That curly hair, man. The first Aqualad has the same fandom.

ELEMENT LAD (Jan Arrah, aka Alchemist, Progenitor)

Silver Age Element Lad:
-Element Lad has been a recurring Legion character since the early days, usually with some form of “E” on his chest, along with a variety of pink. With the ability to change ANYTHING into ANYTHING, he basically got focus every time the writers needed to have one guy just walk in and save the entire day by himself (though he often went under-used for a long time, until Paul Levitz or somebody realized how effective his power could be). Probably the cast of writers either not recognizing how powerful he really was until it was too late, or other writers just going NUTS with the insane capabilities of a guy who could do almost anything- though he never really did it to living beings. He was powerful enough that his entire race was written out in all three versions of continuity, and I get the impression that a lot of writers were a combination of annoyed at having to deal with him, or happy to have him around to just change the elemental composition of Daxam to include more lead once in a while.

His best stuff aside from his Team Leader days in the mid-80s was whenever he encountered the guy who murdered HIS ENTIRE RACE. Yes, there was once an entire PLANET of people with massive Transmutation abilities. Element Lad nearly killed him once, but realized the error of his ways (when Chemical King made it LOOK like Element Lad had offed the bastard), so the guy kept showing up in various states of misery as a result of his crimes, being tortured by the ghosts of the people he’d slain.

Jan is a beloved Legionnaire, and becomes Deputy Leader for several Levitz-era stories, eventually getting a costume that lacks the “E”, but features an arrow pointing from his junk to his face. He engaged in a serious relationship with the Science Police liaison to the Legion, Shvaughn Erin, for a number of years, and was one of the more stoic, serious Legionnaires. He becomes Legion leader once, but quits and goes away to re-center himself. When Shvaughn turns out to be “Sean”, Jan says “what we shared physically was in SPITE of the Profem (sex-changing drugs), not BECAUSE of it”, confirming to many the long-held belief that the pink-clad, curly-coiffed Jan Arrah was a homosexual all along. It reads to me like he was MOSTLY gay, but loved Shvaughn as an “If it’s you, it’s okay” deal, but then was like “oh yay!”. Or he was always asexual, and loved Shvaughn anyways, and didn’t care WHICH sex she was.

This verison of Jan eventually faded out with the others- he’d met his “SW6” clone by this point, but was largely away from the rest of the Legion during the “Five Years Later” era. The clone took the name “Alchemist”.

Later Element Lads:
-His post-Zero Hour “Reboot” days again made him the sole survivor of Trom- here, they had been killed by the Daxamite “White Triangle” terrorists. Traumatized, Jan had become the villainous “Starfinger” (… really?), but eventually joined the Legion. A battle against Mordru sees Jan gain further power, transforming his OWN chemical composition as well as that of other elements. However, the character ends up going “Dark Phoenix”- he’s lost in space for billions of years, going insane and becoming “The Projenitor”. Much like Hank Hall & Hal Jordan did around the same time… DC was kind of in a rut there, Dark Phoenixing all their heroes out. Jan is eventually killed by Live Wire, who also dies in the process- he later reappears using Element Lad’s biological body as a place for his spirit. Before this plot could be resolved, continuity was again rebooted in 2004.

The “Threeboot” era Element Lad has to touch objects in order to transmute them, and is againt the sole survivor of his lost homeworld. This version finds physical fights “Barbaric” and crushes on Triplicate Girl, but is killed by Superboy-Prime in Legion of Three Worlds, getting a Kryptonite rock (which he’d formed around the villain) thrown through his body. He was last seen being sent to save the 21st Century by R.J. Brande.

I guess in the future, kneeing someone square in the balls is an appropriately-romantic response to the gesture of a gift.

SHVAUGHN ERIN (Sean Erin)

-Shvaughn Erin (about the weirdest name EVER… but actually a REAL name!) is the Science Police liaison to the Legion, there mainly to crush on, and later hook up with, Element Lad, a clear Levitz favourite during his run on the book. Erin & Jan had a ton of cute moments just in the few trades I’ve read featuring them (including one where duty keeps them apart right until the very end, when they do the classic ’80s-style “THEY ARE TOTALLY DOING IT AFTER THIS PANEL RIGHT HERE” moment (this was before comics showed things like Batman & Catwoman have freaky fursuiter sex on-panel).

Later revelations in the Rubberface Era (what I call Giffen’s run, because HOLY CRAP does his art-style get weird- he often switches between Perez-Lite & Rubberface Mode in mid-series!) would show that Shvaughn was Transgender, which was rather ahead-of-the-curve for comics (always a hotbed for socially-liberal stuff like that, really), and taking something called “Profem” to remain biologically female. It’s kind of an odd look at how that would be in the future- like, they can build FLIGHT RINGS that communicate for light years of distance, but you gotta take regular pills to look female? Like they can’t just surgery you into whatever you want to look like, regardless of how complicated it is?

Element Lad more or less accepts this, and is like “I’m in love with YOU, not your sex”, making him a higher number on the Kinsey scale than many dudes (though that curly hair shoulda been a clue. Just saying). She eventually became Science Police Chief of Earth post-War between Earth & the Dominators, but then continuity got rebooted and she ended up a side-character who never hooked up with the Reboot version’s Jan. Shvaughn has not appeared in either Threeboot nor anything set after Infinite Crisis.