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She first appeared in the backup story in Superboy and
the Legion of Superheroes #217, which, coincidentally,
was the first issue I bought of the series. I even
have a copy of it, autographed by the artist, Mike
Grell, my earliest artistic inspiration. In the story
"Future Shock for Superboy", by Jim Shooter and Mike
Grell, Superboy meets his descendant, Laurel Kent.
Yeah, not only did he learn in one six-page story that
he was not destined to remain a virgin forever, he
also learned that he would have a line that would
remain unbroken, though somewhat diluted, into the
30th Century.
When we first "meet" her, she's standing in a mag-lev
freight channel, about to be run down by magnetic
barges. Superboy drops down and stops the barges,
showing off a bit for the hottie in the black
swimsuit. Once more, Grell dips into the Vampirella
well for a costume. She introduces herself as
"Elna" . . . yeah, like a pop star or super model, she
doens't have a last name.
She knows everything there is to know about Superboy
and still has more questions for him, but no answers.
And, when Wildfire walks up, outside Legion HQ, she
runs off. After the Legion meeting, Superboy decides
to fly a seach pattern over Metropolis to look for
her, using his x-ray vision "to check every building".
Bloody voyeur!
He searches the whole city, but has no luck until he
realized Legion HQ is the only place he hasn't
searched! Of course, they're always in the last place
you look, right? There she is, climbing into some kind
of vent on the HQ building, being blasted by Wildfire!
Superboy reacts in typical smitten-schoolboy fashion
and grabs Wildfire, lifting him over his head and
draws back to punch him into a parallel universe, when
"Elna" grabs his arm and implores Superboy not to hurt
Wildfire. He's a bag of energy, how can you hurt him,
anyway?
To his shock and surprise, "Elna" isn't hurt at all,
not even scratched. It was all part of a Legion
Academy training exercise, "Elna", actually Laurel
Kent, is one of the Academy students, thanks to her
sole super-power, invulnerability inherited from
Superboy himself. She's his direct descendant, of
course.
This was the first, and last, time we saw Laurel until
the Levitz/Giffen period, when she was reintroduced,
along with other Academy students. Apparently, Giffen
didn't much care for the Cockrum/Grell era costumes,
so when she reappeared, it was in a pancho and boots.
We soon learned that Laurel was vulnerable to
kryptonite, when she was shot with a kryptonite
bullet.
Following the CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS, Laurel was
forgotten or ignored, in the reshuffle of history.
With the removal of Superboy from DC continuity, and
the de-Kryptonization of Supergirl, Legion history was
rewritten so that the Daxamite, Lar Gand (Mon-El,
Valor, M'onel), took the place of Superboy as the
inspiration for the Legion of Superheroes. A
descendant of his, Laurel Gand was introduced to stand
in for Supergirl. This is as close as we came to
Laurel Kent in the later versions of the Legion. Like
Supergirl, Laurel Gand was blonde.
When the Legion series was ended in the late 1980s and
restarted under the control of Tom and Mary Bierbaum
and artist Kieth Giffen, Laurel played an important
part as the scourge of the Khunds.
Then, following the events of Zero Hour, a new Legion
was introduced and a new Laurel Gand, with them. This
time, she was known as Andromeda (I really like that
name, btw) and she was a virtual Teutonic goddess,
tall, blonde-haired, blue-eyed and bigoted! She was a
member of the speciesist White Triangle organization,
a group whose members despise all non-humans. The fact
that Daxamites are, themselves, non-humans never
seemed to cross their minds. Not unless "human" has a
vastly broader meaning than "homo sapiens sapiens".
She learned the error of her ways and repented and all
that, but I kinda liked the idea of a character with
an unpleasant ideology. That's why I liked Gates, the
Marxist arthropoid in the Legion. Just thought there
needed to be a counterpoint to his Marxist diatribes.
Would have loved it if they'd done my take on Timber
Wolf, where Brin was the polar opposite of Gates, an
individualist Libertarian type. Just to have some fun
discussions.
Andromeda went all drama queen and joined a religious
order called the Sisters of the Eternal Cosmos. Get
thee to a nunnery!
Now, once again, we have an all-new, all-different
Legion of Superheroes and a chance to bring Laurel
back into the fold, once again. Let me say that I find
the idea of Superman producing offspring from a mating
with a human female beyond ludicrous. We have been
told that Kryptonian DNA is vastly different from that
of earth-folk and that means NO INTERFERTILITY!!! yes,
I needed all three exclamation points, for that!
However, interfertility between species is not a
requirement for Laurel to be a descendant of Superman,
if that Superman is Conner Kent, not Clark Kent. I
figure, at some point in his life, Conner's powers
mature and he attains the full Kryptonian set of
powers and that they are passed along to his
descendants, when he finally manages to have some. So
my Laurel Kent is the descendant of Superman II,
possibly with some of his limitations, like
late-developing powers. Start her out with the
invulnerability, who knows what might come later.
For my design, I thought I'd borrow elements from some
other costume designs. The emblem, I adapted from Alex
Ross's "Kingdom Come" Superman emblem. Borrowing the
color scheme from Andromeda and the boots are adapted
from the original Mike Grell costume.
Of course, I made her a brunette again. It's not that
I don't like blondes, it's just that I like brunettes more.
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