Dream Girl

Origin

Nura Nal was born on Naltor in the thirtieth century. Naltor's native denizens are genetically inclined to be precognitives, with the ability to see into the future. At a young age, Nura became recognized as the most powerful precog among her people, more able to dream with peculiar accuracy, or see a few moments into the future while awake, than any other. Nura's exceptional beauty often hid the fact that she was also exceptionally bright, and once she reached adulthood, she had already mastered advanced Naltorian science, putting her among the galaxy's intellectual elite. Nura eventually left Naltor to act on one her visions in which she foresaw the death of several members of the Legion of Super-Heroes on a mission in space. Determined to prevent their deaths, she introduced herself to the Legion using the code name of Dream Girl.

Creation

Dream Girl was created in 1964 by writer Edmond Hamilton and artist John Forte, first appearing in Adventure Comics #310. She became the sixth female member of the Legion of Super-Heroes and their 20th member overall. As her code name would suggest, Dream Girl was portrayed as the most glamorous member of the Legion, and she was envisioned as a Marilyn Monroe-like beauty complete with platinum-blonde hair, revealing silver costumes, high heels, and a star-shaped birthmark on her right cheek. Despite her looks, Dream Girl was also conceived to be one of the Legion's most intelligent and capable members.

Character Evolution

Original Continuity: New Earth

Nura knew from her vision that several of the Legionnaires would face death in an explosion in space if they remained members of the team. At one of the Legion's open try-outs, Nura introduced herself as Dream Girl, gaining the attention of the male Legionnaires and the ire of the female Legionnaires. One Legionnaire fell in love with her at first sight, Star Boy. The male Legionnaires voted her in to the team. Immediately, Dream Girl studied the Legion Constitution, to discover ways to expel the doomed Legionnaires from the team. One by one, she sabotaged them, including Lightning Lass, who had her electrical powers seemingly removed by Nura's Naltorian science. The vision Nura had, turned out to be a vision of a test the Legion was doing with crash test dummies that looked like the Legionnaires. Dream Girl also revealed that Lightning Lass' powers had changed from electrical control to the nullification of gravity.

Once the truth of Dream Girl's scheme came out, the Legionnaires invited Dream Girl to stay on the team because she had their best interests in mind. Dream Girl declined the invitation, deciding instead to get more training in her abilities. Dream Girl joined the Legion of Substitute Heroes so she would have time to practice and perfect her visions. Later, after Star Boy lost his kryptonian-level powers, and followed her to the Substitute Legion and started their romance. Finally, when it appeared that Supergirl and Superboy were leaving the Legion of Super-Heroes, Star Boy and Dream Girl rejoined the team.

With her stunning pinup-girl looks and figure, a flirty swimsuit-like costume (which she wore even prior to the Legion's sexy-costume era of the 70's), and boldly confident personality, the male Legionnaires completely stopped noticing the other female members on the team, and the female Legionnaires soon grew jealous and resentful. Never one to back down from a challenge, Dream Girl made an effort to reach out to her female teammates, gradually winning them over and befriending them with her natural charm and charisma.

Reboot: Earth-247

Nura claimed that her name was Nura Schappin, changing her surname to Nal because, as she put it, "It just says I'm from Naltor y'know." She also claimed to have been the first precognitive to be born on Naltor in seven generations, a claim that was later contradicted by other post-Zero Hour Legion stories. For most of this continuity's duration, Nura was not a Legionnaire, although she was still Star Boy's girlfriend. Additionally, she suffered from narcolepsy, falling unconscious whenever she had a vision. She was no longer the sister of Mysa, who was completely unrelated to her in this continuity. Eventually, Nura gained Legion membership under the codename Dreamer. Unlike other continuities her Legion costume featured a cape, as well as a diamond-shaped "cleavage window" in the front.

Threeboot: Earth-Prime

Dream Girl had a more disconnected and "spaced out" personality in this continuity, since her precognition often interfered with her perception of current reality and she had trouble differentiating between the two. She wore a midriff-baring costume with a silver top and black leggings. In her first action as a Legionnaire she stopped an assassination attempt on the United Planets delegates by a spy. Brainiac 5 had compiled data for three days and sent Dream Girl, Karate Kid, and Element Lad to stop the assassin. The Legionnaires looked like they were beaten, until Karate Kid woke Dream Girl from a daydream and she took down the assassin down with ease, saying that she thought they had already defeated him. Afterwards, Brainiac 5 announced that Dream Girl's precog power frustrated him to no end because there was no rationality to it and it was not scientific. Dream Girl then interrupted Brainy, talking about a conversation they had not had yet, frustrating him even further. Later, Dream Girl, Karate Kid, Shadow Lass and Brainiac 5 were all sent to Dream Girl's home planet of Naltor to investigate why no one under the age of 18 was able to sleep.

Brainiac 5 eventually realized that he was in love with her, right before she was killed in the battle that destroyed most of the Legion Headquarters. He stopped her soul from escaping, and she went to live only in Brainiac's mind while he tried to figure out a way to restore her body.

Retroboot: New Earth

With the "retroboot," Dream Girl and the Legion returned to being very much like the original team prior to the Five Year Gap, with a few differences. At the beginning of the story arc several members of the Legion (including the original Dream Girl in her classic silver costume) mysteriously appeared in the 21st century. Other Legionnaires were scattered and trapped in different places throughout the universe. Dream Girl was captured and imprisoned by the nightmarish villain Dr. Destiny in Arkham Asylum, where her precognitive powers were manipulated into giving her horrific illusions. She was rescued by the Justice Society and Justice League, and was reunited with her longtime love Thom Kallor (formerly Star Boy), who had been flung back in time to become the new Starman. In this revised history the relationship between the two was more tragic, since Starman suffered mental damage after being hurtled back through time unprepared. She felt terribly for him and believed that the 21st-century methods of treating his mental illness were barbaric. Dream Girl has since established a connection to the realm of 'The Dreaming,' further enhancing her precognitive powers. She also correctly predicted the threat of Superboy-Prime in Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds, the recent storyline which united all three versions of the Legion together. After the war with New Krypton in the 21st century, Dream Girl was able to bring Star Boy back home to the 31st century to get him the medical treatment he needed.

Major Story Arcs

Original Continuity: New Earth

Romance with Star Boy

Though Nura continued to receive constant attention from the unattached male Legionnaires (and even some of the attached ones), Star Boy (Thom Kallor) was the one who eventually managed to capture her heart. Nura became very close to him and she was romantically involved with Star Boy for many years. Dream Girl spent several years as someone who needed to be rescued, partly due to her effective but non-combative power. Not wanting to be a liability she trained intensively in hand-to-hand combat in order to better serve the team on the field. She was a quick study and became a highly skilled martial artist, second on the team in unarmed combat to only Karate Kid. Her precognitive power to foresee an opponent's moves before they even made them further enhanced her effectiveness as a fighter.

Leaving The Legion

At one point Nura took a temporary leave from the team, since she believed she had initially joined under false pretenses. She had foreseen the deaths of some Legionnaires while dreaming and proceeded to get those Legionnaires expelled from the Legion in order to save their lives. During this time she joined the Legion of Substitute Heroes until she reunited with Star Boy, who had been previously expelled from the Legion for accidentally killing Nura's former lover, a Naltorian named Kenz Nahor, in self-defense after Nahor attempted to kill Star Boy out of jealousy.

Leader of the Legion

Dream Girl soon rejoined the Legion and continued serving as a highly valued member. After Lightning Lad's term as Legion leader went horribly awry, the team decided it was time to elect a new leader, and Dream Girl announced that she was officially running for the position. The other candidates initially scoffed at the idea of the Legion's glamor girl winning the job, until they realized to their dismay that she would not have announced her candidacy had she not already foreseen herself winning. Sure enough, Dream Girl was elected leader, becoming only the second female Legionnaire ever to do so (after Saturn Girl).

Shortly after she assumed leadership the Legion was faced with one of the most dire challenges in their history -- the Great Darkness Saga. The ancient super-villain Darkseid attempted to conquer the whole of the United Planets. He very nearly succeeded, but the Legion, with Dream Girl's able leadership, finally managed to thwart him after an epic and costly struggle. During this time Nura's sister, Mysa Nal, arrived to aid the team with her mastery of the magical arts. Afterwards Mysa became a Legionnaire, calling herself the White Witch.

Though Dream Girl again ran for leader the following term, she lost out to Element Lad. Star Boy made no effort to hide his satisfaction about this result. During her stint as leader, their relationship had suffered. After Star Boy left the team to become planetary champion of his home planet, Xanthu.

The Universo Project

Dream Girl became one of the first Legion members to demonstrate sufficient willpower to utilize her Legion Flight Ring on an object other than herself, effectively giving her the ability of telekinesis. She later was one of four Legionnaires singled out by Universo as the most dangerous obstacles in his attempt to take over the Earth (along with Saturn Girl, Brainiac 5, and Chameleon Boy). The four were captured and held prisoner with their memories suppressed. Saturn Girl eventually regained her memory and helped her teammates engineer an escape, after which they turned the tables on Universo. It was assumed that they were isolated as the most dangerous because they were the smartest Legionnaires, but it also could have been that those four had the most resistance to Universo's mind control -- even more than the Legion's (then current) telepath, Tellus.

Mind-controlled by Atmos

When the ruler of Xanthu (Star Boy's home planet) asked Thom to be their resident hero since their champion Atmos had gone missing, Star Boy reluctantly had to take his leave from the Legion and Nura. While Star Boy was away, Atmos turned up during a Legion mission and Nura inexplicably found herself intensely attracted to him. To the surprise of her teammates, she broke up her long-distance relationship with Star Boy and jumped into a romance with Atmos. The truth later became apparent to her that Atmos was somehow using his mental powers to take over her emotions and sap her will. Furious at being so manipulated, she used her own formidable willpower to slowly build up a tolerance to Atmos' mind-sapping powers. She kept this a secret from her erstwhile lover until one night when Atmos had fallen asleep. She regained enough control over herself to activate her Legion flight ring alarm and knocked Atmos out cold with one punch the moment he woke up. Free of Atmos' influence, Nura immediately went back to her true love Thom.

Five Years Later

After the devastation of the Magic Wars, Legion continuity was re-started after the period known as the Five Year Gap. The galactic economy had collapsed and Earth's government became very hostile towards the Legion. Nura left the team and made her return to Naltor to become its High Seer. She steered Naltor successfully through the troubled times, and under her leadership her world became one of the most stable economies in the United Planets. But Nura felt alone and missed Star Boy terribly, so she went through a series of relationships with several men during this time. In early 2996, after a flash of light that seemed to indicate some sort of time flux, Dream Girl joined her former teammates on Earth, and just before the destruction of the time line, she shared a kiss with her old flame Star Boy before they were wiped out of existence due to the Zero Hour event.

Threeboot: Earth-Prime

Guiding the Legion

On Naltor, the Legionnaires brought a crazed teen before the high council and Dream Girl demanded to know what was being done to fix the problem. She also explained that without dreams, Naltorians could not interpret their visions and would eventually lose their precognitive abilities. The high council of Nltro claimed that the lack of sleep was a disease and not to worry, since it would work itself out. After it was discovered that it was actually the adults committing the crime against the children, Brainiac 5 took off, leaving the other three Legionnaires to fight the Precommandos (Precog Cops). The cops lay a beating on Karate Kid and Shadow Lass, until Dream Girl distracted the police so that they focused their attention solely on her. Taking advantage of the distraction, her teammates took the cops down. Dream Girl knew that more precogs were on the way, but she also knew that there was something the high council did not want the kids to see. She tried to get Karate Kid to knock her out but he refused, so Shadow Lass blindsided her with a mean right hand. Dream Girl then viewed the Destruction of the Universe by an unknown enemy and his army. When she woke up she said one word... 'Brainy'. Dream Girl lead the team to the public service broadcaster where they found Brainy "attacking the problem" as he put. It came down to Dream Girl having to choose either to let the youth know what she saw and how little time they had left, or security and comfort. She chose the former.

Relationship with Brainiac 5

When the team returned to Legion headquarters, Brainiac 5 explained to Dream Girl how all it would take was one person, one casualty to have the willpower to break destiny; that the universe was more unpredictable than they gave it credit for and her visions did not have to be infallible. Dream Girl told him he would feel differently once they were married.

Foreseeing Her Own Death

After this the Legion's true enemy was revealed: The terrorist group called Terra Firma, lead by the super-powered Elysion and Lemnos. Terra Firma attacked the planet Helegyn. During this attack Dream girl had a vision but could not see past one hour; after that, all she saw was black. After Elysion was captured, Dream Girl took out her frustrations on him. As she did so, Dream Girl expressed faith, something unheard of for precogs. Brainiac 5 and Dream Girl had a romantic moment while he tried to figure out her problem. Then Terra Firma made their move, just as Dream Girl had foreseen. They suicide-bombed Legion Tower and the plaza where teens had gathered to support the Legion. Brainiac 5 and Dream Girl headed there. Elysion escaped and, using his earth-controlling powers, brought down Legion Tower on top of everyone around. Amid the chaos, the answer to Dream Girl's problem was answered... she could not see past her own death. Dream Girl was crushed in the rubble of Legion Tower.

Return to Life

After she died, Brainiac 5 activated his force field around her dug-out body, which was still in remarkably good condition despite its physical death. Later it was revealed that Brainiac 5 had placed Dream Girl's body in stasis and was using a captured Lemnos try to bring her back to life. At the end of the story arc, he was shown to be successful: Nura's consciousness was transferred into a newly cloned version of her original body with her powers and sight fully restored. In the final issue of this continuity, the happy pair announced to the rest of the team their plans to get married.

Retroboot: New Earth

The New 52

The efforts of DC to revitalize its titles led to the New 52 reboot of the universe, in which all DC titles were relaunched simultaneously. The Legion of Super Heroes reverted to a close analogue of their original continuity prior to any of reboots, but it remains to be seen the extent of any changes between the old series and new. Dream Girl and Star Boy are once again an official couple, though she also appears to have a strong relationship with Brainiac 5.

Powers & Abilities

Precognition

Dream Girl has the ability to see the future in dreams and visions. This is a power shared by all natives of her home planet Naltor, but Nura's ability to do so is considered to be among the strongest of her race. In addition to the long-range precognition of her dreams, Dream Girl also has the power of short term precognition when in a conscious state, allowing her to see a few seconds into the future at any given moment.

Unarmed Combat

Because of her passive power, Dream Girl's early portrayal was a damsel-in-distress who could be easily defeated and captured by enemies, obliging her teammates to rescue her. She resolved to change this and spent long hours with the Legion's ultimate martial arts master, Karate Kid, who gave her extensive training in hand-to-hand combat. She quickly became one of his most gifted students, to the point where she is now the second-most skilled martial artist on the team. Her fighting ability is greatly enhanced by her power to see seconds into the future, which allows her to predict her opponent's moves even before they make them and map out a battle before it actually begins. This makes her a very formidable tactician, and she is able to successfully combat enemies physically far stronger than her, such as the Persuader.

Intellect

Nura also possesses a genius-level intellect, and has mastered the highly advanced principles of Naltorian Science. She is one of the few Legionnaires to have received a compliment from Brainiac 5 for intellectual prowess. Because of her great intellect she was chosen for capture by the villain Universo, since he regarded her as one of the Legion's four biggest threats to his domination of Earth (the others being Saturn Girl, Chameleon Boy, and Brainiac 5).

Equipment

As a member of the Legion of Super-Heroes, Dream Girl possesses a Legion Flight Ring. The ring gives its wearer the ability to fly, the speed and range of which is determined by the wearer's willpower. It also acts as a long-range communicator (enabling constant vocal contact with other Legionnaires, even across vast distances of space), a signal device, and a navigational compass, all powered by a micro-computer built inside the ring. Dream Girl has also employed the ring in various ways unknown to other Legionnaires. Using her great willpower, Nura has used the flight ring to levitate and move other nearby objects as though she has telekinesis.

Other Versions

Five Years Later: Batch SW6

The devastation of the Magic Wars caused original Legion continuity to jump ahead five years in what is now known as the Five Year Gap. Afterward, a duplicate teenage Legion team mysteriously appeared, known as "Batch SW6" because they were believed to be Dominator-created clones of the original team. They were later revealed to be time-paradox duplicates of the original Legion, rather than clones. They operated separately from the original Legion and formed their own team, the Legionnaires, and starred in their own series with that title. All of the Legionnaires except for Cosmic Boy, Saturn Girl, Live Wire and Invisible Kid seemed to think that Dream Girl was part of the team the entire time...but she wasn't and her existence, which remained stable until she joined with her adult counterpart and disappeared at the end of the universe, was a blip in time caused by Zero Hour.

Superboy's Legion

Dream Girl appeared as a member of the Legion in Superboy's Legion, an Elseworlds story. She closely resembled the original character in the classic silver one-piece costume, though she wore her hair in a distinctly 1970's "Farrah Flip" hairstyle.

Other Media

Television

Superman: The Animated Series

The first animated version of Dream Girl appeared in the episode New Kids in Town, though it was only a non-speaking cameo role. In this episode she wore a costume very similar to her original bathing-suit costume from comic book continuity.

Legion of Super-Heroes Animated Series

Ten years later, Dream Girl was a major character in the second season of the Legion of Super-Heroes animated series, in the episode In Your Dreams. She was voiced by actress Tara Platt. She had the trademark star-shaped birthmark on her cheek and wore a costume similar to her classic silver one-piece from comic book continuity. For the first time, she wore her long-time Legion symbol (a "thought balloon" logo) on the chest of her costume.