Convergence: Your Guide To All The Worlds, Times And Stories In The DC Mega-Event

Pre-Crisis 30th Century Metropolis

First Appearance: Adventure Comics #247

Notable Heroes: The Legion of Super-Heroes

It’s doubtful that any super hero team from any publisher has a history as complicated as that of the Legion. It’s probably fitting that one of the group’s arch-enemies was the Time Trapper, because you almost need to have a mastery of time travel to understand the myriad of changes DC put these galaxy-spanning heroes through.

In the beginning, though, it wasn’t that complicated at all. Three teenagers named Cosmic Boy, Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl formed the Legion of Super-Heroes as a club, perhaps because there wasn’t anything else to do after school in the 30th century.

Since they got the idea from tales of Superboy’s heroism in the 20th century, they did the only logical thing they could, which was to snatch the Boy of Steel from his own time and put him through tests to see if he could join the club — and seeing as they used him as inspiration, he really should have been a no-brainer, don’t you think?

In any case, the LSH became a staple of the Silver Age, using their cool clubhouse and nifty flight rings to battle evil across the many worlds from which their members came. It always struck me as a little odd that their powers came mostly from their races’ innate abilities — so if they gathered everyone from those planets, they could have had a true legion — but I suppose it’s not the powers, but what their wielders do with them, that really defines super heroes.

Next: The Legion again, but a different one