Okay.. so I have hesitated to get into the Legion for a few reasons.

  1. It scares people. Too many characters, locations, and things going on.
  2. The goal of this site is to ease you into these concepts, so how do I boil it down to the essence when we are talking about a cast of 30+?

Here’s how. First off, I will have faith in your comprehension skills and hopefully you will have some faith in my ability to convey this team to you. And there ARE some shorthand methods we can use. In any team book there are typically shortcuts you can use to “decode” the world we are in.

  • It’s the 30th Century, so it’s all futuristic at the same time it is Super-Heroes so it’s a mingling of Star Wars/Star Trek and other sci-fi tropes along with the 20th century heroes.
  • It’s about the characters. Heroes fighting villains is great, but why should you care? The reason: These characters for a true legion are all different, conflicts occur, relationships begin and end.
  • The writer and artist in this era of the Legion, Mr. Paul Levitz and Mr. Keith Giffen gave us a “short-hand” in the form of symbols that represent each of the Legionnaires. Like the “S” shield represents Superman, these icons represent the Legionnaires.

So, that being said, let’s dive in! You’ve already met Cosmic Boy, Lightning Lad, and Saturn Girl in the previous Legion post. Their icons are as follows…

 

 and

 

Pretty intuitive huh? Well, we are going to meet some more Legionnaires now before we start getting into the stories. The next Legionnaires to join the LSH were

 

 

and

Any guesses? Well, the first one is Duo Damsel, the next is Phantom Girl, and Chameleon Boy.

Duo Damsel was originally Triplicate Girl with the power to split into three different girls, however one of her selves was killed in battle resulting in her renaming herself to Duo Damsel. Her name is Luornu Durago of the planet Cargg. All individuals on Cargg have the power to triplicate themselves, usually when one triplicate dies, they all do, but Luornu survived the death of one self. Maybe there is more to her than it seems? And here she is snuggling up to her husband, Bouncing Boy.

Next up is Phantom Girl who is Tinya Wazzo from the planet of Bgtzl. Bgtzl occupies the same space as Earth, but in a Phantom dimension to Earth. Tinya has the ability to turn intangible and walk through solid objects. All individuals on Bgtzl have this ability. She has a long standing relationship with Ultra Boy and due to her more subtle powers is a member of the Legion Espionage Squad.

The last one in this group is Chameleon Boy also known as Reep Daggle of the planet Durla. Durla is populated by a race of shape shifters. Cham’s antennae send out radiation waves that “remember” the shape of an object and then Cham can mimic that object, person, etc.., and while he can duplicate the appearance of Superman, he cannot duplicate Superman’s powers. Cham is a natural detective and is the permanent leader of the Legion Espionage Squad.

Hopefully those symbols make sense now. We’re going to be doing this for all the Legionnaires now, so you’ll get a few new ones now each day until we are going to get through the roster and then we’ll do the plots.

So next time.. A big man, a man who isn’t there, an enemy no more, and a super… girl?