Characters / Legion of Super-Heroes Founders

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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Lightning Lad, Cosmic Boy & Saturn Girl in their early days as a team.

• Power Trio: Cosmic Boy acts as ego, with Lightning Lad as id and Saturn Girl as superego.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Cosmic Boy plays the coolheaded blue to Lightning Lad's Red Oni. Always.

Cosmic Boy/Polestar

"You don't think I make hard decisions? You think leading this team at a time like this is easy?"

AKA: Rokk Krinn

Homeworld: Braal

Abilities: Magnetism manipulation

Rokk Krinn, otherwise known as "Cosmic Boy" is one of the founders and the default leader of the Legion of Super-Heroes, an organization from the 31st century. His character was created by Otto Binder and Al Plastino and his first appearance was in the pages of Adventure Comics in 1958.
Rokk, along with the rest of the longstanding members of the legion, has an exceptionally murky backstory due to having the villain Time Trapper in their rouges gallery as they're constantly tries to tweak the Legion's histories to their liking. In spite of this the basic key points of Rokk's origin generally remain the same, or are swiftly rectified to resemble the history of his past versions.
His personality, like his power, is magnetic—he draws people to his cause with his charisma, explaining why he is the leader of the Legion in most incarnations. Rokk is from the artificial planet Braal which was populated with rescuees from Dominators experimentation who had the ability to manipulate magnetic fields. At fourteen Rokk left the econimically depressed planet looking to find a living where he could send money back to his family and ended up joining forces with Garth Ranzz (Lightning Lad) and Imra Ardeen (Saturn Girl) to save the life of the billionaire R.J. Brande. After this heroic rescue the three youngsters joined together to form the Legion of Super-Heroes with Brande and the United Planets' support.

Preboot, his brother was Pol Krinn, aka Magnetic Lad (no relation to a minor Legion villain of the same name).

In the FYL continuity, Cosmic Boy was De Powered during a war between Braal and Imsk. He married Night Girl and had a son named Pol after his late brother. Shortly before his reality was destroyed by Zero Hour: Crisis in Time! he regained his powers thanks to a pair of power gauntlets and took the name Polestar.

Postboot, Cosmic Boy was a sports star whose talent helped him as a superhero. When half the team was stranded in the present day, Cos led them through Final Night and Genesis and was instrumental in getting them home. When the Postboot Legion's Earth was destroyed in Infinite Crisis, he continued to lead them, and in their current exile as the Wanderers, he is leading them in their search for a new home.

In Threeboot, though Cosmic Boy founded the Legion, he was widely disliked because he was forced to accept supervision from the United Planets. He struggled with command, and after The Dominator War, ceded leadership to Supergirl. He was approached by a group of superheroes from the 41st century whose legacy he inspired and joined them in the future.

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• Aloof Big Brother: It's not consistent given the myriad of reboots but Rokk's relationship with Pol is distant partially due to Rokk leaving home so early, and after Pol joined the Legion partially to avoid accusations of favoritism and nepotism. He regrets this after Pol's Heroic Sacrifice.
• Always Someone Better: Cos is always the gold standard other Braalians on the team hold themselves to. This was tragically deconstructed when his little brother Pol joined the team to emulate his awesome big brother and ended up pulling a Heroic Sacrifice after struggling in his brother's shadow the whole time he was on the team regardless of how supportive Rokk tried to be. The other Braalian on the team ended up losing his powers and becoming Mission Control instead.
• Archenemy:
  • As a leadership-type with a versatile power, Cosmic King is his opposite number among the Legion of Super-Villains.
  • On the level of someone with specifically magnetic powers, Magno Lad, also of the LSV outstrips him in raw puissance but not in skill and combat experience.
• Batman Gambit: Reboot, he pulls off a pretty epic one to out corrupt President Chu for manipulating the United Planets and staging the Sun Eater hoax.
• Battle Couple: With Night Girl (Lydda) when they're dating and on the same team, and sometimes when on separate teams but not nearly as often.
• Big Brother Worship: (Preboot) Rokk's little brother Pol looks up to and idolizes him. When Pol grew old enough and skilled enough to join the Legion of Super-Heroes as Magnetic Kid he did so in a costume almost identical to the one Rokk wore when he started out.

• The Chains of Commanding:
  • Once, thinking he and Sun Boy are in private, decides to cut loose and rant about all the pressure he's under and how much the various idiosyncrasies of the other Legion members annoy him. To his horror, he discovers mere seconds later that the communications channel had been open the whole time and his entire screed was heard by every other member of the Legion. This ultimately leads to a dangerous schism within the Legion, and they only just manage to pull themselves back together in time to defeat the Big Bad.
  • On another occasion, Cosmic Boy blows up at Saturn Girl and Lightning Lad, telling them about the sacrifices he's made so they can be a happy couple and raise a family, forgoing relationships of his own so the responsibility of running the Legion doesn't weigh as heavily on them.

• Continuity Snarl: He's been subject to a lot of retcons, some of which exist at the same and contradict which bits from which other versions are still canon.
• Convenient Coma: After half the postboot Legion gets thrown into the 21st century.
• Cry into Chest: (Preboot) After learning his family was injured in a terrorist attack, and having his attack on said terrorists cut short by his girlfriend clocking him, sobs into her chest while hugging her when he wakes up back at base.
• Dead Guy Junior: In the FYL continuity, he fathers a son with Night Girl and names him Pol after his late brother.
• Depending on the Artist: Rokk's eyes have been blue, black, grey and purple.
• De-power: (5YL) During the Imsk-Braalian war, at the Battle of Venado Bay the Imskians used a weapon called The Damper, which directly affected the Braalian's natural magnetic fields, turning their powers against their own bodies. This left 4,000 confirmed deaths with an additional 1,500 missing. Rokk's magnetic field was permanently disrupted and he lost his powers, but considering many of the few survivors were horrifically maimed, he thinks he got off lucky.
• The Dutiful Son: He left his economically depressed planet to find work so that he could send money home to support his family when he was fourteen. He only ended up a superhero because he helped save the life of one of the richest men in the galaxy on his way to search for work and was then offered a job as a hero. Preboot this takes a tragic turn as his his mother dies in a terrorist attack on the new neighborhood brought them to so they could be together again and his little brother dies trying to follow in his footsteps as a hero.
• Extra-ore-dinary: Cosmic Boy is a Braalian who have the natural ability to lift and manipulate metal with a number of effects.
  • Magnetism Manipulation: He can manipulate, repel or attract metal objects of varying sizes. Naturally, the more metal there is in an object, the easier it is for him to affect it magnetically. His super-magnetism has only a slight effect on the metallic particles of smog. He is able to juggle smaller metal objects.
  • Not Quite Flight: Cosmic Boy can suspend himself in flight by riding the Earth's magnetic field.
• Fan of the Past: As a teenager, at least, he was a big fan of 20th century popular music and collected 20th Century memorabilia. Cos is a huge fan of the age of the dawn of superheroes (WWII - "present"), which makes the legalization of time travel awesome for him as he pretty much immediately goes to visit and make pals with Superboy.
• Fishbowl Helmet: When he first appeared in The Legion of Super-Heroes!, Cosmic Boy was wearing a glass globe of a helmet. Later incarnations of him and the Legion have invisible means of maintaining a breathable atmosphere for themselves when needed.
• Future Me Scares Me: Cosmic Boy's reaction to meeting his future self (the Time Trapper) in the "End of an Era" closing out the 5YL run.
• Genius Bruiser: It doesn't come up much since he's on a team with Brainiac 5/Querl Dox but Rokk is extremely smart with an encyclopedia of knowledge about history in his head and enough knowledge and skill to repair a time machine with its own cannibalized parts and deconstructed local tech when he and Nite Girl get stranded in the 1980s with a broken Time Bubble.

• Honor Before Reason: On one sacred day of the year, Braalians refrain from using their magnetic powers. Breaking this tradition brings shame upon both the individual and his family for generations. One year, on that day, six Legionnaires were captured by the Emerald Empress and Cos was the only one who could save them. He managed to figure out a way to break them free of confinement without using his powers (just his flight ring), but took a bullet in the process (not having raised a magnetic shield), and only lived because the Empress uncharacteristically healed him out of respect for his courage.
• Human Aliens: Rokk and the other Braalians are usually humans, descended from a group that was taken and experimented on to give them a uniform powerset—like Kryptonians or Martians—rather than humanity's unpredictable potential powerset brought about by the meta-gene, but while not all continuities keep to this version of the story Braalians are always physically indistinguishable from humans save for occasionally purple eyes.
• Iconic Outfit: His Silver Age lilac bodysuit with black down the sides, a tall white band collar, convex white shoulder bands, with four beveled metal medallions on the chest. It makes him recognizable as nothing more than a silhouette and is the go to choice for animated adaptations, though they tend to get rid of the Underwear of Power.
• If You Kill Him, You Will Be Just Like Him!: (Preboot) Cos decides on his own that if her kills his mother's killers he'll be no better than them, and that he doesn't want to do so in her name. It probably had something to do with the fact that he was torturing them to death using their own blood so the screaming helped snap him out of it and made it really clear to him he was doing something vile.
• It's All My Fault: (Preboot) Cos blames his mother's death on her killers, but still feels he's at fault since he's the one who bought his family a home in the neighborhood the terrorists targeted. His brother's Heroic Sacrifice after following Cos into superheroics is something he likewise feels responsible for.
• The Kirk: A sensible leader who balances emotion and logic, as demonstrated by his fellow founders.
• The Leader: Cosmic Boy is a charismatic and effective leader, as seen during his successful tenure as the Legion's first leader.
• Logical Weakness:
  • Cosmic Boy's power cannot affect non-magnetic metals, such as aluminum and gold, or organic substances like wood.
  • Distance affects the limit his magnetic control has over an object, as does the amount of metal in or on that object.
  • Heat weakens magnetism, so his powers (and those of other Braalians) are much weaker in the presence of extremely high temperatures.
• Magnetic Hero: The reason why Rokk became the first leader of the Legion and is often looked to when smaller groups of it need leadership or things are falling apart is because people are just drawn to his charismatic personality and optimism. This holds less true under some writers, and for some later versions.
• Manly Tears: Rokk doesn't care at all who sees him crying. (Preboot) When he was very publicly breaking into hospital records to see his family's conditions after they were injured in a terrorist attack and the hospital refused to release any information he had tears running down his face the entire time. He didn't stop crying when he violently left the hospital on his Roaring Rampage of Revenge either.
• Movie Superheroes Wear Black: In his only live action adaptation to date he trades in his often colorful pink costumes for a black quilted one.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Cosmic Boy's (or, rather, the Time Trapper's) attempts to protect the Legion using the abilities learned from the Infinite Library in "End of an Era" only make the already-bad situation worse.
• Not Himself:
  • In post-Zero Hour he spent a whole arc being not himself and alienating his teammates at every opportunity in order to set up an elaborate Engineered Public Confession which revealed the President's corruption and caused her removal from office. Some Legion fans never forgave him for it. (It didn't help that this particular arc occurred in the first couple years after a total reboot of the Legion, so it wasn't as clear as it might have been that this wasn't just Cos's new personality.)
  • The bracers he wore as Polestar began to wear away at his mind.
• Oblivious to Love: He was clueless to Nite Girl's rather obvious interest in him for quite a while, though it helped that she was on the substitute team so he didn't interact with her all that much. His teammates on the other hand were all aware of her affections for him long before he clued in.

• Prepare to Die: (Preboot) He tracks down his mother's killers tells them he's going to kill them and starts to do so, but decides it would make him no better than them and a disgrace to his mother's memory. The terrorists are still left badly injured since it took Cos a bit of their screaming to decide he was stepping over a line he didn't want to cross.
• Real Men Wear Pink: Most of his costumes include shades of violet or pink. Apparently, he was trying for "pale scarlet" at first, but got used to the color.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: When fire-bombers killed his mother and severely injured the rest of his family, he rips apart the prison shuttle they're being transported in and Night Girl has to intervene to stop him from tearing them apart as well. Later he does the same to another shuttle they're in, but manages to stop himself on his own this time.

• Sanity Slippage: The gauntlets that gave Rokk his powers back as Polestar also took a toll on his grasp on reality.
• Single-Power Superheroes: Like most of the traditional members of the Legion he's got a single power which everyone on his planet also possesses, in his case magnetism manipulation. He has over the years found ways to turn it into a Swiss-Army Superpower due to his training and abnormal strength level.
• Standardized Leader: In some continuities and most adaptations to other media Cos is very plain and bland compared to his teammates but remains their steadfast no-nonsense leader, which is something they tend to require due to all the drama they generate. He's also very effective in a fight with or without them and is always a bit of a geek who loves studying and memorizing things from history.
• Stripperific: His costumes in the Grell "Naked Legion" era in the 1970s. Admittedly, so were most of the other characters' costumes at the time, but Cosmic Boy's Rocky Horror-esque corset and Saturn Girl's bikini (see below) are the best-remembered. His magnetic powers were actually required to hold on his new costume which amounted to underwear and a strip of matching material up each side of his torso to about nipple height, making sure to leave a strip bare up the middle to show off his navel and back.
• Successful Sibling Syndrome: (Preboot) Rokk is the successful sibling while Pol spent years in the Legion's academy trying to become an actual member and once he did was still in his brother's shadow. Other versions avert this with Pol becoming a professional athlete instead of a hero.
• Swiss-Army Superpower: Cosmic Boy has the ability to control and sense magnetic fields, which has over the years been used to allow him to "fly" without a flight ring, create a personal force field, yank people around by the iron in their blood—though he usually avoids this since the internal damage can kill them—and operate as a computer hacking Technopath which makes him incredibly effective in the computer driven setting in which he lives. He can, and has, locked people out of their own buildings and systems without anyone even having a chance to realize he's using his powers.
• Talented, but Trained: In addition to his powers being considerably stronger than those of the average Braalian (possibly due to being born on Earth), Cosmic Boy has had years of Legion training including combat practice against his super-powered teammates, and is a seasoned fighter of villains of all sorts, super- and otherwise.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: One of those who came up with the Legion's no killing code and usually one of the code's most stringent enforcers and followers. He can however get mad enough to want to throw the code away, which is probably why he feels so strongly about having it be an enforceable rule in the first place.
• Underwear of Power: He's worn white and black trunks over his bodysuit, and for a period black ones and little else, but he's dropped this element of his traditional costume these days.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: During the period where Cos was wearing the Mike Grell designed "Cosmic Corset" he was essentially wearing two strips of tape that covered his nipples in place of a shirt.
• You Killed My Father: When Cos' mother Ewa was killed in a terrorist attack he drops his usual rule abiding ways to seek revenge, catching the Legion off guard. He painfully drags the terrorists from police custody using the iron in their blood before he learns his mother died of her injuries and is only prevented from killing them by his girlfriend knocking him out with super-strength. When he tracks them back down later he stops himself from killing them at the last minute not wanting to sully his mother's memory:
  "Tonight I'm doing my duty as a son, not as a Legionnaire. And the Legion Code be hanged."

Saturn Girl

AKA: Imra Ardeen

Homeworld: Titan

Abilities: Telepathy

A telepath from one of Saturn's moons, Saturn Girl is the glue that holds the Legion together, keeping a balance between the cool-headed Cosmic Boy and Hot-Blooded Lightning Lad. When Cos isn't the Legion's leader, it's usually her. In all incarnations of the Legion, the love of her life is Lightning Lad.

In Threeboot, Saturn Girl's people were so reliant on telepathy that their vocal cords were useless. She was distant and reserved. Her mother was a member of the United Planets council, which put her at odds with the more iconoclastic Legionnaires.

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• Action Girl: Despite her non-physical ability of telepathy, even in the Silver Age Imra was an action-oriented woman who didn't take kindly to being second guessed. In The Death of Lightning Lad she planned to stop an alien warlord's entire fleet by herself by turning into a one-woman Legion via copying the abilities of her teammates.
• Adaptational Jerkass: Her Bendisboot counterpart, and not in an endearing way. Bendis's Saturn Girl confesses in the twelfth issue of her Legion's series she might've accidentally used her mental abilities to coerce her teammates into recruiting Jon Kent as a member of the team. Coupled with her erasing Damian Wayne's knowledge of the future (against Jon's wishes) and then dating Jon, this Saturn Girl comes across as a selfish, stalker fan girl who brainwashed her Legion into getting Jon from his family, isolating him from his best friend, and then started dating him.
• Adaptational Wimp: Her Johnsboot counterpart started off as this. Gone was "Iron Ass Imra" and in her place was a woman barely capable of keeping her husband's anger under control. Thankfully, Paul Levitz undid this and Imra's assertiveness was brought back under his pen.
• Arch-Enemy: To Saturn Queen.
• Conveniently Orphaned: Her Johnsboot counterpart was said to be an orphan, which seemed to be an effect of the Cosmic Retcon which brought this version of the Legion back.
• Cute Mute: While the original version of the character and the rebooted version are just young girls who happen to have awesome telepatic powers, Threeboot Saturn Girl happens to be a mute girl, hailing from an entire planet of mute individuals, needing her telepathy to be able to communicate effectively.
• Dark Secret: One of a conspiracy of four Legionnaires dedicated to avenging Superboy's death (long story), by killing the Time Trapper.

• Fan of the Past: Imra's hobbies include historical simulations. This is exagerrated to an extreme degree in the Bendisboot, where Imra's such a Jon Kent fan she might've accidentally brainwashed the rest of the Legion into being fans of him too.
• Fanservice: Her pink bikini costume.
• Happily Married: With Lightning Lad, Preboot. Following Legion of 3 Worlds in the Retroboot continuity, Imra and Garth went back to this in the latest Legion volume.
• Ice Queen: Later Defrosting Ice Queen.
• Iconic Outfit: Saturn Girl's Grell-era bikini, which has resurfaced in several Mythology Gags in both the Postboot and the Threeboot.
• I Let Gwen Stacy Die: An odd precursor subversion. Silver Age Imra refused to stop looking for a way to bring Lightning Lad back from the dead after he performed his Heroic Sacrifice because he died saving her, even though she had been trying to perform said sacrifice so her teammates wouldn't have to.

• Living Lie Detector: Well, she's a telepath, so...
• Mama Bear: Preboot/Retroboot. This woman went up against Darkseid to restore one of her sons to normal. Unless you want to end up as a mindless heap on the floor, do not mess with her kids.
• Mind Manipulation: Saturn Girl can manipulate other people's minds easily, achieving a variety of effects.
  • Laser-Guided Amnesia: She can erase any awareness of particular memories or cause total amnesia.
  • Mind Probe: Can telepathically "sedate" her victims so that, if already rendered unconscious, they remain so for as long as she continues to "sedate" them.
  • People Puppets: She can control the thoughts and actions of others. Notably in the Postboot era, when is revealed that she had been accidentally doing this to Cosmic Boy's comatose body for the past ten-or-so issues. Whether this was Nightmare Fuel or fetish fuel depended on the reader, but Cosmic Boy was surprisingly non-freaked out about it when he woke up.
• Mind over Manners: Generally observed, although Postboot!Saturn Girl has had a few memorable, if accidental lapses. Like telepathically animating a comatose Cosmic Boy to help keep the Legionnaires trapped in the past together—and turning him into her Relationship Stu. Then in Legion Lost, Imra used her psychic powers to make Ultra Boy think that his wife, Apparition, was with them in their deep-space exile, and when he found out, he was pissed.
• Mistaken for Cheating: In one incident right before The Great Darkness Saga she, Brin/Timber Wolf, and a few other Legionnaires were stranded on an icy asteroid with no apparent hope for rescue. When alone with Timber Wolf, she commented that she envied his and Ayla/Light Lass's deep and passionate love for each other, noting that even she and Garth's love couldn't equal it. Later when all hope of even survival seemed lost, Brin held her close for warmth and comfort...riiiight when Light Lass and Dawnstar showed up to rescue them. This led to Ayla and Brin's break up, and put tension on her troubled marriage.
• No-Sell: Universo, one of the most powerful hypnotists in the galaxy, tried to bend her will to his. She told him to go to hell and slugged him. The mind is her power too, after all.
• Official Couple: With Lightning Lad since the Preboot days. Various attempts at shaking it up have proven futile and/or unpopular.
• Pink Heroine: Her Legion uniforms have since always remained predominantly red or pink, depending on the era and continuity.
• Pink Girl, Blue Boy: The pink girl to Lightning Lad's blue boy. However, she's also been known to wear red instead of pink.
• Power Limiter: Postboot. Blocks were put on the higher levels of Saturn Girl's telepathy when she was a child. When the blocks came off years later, she started using her powers without realizing it.
• Power Trio: As the superego, with Cosmic Boy (ego) and Lightning Lad (id).
• Primary-Color Champion: Her uniforms tend to incorporate yellow somewhere, typically with red or pink, originally with green.
• Someone Has to Die: Saturn Girl secretly attempts to do this in two early Legion stories; both times someone else figures out what she's doing and manages to die in her place.
• The Spock: Saturn Girl is the most cool-headed and intellectual of the three founders, though she's far from emotionless. Bonus points for having telepathic powers.
• Solar System Neighbors: She's from Saturn's moon Titan, where the local people all have some degree of telepathy.
• Stripperific: Zigzagged. Initially she wore a modest red-and-white skirt-and-slacks outfit for the first seven years of her membership. She then abruptly switched to a hot-pink bikini-like uniform and let her hair down, literally. She wore this uniform for three years, then switched to an amalgam of her first and second outfits for the remainder of her career.
• Teen Genius: People from Saturn have high intellects to match their Psychic Powers, and their educational system is renowned. Imra Ardeen was considered exceptional even among them.
• Telepathy: Saturn Girl is one of the most powerful telepaths in the DC Universe. Her telepathy is considered tenth level by her people, the highest ranking. With her telepathic powers Saturn Girl can read, receive, and broadcast thoughts at will.
• Telepathic Spacemen: Everyone from Titan is one of these to one degree or another. Saturn Girl started out as the highest degree they had and only got better.
• Took a Level in Dumbass: Her Bendisboot counterpart is an overeager Superboy fangirl who doesn't seem to realize the strength of her telepathic abilities, to the point she thinks she accidentally brainwashed the entire Legion into thinking they needed Jon Kent as a member.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Preboot, during The Death of Lightning Lad story where she rigged an election for leader, secretly stole her teammates' abilities, and then had them suspended for arbitrary reasons. It turned out she did all that in order to spare her teammates from fighting in an upcoming battle with an alien overlord, after being told by a precognitive society one of the Legionnaires would die in battle. Her plan failed when Lightning Lad discovered what she was planning, and sacrificed himself in battle.
• Workaholic: Due to her strong sense of responsibility. As a teen, she once stated that the one thing she'd change about herself was the need to sleep eight hours a night where there was so much to be done. Eventually, she learned that she couldn't fix everything.

Lightning Lad/Live Wire

AKA: Garth Ranzz

Homeworld: Winath

Abilities: Electrical generation and direction

An inhabitant of the planet Wynath, Garth Ranzz, his twin sister Ayla, and his older brother, Mekt, were attacked by lightning beasts after crashlanding on a distant planet. The bolts reacted with the siblings' body chemistry, granting them the power to absorb, store, and discharge electricity. When Mekt went missing, Garth set out to find him, meeting Cosmic Boy and Saturn Girl, and founding the Legion in the process.

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• Adaptational Jerkass: SW6 Garth was undoubtedly the nastiest version of him to the point you could legitimately argue he was The Friend Nobody Likes. A violent and ill-tempered hothead who frequently joined in Inferno's bullying, Saturn Girl even wondered why she was in love with him.
• Artificial Limbs: His Pre-Crisis/Retroboot and Reboot counterparts both lost an arm though the circumstances vary greatly as to how it happened. The Pre-Crisis Lightning Lad needed his arm removed after it was infected in battle, Live Wire's was destroyed by his brother. While the original Lightning Lad had his arm restored, Live Wire stuck with a prostetic.
• Back from the Dead:
  • Subverted in 5YL. He never returned to life; Proty's consciousness was transferred to his body.
  • He also returned from a Heroic Sacrifice near the end of the Postboot continuity, inhabiting Element Lad's crystallized body.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: When he became Starfinger, Preboot.
• Cain and Abel: Shares the Abel status with his sister against Lightning Lord's Cain.
• Came Back Wrong: The Glorithverse's Lightning Lad was retconned into actually being Proty, whose life essence was transferred into Garth's body all those years ago. Averted with the Retroboot, which completely ignored this retcon.
• The Chosen One: Preboot Garth was secretly revealed to be an individual whose life has been keeping a balance between science and magic, and that the actual Luck Lords of Ventura had been planning to manipulate his death during a cosmic convergence so as to bring about the return of magic and luck with science's death. None of the Legionnaires or Garth himself ever found this out.
• Demoted to Extra: His Bendisboot counterpart has little to no chemistry with Cosmic Boy and Saturn Girl compared to his other counterparts, which is especially glaring as he was only recruited to the Legion because his sister initially turned them down.
• Did Not Get the Girl: A retcon revealed that the Lightning Lad that returned to life, married Saturn Girl, and had children with her was actually Team Pet Proty in Lightning Lad's body.
• Electric Black Guy: His Bendisboot counterpart is this, a very last minute addition that was thrown in at the last second before the release of Superman #14.
• Farm Boy: Winath in every continuity except the Bendisboot is an agrarian colony, and Garth has the upbringing to match.
• Fiery Redhead: Subverted and played straight.
• Freakiness Shame: How he feels about his metallic artificial arm tends to vary. In the Silver Age, he felt that Saturn Girl would think he was a freak, but she assured him otherwise.
• Freudian Excuse: Retroboot's Garth angrier personality is easily explained as a result of the stress brought on from the Justice League's coup, being forced underground, and having to send his kids to live on Winath to keep them safe. Once things began to calm down, and the twins were able to live with their parents again, Garth calmed down considerably.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: With the exception of Inferno, who made him look like a saint in comparison, you'd have a hard time getting the friends of SW6's Live Wire to tell you why they were friends with him.
• Grand Theft Me:
  • The original Lightning Lad never returned to life; Proty's consciousness was transferred to his body. Being a former telepath as Proty, Garth was able to protect his thoughts from his telepathic wife about the matter
  • Postboot, Livewire eventually became trapped in Element Lad's body.
• Half-Identical Twins: With Lightning Lass, to the point she was able to pass herself off as her brother near flawlessly (until Sun Boy realized she didn't have an Adam's apple).
• Happily Married: With Saturn Girl, Preboot. Following the end of Legion of 3 Worlds and the beginning of the latest Legion series by Paul Levitz, Retroboot Garth and Imra have gone back to this.
• The Heart: Pre-Crisis and Retroboot, while the Legion idolized and befriended Superboy it's been proven that Lightning Lad is a subdued example of this in regards to both the Legion's founders and the Legion itself. Multiple Legionnaires, including his own sister, were willing to sacrifice their lives to revive him after he died, and the Time Trapper specifically went after Lightning Lad as the core of the founders to get the Legion's secrets.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Several times in several continuities. In a particularly convoluted example, Lightning Lad sacrifices himself in battle with Zaryan the Conqueror and every member of the pre-Crisis Legion participates in what amounts to a lottery to determine who will sacrifice their own life to bring him back.
• Heroic Willpower: The Time Trapper believed the Pre-Crisis Garth was in fact a mentally unstable man who could very easily have a psychotic breakdown given the right nudge. After the Trapper put Garth through multiple traumatic scenarios in order to break his sanity, Garth rebelled against every illusion and simply would not yield until the Trapper was finally forced to concede his "game" to the Legionnaires.
• Hidden Heart of Gold: The SW6 version is arguably the meanest of all the alternate Lightning Lads, at one point punching Cosmic Boy in the face because he thought he was coming on to Saturn Girl. A Lotus-Eater Machine experience revealed, however, when he was young he accidentally killed his pet and felt insanely guilty about it. His parents saying they could easily replace it and tossed it away didn't make him feel better. Live Wire's ruder tendencies seemed to have been amped up whenever he was around Inferno, who was an even bigger jerkass in comparison.
• In the Blood: The Bendisboot's Lightning Lad makes mention of his powers being passed down in his family, cutting out the lightning beasts from Korbal.
• The Lancer to Cosmic Boy's Hero, when Saturn Girl isn't filling the role instead.
• Hot-Blooded: In later continuities.
• House Husband: The Preboot version, while his wife went back to being a Legionnaire, Garth was the one willing to stay at home and look after their twin sons, Graym and Garridan. A spotlight issue revealed that, while Garth did worry about Imra, he enjoyed watching after the kids.
• Informed Flaw: His so-called legendary bad luck. However, a spotlight issue revealed that Garth's luck is exceedingly good, and has been preventing the Luck Lords from bringing about the death of science in the universe. He received lightning powers, came back from the dead, got a robot arm and later had his flesh arm regrown, married the love of his life and had her children, and they are all happy and healthy. Does that sound like the unluckiest Legionnaire?
• Jerkass Realization: It is greatly implied Garth of the Johnsboot snapped out of his Jerkass phase after being told Titan was destroyed and Imra had vanished alongside their sons. The shock of his wife and children narrowly avoiding being destroyed alongside Titan was enough for him to realize how badly he'd been acting and Garth made a conscious effort to return to his old personality.
• Jerk Jock: The SW6 version.
• Logical Weakness: Depending on the Author, his metallic arm left his powers only partially-effective, as he couldn't channel electricity through it properly.
• The McCoy: A highly-emotional hothead before his temporary death, and a little calmer afterward. The most overtly emotional and instinctive of the founders.
• My Friends... and Zoidberg:
  • The public perception of the Founders has been that Garth was simply lucky to be with Rokk and Imra when they saved R.J. Brande's life, due to them appearing more professional and serious compared to him.
  • This was distressingly played straight in the Bendisboot. When the United Planets were sent to the Ranzz household, Ayla vehemently turned their invitation down with it being clear Garth was extremely lucky that her rejection didn't automatically extend to him.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: SW6 Live Wire and Inferno bullied Cera Kesh so badly that it made her easy pickings for the Emerald Eye to turn her into the new Emerald Empress.
• No-Sell: Retroboot!Garth briefly spent a day with Superman and Batman, and throughout it all Garth simply wasn't intimidated or impressed by Batman. Instead of being a stubborn attempt to convince people Batman's not scary, Garth genuinely doesn't get what makes Batman terrifying.
• Official Couple: With Saturn Girl. Attempts to shake this up don't generally end well or popularly, as both the Postboot, Threeboot, and Bendisboot can attest.
• Papa Wolf: Don't mess with this man's sons, not unless you want your synapses scrambled.
• Perma-Stubble: His Retroboot counterpart was consistently depicted with stubble until the beginning of the new Legion series.
• Pink Girl, Blue Boy: The blue boy to Saturn Girl's pink girl.
• Power Trio: As the id, with Cosmic Boy (ego) and Saturn Girl (superego).
• Race Lift: The Bendisboot counterparts of Garth and Ayla are Black but still come from the planet Winath.
• Red Oni: To Cosmic Boy's Blue Oni.
• Shock and Awe: Lightning Lad has the ability to generate electricity within his own body without harming himself. This electricity he is able to discharge in the form of potent "lightning bolts" (in some undisclosed way his power prevents these bolts from taking the path of least resistance to Earth, such that he is able to target objects with great accuracy). He can also create flashing lettering which can be seen from great distances.
• Super-Speed: In more recent versions of the character, Garth is also able to direct his electric powers internally so as to move at superhuman speed, with his top speed being approximately one-third the speed of light.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: His Johnsboot counterpart, which is supposed to be technically the original Lightning Lad, would often get angry as easily as some of his counterparts and sometimes had a tendency to throw temper tantrums when Saturn Girl wouldn't take his side. Fans were put off by this considering the original Lightning Lad actually subverted the Fiery Redhead trope most of the time and only really got mad on certain occasions. However, when taking into consideration that this version of Garth has been forced to go into hiding, has been separated from his children and his sister, and has basically watched everything he and his friends built and stood for destroyed overnight while simultaneously getting branded as terrorists, this becomes a more Justified Trope. Also of note, since Paul Levitz returned as Legion author, the Johnsboot Garth has calmed down considerably.
• Understanding Boyfriend: His Pre-Crisis counterpart, in contrast to his counterparts, especially his SW6 counterpart.
• Undying Loyalty: Preboot/Retroboot to Saturn Girl. Even before they began dating, Garth showed a willingness to defy her orders as Legion leader and sacrificed himself so she wouldn't have to die fighting Zaryan the Conqueror.
• Unluckily Lucky: He's considered the Unluckiest Legionnaire because of the string of traumatic events he's gone through, but after every bad experience he comes out better than before to the point it'd be better to call him the Luckiest Legionnaire.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: On Winath anyway, a very warm agrarian world where there doesn't seem to be much of a nudity taboo.

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