Comic Book / Legion of Super-Heroes

"Long live the Legion!"

— The Legion's Battle Cry

The original version of Superman's origin had him becoming a superhero when full grown. However, in 1945, DC introduced Superboy as an addition to Superman's backstory, retconning in prequels and earlier meetings with DC characters.

At the start of the Silver Age, one story, in Adventure Comics #247 (April, 1958), introduced the "Legion of Super Heroes", a trio of super-powered teenagers from the future who committed many acts of questionable morality while initiating Superboy into their club — with the best of intentions, really. The trio became popular enough to be seen again, as Superboy began traveling in time to team up with them, and the other new members they'd recruited.

The Legion gradually became more prominent in Adventure Comics (which at the time was a second Superboy book) and took over as the main feature with issue #300 (September, 1962), reducing Superboy to supporting character status on what used to be his comic book. They are remembered for their wide-eyed idealism, not to mention corny touches — their clubhouse was designed to look like a crashed rocket. How they all fit inside was never explained. However, their series was surprisingly sophisticated for the Silver Age; with one of the earliest comic book characters Killed Off for Real in Ferro Lad (and, for that matter, one of the earliest comic book resurrections with Lightning Lad), a trial for a Legionnaire killing in self-defense, and dealing with Fantastic Racism even before Star Trek did.

To become a member, you had to demonstrate at least one superpower not dependent on devices. Thus, telepathy, Saturn Girl; electricity powers, Lightning Lad; magnetic powers, Cosmic Boy, and so on. Applicants with ridiculous powers (and some members of the Legion proper had pretty ridiculous powers) were consigned to the Legion of Substitute Heroes, who included Chlorophyll Kid (ability to make plants grow really fast), Stone Boy (ability to turn into an inanimate statue), Color Kid (ability to...change the color of things), and Double Header (whose name speaks for itself).

At the end of the Silver Age, the Legion's slot was swapped with Supergirl, leaving Supergirl as star of Adventure Comics and the Legion as a backup in Action Comics. After the retirement of editor Mort Weisinger, the Legion was reduced to an occasional backup in Superboy. Dave Cockrum, who would go on to design many members of the Bronze Age incarnation of the X-Men, became the Legion's regular artist, and started redefining their look. With this, their popularity started to inch upwards again, and eventually, Superboy became Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes and later just Legion of Super-Heroes. Again booting the poor kid from his own book!

This incarnation used plenty of the Soap Opera-style storytelling that was popular in the days of X-Men and Teen Titans, but kept on a level of solid yet unexciting sales, even after they booted Superboy out of his own book. This changed in the early '80s, with the Paul Levitz/Keith Giffen Legion. Classic stories like "The Great Darkness Saga" appeared during this run, but it was interrupted halfway through by the Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Since the entire premise of the Legion was centered around Superboy, and Superboy no longer existed in the Post-Crisis universe, the history and continuity of the series didn't work any more. DC's initial patch was to say that, during the Crisis, one of the Legion's foes, the Time Trapper, had created a pocket dimension containing an Earth where there was a Superboy. However, this issue kept coming up over time, with more and more patches needed just to keep things together.

Eventually, Keith Giffen took over the book, along with fans-turned-writers Tom and Mary Bierbaum, and the series really jumped into the Dark Age with the "Five Years Later" Time Skip. Earth is ruled by alien invaders. One character was retconned into an Applied Phlebotinum transgender person, and another into a shapeshifter who only thought he was the character. The Legion are actually clones — unless the other, younger Legion (Batch SW6) that were discovered in People Jars are the clones, as one might think at first. The moon was destroyed, followed by the Earth itself.

Eventually, a combination of continuity issues and low sales brought DC to the point where they said "screw it" and decided to reboot the series altogether. In 1995, as part of the Zero Hour Crisis Crossover, Mark Waid and Tom McCraw wrote the first issue of an all-new all-different Legion. Some of the sillier characters were pruned, and others were introduced to fill the gaps. This incarnation of the Legion was a youth corps run by The Federation, which was just forming as the series began, to symbolize its member worlds and species working together. (Although they were frequently dismissed as either a publicity stunt or a "teenage death squad".) This version sidestepped the Superboy issue by being inspired by the 20th century's age of heroes in general (although the Post-Crisis Superboy did become a member). The new version attempted to distill all of the Legion's history to date, while adding its own twists — some of which didn't work that well. Still, this version lasted until 2004 with a few writer changes and ReTools; then, they were wiped out (or at least detached from the main line of DCU history) during the build up to the Infinite Crisis Crisis Crossover, and replaced with a third version — the "threeboot" Legion.

This version, also introduced by Mark Waid, brought back many of the more Silver-Age-ish elements, including the Something Person names, while going for a Darker and Edgier feel. In this incarnation, the Legion are firebrands and muckrakers in a future where those under 18 are almost entirely controlled by their parents and a paternalistic government; although only a chosen few are given flight rings (which are ridiculously expensive), anyone who follows their ideals is considered a Legionnaire. It also added twists to many of the characters; for instance, in this version, Colossal Boy is a member of a race of giants whose super-power is to shrink to six feet tall. (He prefers to be called Micro Lad.) Their inspiration this time is legends of superheroics as preserved in old comic books. Supergirl joined up about a year and a half into the series, having apparently made the trip during the "One Year Gap" in her own title (all DC books jumped forward a year after Infinite Crisis), and been given Laser-Guided Amnesia before she was sent back. On the other hand, the political aspects ("Eat it, Grandpa!") wore thin for some readers. This version lasted until 2009, when, despite fan favorite Jim Shooter taking over writing duties, it was unceremoniously cancelled with a rushed final issue written by "Justin Thyme".

Stories post-Infinite Crisis have reintroduced The Multiverse and brought in the "retroboot" Legion, which essentially restored the Pre-Crisis team and their entire history to canon – including Superman's past with them – while disregarding everything post-Crisis. This version first (re)appeared in The Lightning Saga Bat Family Crossover between Justice League of America and Justice Society of America. As a tie-in to Final Crisis, Geoff Johns wrote a miniseries called "Legion of 3 Worlds" which included the reboot, threeboot and retroboot versions of the Legion, and put the reboot and threeboot Legions on a bus for good. The retroboot Legion then got an ongoing series written by Paul Levitz; while it was renumbered with the New 52 reboot, it was largely unchanged aside from losing some characters to the Legion Lost companion series featuring a group of Legionnaires in the present. The series was eventually cancelled, with the implication that the New 52 take on the Legion actually belonged to an Alternate Earth (this Legion's final battle was with the Fatal Five for the apparent first time, and the last issue mentioned their Superman died fighting Steppenwolf which happened on Earth 2). The Legion reappeared as part of the "Infinitus Saga" storyline in Justice League United.

As part of the DC Rebirth initiative, the Legion were teased by creators and Saturn Girl made some brief appearances. It was later confirmed that there would be a new Legion ongoing, and even later Word of God said that the Batman ongoing (where Saturn Girl briefly appeared) would lead into the Legion's return. After years of teasing, the Legion makes their return in Superman (Brian Michael Bendis) #14, this time as yet another new iteration hailing from the 32nd century, with Jonathan Samuel Kent (the modern day Superboy and son of Superman) joining the group due to the crucial role he played in the establishment of the United Planets. This was followed by a two-issue miniseries called Legion of Super-Heroes: Millennium, featuring highlights of the thousand years between the DCU's present day and the Legion's era as seen through the eyes of immortal character Rose and Thorn. A new Legion of Super-Heroes ongoing series followed, with Jon Kent as its point-of-view character.

Meanwhile, over in The New Golden Age by Geoff Johns, a future version of the Justice Society of America appeared featuring a version of Dr. Fate who is implicitly not the same Dr. Fate in the Bendisboot Legion. The future Justice Society refer to the Legion of Super-Heroes by name, and in the fifth issue of Justice Society of America (2022) (also by Johns) Per Degaton is shown fighting none other than the Retroboot Legion. The seventh issue features the appearance of the Legion of Substitute-Heroes on the last page approaching present day Khalid Nassour, the present day Dr. Fate, and the following issue features the first full appearance of a mysterious, masked "Golden Age Legionnaire" in the present day. What this means for the Legion's status at DC is unknown, due to Bendis's Legion appearing in the pages of Green Arrow (2023).

An Animated Adaptation aired from 2006 to 2008, taking the most iconic versions of all involved, but also taking even more inspiration from the DC Animated Universe despite, judging by Brainiac 5's being an android, not being in continuity with it. See Here for that series. An animated film set in the Tomorrowverse continuity released in 2023, and follows Supergirl as she attends Legion Academy.

Comic books, solo series, stories and storylines featuring the original Legion:

• "The Legion of Super-Heroes!": Adventure Comics #247 (April, 1958). Their first story.
• "Supergirl's Three Super Girl-Friends": Action Comics #276 (May, 1961). Supergirl and Brainiac 5 join the team.
• "Supergirl's Greatest Challenge": Action Comics #287 (April, 1962). By Jerry Siegel and Jim Mooney. Supergirl is called to the 30th century to replace the Legion as they get their powers back. However, her friends being depowered is part of a greater and subtler scheme to destroy the whole Legion.
• Adventure Comics: #300-380 (1962-1969). The Legion started as guest stars in Superman-related comics. They became one of the recurring features with issue 300 until their strip was swapped with Supergirl's.
  • "The Death of Lightning Lad": Adventure Comics #304-5, 308 and 312 (January-September, 1963).
  • "The Condemned Legionnaires": Adventure Comics #313 (October, 1963).
  • "The Unknown Legionnaire": Adventure Comics # 334 (July, 1965).
• Action Comics: #378-392 (1969-1970). As backups only.
• Legion of Super-Heroes (volume 1) (1973), a four-issue miniseries reprinting the backups in the Superboy series from 1971 to 1973.
• Superboy (1949): With issue #197 it became the Legion's comic and was renamed to Superboy and/starring the Legion of Super-Heroes (1973-1980).
  • "The Earthwar Saga": Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes #241-245 (July-November, 1978).
• Karate Kid (1976-1978)
• Legion of Super-Heroes (volume 2, 1980-1984) with: The former series was renamed in issue #259. Renamed again to Tales of the Legion of Super-Heroes (1984-1987) with issue #314, which continued with original stories until issue #325 and afterwards switched to reprints.
  • "The Great Darkness Saga": Legion of Super-Heroes (vol. 2) #290-294 (August-December, 1982).
  • "Those Emerald Eyes Are Shining": Legion of Super-Heroes (vol. 2) #301-303 (July-September, 1983)
• Legion of Super-Heroes (volume 3) (1984-1989). Overlapped Tales for a year, and then Tales switched to one year delayed reprints of this book.
• Legionnaires 3 (1986)
• Cosmic Boy (1986-1987). Tie-in to Legends (DC Comics), featuring Cosmic Boy and his wife Night Girl in the present amidst the chaos of the event, while discovering truths about the 20th century.
• Legion of Super-Heroes (volume 4) (1989-1994). Picked up five years after the previous volume.
• Timber Wolf (1992-1993). Timber Wolf's adventures in the 20th century.
• Legionnaires (1993-1994) starred clones (sort of) of the Legion.
• Valor (1993-1994)
• Legion of Super-Heroes/Bugs Bunny Special (August, 2017). One-shot crossover.

Comic books, solo series, stories and storylines featuring the "reboot" Legion:

• Legion of Super-Heroes (volume 4 numbering continues) (1994-2000)
• Legionnaires (numbering continues, but the series is now just a second Legion comic with the same characters, no clones) (1994-2000)
• Inferno (1997)
• Legion Lost (2000-2001)
• Legion Worlds (2001)
• The Legion (2001-2004)

Comic books, solo series, stories and storylines featuring the "threeboot" Legion:

• Legion of Super-Heroes (volume 5) (2004-2009). #16-36 titled Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes
  • "The Dominator War": Supergirl And The Legion Of Super Heroes #26-30 (March-July, 2007).

Comic books, solo series, stories and storylines featuring the "retroboot" Legion^note based on the original version up to "Crisis on Infinite Earths", first appearing as guest stars in Superman-related comics since 2007, confusingly overlapping the threeboot:

• "The Lightning Saga" (2007) (story in Justice League of America and Justice Society of America)
• "Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes" (2008) (story in Action Comics)
• "Legion of 3 Worlds" (2008-2009)
• Adventure Comics (2009-2011)
• Legion of Super-Heroes (volume 6) (2010-2011)
• Legion Lost (volume 2) (2011-2013)
• Legion of Super-Heroes (volume 7) (2011-2013)

Comic books, solo series, stories and storylines featuring the "Rebirth" Legion:

• Legion of Super-Heroes: Millennium (volume 1) (2019)
• Legion Of Super Heroes (volume 8) (2020-2021)
• Justice League Vs the Legion of Super-Heroes (2022)

Comics staring "contemporary" versions and offshoots of the Legion:

• L.E.G.I.O.N. (1989-1993)
• DCU: Trinity Vol 1 (1993)
• R.E.B.E.L.S. Vol 1 (1994-1996)
• R.E.B.E.L.S. Vol 2 (2009-2011)
• The Terrifics (2018-2020) (contains Phantom Girl's modern ancestor)

Animated Series

• Legion of Super Heroes (2006)

Animated Films

• Legion of Super-Heroes (2023)

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The Legion's stories provide examples of:

• Aborted Arc:
  • In related series R.E.B.E.L.S., featuring Vril Dox II, an ancestor of Brainiac 5's from the 20th century, the earlier Dox makes a deal with Neron in exchange for knowledge, offering up not his own somewhat tarnished soul, but instead placing the debt on his bloodline and setting it to come due in "about 1000 years." After R.E.B.E.L.S. was canceled, a team of Legionnaires was sent back to the 20th century, leading to a meeting between Querl and his ancestor in which Vril mentioned Neron in a guilty sort of way...and then nothing came of it. It was implied, however, that the insanity of Brainiac 5's mother could be related to this deal.
  • Prior to this, a number of long-running subplots started during the TMK run were dropped unceremoniously because of the Zero Hour reboot. Some of these were quickly condensed into a panel or two in the final issue, but others were just forgotten. Most notably, Sussa Paka (formerly the villain Spider Girl) steals a mysterious sealed canister from the corrupt Earthgov branch of the Science Police (secretly under the control of the alien Dominators). On the run from the cops, she gets caught up in the Legion's battle to liberate Earth. Eventually, she shows up on the Legion's doorstep looking for protection, and immediately gets caught up in their problems. She grows fond of the team, and ultimately joins up, adopts a new name (Wave) and a new hair color...but events start cascading from there, and the actual contents of the canister that half the galaxy was ready to kill Sussa to get their hands on are never revealed.
  • Many arcs were dropped when Geoff Johns stopped writing the Legion back-up feature in Adventure Comics, which included Lightning Lad investigating the possibility that his older brother might've actually had a twin, the Legion of Super-Villains having their own espionage squad in the 21st Century, Dream Girl being held hostage, and the connection Kid Flash and XS had to Professor Zoom's ongoing war with the Flash Family. The story about Dream Girl was retconned, and the Lightning Lad subplot was briefly carried over into the new ongoing Legion comic where Garth had to drop his search because Saturn Girl and their kids disappeared during the destruction of Titan.
• Absurdly Sharp Blade: The Persuader's atomic axe can cut through anything...even the force of gravity.
• Abusive Parents:
  • Apparition's absent father in reboot continuity sold two of her three bodies to pay off his gambling debts.
• Accidental Misnaming:
  • In "threeboot" continuity, Gim Allon comes from a race of giants all of whom have the power to shrink down to normal human size. To him, his power is to shrink, but everyone else sees it as growing. So most of his teammates persist in calling him "Colossal Boy", instead of his preferred name, "Micro Lad".
  • Similarly, Atom Girl doesn't take well to being called "Shrinking Violet".
• After-Action Healing Drama: Once when the White Witch, Mon-El, and Ultra Boy rescued Dev-Em from enemies, they had to rush him to treatment for Kryptonite poisoning.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Computo/C.O.M.P.U.T.O., an AI created by Brainiac 5 who went evil, is a regular Legion villain, having fought them multiple times, and even, in Original Legion continuity, having killed one of Triplicate Girl's three bodies.
• All Just a Dream: Invoked to escape the restrictions imposed by the original "adult Legion" story from the 1960s. They, and a number of other "what if?" scenarios, were explained away as dreams induced in the mind of Ferro Lad's catatonic brother, Douglas Nolan.
• All There in the Manual: A number of pivotal events that occurred during the "five year gap" between the conclusion of Paul Levitz's 1980s run and the start of the Keith Giffen / Tom and Mary Bierbaum run, including things like the dissolution of the team, the death of several former members, and the general devolution of the entire galaxy into a Crapsack World, were never fully explained or explored in the comic itself. Many were given much deeper treatment in the Legion of Super-Heroes sourcebook for the defunct DC Heroes role-playing game, much of which took the form of an in-universe scrapbook of news clippings and diary entries.
• All Your Powers Combined: Nemesis Kid, the Composite Legionnaire, Earth-Man.
• Alternate Company Equivalent:
  • The Uncanny Amazers.
  • On the flip side, Marvel Comics has created two entirely separate expies of the Legion: the original Guardians of the Galaxy and the Shi'ar Imperial Guard. Wolverine was initially (loosely) based on Legionnaire Timber Wolf.
  • Supreme's League of Infinity.
  • Gates is one to Nightcrawler, from Marvel's X-Men, giving their similarities in appareance (blue body, three fingers per hand, red and black costume) and powers (Teleportation). It's a bit ironic, considering that Nightcrawler's creator Dave Cockrum wanted him to be a member of the Legion, and, after it didn't work out, part of a spin-off called "The Outsiders", which was also rejected.
• Amnesiac Resonance: Ultra Boy remembered he was a good guy when amnesiac and taken up by pirates.
• Amulet of Concentrated Awesome:
  • Explicitly forbidden in most versions of the Legion's constitution. Any hero whose only powers are derived from an external source (like a belt, ring, or clothes) are not allowed to serve on the team. Examples include the first Kid Quantum (whose death led to the adoption of the rule in the first place, in the reboot version) and any member of the Green Lantern Corps.
  • On the other hand, flight rings and transuits are assigned to all active Legionnaires to allow for flight, communication, and survival in the vacuum of space or in other hostile environments.
• Amulet of Dependency: The Emerald Eye of Ekron. Used long enough, it's also an Artifact of Death.
• Ancestor Veneration: The people of Talok VIII practice ancestor worship. Shadow Lass's shadow powers are derived from her ancestors.
• Animal-Themed Superbeing: Timber Wolf and Kid Chameleon.
• Apron Matron: Monstress
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: One Silver-Age story had history's three greatest villains teaming up. This included Hitler, Nero, and John Dillinger.
• Artifact Alias: A particularly notable comic book example is Mon-El. Mon-El's superhero identity is the Kryptonian name Superboy gave him when he was suffering from amnesia. His actual name, as he recalled later, is Lar Gand, but he continues to be known as Mon-El.
  • Averted in the Bendisboot continuity where Mon-El is a descendant of the El lineage.
• Ascended Meme: Arm-Fall-Off Boy had been a joke in forums and comic book stores for over a decade before he made an actual appearance in Secret Origins.
• Badass Family: The Ranzz Family. Garth, his sister Ayla, and his wife Imra. Unless you have a death wish, do not miss with Graym and Garridan Ranzz, Garth and Imra's twin boys.
• Badass Normal: Karate Kid, who 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. Even Batman has said that KK is a better fighter than he is.
• Bad Future: Overall, the Glorithverse has essentially become this long after the end of its run. The Legion fell apart and most of its former members were either dead or traumatized, Earth was under the control of the Dominators, Glorith had control of time, and the Legionnaires had absolutely no memory of Superboy, Superman, or Supergirl in any capacity thanks to them being unknowingly replaced by Mon-El as "Valor" and Laurel Gand. This future proved to be so unstable it rapidly began to fall apart until it was finally erased completely and the Reboot Legion was created.
• Barrier Warrior: Brainiac 5 in the comics.
• Battle Couple: Shrinking Violet and Lightning Lass in an Annual. And it is AWESOME...
• Bee People: Gates.
• Beware the Quiet Ones: Shrinking Violet in postboot continuity. She starts off as, well, a Shrinking Violet; her Establishing Character Moment is being Overshadowed by Awesome by two other Legion candidates^note This was while the postboot Legion was using a draft instead of tryouts until one of them is murdered by the other, who gets captured by Salu decisively enough to earn her position. Over time she is showing coming out of her shell, even going so far as to be elected team leader. Right after that, it's revealed that her increased confidence was the result of her coming under the influence of the Emerald Eye of Ekron. She completes a (temporary) Face–Heel Turn shortly thereafter and curbstomps her former teammates.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Matter-Eater Lad as written by Keith Giffen and Tom and Mary Bierbaum. He was a shameless self-promoter and con artist and affected an air of extreme vanity, but was a bit of a Bunny-Ears Lawyer. Literally, in one case: he successfully manages to get former teammate Polar Boy freed from unjust imprisonment by employing the Chewbacca Defense and then quickly smuggling him off-planet before anyone recovers enough to realize they'd been bamboozled. It's also worth remembering that Matter-Eater Lad is basically a walking disintegrator who can annihilate anything he can get his jaws around.
• Big Bad:
  • In the Great Darkness Saga of The '80s, the Legion faces Darkseid, still very much one of these. The team is forced to call in every available ally in order to deal with him...and the three billion Superman analogues he's mind-controlling.
  • The Time Trapper served as this during Paul Levitz's v3 run in the 1980s.
  • President Chu from the early postboot run.
• Big Bad Ensemble: The Time Trapper, Mordru, and Glorith during the Giffen-Bierbaum run in the early 1990s. The former two eventually coalesced into a Big Bad Duumvirate towards the end of the run.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: Half of the Legion, and it's universe, is made of this; from Torks (elephants with a head on each end), to the inhabitants of Dormir, who have skies instead of skin.
• Black Dude Dies First: The post-Zero Hour Legion's roster as of their first mission included four white guys, three white girls (or five, depending on how you count Triad), a black guy, a black girl, an orange guy, and a green guy. Guess who died the first time out. If you guessed the insufferable jerk with the technology-based powers who also happened to be the only black guy, you win a first-class ticket to the funeral of James Cullen (Kid Quantum I).
• Boisterous Bruiser: Ultra Boy.
• Bouncing Battler: Bouncing Boy, naturally.
• Brain in a Jar: The Brain Globes of Rambat. Started out as villains, but in the Post-Zero Hour continuity, they were just another member of the United Planets.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: The threeboot Legion would do this in the letter column segments that started in #6.
• Break the Cutie: V4 did this with a number of characters, but particularly harshly with the White Witch. Previously depicted as a slightly shy, bookish type in a (platonic?) relationship with teammate Blok. At the start of v4, she was shown to be in an abusive marriage with former archnemesis Mordru. She was rescued by the reconstituted Legion just in time to discover that Blok had been brutally mutilated by genocidal pirate Roxxas the Butcher.
• Broken Angel: Dawnstar in v4 lost her wings after being possessed for three years by Bounty, a thrill-seeking entity that used her tracking powers to go into business as a bounty hunter. The reason for this was never explained.
• Broken Bird: The White Witch (see "Break the Cutie" above) and Shrinking Violet (though it's a fairly brief phase) in v4.
• Brought to You by the Letter "S":
  • Invisible Kid wears an "i."
  • The Legion logo, a stylized letter "L", shows up as a shared motif on many Legionnaire costumes (usually as part of the belt buckle), and is part of the design of the standard flight ring.
  • Element Lad's original costume had a big "E" on it. He still wears an "E", only the Interlac version, which looks like a sideways "J".
• Cain and Abel: Lightning Lord versus his younger brother Lightning Lad (and to a lesser degree his sister Lightning Lass).
• Cast Speciation:
  • "All Legionnaires must have at least one unique power" used to be a rule, though it was introduced much later than commonly thought. The Reboot version merely "encouraged a diversity in powers", because by the time they got to write their own constitution they already had the matching powers of Live Wire/Spark and M'onel/Andromeda/Ultra Boy, none of whom they wanted to force out.
  • Ultra Boy still qualified as having a unique power, since while he can only use on power at a time, they are individually superior to Mon-El's, Superboy's and/or Andromeda's versions. For instance, his invulnerability works just as well against magic, lead and kryptonite as it does against everything else, and in one issue, when faced with a truly unstoppable force, it shunts him into another dimension to protect him. His penetra-vision could see through lead and inertron (a 30th-century energy-proof metal), which the others could not. In one comic panel, he demonstrates that his flying ability allows him greater maneuverability than Mon-El and Superboy, when he is able to trick them into colliding with each other while chasing him. As well, in the modern version, Rond Vidar made it in despite a Green Lantern typically not being allowed because of reliance on outside powers. The technicality: Rond also intrinsically possesses the power of being able to resist all hypnosis.
• Characterization Marches On:
  • When she first appeared as an Amazer, Monstress talked like Ben Grimm and snarled "I'm Monstress, an' that's my only name!" When she became a Legionnaire, it turned out her real name was Candi Pyponte-Le Parc III, and her personality was very much what you'd expect from someone called Candi Pyponte-Le Parc III, darling!
  • V4 featured a lot of this, although how much of it was really evolving characterisation and how much was an outright retcon is up for debate. Notable examples include the SW6 versions of Lightning Lad (later Live Wire) and Sun Boy (later Inferno), both of whom had traditionally been depicted as responsible, team-oriented guys, and were now being written as brash, impulsive, and irresponsible hotheads.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: Karate Kid supposedly has no superpowers but could take on (though not injure without kryptonite or lead) pre-crisis Kryptonians and Daxamites in fights and avoid injury himself, shove them around and occasionally (temporarily) restrain them.
• Charlie Brown from Outta Town: Sir Prize & Miss Terious; Sensor Girl; M'Onel
• Chest Insignia: Lots of them, starting with Saturn Girl (although the symbol was changed to a mandatory telepath ID in the post-Zero Hour version) and Lightning Lad. Even the members who don't wear one get a symbol by which they're represented on things like rosters, mission team lists, status listings, and so on.
• Chekhov's Gun: Lots and lots. Particularly in the Legion of 3 Worlds
• Circus Episode: In one story, members of the Legion go undercover as members of an intergalactic travelling circus to discover a murderer: using their superpowers to perform acts.
• Clingy Costume:
  • Without his ERG-suit, Wildfire is just a mass of anti-energy, shapeless and largely unable to interact with the rest of the world.
  • Quislet required his "costume" (actually a miniature spaceship) to survive in our dimension. When it was destroyed, he had to quit the team.
• Cloudcuckoolander:
  • Matter-Eater Lad during the TMK run.
  • Element Lad during the postboot era.
• Compelling Voice: Both Universo and Saturn Queen.
• Continuity Reboot: Twice, meant to untangle Continuity Snarls — but they created a Broken Base as a byproduct.
• Cosmic Motifs: Being futuristic superheroes from various planets, cosmic motifs feature into many of the designs and concepts of its members. Its members included Cosmic Boy (later Polestar), Saturn Girl, Star Boy, Dawnstar, and Sun Boy, all with appropriate space and science fiction powers.
• Cosmic Retcon: A lot. Most of the time, major changes to LSH continuity are explained on panel.
  • The first such example was the brief "Mordruverse" story arc early on in the Giffen/Bierbaum run: Mon-El kills the Time Trapper, eliminating his influence on the timeline and erasing the Legion from existence. In the apocalyptic Crapsack World that results, the universe is ruled by evil sorcerer Mordru, and Glorith, one of his brides, strikes a deal with the resistance and agrees to be sacrificed to take the place of the Time Trapper and the universe is restored...with some key differences.
  • The post-Zero Hour reboot gets similar treatment. At the tail end of the 5YL run, leading up to the company-wide Zero Hour crossover event, random characters who were believed to be dead (or never existed in the first place) start popping into existence (like SW6 versions of Star Boy and Dream Girl). Meanwhile, in light of the chaos, Legion archfoes Mordru and Glorith bury their rivalry and team up, kill and absorb the universe-shaping power of another old time Legion enemy, the Infinite Man, and set about remaking the universe in their image. In the process, they kidnap LSH cofounder Cosmic Boy and trapping him in the Infinite Library. Trapped therein, he spends several lifetimes reading and memorizing the books therein. Armed with the knowledge of how time itself is fraying, and the ability to try and do something about it, he escapes the library and sets out to try and save his team from their impending doom. Unfortunately, his every attempt makes matters worse, and ultimately, as he put it, "I fear I went slightly mad." Forgetting his mission, even his original identity, he dons a stylish purple robe and hood and becomes the Legion's greatest foe, the Time Trapper. He snaps back to sanity after encountering his past self, and teams up with the Legion to defeat Mordru and Glorith. Unfortunately, the Trapper's past manipulations remain a festering wound in the timeline, and the only way to repair time is for the Legion to sacrifice themselves and allow time to be rewritten without the influence of the Trapper or others of his ilk, leading to the reboot Legion.
  • In keeping with tradition, the rebooted Legion is given a similar storyline to end their run and bring in the "threeboot" in "Superboy and the Legion", a two-part crossover with Geoff Johns' run on Teen Titans that served as a Poorly Disguised Pilot. Fatal Five member Persuader discovers he can use his Atomic Axe to slice through realities into parallel universe, an ability he uses to recruit 100 other versions of the Fatal Five to go against his Legion. The combined forces of the Legion and the time-traveling Teen Titans defeat them, but in doing so destroy every Atomic Axe. The resulting release of energy strands the Legion in the time stream, and slices off their original universe from the mainstream DC universe, replacing it with the threeboot world.
  • After Infinite Crisis altered the continuity of the DC Universe once more, it led to the "retroboot", which reinstated the canon of the original Silver Age continuity and ignored everything concerning the previous iterations of the Legion.
  • Legion of Super-Heroes (2020) came to be when Dr. Manhattan undid his changes to the DC Universe that resulted in the New 52 continuity at the end of Doomsday Clock. The original intent was to restore the Retroboot Legion to continuity, but Doomsday Clock suffering delays led to Brian Michael Bendis seizing the opportunity to do his own take on the Legion, which had more drastic changes than before and focused on an incarnation of the Legion that was inspired by Superman's son Jonathan Samuel Kent rather than Superman in his days as Superboy.
• Continuity Snarl: Legionnaires issues 0 and 1 both set the tone for leapfrogging with Legion of Superheroes Vol 4 around it's 63rd issue, then Legionnaires took a break from issues 2 through 18, even though #2 appeared to take place after #19.
• Costume Evolution: happens as much as in most other comics; threeboot for example did so a little too late to have any importance.
• Corrupted Character Copy: In the Reboot Legion Of Super Heroes "trapped in the 20th century" period, they learned that Ferro had escaped from Doc 30, a mad scientist in a high-tech hover-wheelchair who bought young mutants for use in his experiments. As an evil Professor X, his team of wardens/enforcers (the broken "successes" of his experiments) were based on X-Men: The Knight Shift's leader Taser, who fired electric Eye Beams (Cyclops), his girlfriend Psych, who had Psychic Powers (Jean Grey), and the element-controlling Landslide (Iceman but Dishing Out Dirt) have all become deeply sadistic, while the monstrous Kritter (Beast) and wolf-like Fangg (Wolverine) are entirely feral. Ferro's brother Douglas, who shares his Chrome Champion powers, would have been their Colossus, if Doc 30 had succeeded in breaking him.
• Crapsack World:
  • A number of individual planets were presented that way. Examples include Rimbor, a hub for organized crime, and Durla, a barren, insular, and xenophobic world.
  • Most of the galaxy during the "Five Years Later"/v4 continuity, with a particular emphasis on Earth. And even Earth, for all of its problems, seems preferable to the brief glimpse we had of the universe in the fifth issue of that run: all technology, and superheroes, were outlawed, and much of the galaxy was ruled with an iron fist by Mordru.
  • Try being a teen in the "Threeboot" universe. It's what ignited the Legion's spark.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Happened to the Legion more than you'd think, given the number of extreme powerhouses on the team. It was fairly common whenever they went up against the Time Trapper, Mordru, or Glorith.
• Cute Mute: Saturn Girl. 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.
• Cypher Language: Interlac. Many of the invented characters even look suspiciously like their Latin counterparts.
• Dark Age of Supernames: After being a famous example of Something Person names during The Silver Age of Comic Books, the trended started to shift during The Bronze Age of Comic Books in the mid-1970s, with new characters like Wildfire, Dawnstar, Tyroc, Tellus, Quislet, and Atmos. The pace picked up considerably during the TMK run starting in 1989, with Valor, Impulse, Bounty, Kono, Veilmist, Firefist, Flederweb, and Nightwind. But it reached its pinnacle with the introduction of SW6 teenage duplicates of the team, many of whom adopted "edgier" versions of their original names (see below for examples). Most of these names were kept for the post-Zero Hour reboot, and new characters introduced during this period usually started off with such names (Catspaw, Dragonmage, XS, Kinetix, Gates, Thunder, Monstress). When Mark Waid started writing the "threeboot" version of the team, he deliberately returned to the traditional Something Person convention, and the post-Final Crisis version of the team has stuck with it as well, though not as zealously.
  • Chameleon Boy → Chameleon
  • Colossal Boy → Leviathan
  • Element Lad → Alchemist
    • Used for the SW6, but switched back for the reboot.
  • Ferro Lad → Ferro
  • Laurel Gand → Andromeda
  • Lightning Lad → Live Wire
  • Lightning Lass / Light Lass → Spark / Gossamer
  • Phantom Girl → Apparition
  • Shadow Lass → Umbra
  • Triplicate Girl → Triad
• Dark Is Not Evil: Both Shadow Lass and Night Girl are based on this trope.
• Dark Mistress: Glorith, in her first appearance, was one of the Time Trapper's henchwomen, and later was married to evil sorcerer Mordru before going to a successful villainous career in her own right.
• Darker and Edgier: The "Five Years Later" continuity in the comics; the Abnett and Lanning run of the post-Zero Hour reboot, particularly "Legion of the Damned" (which still had a happy ending) and "Legion Lost"; the second season of the cartoon.
• Data Pad: The Legion generally use "omnicoms" that are generally depicted as somewhere between a smartphone and a tablet in size, with a keypad and screen.
• Dating Catwoman: Ultra Boy and Spider Girl in v4.
• Deadly Force Field: In the "End of an Era" storyline that led to the first reboot, an evil Brainiac 5 from a Mirror Universe used his forcefield belt to crush several Legionnaires, while commenting on the "lack of imagination" the mainstream Brainy showed by using it purely for defence.
• Death Is Cheap: Despite being somewhat famous for averting this trope more often than not, the eventual return of the first ever Legionnaire to die (Lightning Lad) was telegraphed before his corpse was even cold.
• Demoted to Extra: It also happens a lot to them, given the sheer number of characters, frequent RetCons and all-out continuity reboots, generally convoluted continuity, and the fact that the team has been in existence since the 1950s, giving fans plenty of opportunity to start Running the Asylum.
• Deus Exit Machina: In the 1960s, when Adventure Comics featured the Legion of Super-Heroes, the Legion had several one-off encounters with some guest character (often a stranger applying for Legion membership) who harbored a secret, and who often turned out to be (in disguise) someone whom the Legion already knew. In each of these stories, Saturn Girl was conveniently called away on some separate emergency and wasn't able to participate in the main adventure. Saturn Girl is a telepath: if she had been available to read the stranger's mind, the story would've ended on the first page.
• Disability Superpower: Ferro Lad and his twin brother. Born with horrible deformities that left their faces scarred and mutilated and forced them both to wear full-face masks. Their consolation was the ability to transform into "living iron." Also the White Witch, born on a planet of precognitive seers but without that ability herself. She did, however, show an innate talent for magic and eventually became one of the most powerful sorceresses in the galaxy.
• Doppelgänger Spin (or Attack): Triplicate Girl/Triad/Duo Damsel. Trijitsu is a Carggite martial art involving splitting and recombining strategically in combat.
• Driven to Villainy: The Time Trapper (a.k.a. Cosmic Boy) in his v4 origin story. The Progenitor (a.k.a. Element Lad) in the original Legion Lost.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: A specialty of the Bierbaums, who dropped a number of bridges on Legion members they hated.
  • Timber Wolf was mutated into a mute, inhuman beast that was treated like a pet by his teammates.
  • Wildfire was killed off in the Noodle Incident known as Black Dawn, with the only details stated being that his death was horribly violent.
  • Shvaughn Erin was turned into a pathetic stalker/transgender person who was addicted to gender-bending drugs. Sun Boy turned traitor and ended up being horribly burnt, to the point that he was mistaken as a monster by his own friends. Writer/artist (and Legion superfan) Colleen Doran was overheard at a con referring to Shvaughn Erin as "Sean" many months before the Bierbaums worked their strange magic on him/her.
  • The first Legion Lost series did this to Monstress, one of the non-legacy characters, at the climax. The second Legion Lost series did this to Chameleon Girl and fan-favorite Gates (the only character on the team not created before 1990) in its first issue, mostly just to show how "serious" the title was.
  • In general the Threeboot Legion got this treatment in "Legion of Three Worlds" where they had more members of their Legion dying and basically being swept under the rug to make the old Legion the main Legion.
• Due to the Dead: Legionnaires killed in battle are buried with honors on Shanghalla, an asteroid used for this purpose by a number of civilizations of different races. Messing with Legion corpses is a great way to commit suicide-by-angry-superheroes.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Quite a bit from the very early comics of the 60s:
  • In the first appearance of the Legion, Garth is called Lightning Boy and wears red, Imra is wearing green, and Rokk has a fishbowl helmet.
  • The Legion used to only accept one new member a year.
  • A couple issues have Tinya looking like a ghost for the whole issue.
  • For the first couple years Dirk would be radiating light at all points.
  • Garth and Mekt were highly implied to be from Korbal.
  • Imra and Saturn Queen were both originally from Saturn instead of Titan.
  • Many early Legion comics have the future be the 21st century, before it later got changed from 100 years in the future to 1000.
  • Up until 1962 Rokk could only use his powers through his eyes.
  • Jo's only power was his penetra-vision for a bit.
  • Most Legionnaires were not given real names for many years. In fact, Garth died before we even knew his name was Garth!
• Earth Is a Battlefield: It happens every so often:
  • In "Earthwar", the Khunds invade Earth, forcing all Legionnaires out of retirement to fight them in every front.
  • In "The Dominator War", the Dominators have alll but conquered Earth thanks to a worldwide machine-controlling techno-plague. In retaliation, the Legionnaires attack and conquer the Dominator homeworld.
• Earth-Shattering Kaboom: In the original continuity, both the Moon and the Earth suffer this, the Moon by a psychopath in the Superman storyline Time and Time Again and the Earth soon after, both of them occurring during the Five Years Later timeskip. The Legion takes the complete and total destruction of the Earth very badly due to the fact that they couldn't save everyone.
• Egomaniac Hunter:
  • Otto Orion and his son Adam.
  • Also Bounty from the Giffen/Bierbaum run.
• Eldritch Abomination: Mild example in the form of the Sun-Eater.
• Elemental Embodiment: Both the Infinite Man and the Time Trapper were, at one point, described as the living embodiment of time itself. However, they both represented different understandings of the nature of time: the Infinite Man represented an open, infinitely repeating universe, while the Time Trapper represented decay and entropy. As you might expect, their meetings were explosive.
• Elemental Shapeshifter: Stone Boy is a Substitute Legionnaire who can turn into an immobile statue. However, he manages to use this power effectively anyway.
• The Ending Changes Everything: The final issue of the New 52 Legion volume included Bouncing Boy revealing that in their history Superman was famously killed while fighting Steppenwolf of Apokolips. This is exactly how Superman was killed off at the beginning of Earth 2, outright confirming the New 52 Legion comics either took place on Earth-2 and not in the main DC universe or featured Earth-2 characters in the main universe. The previous storyline with the Fatal Five hinted this wasn't the Retroboot due to the Legion acting as though this was their first actual encounter with the villain team.
• Enemy Mine:
  • The Fatal Five were originally introduced as such, as the Legion was shorthanded and needed help to defeat the Sun-Eater. The only help available happened to be the five most-wanted criminals in the galaxy.
  • Played with quite a bit during the v4 run, as the Legion would temporarily strike a truce with one of the three evil Powers That Be (the Time Trapper, Glorith, or Mordru) to counterbalance the other.
• Energy Beings: Wildfire, Quislet.
• Engineered Public Confession: Cosmic Boy tricks corrupt United Planets President Chu into listing all of her crimes on live television (or the closest 30th century equivalent, at least).
• Everyone Is a Super: A lot of planets in the Legion universe are like this: Titan (everyone is a telepath), Naltor (where everyone has precognitive visions), Durla (a planet of shapeshifters), and Braal (magnetism).
• Evil Counterpart:
  • Two of the three original members of the Legion of Super-Villains definitely qualify. Saturn Queen's telepathic powers are similar (though not identical to) Saturn Girl's powers, and Lightning Lord is Cain to Lightning Lad's Abel. It's actually partially averted with Cosmic King, though: despite a similar name and a knock-off costume, his powers (transmutation of elements) have very little to do with Cosmic Boy's super-magnetism.
  • When the evil Legion returned in the mid-1970s after a several-year absence from the comics, they suddenly had two more: Chameleon Chief (for Chameleon Boy) and Sun Emperor (for Sun Boy).
  • The massive Levitz-Giffen version from the 1980s brought in minor characters Esper Lass (standing in for Saturn Queen, who had only every appeared as a member of the "Adult" LSV, as Saturn Girl's counterpart), Ol-Vir (a Darkseid-worshipping Daxamite left over from the Great Darkness Saga who oppose Mon-El), Micro Lad (a villain from Shrinking Violet's homeworld who was essentially a Western Terrorists) and Magno Lad (a Jerk Jock who, along with Esper Lass, had previously tried to bully his way into replacing Cosmic Boy in the Legion). It also used Cosmic King as a counterpart to the similarly powered Element Lad.
  • Satan Girl was a Red Kryptonite-created evil duplicate of Supergirl.
  • An evil version of the entire Legion was created by villains Mordru and Glorith during the "End of an Era" crossover concluding the pre-Zero Hour run.
• Expy: Mon-El (a Captain Ersatz of Superboy) and Andromeda (a Captain Ersatz of Supergirl), after both Superboy and Supergirl were RetConned out of existence by The Man of Steel reboot by John Byrne. Byrne has since admitted that removing Superboy was a mistake. Note that Mon-El was a separate character before the Retcon. They had to bend over backwards in order to re-position him as a Superboy stand-in (whereas Andromeda was a straight Suspiciously Similar Substitute).
• Extreme Omnivore: Matter-Eater Lad
• Fake-Out Make-Out: Chemical Kid and Dragonwing do it in the first issue of vol. 7.
• Fantastic Racism:
  • In the post-Zero Hour and the revised "original" versions of Legion Of Super-Heroes, human prejudice against "impure" aliens is repeatedly used as a metaphor for real-world racism.
  • The Reboot also had the White Triangle, a group of speciesists composed of several species who are all ultimately pawns of a Nazi-esque regime-slash-religion that claims Daxamites are superior to all other species. Since Daxamites basically have all the powers of Kryptonians, they have some reason for assuming so - but in addition to being racist, they're also dirt-ignorant, superstitious, inbred, violent Jerkass thugs. Who can melt entire planets into slag, from orbit, by looking at them funny.
  • The "revised original" version of Legion had a pretty important storyline: "Superman and the Legion of Superheroes". Not only did humans start putting aliens in concentration camps and kill them, but after Earth withdrew from the United Planets, nearly all of the different species decried Earth as "ignorant and backwater" and some even tried to lock up and kill anyone associated with Earth. The story ended with Supes and the Legion calling out both sides.
  • The original LSH had a story about how 'Shadow Lass' arrives from Talok to explain that her world has been conquered quietly by the Fatal Five. To infiltrate unnoticed, the Legionnaires adopt the identities of a rag-wearing desert-living minority. Later, it is revealed Shady is one of these people; she is slightly darker blue than the city folk. Lampshaded in a later story by having Shady look slightly African, while being blue, and dressed for the desert (think Arab).
  • Shapeshifters, Durlans in particular, get a lot of flak. People tend to ostracize them, or at least find them suspicious. One hero, Beast Boy or the Heroes of Lallor, became a misanthropic supervillain as a result of his poor treatment at the hands of the people he'd been protecting.
• The Federation: The United Planets.
• Fiction 500: The Legion's main financial backer, R.J. Brande. Also his Jerkass rival, Leland McCauley.
• Fictional Sport: Magnoball, of which both Cosmic Boy and his brother are former champions.
• Finger in the Mail: In the "Five Years Later" run, the crazed killer Roxxas blows up the rock Legionnaire Blok and mails the pieces to the other Legionnaires.
• Flash Forward: The "Adult Legion" stories. Unfortunately, these revealed who was going to survive and who wasn't, removing a certain amount of tension. this is probably why the writers broke away from following that timeline, which then required a parallel universe story to explain it away.
• Flying Brick: Superboy, Supergirl, Ultra Boy (but only one power at a time), Mon-el/Valor (without kryptonite-phobia to harsh his cool), and Andromeda.
• For Want Of A Nail: Five Years Later and the Glorithverse Legion ended up happening because the Legionnaires still believed the Time Trapper really did manipulate them into forming and the only Superboy they ever knew was his dupe from the Pocket Earth. It's greatly implied the Retroboot Legion avoided becoming the FYL Legion specifically because they saw through the Trapper's lies while regaining their memories of their bond with both Superman and Supergirl.
• Fountain of Youth:
  • The Time Trapper's first appearance involved this shtick, when he returned the Legionnaires to infancy. Later affected a number of Legionnaires for a longer period following an ill-conceived attack on Glorith late in pre-Zero Hour v4: Shrinking Violet catches Merlin Sickness from the experience, while the White Witch is merely deaged to sixteen. Brainiac 5, meanwhile, gets stuck with an Overnight Age-Up.
  • In both the original and postboot continuities, the White Witch was "the Hag," a wizened old crone, as a result of Mordru's curse. She got better (and younger).
• Frameup: Happened more than once, but most notably during the tail end of pre-Zero Hour V4. The Legion is accused of aiding perennial bad guy alien race the Khunds by Universo. Hunted by the authorities, the team adopts a new set of heroic identities and sets out to clear their (original) names.
• Freak Lab Accident: And variants, for the origins of some of the Legionnaires.
• Fugitive Arc:
  • In an old story, the Legion is outlawed following an evil scheme by Universo to take over the government of Earth. With the mightiest members of the Legion having been shipped off to a prison planet, the others of the Legion have to stay one step ahead of the law while trying to break their buddies out and get to the bottom of the whole mess.
  • Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes (a post-Infinite Crisis storyline that restores Superman's history with the Legion) involves Earth turning against the Legion and the entire United Planets due to the Justice League of Earth's xenophobic propaganda.
• 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.
  • A much milder example in the form of the threeboot Brainiac 5, who finds difficulty in working with his (adult) retroboot alter ego.
• Future Slang: "Grife" (interjection), "sprock" (verb), "nass" (noun, generally referring to an object or idea), and "squaj" (noun, generally referring to a person) are some of the more memorable terms, probably because they're all swear words. "Unlax" (relax), "persp" (perspire/act nervous), and others also exist in more child-safe usage.
• Gender Bender:
  • Most notably Shvaughn/Sean Erin in the pre-reboot v4 continuity.
  • Chameleon Boy did it as far back as the sixties.
  • Notably, there were at least two canonical methods of gender bending defined in the series. The first, a disease with temporary effects, was usually played for comedic effect (often involving the Legion of Substitute Heroes or Matter-Eater Lad), and the second (used for the Shvaughn/Sean Erin story arc) was induced by drugs.
• Genocide Dilemma: At the aftermath of "The Dominator War", the Legionnaries learn the Dominators intend to send their Xenoclone Shocktroopers -an army of millions of genetically-engineered super-powerful Dominators- throughout the inhabited worlds to multiply without control until eventually taking over the galaxy. The Legion has two options: leaving Dominion -the Dominator homeworld- and letting a race of monsters conquer the galaxy, or blowing up five billion of sentient beings. However, Cosmic Boy takes a third option, and sends the whole Dominator homeworld into the Phantom Zone.
  Sun Boy: What can we do [Cosmic Boy]? We have Supergirl. And Mon-El. And Ultraboy and more. A full-out assault can literally— literally— tear that planet in half. Question is, are you willing to give your team the go-ahead to destroy an entire race of irredeemable monsters before they rise again?
• Gentle Giant:
  • Colossal Boy, the Legionnaire known for having a big heart no matter what his size.
  • Blok, who was a soft-spoken and solitary rock creature.
  • Also Monstress from the post-ZH Legion.
• Genius Bruiser: Blok, a giant rock-creature and the Legion's archivist.
• God Guise: Valor (Mon-El) was worshiped by most of the galaxy in the post-boot continuity for founding most of the Planets of Hats the Legionnaires came from back in the twentieth century. In order to avoid getting crazy reactions wherever he went, he changed his costume slightly and took the codename M'onel.
• Grand Finale:
  • "The End of an Era", the storyline that concluded the pre-Zero Hour run. The Legion and their SW6 dopplegangers face off against both Mordru and Glorith as the universe is being erased around them. They win, but are forced to sacrifice their lives in order that their entire history may be erased and "done over" without the influence of Mordru, Glorith, and the Time Trapper. The series continues, but with a total Continuity Reboot, effectively shutting the door on three and a half decades of Legion storytelling.
  • The post-Zero Hour Legion comes to a similar conclusion with the Teen Titans / The Legion Special, which destroys the team's entire universe. The Legionnaires survive (for the most part), but everything else introduced during that run is destroyed, and the team reduced to occasional guest shots in other books as the new Wanderers.
• The Greatest Story Never Told: All of the Legion of Substitute Heroes' Silver Age adventures ended with the Substitute Heroes having a magnificent adventure that nobody would ever learn of.
• Great Offscreen War: The Braal-Imsk conflict during the five-year gap preceding the Giffen/Bierbaum run is only seen in flashback glimpses, but it casts a massive shadow over subsequent events. Black Dawn may also qualify, but since it's also a Noodle Incident, it's hard to say for sure.
• Guinea Pig Family: Timberwolf got his powers from being experimented on by his father.
• Half-Identical Twins:
  • Lightning Lad/Live Wire and Lightning Lass/Light Lass/Spark, to varying degrees.
  • The entire planet of Winath where they were born was full of examples of this trope. Twins were the norm rather than the exception (by something like 99-to-1 percent), and while some pairs were single-gender, there were plenty of counter-examples as well.
• Heart Drive: Brainiac's backups.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: During v4's "Terra Mosaic" story, Earthgov president Tayla Wellington, who up to that point had been a Puppet King put in place by the Dominators, attempted to make a plea on live holovid feed that Earth desperately needed help and had needed help for years before she was shot in the head by a Dominion agent, while still on air. If anything though, the footage of her death was what prompted the United Planets to finally make a move against the Dominion's hold on Earth.
  • During that same story, Sun Boy finally attempted to do some good after being a willing puppet of the Dominion for the sake of fame and fortune, only to be violently rejected by Earth's masses for being a traitor. To make matters worse, Dirk was caught in a nuclear blast that transformed him into a walking corpse that is constantly aflame.
• Heel–Face Revolving Door: A lot of debatable examples of this because of the frequent Continuity Reboots the team has been through. Many of the Heel Face Turns during the Giffen/Bierbaum run (Lightning Lord, Saturn Queen, Spider Girl, etc.) were subsequently invalidated when that entire run was consigned to the dust bin. But Mordru is an example of this within a single continuity: he was cured of his megalomania towards the end of Paul Levitz's v3 run, and was even married to the White Witch in during the five-year gap between v3 and v4. By the start of v4, he was back to his old tricks again.
• Heel–Face Turn:
  • Surprisingly, Earth Man (of all people) in the latest series.
  • Blok started off as a member of a team of villains seeking revenge against the Legion for the destruction of his planet. Turns the Legion wasn't responsible and were actually trying to evacuate the survivors, so he switched sides.
  • A lot of examples of this during the v4 run, especially former members of the Legion of Super-Villains. Lightning Lord and Saturn Queen's former villainy was excused as an example of With Great Power Comes Great Insanity, and Spider Girl went from being an example of Ultra Boy Dating Catwoman to a full-fledged member of the Legion in its final issues.
• Heel Realization: Cosmic Boy (a.k.a. the Time Trapper) at the end of the 5YL run.
• Hereditary Twinhood: Twin births are the norm on Winath, to the point that children born without a twin, like the villain Lightning Lord, are outcasts in Winathian society.
• Heroic BSoD: The White Witch near the beginning of v4, following being rescued from her abusive marriage and seeing her previous love interest Blok get butchered.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Practically a Legion tradition. Notable examples include Ferro Lad, Karate Kid, and Magnetic Kid, among many others.
• Hide Your Lesbians: Very weakly attempted during V4 with the relationship between Lightning Lass and Shrinking Violet. In truth, the only real difference between this particular relationship and any of the heterosexual relationships being depicted in the book was that the writers generally avoided referring to the two as lovers: the innuendo was both intentional and obvious, and the masquerade was put on solely to appease the editorial guidelines of the day. Lightning Lass and Shrinking Violet have thankfully been confirmed to be a couple in the current series and they are both adorable and kick ass together.
• Hidden Elf Village: Marzal, Tyroc's home island, a Brigadoon-like island off the coast of Africa colonized by escaped slaves.
• Historical Domain Crossover: In Adventure Comics #314, a villain called Alaktor recruits history's three greatest villains (Nero, John Dillinger and Adolf Hitler) to take on the Legion.
• Hollywood Evolution: This was the explanation in the first continuity for some of the Legion members powers. They were aliens from planets whose environments pressured their species into developing abilities that helped them survive. Polar Boy is from an incredibly hot planet so his people developed the ability to make things cold. Stone Boy is from a planet with both incredibly long nights and vicious nocturnal predators, so his people became able to hibernate as stone statues.
• Hopeless Auditionees: Always a highlight of any Legion audition are the people with lame powers trying their best to impress the Legion.
• Human Aliens: Regardless of where they're from, almost all Legionnaires look completely human, though Bizarre Alien Biology sometimes applies.
  • Threeboot Star Boy, as a black gu—excuse us, Xanthuan, can't eat sugar, and Reboot Ultra Boy, as a Rimborian, has a set of organs which don't correspond to the human body at all.
  • In the first Post-Crisis continuity, this was Retconned so that all of the Human Aliens were actually humans who were sent to colonize other planets after gaining superpowers during Invasion!...and Projectra, still an actual alien, was a snake.
• Humans Are White: There have been comparatively few dark-skinned Legionnaires. This ties into Executive Meddling in the original continuity. Jim Shooter originally intended for Ferro Lad to be black, however Mort Weisinger vetoed the idea afraid that DC would face backlash in the South. Unhappy that he was unable to do what he originally intended with the character, Shooter decided to write out the character with his now legendary Heroic Sacrifice. The Legion wouldn't get its first black member until Tyroc in 1976...which was also a sore spot with creators. Shooter was unhappy that Tyroc was a black character instead of a character who happened to be black. Mike Grell intentionally gave Tyroc the worst design he could think of as protest. Tyroc was so unpopular with Legion creative teams that he was the only Legionnaire introduced before Paul Levitz's decade-long run on the title that was never used. Levitz put him on a bus and never referred to him. He did finally use the character when he returned to the title in the 2010s, though.
• Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: People like to hunt Legionnaires for some reason. See earlier entries regarding the Orions and Grimbor.
• I Am the Noun: When Element Lad finds Roxxas, the man who destroyed his homeworld, he gets ready to kill him. When some teammates catch up, they tell him to turn Roxxas over to the law, to which E-Lad replies, "I am the law! As the last surviving Trommite, it is my right to execute him!"
• I Believe I Can Fly: Everyone, thanks to the Legion's flight rings.
• An Ice Suit: Polar Boy
• Iconic Outfit: Saturn Girl's Grell-era bikini, which has resurfaced in several Mythology Gags in both the Postboot and the Threeboot.
• Immortal Apathy: Element Lad goes through this trope in the "Legion Lost" arc. After saving his teammates from being trapped in a space-time rift, Element Lad is accidentally left behind within the rift and stays trapped there for billions of years. During that time, he manages to watch the stellar life cycles of stars, improves his powers to the point that he can create entire worlds, and becomes known as the Progenitor of his new respective cosmos. Unfortunately, his time spent in isolation drives him to become considerably callous to all mortal life due to his immeasurable lifespan and he begins purging any creature that he sees as a "variant" to his designs under his firmly cemented god complex. After seeing him, Brainiac Five admits that Element Lad is not evil as the Legion understands, but he's working at a level so far removed from conventional life that his view of life is callous by default.
• Inflating Body Gag: Bouncing Boy's superpower is to inflate himself at will into a human superball.
• Insufferable Genius:
  • Brainiac 5, in most versions.
  • Invisible Kid is usually his friendlier foil.
• Intangible Man: Phantom Girl/Apparition. 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.
• Interspecies Romance: Just about all major cast relationships are Cross-species; the Legion is compromised of tons of different species hanging out together 24/7, almost all raised with no species boundaries whatsoever.
• Invisible Anatomy: Atmos of Xanthu has an invisible torso, revealed by a costume that covers his shoulders and abdomen but none of the rest of his chest.
• Invisibility: Invisible Kid. He can turn himself and his clothing invisible at will. His invisibility cloaks himself from many types of detection: ocular, auditory and telepathic.
• It's All About Me: Roxxas.
• The Jailer: Grimbor the Chainsman
• Joker Jury: "The Devil's Jury" in Action Comics #370.
• Karma Houdini: Threeboot Princess Projectra brutally assaults Phantom Girl and puts her in a coma, mind-rapes Saturn Girl to keep her from alerting the rest of the Legionnaires, and because of the book's cancellation, she never got found out.
• Kick the Dog: Akka is Saturn Queen's most loyal ally throughout the Legion of Supervillains story arc in the current series. How does Saturn Queen reward her? She stabs her in the chest
• Killed Off for Real: The Legion are somewhat known for this, dating all the way back to the Silver Age when death in comics was still a very rare thing. Their characters and relatively self-contained universe make it easier to manage the occasional permanent death...though they're also rebooted often enough that even if a character is really-truly-we-mean-it dead in one continuity, they're likely to get another chance in the next.
• Kill the Lights: Shadow Lass can manipulate darkness and see in the dark, and so often blinds enemies with darkness. Night Girl can also see in the dark, and carries smoke bombs and devices that can shut off lights both to blind enemies and allow her to use her Super-Strength that only works in the dark.
• King Incognito: Projectra, during her Sensor Girl phase. Originally her identity was obscured even from her teammates, but it remained a public secret for even longer.
• Kudzu Plot: Suffered from this big-time in v4, partially due to Executive Meddling. Within the first dozen issues, the list of plot threads was already a mile long: the reestablishment of the team, filling in the off-screen backstory from the five year gap preceding the series launch, liberating Earth from its alien oppressors, explaining the presence the SW6 duplicates, numerous "where are they now?" side stories, and so on. By the end of the run the writers had only worked their way through about half of these, resulting in a final story arc that was mostly Infodump and which still left a number of dangling threads.
• Kryptonite Factor:
  • For Superboy and Supergirl, Kryptonite itself. Mon-El/Valor/M'Onel and Laurel Gand/Andromeda were similarly affected by lead (though a cure for lead poisoning was later introduced). Ultra Boy suffered from a critical limitation in that he had the same suite of powers of Superboy or Mon-El, but could only use one at a time: he could be super-strong, but not invulnerable at the same time.
  • On the villain side of things, Mordru had a phobia of being buried alive that was so great that it reduced to him to near-catatonia and rendered him helpless.
• Lady Macbeth: Charma's powers were to make men do whatever she wanted, and to make women hate her to the point of physical violence. She wound up imprisoned by her school's headmistress when she was nearing graduation, escaping by working her charms on her jailer, Grimbor, who embarked on a criminal career of his own, first by her side, and later solo.
• Language Drift: In Legion of Super-Heroes (Vol. 5) #23, Supergirl travels to Kandor -a surviving Kryptonian city- and meets 31st century Kandorians. Although they talk Kryptonese, their language has become barely intelligible to her. At the same time, her speech is an archaic, thousand-year-old dialect from their perspective, so they do not even understand a simple request for some water.
  Supergirl: Are all the wires necessary? They're making me uncomfortable. And could I have some water?
  Scientist 1: What's she going on about?
  Scientist 2: Weird, isn't it? It's Kryptonese, but it's an ancient dialect! Something about liquid wires...?
  Supergirl: Water? In a cup?
  Scientist 1: Oh. For thirst.
• Last of His Kind: Superboy was originally the last Kryptonian, but that was quickly abolished when Supergirl joined up. Then restored with "Crisis on Infinite Earths." Then erased again with "Supergirl & the LSH." Meanwhile, Legionnaires Blok and Element Lad really are the last of their kinds; E-Lad's homeworld, Trom, was depopulated by Roxxas & company, and Blok's world of Dryad was destroyed by the Dark Man.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: Pre-Zero Hour Sensor Girl is really Projectra.
• Latex Space Suit: The transuit.
• Lawful Stupid: In the early stories the Legion could fall into this way too often. In one instance Supergirl was not accepted into the Legion despite passing her initiation test with flying colours because she had been temporarily aged to an adult after accidental exposure to Red Kryptonite and thus was barred from membership due to being over 18. Aside from the fact the aging was temporary the Legionnaires knew she was really only 15 years old but still disqualified her.
• Legacy Character:
  • Brainiac 5, 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.
  • Jenni "XS" Ognats, granddaughter of Barry "The Flash" Allen and cousin of Bart "Impulse" Allen.
  • Thom "Star Boy" Kallor has been revealed to be a part of the "Starman" legacy, as well, which James Robinson had set up during his Starman run.
  • The post-Zero Hour Legion had a legacy entirely within the future timeline, with Kid Quantum I being killed on the first mission and his sister taking up the name- first as a member of home-planet team The Uncanny Amazers, and eventually as a Legionnaire.
• Legend Fades to Myth: After Crisis on Infinite Earths, due to the fact that so much of the old "Earth-1" continuity was pivotal to the Legion of Super-Heroes canon, the pre-Crisis version of history was presented as the 30th century's distorted legends of the "actual" (post-Crisis) continuity.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: The Legion of Substitute Heroes and Legion Academy cadets, on several occasions.
• Lightning Can Do Anything: Specifically, it can give you superpowers (when channeled by Korballian lightning beasts)...or resurrect the dead.
• Literal Genie:
  • The Emerald Eye in the postboot "Emerald Vi" arc.
  • The Miracle Machine is preboot continuity.
• Literal Split Personality: Triad. Unlike other versions of the character, Triad's three bodies represented different facets of her personality.
• Living Ghost: The inhabitants of the planet Bgztl, including legionnaire Phantom Girl, all have ghost-like powers, majoritarily phasing/intangibility, but also sometimes invisibility. To add to the theme, they normally wear white clothing, and on the post-rebirth continuity they even have an ethereal purple body.
• Long-Lost Relative: Ferro Lad's twin brother Douglas.
• Loophole Abuse: Although the Legion Code was strict, there were a few examples that stretched it.
  • Superboy, Mon-El, and Ultra Boy can be part of the team in spite of having similar powers because Superboy lives in the 20th Century and is thus an honorary member. Ultra Boy's "Penetra-vision" has the ability to see through things that Mon-El and Superboy's X-Ray Vision cannot, and his "Flash-Vision" is more powerful than their heat vision as well as working in a different way (with "ultra-energy"), thus they count as unique powers.
  • Jimmy Olsen and Lana Lang have powers derived from outside sources and which are redundant in the face of Chameleon Boy's stretching and shape-shifting abilities. They're both honorary members as well, however.
  • Married Legionnaires are technically disallowed, but...yup, the honorary member dodge again. Okay, there were several examples which stretched the code.
• Lost Episode: Sort of. A very significant story (the wedding of Saturn Girl and Lightning Lad) was originally published as an over-sized, tabloid-sized special in the mid-1970s. It was never truly lost, but because of its unusual publication format (especially in the days before eBay) it remained extremely hard to find in the usual places where a fan would look for such things (specialty comic book store back issue collections, mainly). Gained the nickname "That Damned Tabloid" in fandom as a result. It was eventually reprinted as part of DC's hardcover archive collection in the late 1990s.
• Luke, I Am Your Father:
  • In the original canon, R.J. Brande is Chameleon Boy's father.
  • Postboot, the leader of the Dark Circle is really Brainiac 5's mother, Brainiac 4.
• MacGuffin: The mysterious canister stolen from Earthgov during TMK's run served as the catalyst for Spider Girl/Wave's Heel–Face Turn and played a role in the liberation of Earth from the Dominators. It was probably intended as part of some aborted storyline, but it gets pushed to the sidelines by the time Wave has formally joined the Legion, and is not mentioned again.
• Made of Indestructium: Inertron
• The Magic Versus Technology War: The "Magic Wars" storyline.
• Manchild: Invoked in Action Comics, where the numerous dignitaries of Earth and the United Planets accuse the adult Legionnaires of retaining childlike ideals. The fact that they still use epithets for children like lass and lad is used as evidence of this.
• Married in the Future: The infamous "Adult Legion" story in 1967 showed some characters were married in the future. The first pair married for real in 1974 and the second in 1978.
• Master of Illusion: Princess Projectra fits this trope royally.
• Merlin Sickness: Shrinking Violet is literally afflicted with this following an ill-conceived attack on Glorith towards the end of the pre-Zero Hour v4 run.
• Mighty Whitey:
  • The comic set in 30th Century earth, for decades managed to have blue-skinned members, orange-skinned members, and green-skinned members, but no blacks or Asians. They were still almost entirely Northern European body-types right into the 1980s. When they decided to have a martial arts expert join the Legion—in 1966, before it was fashionable—they got Val Armorr, Karate Kid raised on an earth colony, allegedly of mixed human genetics, but with features and curly red-brown hair that suggested Irish ancestry, if anything. There was a (probably unintentionally) funny bit in the issue which examined Val's origin, where he's absolutely SHOCKED to discover that he's not actually entirely Japanese. Despite his appearance being as white as possible without making him blond, and his name being decidedly non-Japanese.
  • Jim Shooter originally wanted Ferro Lad— who joined the Legion at the same time as Karate Kid to be of African descent but got vetoed by Mort Weisinger (likely out of fear of offending readers in the South.) So Shooter had him make a Heroic Sacrifice seven issues after his introduction. Later iterations of the character would be white.
  • After Tyroc was Put on a Bus, Invisible Kid II was introduced…and remained the only Black Legionnaire for the ten-year Levitz run. The Native American Dawnstar was a member for this period, but had her own issues. It wasn’t until the SW 6 team late in the Five Years Later continuity that the team had two Black members at the same time.
• Mind-Control Device: Recurring villain Universo went through a procession of these, allowing him to amplify his natural talents for hypnosis over larger and larger scales, be it an entire planet or much of the galaxy. One of these, the Hypno-Stone of Titan, was also involved in a subplot involving Matter-Eater Lad and reformed villain Saturn Queen during the Giffen/Bierbaum run.
• Moby Schtick: Early on, Lightning Lad had his arm destroyed by an ill-timed attack on a Space Whale, and became obsessed with revenge upon it. He got better.
• Money Is Not Power: One of the first applicants to be rejected was Lester Spiffany, heir to Earth's 'swankiest jewel establishment', who assumed a hefty payment would buy him membership. Cosmic Boy tells him off very quickly. The fact that the kid was a huge jerk might have been another factor.
• Monster-Shaped Mountain: There is a silver age Legion of Super-Heroes story that revealed that the origin of their headquarters, which looked like an upside down rocket perfectly planted into the ground, was actually the transformed body of a Legion reject named Fortress Lad. Defending the Legion from another, disgruntled reject with memory erasing powers, he completely forgot everything of his identity, including how to change back, with only the thought to never give up left. The rest of the Legion forget where a sorely needed headquarters came from, though they do feel some familiarity to it.
• More Expendable Than You / More Hero than Thou: One in the Silver Age. To destroy the Sun Eater, Superboy had to fly into the creature and detonate it. He was about to do when he was suckerpunched by Ferro Lad and he made the Heroic Sacrifice in Superboy's place.
• Multiple-Choice Past:
  • At least two all-out continuity reboots, and many other variations besides, ensure that the Legion's backstory has an inordinate number of inconsistent details.
  • None of them hold a candle to the Time Trapper, which is finally explained in Legion of Three Worlds: According to Brainiac 5, the Time Trapper is a sentient timeline who is rebelling against the Legion's timeline.
• The Napoleon: Atom Girl in the threeboot.
• 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.
• No-Sell: Nemesis Kid.
• Noodle Incident: Black Dawn. Though later writers attempted to tell the story (with various success), none really line up with the details given by TMK. The only details we know for sure is that it involved the sun almost going out, Wildfire apparently died (he survived, but floated around the galaxy as a disembodied consciousness for a few years), and Timber Wolf was hit with a blast of radiation so bad it mutated him into Furball.
• Omnicidal Maniac: The Blight from the "Legion of the Damned" arc.
• One World Order: Earthgov.
• Only Known by Their Nickname:
  • A few Legionnaires are addressed almost exclusively by their codename or derivations thereof, notably Shrinking Violet (Violet, or Vi), Brainiac 5 (Brainy), Chameleon Boy (Cham), and Gates.
  • Initially, in keeping with the mood of the Silver Age, this applied to everyone. Later on, it was much more common to hear team members refer to each other with their real names, save for the previously mentioned exceptions.
• Organic Technology: Dominator technology was plant-based and grown, rather than built.
• Our Zombies Are Different: A late v4 story arc featured type V zombies reanimated by Mordru's magic, while the later postboot "Legion of the Damned" arc used type PS spore-infected zombies.
• Overly-Long Tongue: Ze Tongue.
• Overnight Age-Up: Brainiac 5 following the assault on Glorith in the final dozen or so issues of v4 prior to Zero Hour.
• Phantom Zone: The Stasis Zone that was at the time standing in for the Phantom Zone in M'Onel's origin and the Buffer Zone that Bgzltians phase into. Grant Morrison's JLA reveals that both are in fact THE Phantom Zone.
• The Pig-Pen: The joke character The Mess.
• Pirate Girl: Kono.
• Place Beyond Time: The Time Trapper's lair at the end of the universe; the Infinite Library.
• Planet Eater: The Sun-Eater kicks this trope up a notch.
• The Plan: Cosmic Boy in the post-Zero Hour reboot continuity employed them often; Brainiac 5 in the current comics continuity seems fond of them, too.
• Planet of Hats: The "hats" in this case being the superhuman powers shared by all or almost all of the inhabitants of various planets, though the trope also applies in the traditional sense: Winath is the farming planet, Rimbor is the slum planet, Colu is the computer planet, etc.
• Poorly Disguised Pilot: The starting point of the Threeboot era was "Superboy and the Legion", a two-part crossover with Geoff Johns' run on Teen Titans where the two teams battled the Fatal Five Hundred, consisting of the Legion's enemies the Fatal Five and 99 alternate counterparts thereof. When the battle concludes with destroying the Atomic Axes of every Persuader, the energies unleashed cause a Cosmic Retcon that change the Legion's history into the Threeboot continuity.
• Powered Armor: Brainiac 5 briefly wore something like this after being aged by Glorith.
• Power Of Hate: In the famous "Great Darkness Saga," the restored clone of Orion says to Darkseid "I live father...and live to hate!" Subverted in that Darkseid proceeds to destroy him.
• Powers That Be: The Time Trapper; Glorith
• Prehensile Hair: Spider Girl (later Wave)
• President Evil:
  • Leland McCauley in the Postboot continuity (who was actually Batman's immortal foe Ra's al-Ghul in disguise at the time). He was still definitely evil in the Preboot and earlier in the Reboot continuities, but was a Corrupt Corporate Executive, not president (and wasn't Ra's, either).
  • Universo has been president of Earth a time or two as well, inevitably creating a fascist state immediately thereafter with his mind control abilities.
  • Earthgov presidents Tayla Wellington and her successor Arlington Morse from the "Terra Mosaic" story arc in v4 are this, as well (both of whom were Puppet King for the Dominators)
  • As was United Planets president Jeanette Chu earlier on in the Postboot continuity. Possibly an overused trope, all things considered.
• Properly Paranoid: One Bronze Age story shows that the parents and family members of the Legionnaires have been given personal weapons, communicators and force-field devices in case villains try to go after them. Unfortunately, in that story, the villain (Dagon the Avenger) was aware of these measures and knew to counter them.
• Prophecy Twist: Pretty much any significant prophecy provided by Dream Girl/Dreamer's powers tends to be subject to this.
• Pstandard Psychic Pstance: Saturn Girl takes one or both hands to her head when she uses her telepathy more often than not.
• Psychic Powers: Saturn Girl, Dream Girl, Tellus, among others...including everyone on those characters' respective home planets.
• Psycho Electro: Lightning Lord. In the post-Zero Hour Legion, Live Wire (Lightning Lad) was afraid that the powers he and his siblings gained drove his brother mad, and that he and his sister would be next...until he finally saw his brother again and realized that blaming it on the lightning would excuse Mekt's generally being a sociopathic Jerkass who killed people on a whim.
• Punny Name: Ultra Boy's real name, Jo Nah. He got his powers after being devoured by a space whale.
• Puppet King: During the "Terra Mosaic" story, in which Earthgov had been secretly taken over by the Dominators, President Tayla Wellington was a textbook example of this. After a failed Heel–Face Turn, that role is taken over by her vice-president, Arlington Morse.
• Put on a Bus: Tyroc for the duration of Paul Levitz's run as writer during the 1980s.
• Putting on the Reich: The White Triangle; Earth-Man and his gang of Terran supremacists.
• Race Lift:
  • Threeboot Star Boy became black (which carried over to the cartoon).
  • Karate Kid was originally depicted as white, then Asian, then white, then Asian...possibly a result of his being the son of an Asian man and an American woman.
  • And then there's Projectra, renamed Sensor, and changed into a snake alien.
  • Multiple members are subject to this in the Bendis incarnation: Lightning Lad and Lass are black, Cosmic Boy is Asian, and Ultra Boy and Matter-Eater Lad are Ambiguously Brown. Other characters like Element Lad, Phantom Girl and Star Boy are now examples of Amazing Technicolor Population.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: R. J. Brande.
• Rebellious Spirit: Quislet rebelled against his species, stole a spaceship, and fled to another dimension in order to join the Legion because he was fed up with the straight-laced, totalitarian nature of his society...and because he thought it would be entertaining, basically.
• Recycled In Space: This trope is so common in silver age comics that it's a catchphrase of Legion fandom to randomly add "of space" to things. Classic examples include the Super Stalag of Space, the Super Moby Dick of Space, the Mount Rushmore of Space, etc, etc, et so very c.
• Redeeming Replacement: One "imaginary story" features the descendant of Lex Luthor (who had given himself Gravity Master powers) and Mr. Mxyzptlk's brother...uh, M-Mr. Mzyzptlk...who wanted to make up for the actions of their wicked relatives by joining the Adult Legion. Once the initial confusion was cleared up, they were welcomed with open arms.
  • Brainiac 5 is this to the original Brainiac.
• Red Skies Crossover: Legion of Three Worlds was billed as a Final Crisis crossover and had the cover logo, but had no real connection to Final Crisis.
• Reed Richards Is Useless: Despite all of the big brains on the Legion roster, none of them want to or can be bothered to try and help restore Wildfire to some semblance of humanity. It was Quislet of all people to be the one who restored Drake to human form!
• Retcon: Too many to list.
• Ring of Power: The flight rings, which also serve as communicators and in some continuities provide the forcefields necessary for Legionnaires to function in space.
• Robot War: The war with Robotica in the Postboot continuity.
• Sacrificial Lamb: The first Kid Quantum was created just to be killed to illustrate the need for the Legion's "no external powers" rule.
• Sacrificial Planet: The origin story of minor villain Mano features him using his disintegrator power to destroy his entire homeworld and everyone on it. Given that he was never even remotely that powerful in any of his actual appearances, it almost reads as an example of Cutscene Power to the Max.
• San Dimas Time: Particularly when half the Legion got stranded in the 20th Century during the post-Zero Hour continuity.
• Scandalgate: The crisis of the United Planets' Portal Network being subverted by an alien power and used to invade Earth is referred to as "Softgate."
• Scarily Competent Tracker: Dawnstar and her postboot semi-counterpart, Shikari.
• Scars Are Forever: Shrinking Violet is scarred during the five-year gap period between v3 and v4 and keeps the wound until the Zero Hour-induced reboot. 30th century medicine is more than capable of repairing the damage, but since she earned it during an unjust war with her former teammate's planet, she takes it as her My God, What Have I Done? moment and continues to wear it as a protest.
• Science Hero: Invisible Kid, Brainiac 5.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: Subverted. Lester Spiffany, the son of an incredibly rich jewel magnate, had no powers but attempted to use his money to pay his way into the Legion regardless. However, he was rejected.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Mordru in the post-Zero Hour comics, among others; Drax in the cartoon.
• Seashell Bra: Issues drawn by Adam Hughes (and some other artists about the same time) have had seashell bras (and bottoms) indicating nudity (simply assume they aren't there, then the characters' reactions make sense).
• Secret Identity: Averted, unlike most superhero comics. The identities of all members are known to the public...except for Sensor Girl in the original continuity, whose identity isn't even known to the Legion for a while, and M'onel in the Zero Hour reboot, who won't let anyone find out he's the mythical Valor who first seeded their worlds with life because it'd be impossible to have a life of his own afterward.
• Secret Test of Character:
  • The first story with them involved an "initiation" for Superboy which was three separate Secret Tests. This story was later repeated with Supergirl.
  • Reboot Cosmic Boy attempts a mild version of this on Superboy v2 in the Teen Titans/The Legion Special, asking him to choose between saving his original team (the Titans) or his new team (the Legion). Superboy doesn't fall for it, and Cosmic Boy sheepishly responds that he couldn't resist: "it's a Legion thing."
• Self-Sacrifice Scheme: Saturn Girl devises one of these to resurrect Lightning Lad. Several Legionnaires agree to stand around the latter's casket, holding lightning rods. One of them will be struck by lightning, the result of which would be to revive Lightning Lad at the cost of the hero's life. Unbeknownst to everyone else, though, Saturn Girl has sabotaged all but her own rod...except that it doesn't quite work as planned (see the entry for "Taking the Bullet" below).
• Sensible Heroes, Skimpy Villains:
  • It's not like the Legion didn't have plenty of questionably attired heroes, but even when this was common during Mike Grell's run as artist, it wasn't unusual to see the villains wearing even less than the heroes, as was the case with Grimbor the Chainsman and his partner Charma, who were dressed as a bondage duo.
  • In the postboot era, this was typified during the "Emerald Legion" story, where the Emerald Eye-possessed Legionnaires all get much skimpier (and greener) costumes.
• Shape Shifting Squick: In fact, in the threeboot, someone suggests that Chameleon is not attracted to non-shapeshifters. Averted in the original continuity, though, where Colossal Boy and Chameleon Girl (a different character) have a happy marriage.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Shrinking Violet in v4 continuity. Arguably averted in the case of Cosmic Boy in the same period: he was physically scarred and lost the use of his powers, but remained The Heart that he always was.
• Shrinking Violet: Er, Shrinking Violet, particularly post-Zero Hour.
• Shout-Out:
  • In Legionnaires #59, a baseball player has the name Sisko on his shirt. And in #60 a group of people sitting in a Metropolis cafe discussing the storyline look a lot like alien versions of the Friends cast.
  • Some time after the Five-Year time-skip, Tenzil Kem (Matter-Eater Lad) had lost his seat as senator on his homeworld of Bismol after he was wrongly believed dead. Tenzil briefly considered what kind of funeral service he was given, quipping, "I don't want no fancy funeral, just one like ol' King Tut's".
  • A meeting of the Legion of super-Villains is framed in a way that resembled the The Last Supper painting, with Lightning Lord the apparent leader in the center where Christ should be.
• Significant Wardrobe Shift: Played with. The Legion has been shown in medieval garb, and then there's the Hotter and Sexier costumes a possessed Vi forced them into once.
• Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids!: Following the return of the original Legion in Action Comics and Legion of 3 Worlds, the various dignitaries of both Earth and the United Planets have become convinced that the Legion is nothing more than a child's fantasy of peace and cooperation with no chances of happening, now that Earth has "shown its true colors" thanks to Earth-Man's Justice League of Earth. The Earth President supports the disbandment because he's a xenophobe, and the United Planets supports it because of all the damage Earth has done to its alien citizens. The U.P. even point out how "naive" the Legion is by mentioning that, even though most of the members are adults, they still refer to themselves with "boy, girl, lass, and lad" in their codenames.
• Single-Power Superheroes: The pre-reboot Legion had the "No Duplicate Powers" rule. They accept only one member with a particular power..with some exceptions like Superboy and Supergirl.
• Sixth Ranger Traitor: Nemesis Kid.
• Sleepwalking: For most of his career, Substitute Legionnaire Stone Boy was limited in that his ability to turn to stone worked as a form of hibernation. During the five-year gap period, he Took a Level in Badass with his fellow Subs, and was trained to sleepwalk, rendering him substantially more threatening to his enemies.
• The Smurfette Principle: Averted, most unusually for a comic originating in the Silver Age. The team tried to get a second female member as soon as their third story.
• Sociopathic Hero: Shrinking Violet/Atom Girl in the Threeboot Legion, subverting the personalities of her previous incarnations.
• Something Person: Ridiculously common in early Legion names; played down post-Zero Hour, but intentionally preserved in current continuity. It was deliberately played up in threeboot continuity, in one case even changing a pre-Dark Age of Supernames character (Shrinking Violet) to fit (Atom Girl).
• Sons of Slaves: In the original timeline, Tyroc's people were descended from African slaves who escaped from slavery and found their way to a hidden island.
• Space Pirates: Roxxas, the Sklarian Raiders, and undoubtedly others.
• Space Police: The Science Police. The Green Lanterns show up in some incarnations, too.
• Space Whale: Most notably as the source of Ultra Boy's (real name: Jo Nah) powers.
• Spheroid Timeship: The Legion's most commonly-used method of time travel was the "time bubble" (though they occasionally used a time cube, and Superboy generally traveled under his own power).
• Spin-Off:
  • The Legion is a spin-off of Superboy (who is himself a spin-off of Superman). Members Cosmic Boy, Timber Wolf, Karate Kid, and Mon-El have all had Spin-Off series of their own, as have the Legion's fellow future Super Team, the Wanderers, and Sixth Ranger Inferno.
  • L.E.G.I.O.N. (later R.E.B.E.L.S.) is a slightly unusual example: it's a Suspiciously Similar Substitute for the Legion, with similar characters and a similar space-operatic style, but set in the contemporary 20th/21st century DCU.
• Spinoff Babies: The SW6 clone team, who starred in pre-Zero Hour Legionnaires.
• Stalker with a Crush: Glorith's unhealthy obsession with Valor in v4.
• Starfish Character: Apparition and Phase in the Reboot version.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: Dawnstar and Wildstar as he is sentient energy trapped inside a containment suit. .
• Star-Spangled Spandex: Threeboot Star Boy, and current-era Starman.
• Straw Character: Gates from the Post-Zero Hour Legion. But he's a rather unusual case, since the writers consistently treated him as a three-dimensional, sympathetic character despite his often silly beliefs, rather than a convenient political target to knock down.
• Suicide by Cop: Darkseid during "The Quiet Darkness." A brilliant scientist saves his dying wife during her pregnancy by striking a deal with Darkseid in exchange for implanting the unborn children with the "Gemini Matrix" to raise them to a more powerful plane of existence. Darkseid then takes over the planet in order to prevent the children from fleeing, and finally goads the twins into attacking and killing him. His final words suggest that this was his plan all along: a god like Darkseid was only capable of being killed by another god. Since there weren't any available, he had to create his own, and make them hate him enough to kill him.
• Superdickery: The Legion were made of this in their early appearances. Most early Legion stories consist of the Legionnaires being jerks to each other, only to reveal at the last minute that it was for the greater good. Maybe the most famous example is a story in which Saturn Girl mind-controlled the Legion into electing her leader and then stole all of their powers so that she could ensure that she would be the Legionnaire to make a prophesied Heroic Sacrifice.
• Superheroes in Space: Perhaps the oldest example of taking superheroes and sending them off into space to fight evil.
• Superhero School: The Legion Academy.
• Superhero Speciation: Mandated by the Legion's bylaws at some points.
• Super Serum:
  • Invisible Kid invents an invisibility serum to give him powers.
  • Bouncing Boy gained his powers by mistaking one of these for a soft drink.
• Survivalist Stash: During the second Universo story arc, the Legion has been outlawed and everyone on Earth turned against them by the mind-controlling villain. All their resources have been stripped away. Good thing they just happen to stumble across one of Lex Luthor's old hideaways, still fully stocked and functional after a thousand years.
• Taken for Granite: Stone Boy
• Taking the Bullet: Saturn Girl devises a Self-Sacrifice Scheme to resurrect Lightning Lad...but is foiled by Proty, who mimics her form and takes her place.
• Taste the Rainbow: A common reason cited by fans for the appeal of the Legion — in the romantic sense in this case, for both genders.
• Team Title
• Teamwork Seduction: Once with Superboy, Phantom Girl and Triplicate Girl. When Phantom Girl takes an opportunity to steal a kiss from Superboy, Triplicate Girl cuts in using two of her duplicate selves to steal Superboy away and get kisses for themselves.
• Technopath: Gear. Computo from the SW6 Legionnaires.
• Teen Genius: Brainiac 5, Invisible Kid and Saturn Girl.
• Teen Superspy:
  • Post-Zero Hour Invisible Kid thanks to his power.
  • The preboot Legion had the Espionage Squad, an entire subteam of stealth and/or disguise-oriented members (Invisible Kid, Chameleon Boy, Shrinking Violet, etc.) dedicated to this sort of thing.
• Teleportation: Gates.
• Telescoping Robot: In the animated series, Brainiac 5 can grow in size and sprout weapons.
• Terrible Interviewees Montage:
  • The Legion frequently holds open auditions, and most of the people trying out are total losers.
  • "The Death of Lightning Lad": After the titular event, the Legion holds an audition to replace Lightning Lad. The first applicant, Antennae Boy, can pick up radio broadcasts from anywhere and anywhen, but his giant ears emit a unbearable noise which cannot be turned off. The second applicant, Dynamo Kid, is really a fraud with no powers who intended to infiltrate the Legion and write a scoop. The third applicant, "Lemon", is absolutely perfect...and he is already a Legionnaire in disguise who was playing a prank on his friends.
  • In a subversion, a number of Legion rejects form the Legion of Substitute Heroes, who do good work as a sort of reserve team putting their unconventional powers to work in the field when the main team can't handle all aspects of a crisis.
  • In one issue, the villainous Dynamo Boy, having tricked the rest of the Legion into quitting, held his own auditions — and while he was largely met with the same type of also-rans who show up to other Legion try-outs, he turned down a couple of decent candidates for petty reasons. His reasons being that, using some future technology to get a scan of their personalities, judged they were too decent and wouldn't be converted to evil so easily.
  • "Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes" retconned the reason as to why some applicants were rejected, citing that Saturn Girl had done psychic profiles on them during their try-outs. While some were rejected because their power was lame or they lacked suitable control, others were rejected because they had a variety of psychotic tendencies and deeply disturbed psyches.
• Textplosion:
  • During the "5 years later" arc, text pages were often used to provide exposition on events that occurred during the Time Skip or other background information.
  • Issue #38, in which the Earth is destroyed by an environmental disaster, is told entirely in illustrated prose.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: An official rule of the Legion. Legionnaires generally obey this strictly, but the actual rule allows for killing villains if there's no other way to save sapient lives.
• Time Master: The Time Trapper, the Infinite Man, and Glorith, on the villainous side. For the heroes, there's Kid Quantum, though at a greatly reduced level.
• Time Travel: Originally it was all over the place, as the means by which Superboy and Supergirl could be members of a thirtieth-century superteam. After the Zero Hour reboot, it's extremely rare, and half the Legion being sent a thousand years into the past (where they can interact with most of the rest of The DCU) poses a huge problem in terms of how to get them home.
• Time-Travel Romance: Brainiac-5 (Querl Dox) and Supergirl (Kara Zor-El). Brainy always falls hard for Kara as soon as he lays his eyes on her, and she likes him back. But he can't live in the 21st century and she can't stay permanently in the future. Her oftentimes prolonged absences have led Brainy to pull some truly dumb stunts.
• Took a Level in Badass: After spending much of their history as running jokes, the remaining members of the original Legion of Substitute Heroes did this during the five year gap leading up to the v4 series. With the original Legion discredited and disbanded, they became the leaders of the resistance against Earthgov's abuses. Ironically, Polar Boy, the only former member of the team to have actually graduated to the majors on panel, was shown in a rather negative light, having failed to prevent his team from dissolving and then getting arrested for attempting to incite a riot.
• Too Many Belts: When Keith Giffen returned to the title as artist in the late 1980s, he brought with him a radically changed art style and a complete redesign of the costumes of the team. Those redesigns eschewed the traditional spandex superhero aesthetic in favor of jackets, belts, and pouches. Lots and lots of pouches. And this was before Rob Liefeld hit the big time...
• Tragic Intangibility: Issue #82 of the post-Zero Hour reboot deals with the deceased superhero Apparition returning as a ghost. Her mother and boyfriend are happy to see her, but without a body, they can't comfort her by holding her hand or letting her rest her head on their shoulder as she processes her death.
• Training the Gift of Magic: Many Legionnaires come from worlds whose denizens have the same powers they do. Chameleon Boy, for example, is a Durlan with the natural ability to shapeshift. However, because of the intense training and breadth of experiences they undergo as Legionnaires (combat, rescue, exploration of strange phenomena, helping with scientific experiments, investigation and more), they tend to be far more adept at the application of their abilities than members of their species, as well as genuinely growing stronger by constantly testing their limits and practicing to overcome them. To use Chameleon Boy again, the average Durlan is a recluse who never leaves their home planet, while he's personally gone out into the galaxy and learned about all kinds of different creatures with amazing abilities. Some like Saturn Girl or Cosmic Boy also start out as above-average examples of their kind and only get better with experience.
• Trust Me, I'm an X: Matter-Eater Lad once said, "Trust me, I'm a senator!" (Him being a comedic character and politicians being fair game to mock).
• Tuckerization: The Batch SW6 Legionnaires were so-named as a reference to a well-known fan and letter writer with a London SW6 return address.
• 20 Minutes into the Future: Until some point in the 1960's, The Legion's era was said to be not 1000 years but only 100 years ahead. Writers moved it all up when it dawned on them that this type of galactic community would be more than a century in coming around. Oddly enough, the 1000 year difference came first, being mentioned in the first few Legion appearances. After that, the writers switched to 100 years with no explanation, which stuck for a few years before switching back to 1000.
• Twin Threesome Fantasy: Bouncing Boy married Duo Damsel when they left the team to run the Legion Academy. He wears two wedding rings and assures Wildfire that "being married to a woman who can become TWO people" is quite an experience.
• Two-Faced: Tharok
• Two Guys and a Girl: Cosmic Boy, Lightning Lad/Live Wire, and Saturn Girl, in the comics.
• Unfortunate Item Swap: Bouncing Boy owes his superpowers to this - he mistook a bottle of experimental Super Serum (which he was supposed to be delivering when he got distracted) for the bottle of soda pop he'd just bought.
• Unobtainium: Inertron, Valorium, among some others.
• Vibration Manipulation: Shanen Dreyus, aka Quake Kid, can create artificial earthquakes by affecting the vibrational field of any area he is in. He applied for Legion membership but was rejected due to his inability to control his powers.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting:
  • Reep Daggle/Chameleon Boy and Yera/Chameleon Girl, who are Durlans, a species of shapeshifters.
  • Proty I and II were both Proteans, who had the same ability.
• We Will All Fly in the Future: With flight rings!
• Wham Episode: Almost any story featuring the Time Trapper during the 1980s and early 1990s could be considered an example of this. Especially the "Mordruverse" two-parter near the beginning, and "End of an Era" at the end of v4, pre-Zero Hour. Also, Secrets of the Legion of Super-Heroes (R.J. Brande is really Chameleon Boy's father), v3 annual #2 (long-time villain Validus is really the child of Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl), and the conclusion of The Plan of Cosmic Boy's against President Chu in the post-ZH book.
• Wham Line: At the end of the final New 52 issue, Bouncing Boy mentions Superman being killed by Steppenwolf, implying that this takes place in the 30th centuty of Earth 2.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Tends to happen a lot whenever there's a reboot.
  • A token effort was made to resolve a number of threads during "The End of an Era" storyline wrapping up pre-Zero Hero v4, but several more fell through the cracks, including the revelation of what was in the canister Spider Girl stole and that most of the galaxy was willing to kill her over (see the entry on Aborted Arc above).
  • At the end of the Postboot era, plot points that were left unresolved included Apparition's missing sister, Apparition and Ultra Boy's rapidly aging son, the disappearance of Computo and the mysterious figure who "stole" him (probably the Time Trapper), the apparent rebirth of Darkseid, Ra's al-Ghul staying in custody on Legion World, the romance between Cosmic Boy and Kid Quantum, and a hinted-at subplot in which the Time Trapper would have turned out to be Cosmic Boy and XS' son....
  • In regards to the Threeboot Legion there's the matter of Princess Projectra's betrayal and her plans of revenge against the United Planets, Timber Wolf's disappearance, and Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl's quasi-failed relationship. It's claimed by a writer named Jim Shooter that the series had 4 more issues instead of the ending we all know.
  • The Post-Zero Hour Reboot's first arc's villains were a group of psychopathic, xenophobic Daxamites. To underscore how powerful and awful these villains were, a dozen of them destroyed a planet in minutes by flying over it and blasting it with their heat vision. Those are the key facts: very evil, very powerful, and there are (at least) twelve of them. The next issue four of them attack Earth and it's an amazing fight, with heroic sacrifices and deaths, and at the very last moment the four Daxamites get defeated, the Legion proves its worth to the skeptical authorities and the universe rejoices. And the other eight Daxamites? Each with the power to destroy a continent? Responsible for the deaths of billions? They never get mentioned again.
• What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?:
  • The Legion of Substitute Heroes.
  • Bouncing Boy and Matter-Eater Lad from the Legion proper. Note that during the Great Darkness saga, Bouncing Boy successfully knocked down Daxamites. Granted, they were mind-controlled and thus not at peak efficiency, but still — Daxamites.
  • On some occasions, Substitute Heroes would be inducted to the Legion, such as Night Lass and Polar Boy, because it turned out their powers weren't so useless after all.
  • In the Reboot, it would actually be retconned that the Legion tryouts only partially test for the viability of the applicant's power. Yes, having a power that is utterly useless or too dangerous to your allies is one way of being rejected. The other thing they test for is mental stability (hence why Reboot Chlorophyll Lad is still rejected; he's considered too delusional) — the so-called "Justice League of Earth" were all booted out specifically because the tests revealed they had, in essence, psyches that could easily lead them to abuse their positions and powers.
• Will They or Won't They?:
  • Supergirl and Brainiac 5 first met in 1961. Querl fell for Kara at first sight and she liked him back, but she couldn't stay in the 31st century permanently. Both teenagers spent twenty-three years, real time, dancing around each other and wondering whether they should or could get together until they hooked up. Unfortunately, Kara died in the Crisis On Infinite Earths one year later.
  • Saturn Girl and Lightning Lad also spent many years pursuing and dodging each other before getting married.
• Winged Humanoid: Dawnstar possesses natural wings. This is a common physical trait of her people however, and is not considered unusual by the standards of Starhaven culture.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity:
  • Brainiac 5 and Matter-Eater Lad after he eats the Miracle Machine. The Time Trapper is similarly revealed to be a victim of this at the end of v4.
  • Postboot, Shrinking Violet / Leviathan II during her Emerald Empress phase and Element Lad during the original Legion Lost (though the latter may be a better example of Driven to Villainy).
  • Seems to be a fairly common occurrence with the Emerald Empresses.
• It's a Wonderful Plot: Doubly subverted in a humorous post-Zero Hour side story involving Brainiac 5.
• World War Whatever: In Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes #228, Chemical King died to prevent World War VII in 2977.
• Xenafication:
  • Happens to Shrinking Violet in phases. She starts off as exactly the cliche her name suggests. In the early 1980s, she's kidnapped and replaced with a shape shifter. When she returns she's Darker and Edgier from the experience. Later on, she gets drafted, experiences War Is Hell first hand, and comes out the other side as a Martial Pacifist.
  • Taken in a different direction following the Zero Hour reboot. See the above entry for Beware the Quiet Ones.
• X-Ray Vision: Ultra Boy, Superboy, Supergirl, Mon-el/Valor, Andromeda, Dev-em and his clones, and every empowered Daxamite. Even Wildfire had the power briefly.
• Yin-Yang Clash: The Time Trapper versus the Infinite Man in v3 #50, each representing a fundamentally different model of how time works.
• You Can't Go Home Again:
  • Superboy, of course, although that serves primarily as background material for his role in Legion stories.
  • Element Lad's origin story involves the destruction of his home world of Trom and most of its inhabitants in most versions of his origin.
  • Both Superboy (the Kon-El clone version, not the original) and Supergirl were stranded in the 31st century during their stints with the team in the postboot and threeboot runs, respectively.
  • The postboot team, later renamed the Wanderers, are the sole survivors of their entire universe.
  • On a less apocalyptic note, in the original continuity, members of the Green Lantern Corps were prohibited from operating on Earth. When Legion supporting cast member and Earth native Rond Vidar was outed as a Green Lantern, he was forced to leave for parts unknown, unable to return.
  • Numerous story arcs have been written about Legionnaires being trapped in space and/or time: Legion Lost (both series), the early 1990s Timber Wolf miniseries, and an extended story arc running through Legion of Super-Heroes V4 in the late 1990s.
• You No Take Candle:
  • Subverted by the post-Zero Hour Chameleon Boy—he can't speak Interlac for a good long while at first, but the distrust he gets as a shapeshifter is depicted as a bad thing (prejudice = not cool, guys). And then they reveal how long it actually took him to learn the language, and that he's been keeping it a secret as part of a sting operation...
  • The 2007 relaunch under Geoff Johns gave team financier R.J. Brande a thick German accent, despite the fact that it was presented as a direct continuation of the 1980s version of the team, where he had no problem speaking unaccented Interlac. This was later lampshaded by Brainiac 5 as one of Brande's personality quirks in an issue of Adventure Comics.
• Zeerust: In the older comics.

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