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Although if we're talking about what Drake was wearing in that dimension... yeesh. Makes Tyroc's costume look good.

Both, really.

I could see Wildfire trying to game the 'rules' of this universe to allow him to change back and forth from flesh to energy, in hopes of being able to return home and retain this ability, for instance. Less 'Imma make a harem!' and more 'Imma cure myself, permanently!' He's stubborn and forceful and very strong-willed about getting his way, he doesn't seem like the sort who would surrender to anything, even a pleasant fantasy.

And Jacques seemed unusually decisive and aggressive towards Drake. Very out of character for him, really. He's usually been pretty quiet and thoughtful, except when his sister was in danger and he got a little shout-y.

#13 Element Lad (Jan Arrah of Trom) and Sean / Shvaughn Erin of Earth

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“Art is subjective, and opinions vary, but arguing on the internet is forever.” -- Steve Shives
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"Riddle me this: Arrah, Arrah, and gather round, the work of this hero is Legion bound. He multiplies N by the number of HE and in this room the Thing you'll see."

I only include this for completeness’ sake.

In my seventy-eight years, I have known gay men, lesbians, drag queens, trans-men, and trans-women. And never have I heard a single one of them say, “I present this way because I want heterosexual men to desire me.” Let alone, “my choice to transition was to please one specific man I had never met.”

Your turn.

#14 Rond Vidar (Green Lantern) and Laurel Gand (possibly previously known as ¿Valor Girl / Andromeda?)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81IOO9EC1nE

It is issue #5 of the 5YL arc…

When we first meet Laurel Gand, she is already an adult woman with a newborn child. Leaving baby Lauren in the care of her Zirrian nanny Englenna, she travels to the Sorcerer’s World to free Lauren’s father, the Green Lantern Rond Vidar.
They haven’t seen each other for a while; Rond is unaware that Laurel had even been pregnant.
Over the rest of 5YL we get substantial backstory for Laurel. But very little information about her relationship with Rond. As she is a ‘replacement’ for the Silver-Age Supergirl, we assume she also had a relationship with Brainiac 5. This proves true for Reboot Laurel, aka Andromeda but the details in 5YL are unclear. Evidently, they broke up.

Rond, of course, has a long and heroic history with the Legion. But as most of it is detailed in the pre-5YL original series, this provides few clues as to the details of his relationship with Laurel.

According to Laurel’s Who’s Who entry, Laurel and Rond were never formally married.

As Laurel and Rond go gallivanting around the Galaxy for the rest of 5YL I presume Lauren was raised on Zirr by her nanny. I would have been interested in this half-Terran, half-Daxamite character… but the Universe resets before she is a toddler.

Rond existed in the Reboot, but as far as I know was never in a relationship with Andromeda, who was involved with Brainiac 5.1.

Neither Rond nor Laurel seem to exist in the Threeboot.

Laurel does not seem to exist in the Retroboot. Rond dies heroically.

Addendum:
One technical definition of species is: “a collection of individuals capable of interbreeding.”
As Laurel and Rond had a child accidentally this means that under the above definition, Daxamites and Terrans are of the same species.

#13 Jan and Sean - I feel totally inadequate to comment on this relationship - last time I did we almost lost a member from Legion World. Pass.

#14 Rond and Laurel - You are right that we get very little of Rond and Laurel, and very very little of Lauren. We actually get more hints of a prior relationship with Brainy than any further commentary about her and Rond.

It's actually the last page of #6 where we get our first glimpse of the unnamed blonde - which of course results in the first complaints of a half-naked Supergirl.
In #7 we learn she is a Daxamite, a former legionnaire, named Laurel Gand, well known to the others. Her reaction to Rond's plight would suit either a friend relationship or deeper but it is Mordru's henchman who calls the two "young lovers".
At the end of #8 we learn that Rond and Laurel have been travelling together, fighting Khunds apparently, and then we meet Lauren for the first time. It is implied that Rond is the father but not definite yet. He certainly shows no surprise at the situation, unlike Rokk who is stunned. (Your comment about Rond being unaware of Laurel's pregnancy I think comes from mixing up Rokk and Rond in this scene. Not too hard to do with the art style but I think if you have another look you will see that Rokk is surprised and Rond is well aware.)
In #9 we get Laurel's backstory, showing her largely replacing Kara in the "Glorithverse" as fans would come to call it, and which includes the information that she and Brainy dated and were seen as a couple, including some discussion of their relationship in a Legion Groupie newsletter thing.
In #10 Rokk is telling Jo about Laurel's daughter and Jo comments that is was about time she and Brainy "got down to business". Rokk then tells him that Brainy isn't the father and Jo has no idea who it could be. He doesn't act surprised about it being Rond but certainly didn't know anything about them being together either and both he and Rokk wonder how Brainy is going to take it when he finds out.

All of this shows that:
1 - Brainy and Laurel were an item for a long time and it was generally expected that they would end up together.
2 - The relationship between Rond and Laurel was unknown by most if not all of the other legionnaires, so this has presumably developed since the Legion split up during the 5 year gap.

We do get further mentions of the Brainy-Laurel relationship, particularly in Brainy's thoughts on occasion, such as when he is trying to heal Laurel after her battle with Bion. The fact that he lost Laurel to his best friend is obviously an issue. Rond tries to discuss it at one point but Brainy avoids the topic. After the destruction of Earth they almost get into a fight when Brainy comments on how he thought her still recovering injuries meant she should have stayed behind and Laurel saying angrily "that's exactly the sort of patronizing, over-protective..." suggesting this attitude is part of why they broke up, but Brainy apologises and suggests can't they just be friends and let the past be the past, which Laurel likes the idea of. When young Valor is apparently lost in a Time Bubble explosion Young Laurel is upset, old Brainy is fairly callous but young Brainy is very comforting and angry at old Brainy for how his words hurt young Laurel. When the Legion gets together with Batch SW6, young Laurel asks older Laurel why she and Brainy broke up. Older Laurel replies that she is not really sure. She guesses that Brainy just had more important things going on in his life - or maybe they both just forgot there's nothing more important in life than the person you love.

A little later it looks like the team is going to die with no way out and Laurel grabs Brainy for a passionate kiss - but then they do survive and Laurel insist to "Green Genes" that nothing happened, got it!. Finally when Laurel is killed in the attack on Weber's World Younger Brainy expresses his condolences to older Brainy who says none are needed. Laurel has just moved on in the journey of life. As Younger Brainy says whatever you say, we see older Brainy shedding a tear in spite of his words.

So I think the big missed opportunity was to explore deeper Rond and Laurel's relationship, but at least we get some feeling of Brainy's struggle with it and some ongoing interactions taht reflect their past history and current changes.

great analysis re Brainy/Laurel/Rond!


Reboot Andromeda and Brainiac 5: there was some mutual fascination, but nothing I would call an actual relationship.

Quoting what I said before - the below represents pretty much everything about Brainy and Laurel in the Reboot, including why I cannot say that there ever has been a real relationship between them


I will add: in the Anomaly, both Brainy and Andromeda were so fascinated by it that they didn't pay each other any mind. Brainy interacted mainly with Gates, while Andromeda was annoyed that M'Onel kept pestering her

well said, Klar. I am much younger, but I have not yet met a single person in real life who would say the same thing...

Oh man I have missed so many of these!

Thoughts on Shvaughn/Sean Erin and Jan:

Prior to 5YL, I really liked how Shvaughn was kind of the girl next door who could be a POV character for readers when she first came along. She also gave Levitz an excuse to occasionally do some worldbuilding with how the Science Police work, which was nice...and I like how she's a lady cop who's not a cliche hardass, which even Gigi wasn't immune from in the retroboot.

That story where Jan takes Shvaughn back to Trom and tells her that marriage isn't something important to his people also feels like one of the few times anyone made an effort to give one of the aliens in the Legion some kind of distinctive culture. I feel like it's the basis for a lot of the "Trommites are all about transformation" takes that came later, and I love it for that. Shvaughn humanised Jan a lot - his power is such a deus ex machina that it's hard to come up with conflict which physically challenges him, and him being the sole survivor of his world very rarely factored into his characterisation in those days (now that I think about it, it's weird that there are so many Legion characters whose backstory is essentially "sole survivor of their world" and it never really came up thematically to link them together). To be honest, he was always just kind of "there" until Shvaughn came along.

Nostalgia aside, I think reboot Shvaughn is definitely the best iteration of the character. She has her own personality, she's competent and assertive, she's practically a Legionnaire herself at some points; as much as I love classic recipe Shvaughn, a lot of those traits are just implied about her rather than shown. It would be super super weird for them to have reprised the Jan/Shvaughn relationship in the reboot given how different Jan was, so I'm glad they didn't go there.

Sean Erin - ehh, I definitely don't think there was anything malicious behind this reveal but it wasn't really great then and it's only gotten worse with time. I can 100% see why Levitz just steered clear of using this character at all in the retroboot. I did like how Jan handled finding out about the profem, but the whole idea of "looking like a girl to trap boys" is a really really harmful trope that follows transgender women around a lot, it's insulting and it's just not cool.

Rond and Laurel:

Rond was weirdly more present in the 5YL Legion than he had been previously while at the same time not really having any kind of impact on anything as a character.

If they had capitalised on Brainy's best friend having a child with Brainy's former love interest to give us some over the top telenovella shenanigans, that would be one thing but...it was just kind of there as a background element without ever really having any impact on anything other than the occasional awkward interaction between Brainy and Laurel. Did Brainy ever even have a scene with Rond during the 5YL period? I can't remember them ever interacting.

Wild that they tried a transgender character something like 40 years ago, but not terribly shocking that it was even more sketchily handled than 'Lydda had herself experimented on to impress a boy' or 'Gim married an impersonator who pretended to be a girl he liked.' I suspect few comic book couples are great examples of anything other than writers who are not relationship coaches or gender studies students writing stuff they don't really know much about.

(Cue angry bitter divorced writer dudes mandating that characters and their partners break up, because the idea of happy couples feels 'unrelatable' to them...)

It happened once. In #29 following the fight with Bion, Brainy is pondering if he can restore Computo again, and Rond comes in to thank him for his care for Laurel and suggests that they talk about it and perhaps still be friends but Brainy says no thanks and walks off to do more important things. One of those things is helping a dying Brin who starts talking to Brainy about Laurel and sympathising about relationship problems and strongly suggests that Brainy at least talk to someone about it, but Brainy responds "none of us can do something if ... if we're not capable of doing it".

Rond appears again occasionally but the only time we see him and Brainy together again is when Glorith kidnaps the conspiracy group and Rond and Brainy never interact (although when Brainy teleports in naked, Laurel makes a comment about the nice costume, Green Cheeks). During Mordru's zombie attack when their shuttle is attacked by Trommites and it looks like they are all going to die, Laurel grabs Brainy for a final kiss. When they survive thanks to Veilmist teleportation, She grabs Brainy and angrily insists that nothing happened. Then during Jan Arrah's "spirit journey" when he is near death we see Laurel re-joining with Rond and telling him that he and Lauren were all she thought of during the battle, nothing else mattered. In the background we see Brainy overhearing and Jan's voice comments.

Finally when Rond turns up at Weber World having been investigating the time anomalies with young Brainy and young Lyle, it is Brainy who takes Rond aside to let him know how Laurel was injured by a Red Solar bomb and is being operated on right then. When she gets the bad news we see Brainy comforting Rond. So there is that at least.

hear, hear!

#15 Invisible Kid 2 (Jacques Foccart of Earth) and Infectious Lass (Drura Sehpt of Somathur)

Ebony and Ivory.

Another pairing that existed only in 5YL, and another instance where we see a couple naked together.

Prior to 5YL there is no indication that Infectious Lass and Invisible Kid 2 ever met, except in alphabetical listings.

During the 5-Year Gap, Drura is recruited by Jacques, along with many of the Substitutes, into the “Earth Underground” which seeks to expose the behind-the-scenes political control of EarthGov. Under Jacques’ leadership and training, the Subs improved their powers and competency. Stone Boy is able to become a moving statue in a kind of hypnotic semi-trance, and Drura gains more control over her infection powers, able to choose which microorganisms to manifest instead of just making people sick randomly. When they fight Mordru, Drura digs deep into her power set and finds some viruses or bacteria that work on zombies.This revolutionary group is evidently the beginning of her and Jacques’ relationship.

At some point, they are officially married.

The Dominators are exposed. Jacques becomes President of Earth, with Drura, a Somathuran, becoming First Lady. Jacques resigns in favor of his Vice-President, Tyroc. Drura and her husband head off to wherever the Legion calls headquarters now, and Jacques replaces Cham as Legion Leader. He tries on the nom de guerre Evanesce, which never really catches on. Jacques again proves his leadership abilities, and Drura is right there by his side the whole time. IIRC, she never joins the Older Legion per se, but is always around, being helpful. The older Drura is less flighty and more competent, and clearly loves her husband. Jacques reciprocates.

I would like to emphasize again how bright Invisible Kid II shines in 5YL. His leadership turns the bwah-hah-hah Legion of Substitute Heroes into a crack group of freedom fighters. He becomes President of Earth at a particularly hard time, and does an excellent job. After Chameleon Boy reorganizes the Legion, Jacques takes over as Legion Leader, and does a superlative job. Maybe instead of Evanesce, he should have taken the name Leadership Lad.

Drura is no slouch in 5YL either. Her powers, now under firm control, are formidable. Her relationship with her husband is solid and mature, a true partnership, IMHO in the same class as Saturn Girl and Lightning Lad, or Bouncing Boy and Duo Damsel.

I may be remembering all this through rose-colored nostalgia.

Then the Universe ends. It was fun while it lasted.

In the Retroboot, Drura is lost in time due to the machinations of Kirt Niedrigh, and apparently never finds her way home. She shows up in Tales of the Unexpected with Dr. Thirteen, Anthro, and a host of other obscure DC characters. I’ve never read it. I understand it had a kind of Doom Patrol vibe. I read on the internet that she was in a relationship with Captain Fear.

Near the end of the Retroboot, Jaques is seen on Shanghalla with Polar Boy, mourning the death of Sun Boy beside his grave. As far as I can tell, there are no echoes of the relationship from 5YL.

I liked how Jacques and Drura's relationship was portrayed in 5YL. It felt very natural and mutually affectionate, yet highlighted their differing personalities. Both showed all the qualities expected from legionnaires (even if Drura was never officially stated to be one) and Jacques' portrayal seemed to me to be an understandable and natural growth from his character pre Magic Wars. I particularly liked Drura's playful personality compared to Jacques' more serious one (e.g. Jacques codename "Studmuffin"). Even though this was a brand new relationship (or perhaps because of it?) I really enjoyed it. It felt right.

Jacques and Drura were cute together = I always thought they both deserved more opportunities to break out than they got, and they complimented each other well.

Plus, I feel like Drura and the other Subs really got some vindication in the 5YL series. Even though she was never officially a member of the team, she was definitely competent and confident in her abilities.

Loved watching Drura take Universo down,

and loved seeing Jacques in a leadership role

I always liked Drura, and while I didn't get to read that era of the Legion, I've always thought that she'd make a great Legionnaire. (Yes, she could 'get other people sick,' the same way that Garth's lightning or Dirk's radiant energy could also affect people around them! But Garth and Dirk can't *immunize their allies* against their powers, and Drura totally can innoculate her allies to her most commonly-used pathogens, making her *safer* in a group than many other Legionnaires!)

Jacques, on the other hand, invisibility is the most awesome power *when you're solo,* but kind of sucks in a group where your power is to be invisibly in the line of fire of every zap that Lightning Lad, Sun Boy, Wildfire, etc. throw, and in the path of fast-moving unpredictable bruisers like Jo, Mon, Brin, Chuck, Dawny, XS, etc. It's no wonder that any other invisibility character on a team, like Gypsy or Invisible Girl (or Martian Manhunter), ends up with other powers like illusion-casting or force fields (or... all of them), because invisibility alone on a team is more of a danger to yourself and your allies, than useful in a fray! Unreliable teleportation / dimension travel powers were, if anything, even worse! (And, sometimes, I accidentally kill people by teleporting us into space! Yay?)

But Jacques himself seemed like a cool guy, and I definitely would have liked to see him transition more into an Espionage Squad regular, perhaps getting more tied to newer members of the squad, like Chameleon Girl, and maybe even his sister, in the fullness of time, as the 'old guard' like Chameleon Boy age into different responsibilities. Drura could make an interesting Espionage Squad agent. "I've got a bug on him, I can track him." "Their fields scramble our tech, it's not going to work..." "No, I meant a literal *bug.* I've infected him with polystaphilococcis B, and nobody else on this moon has that disease. He's glowing like a supernova to my microbial senses..."

In one of my stories, I had Drura track down some missing Legionnaires exactly how you described it - she infected them with something harmless to them, and followed the trail!

It would be completely in-character for my tricksy brain to have noticed that and stolen it and attributed it to my own cleverness...

She's fun to write for. Everyone kind of knows what you are going to do when you write one of the old guard, or even more recent Legionnaires like Blok or Dawnstar. But with someone like Drura, we haven't seen enough of her over the years to have really gotten a good idea of what she can do. And more importantly, perhaps, what she *will* do...

ah great minds think alike, you would have thought of that idea yourself independently



and she is a heck of a lot of fun, there's so much she can possibly do!

I really like the idea you have both expressed about Drura tracking people by their illness, but is that ability - to sense a particular illness rather than just give it to someone - something we have ever seen her do? I can't think of an example but it does sound really cool. Did she do that when she was in the 21st Century?

I don't know about panolovoyance, I know that in the 21st century Drura infected clothing with moths.

I'm not aware that it's ever been a thing in the comics, but other characters like Element Lad stealthily get upgraded to have the power to sense whatever they are affecting, as a side-effect of their power, and it would make sense that Drura could sense disease organisms within another person, if she's able to manipulate them.

what Set said

Oh, I went all out with this concept in my “Young Legion” fanfics

>> Dacey Ranzz can sense electric fields, like sharks and echidna
>> Pol Krinn II has Braalien Quantum Electro-Vision, like European robins, and infra-red vision, like mosquitoes and pit vipers
>> Durlans can sense molecular structure through ultrasonic vibrations from their antennae (this is well-established in canon)
>> Bgztlr have 4D vision, the ability to see around and inside objects. This operates something like x-ray vision
>> Coluans can see somewhat into the infra-red and ultraviolet, and can discriminate far more colours that Terrans
>> To Bismollians, every element has a different flavor. They therefore find ordinary food quite bland, as it is mostly composed of nitrogen, oxygen, carbon, and a little sulphur and iron.