Now that I’ve started off with mini-bios of Superboy & Supergirl, here’s their Post-Crisis stand-ins & successors: Andromeda & Kent Shakespeare!

They- they knew what they were doing with the wording and the body language in that last panel, weren’t they?

Original Laurel Gand:
Andromeda was one of those odd Legionnaires chosen to fill a gap- this gap being Supergirl’s history with the Legion. Introduced as “Laurel Gand”, a Daxamite (named after Laurel Kent, Clark’s future relative ALSO erased by the Crisis), Laurel was rather plucky and very Supergirl-ish at first (wearing a much cooler girl-version of Mon-El’s costume), turning into a semi-grouchy gigantic adult woman (while a younger clone version was running around… Legion “SW6” makes about zero sense to someone just reading synopses online, I’ve discovered). The post-Zero Hour reboot turned her into a much more interesting (but not necessarily in a good way…) bitch-tastic xenophobe who was obsessed with the superiority of her own people. I guess that makes sense given the fact that they all have SUPERMAN POWERS, but whatever.

So yeah, Laurel Gand was created to replace both Supergirl and Laurel Kent- both of whom had been erased following Crisis on Infinite Earths. All of Supergirl’s appearances are thus said to have revolved around this new character- a blonde-haired Daxamite with a peppy personality. She joined the Legion to avenge the deaths of her parents at the hands of the Khunds. Laurel was pretty much only used for this purpose (even sharing Kara’s relationship with Brainiac 5), and turned up after “Five Years Later” married to Rond Vidar, and with a daughter named Lauren.

Like most Legionnaires, she met up with an “SW6” Clone, this one taking the name “Andromeda”. These Clones being sort of an attempt at recapturing the “young heroes” aspect of the Legion, and more of a “dry run” for what would become the Reboot, Andromeda would later be the “Reboot” version of Laurel, who was killed by a terrorist’s bomb during an early mission with a renegade Legion squad fighting the Dominators who’d taken control of Earth. This Legion was soon erased from history.

Reboot-Era Laurel:
Laurel probably got more use in “Reboot”, where she was introduced as a xenophobic “White Triangle” agent- a Daxamite supremacist who was placed on the Legion due to political reasons. As you might imagine, having a racial supremacist/separatist on the LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES was a bit of a problem, particularly when she had trouble touching the icky aliens the team had to fight. She was forced to confront her beliefs by Brainiac 5, who made a version of Valor’s “Anti-Lead” serum that worked on her physiology, and sort of did a “Babyface Turn”, helping out the team a little more. She exiled herself after being thought-dead, started hero-worshipping M’onel, then joined a religious convent. These versions last appeared in Legion of Three Worlds, in the background scenes.

Too bad really, because read-throughs of her personality and the things she’s done make her actually seem interesting (and it is REALLY tough to make me give a crap about the 10,000th DC character with this exact same freaking power-set. DC has more Flying Bricks than Image has Wolverine knock-offs!!). She’s basically Supergirl in the future at first, but her more grouchy adult version has twinges of Power Girl to her without the extreme boob focus, and the xenophobe version was cool until they went “Space Nun” with her. I still like the weird Mon-El-ish costume best.

IMPULSE I (Richard Kent Shakespeare)

Kent was part of the team during the “Five Years Later” era, and I think was meant to be a bit of a stand-in for Superboy during past stories, now that Kal-El no longer adventured in his youth. He left the team quickly, and was only a snippet in the Reboot era. He was created by inker Al Gordon (who was invited, along with most of the Legion creative team, to create some 5YL characters), and was meant to be a descendant of Superman & Lois Lane, but that never got brought up in-story. He’s tough enough to handle The Persuader in his debut, so he’s a bit above most “side” Legionnaires.

The “Reboot” era saw a Kent Shakespeare as a Legion Academy trainee, but this book was itself rebooted quickly. He is, however, seen briefly in a few Post-Infinite Crisis scenes, battling various Legion foes in the background.