you've got Superboy and Supergirl, and you've got Mon-el, you've got three reasons authors tend to have Ultra Boy stories focus on aspects of his life outside of his powers.
• Perma-Stubble: He stopped taking care of himself as well after Tinya vanished.
• Power Creep: In his initial appearances, he only had vision powers, with (at least) Kryptonian-superior X-Ray Vision and Eye Beams, the latter being strong enough to actually burn a Kryptonian. This was later broadened into the more generalized power-set he's usually depicted with.
• The Power of the Sun: Sun Boy can absorb his flash-vision, so it must be solar-based like Superboy's heat vision.
• Prophetic Name: Got his powers from being swallowed by a Space Whale in some continuities. It's even noticed in-story.
• Punny Name: His real name, Jo Nah. He got his powers after being devoured by a space whale.
• Retcon:
  • As mentioned above, he started out with no powers besides Pentra-Vision. In later depictions, his origin story was revealed and he was shown to the full complement of his ultra-powers.
  • As mentioned slightly further above, his Eye Beams were separated from his Penetra-vision and named "Flash-vision".
• Sixth Ranger: In the Postboot, Ultra Boy was originally the leader of Corrupt Corporate Executive Leland McCauley's WorkForce, his answer to the Legion.
• Stern Teacher: Marla Latham, the Legion's Adult Advisor, personally trained Ultra Boy and accompanied him to Earth in order to monitor the prospective Legionnaire as he attempted to pass his initiation test. Jo was so grateful for his guidance that he modeled his superhero costume after his mentor's uniform. Unfortunately, the knife cuts both ways Marla's strictness led him to be particularly harsh when Jo was framed for the murder of his ex. Although Marla was operating in both the Legion and Jo's best interests by trying to ensure a quick capture and trial, relations between them were strained for a while.
• Super-Breath
• Superpower Lottery: Subverted. He can utilize the ultra-energy in his body in a variety of ways to emulate several of classic Superman's powers, but only one use at a time. He can change his ultra-empowerment at any time almost immediately but he must make a conscious choice first.
• Super-Senses: His Penetra-vision seems to fold a number of eye-based super-abilities into one blanket "power", which was at least originally intended (along side his Flash-vision) to be stronger than Superboy's relevant abilities in that regard. In fact, Penetra- and Flash-Vision are the unique abilities that got him into the Legion. He appears to lack the ability to utilize other super-senses however.
• Super-Speed: He can't match a Kryptonian/Daxamite's top speed due to not being able to use Nigh-Invulnerability at the same time or having a friction-shield like other speedsters (at least, when the authors remember/care about that), but he can move and act at super-human speeds.
• Super-Strength: Apparently somewhat weaker than a Kryptonian or Daxamite, but still impressive.
• You Can Always Tell a Liar: When he's using his Penetra-vision he can detect biological signs which tip him off to peoples' emotional states. During his initiation mission his method of finding out Superboy's identity initially involved talking to other kids about him and seeing who got nervous.

Matter-Eater Lad

AKA: Tenzil Kem

Homeworld: Bismoll

Abilities: Matter consumption, acidic saliva

Matter-Eater Lad is a Bismollian. His natural biology allows him to consume any form of matter. This ability seems useless, but it makes him an unstoppable force when confined. He has also been part of the Legion Espionage Squad, and a United Planets senator. In Reboot Legion continuity, Tenzil Kem is the Legion's chef. In Prime Legion continuity, Agent Kem works for the government and monitors the Legion.

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• Abusive Parents: Depending on the Author. In one story his father is shown to be an abusive gambling addict, with his mother being an enabler (and both are mooching off his Legion wage), although they apparently reform afterward.
• Adam Westing: A fictional version. By the time of the FYL Legion, Tenzil had gained a rock star persona and reveled in the ridiculousness of his power. He's a senator on Bismoll and a star of multiple TV shows, which he used to his advantage to get Polar Boy out of jail by having his trial televised and utterly owning the Dominator-controlled Earthgov.
• Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: He ate the Miracle Machine, dissolving Omega, but his body and mind couldn't handle the ginormous, universe-warping cosmic powers within, so he went insane for a while. He did live and eventually fully recovered, which is pretty impressive if you think about it.
• Cain and Abel: His jealous younger brother Renkil once tried to usurp his place in the Legion by tricking Saturn Girl into believing that Tenzil was thinking traitorous thoughts in order to get him kicked out, then pistol-whipped Tenzil so hard he actually had a potentially-fatal head injury. Things eventually get sorted out.
• Casanova Wannabe: The SW6 version.
• Conscription: How Bismoll picks its senators, forcing him at one point to leave active Legion service and go home to serve.
• Cool Shades: In FYL, Postboot, and Threeboot. In the latter, his shades have a built-in camera and lie-detector.
• Darker and Edgier: The Threeboot version. He bit a guy's finger off.
• Demoted to Extra: As with Bouncing Boy, Postboot was too down to earth for a guy with powers like his, so he became the Legion's cafeteria chef. Threeboot, he's a lawyer who searches for Cosmic Boy alongside the Legion- seeking to arrest him for war crimes.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?:
  • Defeated Omega, an otherwise-immortal and unstoppable agglomeration of all hatred in the universe, by eating the Miracle Machine (itself a sort of Eldritch Device).
  • He also bit off Pulsar Stargrave's nose (apparently it tasted pretty nasty), and ended the wicked android's invasion of Bismoll by hucking Stone Boy at him from a tall cliff.
• Driven to Madness: By eating the Miracle Machine, as mentioned above.
• Energy Absorption: Energy is a form of matter, so he could theoretically stick a laser gun into his mouth if he wanted a light snack.
• Extreme Omnivore: Matter-Eater Lad can eat any substance in any amount at super-speed. He can consume an unlimited amount of matter in any form - solid, liquid or gas. He once hollowed out a large meteor in a matter of minutes.
• Fun Personified: In FYL and Postboot.
• Heart Is an Awesome Power: He can eat stuff. Hardly a power to write home about. However, seeing as Tenzil Kem's personal definition of "stuff" includes laser beams and doomsday computers, you might want to keep him around in case you need to get rid of something. In one story he ate a supposedly-indestructible wish-granting device and so saved The Legion from the invincible monster it had created after everyone else failed. It drove him mad, but hey, he saved the universe! In at least one version, being able to bite through and chew up anything meant the Required Secondary Power of acidic saliva, providing a potentially nasty ranged attack.
• Hidden Depths: Tenz didn't get a lot of characterization until "The Hapless Hero" (Detective Comics #381) where we learn he's from a troubled family and demonstrates a suave charm which one day serves him well as a senator.
• Kryptonite Factor: Magnozite, the most poisonous metal in the universe! The one material in all the universe so deadly that even the almighty Bismollian digestive process is helpless against it! However, it seems to be about as rare as Krypronite's supposed to be, so Tenzil quickly deduced at one point that a "Magnozite" cage he was trapped in was more likely some other metal painted in glowing purple paint, and was proven right.
• Lethal Joke Character: When he says he can eat anything, he does literally mean anything. So not only can he destroy objects that nobody else can even scratch (he was the Legion's only method of neutralising the Miracle Machine) but in theory he could bite clean through, say, a Kryptonian.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: As a senator he cultivated a wacky public image so he could catch his opponents by surprise.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: The Threeboot version.
• Put on a Bus: After he ate a cosmic "Miracle Machine", M-E Lad went insane and was returned to his home planet. This was because the writers thought he was too silly and wanted to get rid of him without killing him.
• Required Secondary Powers: A Hyperactive Metabolism and a kind of acid spit that allows him to chew through anything — without either of these his powers would be completely worthless.
• Springtime for Hitler: After getting drafted into serving on his planet's parliament, Tenzil tried to get himself kicked out by cultivating an outrageous public image—carousing with well-known female stars and acting in holo-vids, among other things. Unfortunately the public saw him as a breath of fresh air and loved it, so he decided to embrace the audacity...while doing a lot of good and secretly cultivating political connections on the sly.
• Talking the Monster to Death: When an enraged Duplicate Boy interrupted his date with Shrinking Violet and challenged him to a fight, Tenz calmly faced the most powerful hero in the 30th Century (who was bending and twisting a street lamp) and told him that that fighting was pointless because it wouldn't change Violet's feelings for either of them, and he wasn't going to run away. Duplicate Boy was floored.
• Team Chef: In Postboot.
• Temporary Bulk Change: In a Preboot Silver Age issue involving the Legionnaires trapped in a prison camp for superheroes, M-E Lad was hit by a ray that slowed down his Bismollian metabolism to that of a normal human, thereby making it impossible for him to eat anything anymore. He had previously eaten about a ton of dirt in order to form an escape tunnel, so when his metabolism slowed down he swelled to the size of a balloon.
• Those Two Guys: He and Bouncing Boy were reduced to this in the Postboot.
• What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: Averted. His power sounds useless in theory, but in practice... well, if there's anything you need to break into, or any dangerous item you need to dispose of, the guy who can eat his way through, and digest, anything... he's your man, er, lad.

Mon-El/Valor/M'Onel

AKA: Lar Gand (Bob Cobb, Jonathan Kent)

Homeworld: Daxam

Abilities: Super-strength, speed, senses, flight, and invulnerability

Mon-El is a Daxamite superhero inspired by Superboy. His powers are very similar, although he is vulnerable to lead instead of Kryptonite. Superboy put him in the Phantom Zone when Mon-El was fatally poisoned, and Mon-El stayed there until Brainiac 5 discovered a cure in the 30th Century. This lead Mon-El to become a member of the Legion of Super-Heroes. When Glorith temporarily erased Superboy from time, Mon-El took his position in history.

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• Adaptational Name Change: In Legion of Super-Heroes (2020), his name is also really Mon-El, but unlike Supergirl, where the similarity to the House of El is a coincidence, this is because he's a 31st century descendant of Superman.
• Adaptation Species Change: In Legion of Super-Heroes (2020), he's a Kryptonian rather than a Daxamite.
• Artifact Alias: Mon-El's superhero identity was the Kryptonian name that Superboy gave him when he was suffering from amnesia (and was coined because he was mistaken for Superboy's older Kryptonian brother and was found by the Kent family on a Monday). His actual name, as he recalled later, is Lar Gand, but he continues to be known as Mon-El.
• Dark Secret: One of a conspiracy of four Legionnaires dedicated to avenging Superboy's death (long story), by killing the Time Trapper.
• Depending on the Artist: Some artists draw his Underwear of Power more like blue pants with tight red chaps over them than red pants with blue trunks on top.
• The Engineer: More so in the "present" than in the Legion's future, but Lar is a very good spaceship mechanic and can build advanced ships (for the time) by deconstructing and repurposing the parts of ships that are far less advanced, as he does with a ship built by Lex Corp in his series.
• Flying Brick: Like any Daxamite or Kryptonian who spends much time under a yellow sun, he has the power of flight.
• Freak Out: Normally very collected and sensible (that's a thousand years of living for you), but after the serum protecting him from his previous lead exposure wore off, the prospect of having to return to the Phantom Zone, even temporarily, even to save his life, caused Mon-El to panic and lash out furiously, crying that he preferred death to returning. Once forcefully placed in the Zone, he desperately tried to find some way to commit suicide, only barely being pulled from the brink by the efforts of Phantom Girl and Tellus.
• God Guise: In the "Postboot" Legion continuity, he was worshipped as a god called Valor by many of the humanoid Planets of Hats he founded in the 20th century—which caused problems when word leaked that the Legion was freeing him from the Phantom Zone. Understandably, he was very uncomfortable with this, and he and the Legion worked to keep his actual identity a secret; here, "M'onel" (an alien word meaning "wanderer") was a new alias he invented to hide his identity.
• Human Aliens: Daxamites are visibly indistinguishable from humans, rather like Kryptonians who are part of their heritage.
• Interspecies Romance: Lar Gand is a Daxamite while none of his love interests are and his most serious love interest whom he goes on to marry is Tasmia Mallor, a blue-skinned Talokite.
• Logical Weakness: He's got a lot of mental baggage thanks to his time in the Phantom Zone, and is thus vulnerable to mental attacks meant to bring forth memories of that time.
• Long-Lost Relative: Subverted. In Pre-Crisis continuity, Lar arrived on Earth with amnesia. Since he had Kryptonian-style powers, Superboy supposed he might be a long-lost brother or some such whom Jor-El was also able to save, and dubbed him "Mon-El." His memory returned when he was stricken by exposure to lead, which of course would have been harmless to a Kryptonian. Superboy sent him to the Phantom Zone to save his life, and when Lar was released and cured in the far future and joined the Legion, he kept the "Mon-El" name as his superhero guise.
• Multiple-Choice Past: The details of his origin have constantly fluctuated, with the only consistent details usually being that he's a Daxamite who was sent to the Phantom Zone after being exposed to lead and was eventually freed in the distant future by Brainiac 5 once an antidote was created. One notable change is the etymology of the name Mon-El: In pre-Zero Hour and Retroboot continuity, Lar Gand was named that because he came to Earth on a Monday and was mistaken for being Superboy's older brother from Krypton, while the post-Zero Hour continuity spelled the name as M'Onel and established that it was Martian for "He Who Wanders".
• My Species Doth Protest Too Much: Daxamites tend to be xenophobic jerks, Lar is decidedly not and almost everyone he cares for is from someplace other than Daxam.
• Palette Swap: His costume is similar to Superman's, only with inverted colors and (usually) lacking a chest insignia.
• The Power of the Sun: As a Daxamite, his cells function like a super battery, hyper metabolizing specific wavelengths of radiation as fuel to enable living functions and/or superhuman abilities. Different wavelengths of radiation have different effects on Lar Gand's physiology and well being, but his cells cannot absorb or utilize all types of radiation.
• Punny Name: Superboy inadvertently gave him one, as Monel is an alloy once advertised as being "as strong as steel" (think about Superboy's own nickname as "the boy of steel"), popular before stainless steel came along.
• Secret Identity:
  • Superboy and the Kents originally intended for Mon-El to have a secret identity as a traveling salesman named Bob Cobb (as he was so old, the Kents couldn't very well claim to have adopted him as they did with Superboy).
  • Postboot, Valor is a religious figure due to having seeded intelligent life on most of the worlds the Legion hails from, and when they manage to release him from the Phantom Zone, there's very nearly all sorts of riots over different races' beliefs regarding the legendary hero. They manage to get him out in secret, though, and eventually he takes the name M'onel as his new identity.
  • In "New Krypton" he tries to blend in by posing as Science Police officer Jonathan Kent.
• Star-Spangled Spandex: The black expanses of his Post-Zero Hour costume have a starfield effect.
• Superpower Lottery: Lar has got the powers available to all Daxamites if they are exposed to a yellow sun long enough including Eye Beams, Flying Brick, Super-Breath, Super-Speed and Super-Strength.
• Trauma Button: Being reminded of his thousand-year long durance in the Phantom Zone, watching people suffer and die while he was powerless to aid them, really hammers his.
• Underwear of Power: They're not a part of all of his costumes but traditionally he wore blue briefs over his red suit. They're sometimes part of a throwback to Daxam's past as a Kryptonian colony.

Element Lad/Alchemist/The Progenitor

AKA: Jan Arrah

Homeworld: Trom

Abilities: Capable of transmuting the elements

Born on the planet Trom, he possesses the natural ability to transmute elements. The space-pirate Roxxas destroyed his entire planet and he is the last of his species. His romantic partner is Shvaughn Erin, a trans woman in the Science Police. In Reboot Legion continuity, he takes the name Alchemist when Trom is destroyed by the White Triangle. In Prime Legion continuity, he uses the name Element Lad again. This version is killed by Superboy-Prime during Final Crisis.

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• Apocalypse How: Varies. Preboot, a greedy space pirate/marauder exterminates the Tromians before we meet Jan. Postboot, we meet Jan, Jan's dad, and Jan's whole town before getting to watch four Daxamites with the powers of Superman simply roast the planet with heat vision. Threeboot, mention is made obliquely of Jan being the only survivor of a genocide by the Daxamites, now a dead race themselves.
• Arch-Enemy: Roxxas, the space pirate who wiped out the rest of his race.
• Batman Grabs a Gun: When confronting Roxxas, Jan manages to get his hands on a death-ray gun...and actually pulls the trigger on the pirate while he's surrendering. Fortunately, Chemical King had used his power to neutralize the batteries and briefly knock Roxxas out, successfully banking on the hope that seeing what he'd almost done would snap Jan out of his rage. (Roxxas, by the by, had gone insane, haunted by the ghosts of those he'd killed. So everyone wins. Until 5YL.)
• Blue-and-Orange Morality:
  • Played with. Element Lad, and the rest of the Tromian race, have a different perspective on the physical universe, due to their powers.
  • Postboot, his own morality begins to shift a bit when he discovers he can alter himself, including his brain, which starts affecting his mind and outlook. Shortly afterward, he changes Monstress's skin from green to orange, just because he thought she'd look better that way and didn't consider her consent. Ow, my foreshadowing organ hurts!
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Postboot Jan is kidnapped and brainwashed into becoming the Postboot Starfinger.
• Chest Insignia: Depending on the era, it's an "E" in either English◊ or Interlac◊ (the latter which looks uncomfortably phallic). Later, it's an upwards-pointing arrow coming up from his legs, which, uh, isn't much better. And then there's this one◊ he only wore once, for some reason.
• Cloudcuckoo Lander: Postboot. This seems to be influenced by the fact that he can change his own body, which affects his mind.
• Common Law Marriage: At one point, he takes Shvaughn to Trom, sharing his lost culture with her and inviting her to pray with him in one of their religious buildings. Shvaugn regards this is as good as a marriage—neither of them are interested in anyone else anyway.
• Creating Life Is Awesome: Subverted in "Legion Lost". Creating a race of genocidal life-forms to wipe out the genetically impure is not. Neither is blowing up your dearest old friend when it turns out you didn't create her.
• Go Mad from the Isolation: In "Legion Lost" it is shown that the events from "Widening Rifts" had caused Element Lad to become lost in deep space for billions of years, whereby his perspective changes to a point of arguable insanity and he becomes the extremely powerful villain Progenitor.
• A God Am I: In "Legion Lost", after a few billion years alone, he goes hopelessly insane, creates a race of his own, and becomes a villain with this schtick.
• Hour of Power: Unlike his counterparts, Threeboot Element Lad's transmutations only last for sixty seconds.
• Human Aliens: He's a Tromian.
• Humanoid Abomination: In "Legion Lost", he's gone mad from isolation, become unhinged from time and reality and unlocked the full fearsome potential of his powers.
• Interspecies Romance: Whenever he dates a non-Tromian, and, well, he is the last one. He eventually settles down with the human Shvaughn Erin.
• Identity Amnesia: In "Legion Lost" a few billion years in isolation destroy everything he was. He even forgets his own name.
• Last of His Kind: Every time (spell his home planet's name backwards, why don't you?). See Apocalypse How, above.
• Logical Weakness: His people were wiped out by energy-based attacks, which they couldn't affect.
• Martial Pacifist: Some continuities have him as a deeply religious man who only uses his transmutation powers in nonviolent ways- and it's easy to see why, once Leviathan suggests that he just "turn the Fatal Five into Cheez Whiz".
• Odd Friendship: His Postboot version with Monstress. He was often seen complimenting her on her appearance and wardrobe without appearing to be hitting on her, but from the way they interacted with one another there appeared to be potential for a romantic relationship.
• Prophet Eyes: He's got them when the group finds him in "Legion Lost". After billions and billions of years alone.
• The Quiet One: Seeing his entire race genocided at the age of about twelve left quite an impact on his personality, giving him a quiet, spiritual streak that set him apart from the others.
• Shut Up, Kirk!: Does this in "Legion Lost" without quite realizing it. He'd forgotten who Candi/Monsresss was all over again. As she pleads for him show her some sign that he's still himself, he casually notes that she's acting strangely and that, hm, he doesn't recall creating her. She tearfully says he didn't and he gently caresses her cheek...then explodes/vaporizes her, calling her a "variant".
• Single-Target Sexuality: Shvaugn Erin won him over early on, and he never had eyes for anyone else.
• Supernatural Gold Eyes: He's got golden irises in 5YL and Postboot. It's not clear whether or not this is common to Tromians, but since he can play the fundamental building blocks of the universe like a harp he probably deserves them. Prior to this, they'd been blue.
• Transmutation: Element Lad can transmute substances on an atomic level.
• We Would Have Told You, But...: One of the Legionnaires who figured out that Shrinking Violet had been replaced with a Durlan impostor...and allowed her newfound relationship with an unwitting Colossal Boy to lead to marriage in the hopes of catching her and the people who hired her. Colossal Boy understands why he had to be left in the dark, but also socks Jan in the snoot, which Jan accepts as well-deserved.

Lightning Lass/Light Lass/Pulse/Gossamer/Spark

Lightning Lass

^Spark

AKA: Ayla Ranzz

Homeworld: Winath

Abilities: Electrical generation and direction (as Lightning Lass/Spark); gravity manipulation (as Light Lass/Gossamer)

Born on Winath, she gained electric powers through exposure to a Lightning Beast. She also used the alias Light Lass when she gained the power to alter gravity. Nearly every Winathian has a twin, and her brother Lightning Lad is a founding member of the Legion. Her older brother is the super-villain Lightning Lord, who was shunned for having no twin. Timber Wolf and Shrinking Violet are her most notable romantic partners. In Reboot Legion continuity, Ayla uses the alias Spark. In Prime Legion continuity, Ayla has only used the alias Light Lass.

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• Age-Gap Romance: Tried to start one up with Magnetic Kid, though his obliviousness kept him from getting the hint. When he did catch on, he nervously made an excuse and left the room. Sadly, MK was killed before it could be resolved properly.
• All Take and No Give: How she came to see her relationship with Timber Wolf after he wouldn't leave the Legion with her. Both Sides Have a Point, in that she stayed by his side through all his tumults and identity crises, but on the other hand, he radically changed his life for sake, even getting plastic surgery at her behest, and was only staying with the "family" she'd asked him to join in the first place.
• Amicable Exes: After hooking up with Vi, she and Timber Wolf settle into this.
• Bash Brothers: As Light Lass, she often teamed up with Star Boy, who had opposite powers to hers.
• Battle Couple: With Shrinking Violet in a Legion of Superheroes annual. In present continuity, her previous relationship with Timber Wolf is given a nod, helping avoid No Bisexuals.
• Cain and Abel: Not to the degree of Garth and Mekt, but she isn't fond of her lunatic brother to say the least.
• Chest Insignia: As Lighting Lass, two lightning bolts meeting at the center of the chest. As Light Lass, a feather.
• Discard and Draw:
  • Dream Girl changed her powers from Shock and Awe to making things lighter.
  • A furious blast of lightning from Mekt aka Lightning Lord changed them back again, removing every trace of her gravity power.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Not wanting to get back together with Timber Wolf after he refused to leave the Legion alongside her was understandable. Blasting him with lightning when he tried to talk with her about it was a bit much. Then again, he'd also hired a detective to follow Ayla back to Winath which was sort of crossing a boundary.
• Distaff Counterpart: To Garth.
• Fountain of Youth: An encounter with Glorith restored her from thirty-ish to a teenager again, during which time she took the name "Pulse". Her true age was restored during a battle between Glorith and Mordru.
• Gravity Master: As Light Lass/Gossamer, she can make objects lighter.
• Half-Identical Twins: With Lightning Lad.
• Interspecies Romance:
  • She eventually hooks up with Shrinking Violet, an Imskian to her human.
  • Her Reboot self and Chameleon Boy, a Durlan got together, though events kept interfering with the process.
• Living Emotional Crutch: She was Timber Wolf's, and she largely reciprocated.
• Lightning Can Do Anything: Like restore your old powers, for example.
• Lipstick Lesbian: In contrast to Shrinking Violet being a Butch Lesbian in the Five Years Later Legion, showing more stereotypical femininity then Violet did.
• Love at First Sight: Developed a crush on Timber Wolf, then known as "Lone Wolf" as soon as she met him, and was instrumental in convincing him to join the Legion.
• Masculine–Feminine Gay Couple: Was the Feminine Lipstick Lesbian in her relationship with Violet in the Five Years Later Legion.
• Mind over Matter: Can use her powers to imitate a limited form of this.
• Mrs. Robinson: Flirted with Magnetic Kid a few times, and even went so far as to make a pass at him, which made him quite uncomfortable.
• Ms. Fanservice: Several of her costumes are cover little more than swimsuits and her second post-Flashpoint costume has such a wide low-cut neckline it's a miracle it stays on at all.
• My Future Self and Me: "Gossamer" (aka the SW6 Light Lass) worked with "Pulse". At first they thought Gossamer was a clone, but the SW6 Legionnaires were plucked from earlier in the originals' timeline.
• Opposites Attract: Gregarious and outgoing where Timber Wolf is quiet and brooding.
• Plucky Girl: "What grows in sunshine wilts in worry", as Winathians say. Though her first encounter with Darkseid was briefly too much even for her to get over.
• Race Lift: The Bendisboot versions of Ayla and Garth are now Black, but still hailing from Winath.
• Re-Power: When she joined, her powers had been deliberately altered into gravity nullification by Dream Girl so that she could stay on the team with her brother. Later, she regained her lightning.
• Really Gets Around: Exaggerated into this in Threeboot which has her sleep with half the men in the Legion.
• Replacement Goldfish: Played with in that Mekt sees her as the replacement for the twin he never had.
• Shock and Awe: As Lightning Lass/Spark, Ayla possessed the ability to generate and project bursts of high-voltage electricity. Ayla could also absorb electrical current, process it, and it use it to amplify her powers.
• Stealth Pun: She went from "lightning" to "lightening".
• Sweet Polly Oliver: In her debut story, she briefly pretended to be her (then-deceased) twin brother come back to life.
• 10-Minute Retirement: Felt burned out and went on a sabbatical after the Legion's first encounter with Darkseid. Lightning Lord and his cohorts in the LSV then kidnapped her and tried to torture her into joining them, re-igniting her desire to protect the innocent from evil.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: On Winath, where there's little in the way of nudity taboos.

Karate Kid

AKA: Val Armorr

Homeworld: Earth

Abilities: Martial arts master

Karate Kid is Val Armorr. Born in Japan, he is the greatest martial artist in the known universe. He has mastered every known form of martial arts, including a "super karate" that allows him to hold his own against Superboy. His long-term romantic partner and later wife is Princess Projectra. He was killed by Nemesis Kid during "An Eye for an Eye". He returned to life in "The Lightning Saga" and was killed again by the Morticoccus Virus in Countdown. In Reboot Legion continuity, Val Armorr begins his career as a member of Workforce before joining the Legion.In Prime Legion continuity there is a third version of Val Armorr who helped Ultra Boy learn better control. He briefly dated Shadow Lass and remains good friends with her.

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• Arch-Enemy: From the start, Nemesis Kid had it out for poor Val.
• Badass Normal: Karate Kid has no actual superpowers but has never run into any trouble with the Legion's traditional superpower requirement, presumably because nobody wants to say no to a guy who's demonstrated that he can put the absurdly overpowered Silver Age Superboy in a headlock.
• Charles Atlas Super Power: Karate Kid's martial arts skills have progressed to the point where they are a legitimate superpower, allowing him to split steel beams and destroy spaceships with his hands, even going so far as to give Superboy a tussle during his entrance exam. In fact, Karate Kid's skills are so advanced that when the United Planets outlaws the use of superpowers in one Preboot story, he is no longer allowed to use his karate or judo because they qualify as a superpower.
• Clear My Name: His Legion career almost ended ignominiously when fellow recruit Nemesis Kid framed him for betraying Earth to the Khunds, but Nemesis Kid's own treachery was discovered in time and Val went on to become one of the greatest Legionnaires ever.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: In Countdown to Final Crisis he and Triplicate Girl end up stranded in the past because Karate Kid's infected with a strange virus; they try to find a cure... unsuccessfully. Both of them die. He only came back at the very end of the New 52 series.
• Dying Moment of Awesome: After mortally wounded by Nemesis Kid, Karate Kid managed to stun him and used the last of his strength to destroy the device the LSV were using to take Orando to another dimension.
• Empowered Badass Normal: An unusual example. Karate Kid doesn't actually have any innate superpowers, yet his development of his martial arts skills has reached the point where he is classified as having them anyway.
• Evil Parents Want Good Kids: Or amoral parents at least. His mother, Valentina Armorr, was a bounty hunter who'd fallen for the Black Dragon. In the timelines where she isn't already dead by the time Sensei finds out about their son, she agrees with him that Val would be better off being hidden and raised without his father's allies finding him, but gets killed before she can get away.
• Fad Super: An unusual case because he is a preexisting character who became one for a while long after he was introduced. In the 1970's, he was suddenly modelled after Bruce Lee (and drawn Asian), given a robe instead of a superhero costume, and spun off into his own series which was sold as a martial arts series until the martial arts fad died out. Also, note that the movie The Karate Kid came out decades after his premiere - the credits actually mention that DC Comics owns the rights to the name. (Unfortunately, in-universe he debuted a thousand years later, which leads to silly jokes being made every time he meets someone from the 21st century.)
• Feel No Pain: His discipline allows him to ignore pain. This almost got him killed once when he didn't realize he'd been stabbed.
• Fiction 500: His father may have been an evil crimelord, but he was also filthy rich, as Val learns.
• Frame-Up: As a Legion Candidate, he was framed by Nemesis Kid and made to look like a spy for the Khunds. Val never forgave him for this.
• Gory Discretion Shot: Nemesis Kid beats him up so badly that they actually stop depicting his face and body clearly, but what we do see is pretty bad. What details they show of his body after he blows up the LSV's machine imply even worse.
• The Greatest Style: He uses a future style of Karate that has been refined after one thousand years of progress in a universe of superhumans and aliens. Val is completely human, but his style is not. It enables him to smash through extremely tough constructs, and damage or restrain superhuman opponents as if he had power equal to theirs.
• Happily Adopted: Upon learning that his blood father was the crime lord called the Black Dragon, Val tells his sensei that he had always regarded the old man as his true father.
• Happily Married: To Princess Projectra Preboot.
• Heroic Sacrifice: He sacrifices himself to save his wife's home planet.
• Hot-Blooded: In the Preboot, where he was portrayed as brash, hot-headed, and only too glad to charge into situations. Later versions have portrayed him as more of a stoic.
• I Am Who?: Val grew up with no idea that he was the son and heir of the crimelord known as the Black Dragon. Naturally, he refuses to have anything to do with his father's old organization.
• Parental Abandonment: His father the Black Dragon was killed by Sensei, and his mother either died beforehand or was killed by BD's lackeys when she tried to escape with him, depending on the version of the story.
• Parental Substitute: He was raised by his sensei, a former superhero who had killed his villainous father.
• Race Lift: Started out Caucasian and has been Race Lifted back and forth to and from Asian a couple times. Most of the time he's considered half-Asian.
• Redeeming Replacement: Sensei raised Val as a hero in order to make up for both his birth father's career as a crimelord and Sensei's own killing of the man.
• Super-Reflexes: Thanks to his training he can handle people with Super-Speed in combat.
• Trapped in the Past: In order to prove worthy of Projectra's hand in marriage, her father King Voxv temporarily sent him to 20th century Earth (and a 70's-era solo series) as a trial.
• Turn Out Like His Father: Sensei kept the Black Dragon's comrades from learning Val existed in order to keep this from happening.
• Writer on Board: Keith Giffen really does not like Karate Kid, and has said up-front that any time he ends up writing the Legion he will kill off the character, as he did in 1984. (To Giffen's credit, he gave the the character an appropriately badass exit, saving his wife's planet from the Legion of Super-Villains in a story arc that's remembered fondly by many fans.)
• Your Days Are Numbered: Upon being poisoned alongside several other Legionnaires and only having twelve hours to live, Karate Kid decides to capture the Fatal Five by himself. He manages to subdue the Empress and Mano, but Validus is too much for him. On the other hand, the battle destroys the Five's HQ and both they and him barely get out alive, which definitely ruins their plans and resources for awhile.

Princess Projectra/Queen Projectra/Sensor Girl/Sensor/Imperiatrix

AKA: Projectra Wind'zzor (Preboot); Jeka Wynzorr (Postboot); Projectra Vauxhall (Threeboot)

Homeworld: Orando

Abilities: Illusion casting, later super-senses; mind control and super-strength (Threeboot only)

Princess Projectra is Projectra Wind'zzor. Born to the royal family on medieval planet Orando, she has the magical ability to generate illusions. She has also used the identity Sensor Girl to conceal her powers. Her romantic partner and later husband is Karate Kid. In Reboot Legion continuity, Orando is a planet of telepathic snake-like creatures and their princess Jeka Wynzorr becomes Sensor. In Prime Legion continuity, Projectra Vauxhall becomes Princess Projectra and bankrolls the Legion.

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• Accidental Murder: Accidental Mercy Kill. Sarya, the Emerald Empress, begs Sensor Girl to free her from the power of the Emerald Eye, so she cuts off its ability to perceive the villainess. The grateful Sarya then proceeds to age to death and rot away before her eyes, which SG hadn't expected.
• Action Girl: A lady from a feudal planet with trial by combat, who spent over a decade as the lover of the greatest martial artist in the galaxy? Yes, she knows a thing or two about fighting.
• Birds of a Feather: Besides Karate Kid, she was closest to her fellow friends in the Legion Espionage Squad.
• The Bus Came Back: Her return as Sensor Girl was due to being sentenced to a journey of penance due to the damage caused to Orando during her reign.
• Charlie Brown from Outta Town: Preboot, when she secretly returned from retirement as "Sensor Girl." As part of the penance laid down by the Council of Orando, she was unable to reveal her true identity to her friends.
• Clashing Cousins: Projectra's grandmother Hagga, Royal Sorceress of Orando and the one responsible for gifting Projectra her powers at birth, had always secretly resented that Projectra had been chosen for the throne over her grandson Pharoxx. Upon the death of Projectra's father King Voxv, Pharoxx, with their grandmother's backing, tried to take the throne. Although thwarted, the royal pain eventually gave the Legion of Super-Villains access to Orando, much to everyone's misery.
• Cleavage Window: Her Retroboot costume.
• Cool Mask: As Sensor Girl she wear a distinctive white mask.
• Crimefighting with Cash: Until her planet blew up and she got her parents' illusion powers in the Threeboot.
• Death Glare: Following Karate Kid's death, she fixed Nemesis Kid (his killer) with one that paralyzed him with fear.
• Face–Heel Turn: Threeboot was making her into this, but it was canceled by the rushed ending before the last four issues could be made.
• Freakiness Shame: Following her transformation into a naga-type creature, Reboot Jeckie feels that her beauty has been destroyed and that everyone else is just being nice when they tell her otherwise.
• Happily Married: To Karate Kid, Preboot.
• Hot Witch: Aside from her powers being mystical in origin, she comes from a world where magic is practiced commonly, and received training from the Royal Sorceress of Orando herself. As such she often works with White Witch and/or Dream Girl when spells or rituals prove necessary.
• Innate Night Vision: Thermal vision is one of her sensory powers as Sensor Girl
• Intellectual Animal: Postboot, Jeka Wynzorr is a giant snake.
• Invisibility: As Sensor Girl, her abilities have been heightened to the point that she can project complete invisibility to anything, any sense, any power (including telepathy), any means of perception. Period.
• Irony: Having been one of the few Legionnaires to kill of her own free will, she found herself confronting the conspiracy several Legionnaires had formed to assassinate the Time Trapper.
• It's All Junk: In time, the Council of Orando declares that Projectra has served her penance and and may take the throne again. However, her experiences as Sensor Girl lead her to realize that temporal power and authority are only illusions and that she'd rather live happily with her friends.
• Masquerade: After revealing her true identity as Projectra to her friends, she kept using the Sensor Girl name and identity. This added another layer to her illusions, as no one outside the team knew "Sensor Girl" could create such things.
• Master of Illusion: When first introduced, she projected illusions. After her powers were increased, her illusions became so realistic that the subject of them could not tell reality from her projections. She was now able to effect all of the senses and could shut them down, effectively isolating a person in a prison of their own mind.
• Mix-and-Match Critter: Near the end of Postboot, she was mutated into a naga-like form.
• Most Common Superpower/ In her humanoid form.
• Neck Snap: How she killed Nemesis Kid, Preboot.
• PrincessIncognito: During her Sensor Girl phase. Originally her identity was obscured even from her teammates, but it remained a public secret for even longer.
• Odd Friendship: After her return from Orando, she becomes close to Timber Wolf, who had been Val's good friend and the executor of his will.
• Overly Long Name: In the threeboot and current versions, her full name is Wilimina Morgana Daergina Annaxandra Projectra Velorya Vauxhall. “Jeckie” to her friends.
• Psychic Powers: As Sensor Girl.
• Put on a Bus: After the LSV attack on Orando, and the subsequent death of her husband Karate Kid, Projectra proceeded to take the planet out of our dimension, citing the LSV attack as proof that Orando was unsuited for the United Planets and their modern times and dedicating her life to rebuilding her damaged world. However...
• Race Lift: Postboot. She is changed into a snake alien.
• Rich Bitch: Threeboot, in the Shooter run.
• Royal Inbreeding: The Bierbaums suggested that this may explain her susceptibility to mental viruses.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: She's the actual princess (later queen) of planet Orando.
• Snakes Are Sinister: Subverted. Postboot Sensor is a giant snake and is easily the nicest version of her.
• Super-Senses: The name Sensor Girl is appropriate enough. She has the ability to "remove the illusions of distance and size," allowing her telescopic and microscopic senses, and can perceive various spectrums at will. Considering Sensor Girl's originally planed identity as a Supergirl stripped down to her (greatly enhanced) Kryptonian sensory abilities, it can probably be assumed that she has those abilities at the very least.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: After snapping Nemesis Kid's neck (thus breaking the Legion Code against killing), she tells her horrified teammates that she executed a condemned criminal as per her royal privilege and dares them to call her out on it. Nobody does. When she returns as Sensor Girl and her identity is revealed, the Legion judges Nemesis Kid's death to be self-defense and reinstates her.
• True Sight: As Sensor Girl she can see through illusions, invisibility and similar deceptions.
• Underestimating Badassery: After killing Karate Kid before her eyes, Nemesis Kid thought that canceling out her illusions would make her easy prey, as if that was the only way she knew how to fight. He learned better, but not for long.
• Unstoppable Rage: After he kills her consort Karate Kid, Projectra scares the crap out of Nemesis Kid, and breaks his neck with her bare hands.
• Uptown Girl: As she's royalty, there's some question among her people about whether her relationship with Karate Kid is appropriate. After he proves his worth, she has to worry about her newfound duties as queen keeping them apart, but he pledges to stay by her side even if he has to leave the Legion alongside her.
• Warrior Princess: Between casting illusions that can drive you mad, and packing one of the hardest punches this side of Karate Kid, Projectra is one of the toughest female Legionnaires.
• What Could Have Been: Originally, Sensor Girl was going to be revealed to be Supergirl, having come back from the dead as an amnesiac, having lost all her abilities but her Kryptonian sensory powers, which were enhanced. This was why she showed things like telescopic and heat vision before her identity as Projectra was revealed.
• X-Ray Vision: One of Sensor Girl's sense powers.

Ferro Lad/Ferro

AKA: Andrew Nolan

Homeworld: Earth

Abilities: Can turn into living iron, gaining super-strength and invulnerability

Born on Earth, he has a mutation that allows him to transform into living iron. His brother Douglas Nolan also shares this power. He died shortly into his tenure as a Legionnaire, sacrificing himself to stop a Sun-Eater and save the solar system. In Reboot Legion continuity, he is born in the 20th Century and uses the name Ferro. He meets the Legion while they're trapped in the past and fighting a Sun-Eater during Final Night. This version survives the encounter.

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• Adaptational Attractiveness: After his death his mother made a series of Ferro Lad action films in his memory/to make a profit. He's played by a handsome actor in the movies, of course.
• Backup Twin: His brother Douglas.
• Characterization Marches On: The Preboot Ferro Lad was your typical hero-type, but as depicted in 5YL, Batch SW6 Ferro is a fun-loving thrill-seeker who's always testing his limits.
• Chrome Champion: Ferro has the ability to convert the tissue of his entire body into an organic Iron. He is able to transform into this armor-like state at will the process is virtually instantaneous and remain in that form for an as yet undetermined amount of time. If he is rendered unconscious, however, he spontaneously reverts to his normal form.
• Continuity Nod: The Preboot Ferro Lad is best known for sacrificing his life to stop a Sun-Eater. The Postboot Ferro first appears during the Final Night crossover, featuring another Sun-Eater. He volunteers himself for a suicide mission to keep the Sun-Eater from destroying Earth, but at the moment of truth, he is quickly told by Hal Jordan, "That's OK, son, but you've got too much to live for," and rescued. Hal Jordan, currently the supervillain Parallax, sacrifices himself to stop it instead.
• Dying Moment of Awesome: Preboot. Punches Superboy in the face, then carries a bomb into the center of the Sun-Eater, destroying it.
• Facial Horror: Why he always wears a mask. We never get to see it, but Postboot he looks for medical treatment and is told that not only is his skull structure sprocked up beyond repair, but his muscle and skin tissue are mixed in with it at random. The only help possible would come from a metallurgist and require him to remain metal for the rest of his life, sacrificing most of his senses of smell, taste, and touch. He still considers it for a while before deciding to keep his fleshy form. Later, he was just starting to accept his appearance when he was wounded and Mode Locked into metal form- with the mask on.
• Foreseeing My Death: The Hag, a mystical villainess (who was secretly a transformed Mysa Nal), predicted that Ferro Lad would die engulfed in flames. His death involved delivering a bomb directly into the heart of a Sun Eater.
• Heroic Sacrifice:
  • Preboot, Superboy was going to carry a massive bomb into the heart of the Sun Eater, but Ferro Lad recognized that the Eater's red sun radiation had already weakened Superboy and extended exposure would completely remove his invulnerability. Thus, Ferro knocked him out and carried the bomb himself. Both he and the Sun Eater were obliterated.
  • Postboot, he had a twin brother who died protecting him and some of the time-lost Legionnaires under unrelated circumstances.
• Made of Iron: Literally.
• Missing Mom: Postboot, he and his brother were abandoned by their mother and locked up with a number of other metahumans for experiments by a corrupt government-sponsored scientist.
• More Expendable Than You / More Hero than Thou: In both the Preboot and Postboot continuities, his most memorable moments involve these tropes.
• Nice Guy
• Nightmare Face: He and his twin brother's faces were so horrible that their own mother abandoned them as babies.
• Not Too Dead to Save the Day:
  • At one point after his death, a Controller plotted to use a fake ghost of FL to manipulate the Legion and use them to bring order to the universe. On the cusp of success, Ferro Lad's actual factual ghost suddenly appeared before the Controller, giving him a heart attack.
  • His ghost is also alleged to have helped Invisible Lad and Chemical King, two other Legionnaires who died young, fight a member of the Taurus Gang.
• Parental Abandonment: Postboot.
• Percussive Prevention: Preboot. Ferro Lad knocks out Superboy and takes the bomb into the heart of the monster in a Heroic Sacrifice, knowing that the red sun radiation from the Sun-Eater would have rendered Superboy vulnerable to the bomb.
• Plot Hole: The Reboot Legion met their versions of Ferro and his twin brother in the present day DCU. After the Reboot Legion was retconned into being residents of Earth-247 and the original Legion restored as the main future of the DCU, that didn't answer how two separate versions of the Nolan twins existed in the present (Ferro) and the future (Ferro Lad).
• Race Lift: In Rebirth, he actually is black, as Jim Shooter intended.
• Replacement Goldfish: Not Andrew himself, but Douglas ends up replacing his twin in an alternate-universe version of the Legion. (This also cures Douglas's insanity, apparently.)
• Shapeshifter Mode Lock: Postboot. He was mortally wounded by a criminal and only stayed alive by morphing to iron form, forcing him to remain "ironed up" permanently.
• Someone Has to Die: Preboot.
• Super-Strength: When in iron form.
• Thrill Seeker: The Batch SW6 version of him is a daredevil with a possible hidden death wish, which Brainiac 5 doesn't remember Andrew acting like, but Brainy figures nostalgia may have messed with his memories a bit.
• Twin Telepathy: Shared some with his brother Douglas, which drove the latter incurably insane after Andrew sacrificed himself.
• What Could Have Been: Jim Shooter wanted to make Ferro Lad African-American, but the editors were worried that they'd lose distribution in the South. So Shooter decided to have him heroically sacrifice himself.

Dream Girl/Dreamer

AKA: Nura Nal

Homeworld: Naltor

Abilities: Precognition

Born on the planet Naltor, she possesses natural precognitive abilities. This power requires her to be asleep, but she is also an expert in science and physical combat. Her sister is White Witch, and her romantic partner is Star Boy. She has also been a member of the Legion of Substitute Heroes. In Reboot Legion continuity, she is Nura Schnappin who takes the name Dreamer when she becomes a Legionnaire. In Prime Legion continuity, Dream Girl is romantically involved with Brainiac 5 until she is killed by Terror Firma.

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• Badass Normal: The strongest non-superpowered hand-to-hand fighter on the team after Karate Kid.
• Big Beautiful Woman: By 5YL, she's gained considerable curves, and has no shortage of male attention.
• Charlie Brown from Outta Town: Before she permanently joined the Legion, she temporarily joined the Substitute Legion alongside Star Boy, wearing concealing armor and calling herself Miss Terious.
• Damsel in Distress: Dream Girl's early portrayal was a damsel-in-distress who could be easily defeated and captured by enemies, obliging her teammates to rescue her.
• Dreaming of Things to Come: Like all people native to Naltor, Dream Girl is clairvoyant, and has the ability to forecast future events based upon visions she sees in her dreams. This ability is 100% accurate in all situations, though there have been occasions when Dream Girl has misinterpreted the visions that she sees.
• Fainting Seer: Postboot, she literally only gets visions in her dreams, but visions can strike at any time, resulting in narcolepsy- until she gets over it via Training from Hell which results in her no longer sleeping. Ever.
• Head-Turning Beauty: With her stunning pinup-girl looks and figure, a flirty swimsuit-like costume and boldly confident personality, the male Legionnaires completely stopped noticing the other female members on the team and the female Legionnaires soon grew jealous and resentful.
• Hospital Hottie: An expert in biotechnology, including medicine.
• Hot Witch: Picked up some tricks from her sister, the White Witch, and her own research. As such she's one of a select group among the Legionnaires who participate in magical spells and rituals.
• The Leader:
  • Dream Girl was a leader of the Legion. She led the team through many crises including one in which Nura handled Darkseid.
  • As the most powerful seer among the Naltorians, she's in line for the position of High Seer, which she takes up during 5YL.
• More than Mind Control: After her affair with Atmos of Xanthu, she said that she believed he had some sort of hypnotic power over her. He seems to just be a Flying Brick with energy blasts, but it's...possible. On the other hand, she may just by trying to justify his charisma and her bad decisions to herself.
• Most Common Superpower: She’s busty.
• Ms. Fanservice: By design, from her very first appearance, she look like a pin-up. She is a sexy blonde girl and her white costumes (especially her iconic leotard) are always very skimpy (even prior to the Legion's sexy-costume era of the 70's). Artist often emphasize her sensuality.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Her flirtatious persona makes her easy to underestimate; this is generally a mistake.
• Omniscient Morality License: In her first appearance she tampered with seven Legionnaires' lives in order to get them kicked out of active service with the Legion, as she believed she'd seen them dying terribly and wanted to protect them. The only permanent thing she did was alter Lightning Lass's powers without her consent, allowing her to stay on the team with her twin brother.
• Prophecy Twist / Prophetic Fallacy: Sometimes has problems with this; her visions of the future always come true, but she isn't always seeing what she thinks she is. (Invoked in her first appearance, in which "the Legion will die!" turned out to mean "some robot doubles will be destroyed.") Her powers work "literally", in a visual sense. Previsualization, not true precognition. Usually.
• Seers: Dream Girl has the ability to see the future in dreams and visions. This is a power shared by all natives of her home planet Naltor, but Nura's ability to do so is considered to be among the strongest of her race.
• Teen Genius: She has a keen knowledge of Naltorian super-science and has used these skills to help her comrades.
• Took a Level in Badass: Postboot; see above. In original continuity and Threeboot she can use her shorter-range precognition to predict opponents' moves in battle, and even uses this to take out two Naltorian cops who've been trained in the same skill.
• Unrelated in the Adaptation: Reboot Dream Girl isn't related to White Witch.
• What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: Being well aware of the limits of her power, she became a Renaissance Woman, and as such is an expert in engineering, science, medicine, the occult, fighting, leadership...the list goes on.

Shadow Lass/Umbra

AKA: Tasmia Mallor, Betsy Norcross

Homeworld: Talok VIII

Abilities: Generate absolute darkness

Shadow Lass is Tasmia Mallor. Born on the planet Talok VIII, she was given the ability to manipulate darkness. The Talokites choose a different shadow champion in every generation. Her cousin Grev is Shadow Kid, her 20th Century ancestors in L.E.G.I.O.N. are Lydea Mallor and Lyrissa Mallor. Her longest romantic partner is Mon-El.In Reboot Legion continuity, a colder and more aggressive Tasmia uses the name Umbra. In Prime Legion continuity, she uses the name Shadow Lass again. This version dates Ultra Boy.

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• '80s Hair: Has an amazing feathered mullet in 5YL.
• Barrier Warrior: Her shadows can absorb and nullify heat and light based attacks.
• Because Destiny Says So: Traditionally, one Mallor per generation would enter the sacred caves of her planet, receive shadow powers and serve as the planet's protector. She and Grev entered together, and both received them; apparently fate had decreed that one would protect the planet as "Shadow Champion" and the other would be free to travel.
• Casting a Shadow: Tasmia can cast dark-fields preventing all light from reaching an area from outside. These can either be complete, effectively rendering useless all light sources within the area, or hollow to allow the interior to be lit. She can also solidify these fields, to use as a more direct weapon. She has the power to create darkness 100 times darker than a moonless night. Her black shadows are impenetrable by light.
• Cleavage Window: In the 1980's Shadow Lass's costume became more conservative, consisting of black tights and a cape, though still with a hint of sexiness due to a revealing 'cleavage window' on her chest.
• Commonality Connection: She (a protector of Talok VIII) and Tyroc (the protector of Marzal) understand each other very well and get along swimmingly.
• Culture Police: During the Postboot era, Umbra's origin had her as a hereditary guardian of Talok VIII's culture. Because of her unique interpretation of the role, she almost singlehandedly beats up the Science Police crew sent to make first contact before being knocked out. She was disturbed to find out her people had joined the United Planets by the time she woke up, and she tells the story like a resistance fighter preparing to "free" her people from the U.P.'s cultural hegemony someday.
• Dark Is Not Evil: A superheroine with shadow powers. Definitely a good girl, though her incarnation in the Postboot continuity was an ill-tempered Anti-Hero.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: Postboot.
• Disney Death: Gets one in issue #300 when an exploding generator appears to obliterate her during a Khund attack. Two pages later it's revealed Mon-El threw the generator far enough away that the only damage done was to her costume. Especially blatant since this was the same issue that teased her future death as mentioned in Doomed by Canon below.
• Doomed by Canon: An early "Adult Legion" story shows a memorial to "Shadow Woman", who was killed defending the Science Asteroid. This hasn't happened in any continuity, at least so far, except as a Mythology Gag.
• Expy: Personality-wise in Postboot, She's basically Andromeda 2.0.
• Famous Ancestor:
  • One of her ancestors is Mikaal Tomas, aka Starman.
  • She descends from a long line of Shadow Protectors, making her name famous on Talok VIII, at least. Among them are Lydea and Lyrissa Mallor, both members of L.E.G.I.O.N. in certain continuities.
• Gossipy Hens: Jim Shooter, who created her, saw her as a bit of a busybody and gossip.
• Green-Skinned Space Babe: A blue-skinned space babe.
• Human Aliens: She's a Talokian.
• Living Emotional Crutch: Mon-El has gone through a lot in his lifetime, and the universe doesn't really let up on him, either. Fortunately her inner strength is more than enough to carry them both.
• Innate Night Vision: She has shadow-sensitive eyes that give her the ability to see in darkness.
• Ms. Fanservice: A sexy blue-skinned babe that often wears just a black bikini with a cape.
• Mythology Gag: At one point she jokingly covers herself in white makeup and toys with the idea of calling herself Shadow Woman, just to flirt with Valor.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: The Lydea Mallor clone's shadow powers were enhanced into a corrupting darkness and killer cold. This has the side effect of causing other Servants of Darkness and their mooks to be terrified and confused by Shady's powers.
• Pointy Ears: Suddenly has these in 5YL, and it appears to stick in further incarnations.
• Protectorate: She was first introduced as Talok VIII's native superhero. This was later retconned into she and her cousin Grev receiving the same powers at once, thus allowing him to be the Champion of Talok VIII while she joins the Legion. They do protect the planet together when necessary, though.
• Proud Warrior Race Girl: Tasmia's origin lies somewhere between "native powers" and "unique powers", in that she is the "Shadow Champion" of Talok VIII. In some continuities, this means that all Talokians have these powers and she's officially the best at using them in combat; in others (Postboot particularly), she's officially the best in combat among Talokians, and that earns her the right to her powers. The latter scenario turns out disadvantageous in Postboot when she's missing and presumed dead by her people and they appoint a new champion.
• Related in the Adaptation: Threeboot changes Grev from her cousin to her brother.
• Religious Horror: Darkseid makes a twisted clone of Lydea Mallor, a Shadow Protector of the 20th Century and one of Tasmia's revered ancestors to act as one of his Servants of Darkness. Since Tasmia prays to her ancestors, this is kind of like the Devil making an enslaved zombie clone of Jesus. What's that? No, it's not "cool"!
• Required Secondary Powers: Her secondary ability to see in the dark lets her see through her own powers.
• Royal Brat: At her worst, she can behave this way. However, her puckish attitude helps Mon-El loosen up.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: In some continuities, "Shadow Champion" is a hereditary position, making her akin to a princess or queen who is officially required to kick ass.
• Ship Tease: Upon her introduction in Postboot, her narration briefly mentioned an attraction to M'Onel. They had been a long-standing couple in Preboot, but nothing came of it. She's also been paired with Karate Kid (Vol 5), and Earth Man (Vol 6).
• Stripperiffic: Tasmia's first costume in original continuity was essentially a dark blue bathing suit with a cape. Like many Legionnaires she underwent a sexy makeover in the 1970's, adopting a revealing black bikini-like outfit with gold accessories — a tiara, bracelets, and an "S"-shaped logo just below her navel.
• Super-Strength: As demonstrated by her ancestor Mikaal Tomas, Talokians possess greater-than-human strength.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: She thinks Timber Wolf's an ignorant idiot, and isn't one to be shy with her opinions.
• What Does She See in Him?: Her Retroboot counterpart has broken up with Mon-El and entered into a relationship with Token Evil Teammate Earth-Man. Tasmia tries to justify this in that he is a warrior befitting of her race, but her teammates aren't exactly buying it. After Earth-Man's death, she continuously mourns his death while attempting to show that he was good man deep down because of his sacrifice.
• Xenafication: Compare the fight with the Persuader. Some decades ago: Hides behind her shadows and cries for Mon-El to help. After-reboot: Blinds him and mops up the floor with him. (The generic setup is so similar that it well might have been an intentional lampshading.)

Chemical King

AKA: Condo Arlik

Homeworld: Phlon

Abilities: Can create/control chemical and energy reactions.

Chemical King, alias Condo Arlik of Phlon, was a member of the Legion whose mutation allowed him to control chemical reactions. In Reboot Legion continuity he is not a member of the Legion. However, it is hinted that he dates Invisible Kid.

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• Demoted to Extra: The Postboot Condo Arlik is a TV reporter, not a superhero.
• Depending on the Writer: The specifics of his abilities tended to change depending on what the writer needed for a situation and whether or not said writer had done their science homework.
• Doomed by Canon: One story has Superboy going into the Legion's future and seeing his memorial, with the details of how he died, well before he appeared in the series proper.
• Energy Absorption: Can suck the power out laser gun batteries.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation: Tends to be pretty down on himself, a lack of confidence which seems to haunt him to his dying day.
• Hollywood Acid: Can generate this from thin air.
• Instant Sedation: Can throw somebody into shock, or drastically slow their metabolism.
• I Owe You My Life: To Lyle Norg, who stabilized his powers and trained him in their use.
• Legacy Character: In Retroboot, a gene-grafting process would be used to give his powers to a hero (Chemical Kid) and a villain (Alchemical Girl).
• New Powers as the Plot Demands: The limits of his powers were never really hashed out. He's shown affecting energy reactions as well, for example, including radiation.
• Power Incontinence: When he was born, his powers nearly killed the doctors and nurses in the room by accelerating their glucose. They thought he had some kind of new virus...then the hospital collapsed. He struggled most of his life to learn how to keep from harming himself or others.
• Power Nullifier: As long as it's run by a chemical reaction of some sort.
• Race Lift: In Postboot, he's depicted with tan skin, whereas Preboot he was Caucasian.
• Sacrificial Lamb: To stop World War VII, he sacrificed himself in battle against the Dark Circle. This made him one of the Legion's earliest casualties.
• Super Mode: Can use his ability to boost people's body chemistry, briefly turning them into a Lightning Bruiser, although this also exhausts them.
• Swiss-Army Superpower: Just sit down for a while and think about all the chemicals he could generate, the reactions he could cause in someone's body, all the superpowers out there which come from biological reactions or energy reserves...he's got a Story-Breaker Power, if he only had the confidence to match.
• Touch of Death: He mentions at one point that he could just shut a pair of criminals' bodies down entirely, but killing is against LSH rules.
• Training the Gift of Magic: His powers were inherent from birth, but he needed years of training (and Lyle Norg's chemical treatments) so that he wouldn't accidentally wreak havoc on Phlon...or on his own body.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Largely since writers tended to forget he existed.
• What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: He worries about this in-story, despite his powers actually being pretty useful. Justified in that they started out incredibly dangerous for himself and everyone around him.
• Your Days Are Numbered: Some sources indicate that his powers were slowly eroding his physiology, greatly reducing his lifespan.

Timber Wolf/Lone Wolf/Furball

AKA: Brin Londo

Homeworld: Zuun

Abilities: Super-human strength and speed, heightened senses, and claws

He was born on the planet Zuun, where his father Mar Londo experimented on him. This gave him enhanced werewolf-like abilities, but also made him prone to beastial savagery. Light Lass is his longest romantic partner. In Reboot Legion continuity he starts out as a gangleader on Rimbor. In Prime Legion continuity his origins are not explained.

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• Abusive Parents: His deceased mother was quite kind, but his father was a mad scientist version of one of those football dads who don't want to raise a wimp so they force their kids to play even though they don't want to. Except the "football" in this case is a powerful radioactive isotope and "playing" involves being injected and zapped with it.
• Addled Addict: In one of his focus stories, he was tricked into becoming one.
• Amicable Exes: His relationship with Ayla eventually settles into this, after a long time of pining after her, once she hooks up with Shrinking Violet.
• Animorphism: Mode Locked into the bestial Furball in 5YL.
• Badass Longcoat: Threeboot.
• Beast Man / Wolf Man: To varying degrees depending on which part of continuity you look at.
• Book Dumb: Definitely more of a physical and instinctual thinker, rather than an intellectual, though he's not stupid.
• Carpet of Virility: Some of his uniforms seem designed to show it off, too.
• Catchphrase: "Think fast!"
• Compressed Vice: Also an Informed Attribute. In 5YL, Darkseid, out of the blue sky, claims that Brin is "addicted" to Zuunium before he reverts him back into his human form. Brin and Brainiac 5 later corroborate this, as if it were some steroid he'd been willingly putting into himself (thus causing himself to mutate) instead of something that had been permanently infused into his body largely against his will. It doesn't make a lick of sense, directly contradicts his origin story, and he'd never been seen doing or referencing anything of the sort in all his thirty-ish years as an existing character. The notion (fortunately) appears only in 5YL continuity.
• Did Not Get the Girl: Ayla breaks up with him over a misunderstanding, refuses to get back together out of resentment in spite of still loving him, and eventually hooks up with Shrinking Violet.
• Game Face: In spite of the plastic surgery mentioned below, he still slips into a feral appearance when agitated, most notably Red Eyes, Take Warning.
• Guinea Pig Family: In light of Zuun's declining ecology, Brin's scientist father wanted to raise a strong, tough child who could make something of himself, and so experimented on his own son, injecting him with Zuunium and hitting him with Zuunium rays to give him his powers. Dear ol' dad didn't live long enough to learn that he'd also afflicted his son with a lifetime of physical pain and a slow, lingering death, as well.
• Ineffectual Loner: Occasionally averted- in one Postboot story, he takes on the current Fatal Five solo and beats them because they're horrible at teamwork. Generally the "loner" part holds true, though.
• Lightning Bruiser: Super-strength, -speed, -reflexes, and -agility.
• Living Emotional Crutch: His feelings for Ayla were the primary reason he joined and stayed with the Legion, at first. At one point he acknowledges that she's about the only thing keeping him from running off into the wild. This changes with time, although their break-up still tears him apart.
• Loss of Identity: Most of his storylines involve this in some way. Sit down and buckle up:
  • After being altered by the Zuunium injections and rays, he ended up with newly-developed bestial instincts and in constant agony.
  • Shortly after, Karth Arn, an android in his father's service, mindwiped and brainwashed the disoriented and suffering kid in order to convince him that he had been an android all along and that Karth was Mar Londo's son. The Legion revealed the truth and he joined at Light Lass's behest.
  • During his time with the Legion, a criminal tricked him into drinking the juice of a certain incredibly addictive fruit and forced him into servitude for more. His time as a junkie was fortunately short-lived, but he still went through a nasty withdrawl.
  • After being thought dead for six months, he returned, far more feral in appearance and personality than before, as well as brainwashed (again) by Tyr. The brainwashing was lost, everything else stayed.
  • At Ayla's insistence, he went under the knife to try and get his old human appearance back. Much to her irritation, he felt disconnected from his old face and wondered if it was the right thing to do.
  • When it finally seemed that he'd gotten an handle on his life, finding family, purpose, and true love within the LSH, Ayla broke one of the legs off his footstool by leaving the Legion and asking him to come along. Though he begged her to stay, she left without him...and he became obsessed and frustrated, his mind slipping a bit, especially after she rejoined and refused to reconnect with him.
  • Prior to 5YL he got hit with strange radiation that interacted with the Zuunium in his system to give him a truly monstrous form, "Furball", which couldn't speak or think properly, and briefly slipped into a proper human form and mentality on rare occasions.
  • After this was reversed, both forms of radiation overwhelmed his system, and the entity known as Aria accidentally sent him back to the 20th century when trying to heal him, changed into a strange-half beast that had difficulty speaking.
  • Then he gets experimented on again, and gets his whole intellect back for the first time in a while, albeit in yet another form.
  • Finally, finally, he was sent back to the 30th century and seems to be doing okay, multi-versal time shenanigans aside. Sheesh! And they call Lightning Lad the unluckiest Legionnaire!
• Men Don't Cry: Why he never told anyone that he'd been suffering from chronic pain since getting injected with Zuunium as a child. His father was a Social Darwinist type, who raised him to never be "weak", to the point of extracting a promise of such from Brin as he lay dying.
• Mistaken for Cheating: After he was discovered (by his girlfriend, no less) holding Saturn Girl close for warmth and comfort while they were stranded on a frozen asteroid and promising to take care of her, a number of Legionnaires came to believe that they'd had, at the very least, an emotional affair. Ayla broke up with him over it.
• Necessary Drawback: In 5YL his increasingly bestial body and eventual transformation into a therianthropic being turn out to have been drastically slowing or holding back an early death by Zuunium radiation for all these years. (How? Never mind that.) Once he's human again, he promptly gets right to the business of dying.
• Odd Friendship: With Blok.
• Opposites Attract: He and Ayla were about as different as they could get, personality-wise.
• Parental Substitute: Apparition's baby boy Cub Nah began to see Brin as more of a father than his actual father, which is understandable because Brin was the only father figure in his life when he was first born.
• Real Men Wear Pink: His interactions with Cub Nah.
• Romantic False Lead: Sometimes plays this role for Phantom Girl, against her already-established relationship with Ultra Boy.
• Ship Tease: A bit prior to Zero Hour, when he's been returned to a more humanoid form and White Witch is de-aged to a teenager and calling herself Jewel, she takes an interest in him. He's a bit uncomfortable about it, but we don't get to see how it turns out 'cause the universe ended. Ain't that always the way?
• Simpleminded Wisdom: His simple, pragmatic nature helps him come up with solutions when his teammates might over-complicate matters.
• The Social Darwinist: Not him, but his father, who believed the Zuun's ecology was falling apart and so raised his son to survive by never showing weakness.
• Spell My Name With An S: In this case it's his home planet, either Zoon (earliest) or Zuun (later on).
• Super-Senses: Another result of the Zuunium ray.
• Super-Strength: Timber Wolf's strength level is several times that of a normal human.
• Team Pet: "Furball" was this during 5YL, as no one knew better. He was particularly close to Kono.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: His Threeboot counterpart after he received a power upgrade. He became stronger and faster, but he also became more aggressive and threatening to his teammates. Slightly Justified by the reveal that Saturn Girl had been exerting a bit of control over his emotions to keep him in check for a while.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: One of his outbursts is caused when he's thanking, in his own way, future teammate Giselle for helping in a battle, and learning that the reason why she wasn't with the rest of the citizens in the safety zone was because the city manager locked her out on purpose. He then attempted to tear said manager's throat out before Saturn Girl intervened. Some of his other outbursts after that could be contributed to his overprotective nature with Princess Projectra.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Gave one to Chameleon Boy after his impulsive plan to spy on the Khunds got Brin and a few other Legionnaires stuck on an asteroid with little hope of rescue and led to the Mistaken for Cheating incident above.
• Wolverine Claws: Timber Wolf has sharpened claws on each hand.
• Wolverine Wannabe: It should be noted that while Wolverine is the more famous example, Timberwolf actually predates Wolverine and may have been the one Wolverine ripped off. He bears a strong physical resemblance to Wolverine and having near-identical powers.
• Your Days Are Numbered: In 5YL, after Darkseid reverts Brin to human form from his "Furball" identity, his body starts falling apart the way you'd expect someone with radioactive material infused throughout their system, top to bottom, and then blasted with even more radiation would.

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