This page covers the DC comicbook team Legion Of Super-Heroes . If this is not the page you were looking for check here.
Pre-Zero Hour
In the 30th century, the galaxy is a crowded place. There are thousands of inhabited worlds and intelligent species, and very few of them get along with each other. Still, there are those who believe that a united galaxy is the best solution for everybody. One of those is R.J. Brande, one of the richest men in the galaxy. He pushed for a United Planets organization to handle conflicts between systems, and while he had some support, he also had a lot of resistance. There were some who opposed him so strongly that they wished him dead.
One of these assassination attempts was in the presence of three teenagers, strangers to each other. Imra Ardeen from Titan, with her people's power of telepathy, Rokk Krinn from Braal, one of the best manipulators of magnetic fields on his planet, and Garth Ranzz from Winath, who had gained his powers over electricity in a bizarre accident on another world.
The three youths worked together instantly, foiling the assassination and capturing the suspects. Brande saw in them the embodiment of all he had been working towards, and convinced them to follow in the footsteps of the great heroes of the 20th century. They wore costumes and used code names and became the Legion of Super-Heroes.
News of the Legion spread quickly, and soon there were many superpowered youngsters clamoring to join. Some had powers native to their homeworlds, others had acquired them through strange accidents. The number of people who wanted to join eventually grew so large that the Legion had to hold regular tryouts, in which any potential Legionnaire could show his or her abilities.
The Legion was heavily involved with time travel, often going back to the 20th century to meet their idol, Superboy - the original teen hero. Time travel had its dangers, however, and they eventually spent most of their time in their own era. They battled alien conquerors, evil robots, crazed magicians and even demigods. Members grew up, married and had children, and not a few members died.
The Legion eventually disbanded after a galaxy-wide cataclysm involving a struggle between the forces of magic and science, but it was reassembled five years later by Chameleon Boy, who saw a need for the Legion in this, a darker era.
By this time, the Dominators, a super-scientific race, had control of the Earth and, by extension, the United Planets. The new Legion did away with much of its child-like past - no more bright costumes or cute code names. Their main purpose was to free Earth from the Dominators. In the process, they would learn much about themselves as well.
The most startling discovery they made was a group of Legionnaire clones, labeled batch SW6, that the Dominators had grown and kept hidden on Earth. These clones were all teenagers, reminiscent of the Legion's early days, and believed that they were in fact the original Legion. They believed the older Legion was fake, an impossible distortion of their dream. After the destruction of the Earth, the older Legion team went into hiding, and worked in secret.
The end of the Legion came with the event known as Zero Hour.
The temporal instability of Zero Hour led to a massive battle between Glorith, Mordru and the Time Trapper against the combined Legions. The Time Trapper, who was actually Rokk Krinn after an eternity stuck in the Library of Time, revealed that the clones weren't clones at all - they were versions of the Legion from an alternate timeline, and if the Legion wanted any hope of surviving the coming crisis, the doppelgangers would have to cancel each other out. The last legionnaires were also the first - Lightning Lad, Cosmic Boy and Saturn Girl, and their counterparts. They merged with each other and their universe ended.
Post-Zero Hour
The "rebooted" Legion began much as the original had - Ranzz, Ardeen and Krinn foiling an attempt on the life of R.J. Brande and becoming the Legion, living symbols of the new United Planets. This group also grew rapidly, accepting many members and eventually having to hold tryouts for new ones.
There were some significant differences, however. Some of the names were different - Live Wire instead of Lightning Lad, Apparition instead of Phantom Girl and so on. Some characters, such as Chuck Taine (Bouncing Boy) and Tenzil Kem (Matter-Eater Lad) filled non-heroic roles as the Legion's chief technologist and gourmet cook, respectively.
A few heroes joined who had no counterparts in the previous Legion - XS, the granddaughter of Barry Allen (Flash II), Gates, an insectoid teleporter with communist leanings, and Kid Quantum, who could alter the very flow of time itself.
As before, it wasn't long until members died. The first Kid Quantum died when his power-belt malfunctioned, depriving him of his powers and giving Tangleweb a chance to snap his neck. Leviathan (previously Colossal Boy) died fighting Doctor Regulus.
Other members who had died in the previous incarnation of the Legion went on to survive. Invisible Kid and Ferro are the two most notable of these.
This Legion acted as police, ambassadors and explorers, working to bring peace and understanding to the galaxy. They had many adventures, including an extended period when half the Legion was stranded in the 20th Century, following a battle with one of their own - Shrinking Violet, who was in the thrall of the Emerald Eye of Ekron.
The Legion continued to operate on Earth until the appearance of the Blight, a star-spanning race of aliens who were determined to assimilate all life into their galactic web. They were defeated by the Legion, but at great cost, and the Earth was nearly in ruins. The Blight had used the UP's network of stargates to spread through the galaxy, and so the network was shut down until it could be made safer. The galaxy was about to enter a dark age, and the Legion was about to enter one of its own.
While trying to contain a space-time rift caused by a malfunctioning stargate, half the Legion was flung out of our universe entirely into another, stranger place. They spent a year trying to get home, in the process discovering that their survival was due to the efforts of Element Lad, who paid for their lives with his sanity. He became a kind of mad god of this universe, creating and extinguishing life at his whim.
With the help of a native of that universe, Shikari Lonestar, and the sacrifice of one of the founders, Live Wire, the lost Legionnaires were able to make their way home, a year after they had left.
During that year, the Legion had ceased to exist. Leland Macauley, a longtime opponent of the Legion, had become President of the United Planets, and the era of super-heroics was at its nadir. When the lost Legionnaires returned, however, they discovered that Macauley was actually Ra's al Ghul, who was preparing to bring the Earth to a state of near catastrophe so as to jump-start human evolution. He was thwarted, but at great cost.
The Legion, now with complete autonomy thanks to R.J. Brande, looked forward to expanding its role in the galaxy. They had their own satellite, and were training a "Legion Corps" to assist them. They went into battle against great enemies, such as Universo and Darkseid.
When an attack by the Fatal Five brought the Legion together with the Teen Titans, another spacetime rift was created. In order to shut the rift, the Legion took the Persuader's axe - the cause of the rift - through it, and vanished. The member remaining in the standard DC continuity was Shikari, who immediately set out to find her friends. She did so during the Infinite Crisis, on Earth-247.
Current Continuity
Following the Infinite Crisis, the history of Earth - and the Legion - was re-written. While the origin of the Legion is still unknown, the world they live in is very different. It is a time of stagnation and conformity, where physical contact with other people is considered the height of rudeness, and even people in the same room will use electronic means to converse rather than talk to each other. Children are bio-tagged so their parents can track them anywhere, and are taught obedience and propriety.
In this environment, the Legion has become an icon of youthful rebellion. While the actual working membership of the Legion is only about twenty, the thousands of young people who have left their homes and gathered together in its support are also considered Legionnaires. The "core team" have adopted code names conforming to the pattern of 20th century heroes - one-word noun or adjective, followed by "Boy," "Girl," "Lad," or "Lass."
For a long time, the Science Police, the dominant power on Earth, considered the Legion a threat, but now is attempting to put the Legion under its power.
As with the previous "reboot," there are some changes to characters. For example, Colossal Boy is now from a race of giants. His ability to shrink to six feet tall is why he wants to be called "Micro Lad," but his teammates prefer his original name. Chameleon Boy, who in previous incarnations was recognizably male, is an androgynous character due to his nature as a shapeshifter, and thereby only goes by the codename "Chameleon." Phantom Girl gains her abilities by phasing from one dimension to another, to the extent that she is existing in two worlds at once.
The current Legion exists to fight not only evil but also conformity, fear and oppression. They are at the front lines of the generation gap in the galaxy. Their first battle cry, coined by Lightning Lad, was "Eat it, Grandpa," which says a great deal about the view the current team has of the world.
Legion Of Super-Heroes Appear in These Volumes
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