Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Long Live the Legion! Questions about Element Lad...

How powerful was he, pre-reboot? I've read that he ended up getting sent back in time to the beginning of the universe and went insane having been alone for billions of years.

Does he have any really cool feats? How would he compare to Firestorm (original) in terms of transmutation abilities and overall power?

After Garth ended up in Element Lad's body he possessed both of their powers correct? With Element Lad's powers why couldn't he alter his appearance so he'd look like himself again, even if he was still in a crystaline form.

For that matter why couldn't the Legion just hook him up with a holographic disguise or something, like Ra's Al Ghul used to look like the President?

Element Lad basically manipulated the couse of evolution in a galaxy for billions of years, causing various species to evolve and others to become extinct.

I suppose one big difference between him and
Firestorm is that he could affect organics, and simply "delete" any organism that displeased him.

As far as Garth's appearance in Element Lad's body, there doesn't seem to be any explanation beyond extremely poor writing.

Does he have any really cool feats? How would he compare to Firestorm (original) in terms of transmutation abilities and overall power?

Postboot (1994-2004) he was the only person alive able to create Tarnium, the element that activated the stargates. He turned the Persuader's atomic ax into cheese spread (really!). He helped defeat Mordru by sealing him in an airtight sphere. After he was turned into crystal by Mordru, he eventually learned to transmute himself back into flesh and blood again, or to any other element (at the cost of his mental stability, unfortunately). Along with Kid Quantum, he repaired a spacial rift that threatened to destroy the galaxy. He save the lives of 9 Legionnaires by encasing them in tromium cocoons when they were thrown beyond a quantum barrier, reinforced the damaged Outpost and then brought them all back to their own universe before he was cast into space. Eventually, after a couple of billion years of practice, he was able to create life and populate the so-called Kwai galaxy with many different species.

Preboot (up to 1994), perhaps his most famous feat was transmuting the space around Mordru into soil, entombing him. He also used his elemental powers to defeat an army of "chem-men" and an army of corpses resurrected by Mordru.

After Garth ended up in Element Lad's body he possessed both of their powers correct? With Element Lad's powers why couldn't he alter his appearance so he'd look like himself again, even if he was still in a crystaline form.

I wish he had!! My impression was he didn't really know how to use all of Jan's powers at first, other than transmuting things into tromium and/or crystal. But at the very end (TT/Legion special), he was seen altering Violet's bio-electrical aura, so presumably he was well on his way to developing the necessary skills to change his own physiology when they were all blown away by Hypertime.

let's agree to never speak of this again.

Cool, thanks for the info Eryk and Tromium.

Answers to two questions about *hic* Element Lad:

1.Gay.

2.It's a perm.

Perm My arse!!!!!!!!!
It's all natural baby!!!!!!

Here's a Question.

Since the 3-boot Element Lad's transmutations of elements are temporary, Would Roxxas have any motivation to kill off the entire population of Trom?

Maybe for sheer nastiness.

See, I think it's precisely because Waid doesn't intend to kill off the other Tromans that he made the transmutations temporary. Because what kind of sense would the UP economy make if there was a planet where everyone could make as much as you needed of everything? This way, it's useful as a superpower but doesn't ruin game balance.

Attending one of their spiritual services would probably provide adequate motivation to strangle the whole lot of them.

Seriously, though, Jan mentioned hating pirates so maybe there's something else they want on Trom.

I think his most impressive singular transmutation was in the Great Darkness Saga, where he changed the percentage of particulate lead in the *atmosphere of the entire planet* with a gesture, dropping thousands of lead-allergic super-beings to the ground in convulsions...

I've gotten the impression that his time limitation is something that can be lengthened, perhaps even overcome entirely, with practice. In that case, Roxxas could get by on the same motivation he originally had.

No, if Roxxas found out it was the populace of Trom that could transmute elements, even temprarily... he'd still have to kill them.

While Kryptonians have the deadly reaction to kryptonite -- if you remove it from their proximity in time, they can recover. But Daxamite lead poisoning is a chain reaction that isn't stopped by the removal of the lead. So any species that can create lead -- even for a matter of seconds -- would be considered too great a threat to the White Triangle.

In the same story, he also singlehandedly defeated a villain with Superman's powers, by changing rocks into gold kryptonite.