Legion (Marvel Comics)
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Legion (David Charles Haller) is a Marvel Comics character, created by writer Chris Claremont and artist Bill Sienkiewicz. He first appeared in The New Mutants #25 (August 1985).
David is the mutant son of Charles Xavier and Israeli Holocaust survivor Gabrielle Haller. He suffers from severe mental problems including a form of multiple personality disorder, with each of his personas controlling one of his many superpowers.
David travels back in time to kill the supervillain Magneto in order to give his father the world he has always wanted. David accidentally kills Xavier instead, creating the divergent timeline known as the "Age of Apocalypse". David dies when he restores the Marvel Universe to normal.
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[edit] Character history
Charles Xavier meets Gabrielle Haller while working in an Israeli mental facility where she is one of his patients. Xavier secretly uses his psychic powers to ease the pain of Holocaust survivors institutionalized there. The two have an affair that results in the birth of their son David, in Haifa.
When he is very young, David is involved in a terrorist attack, in which he was the only survivor. The trauma of the situation causes David to unconsciously use his vast powers, incinerating the brains of the terrorists. He simultaneously absorbs the mind of the terrorist leader, Jemail Karami, into his own. As his mind is linked to so many others at the moment of their deaths, the incident renders him catatonic, and he is eventually remanded to the care of Moira MacTaggert at the Muir Island mutant research facility. The trauma that David suffers splinters his personality, with each of the personalities controlling a different psionic power.
Karami struggles for years to separate his consciousness from David's. Using David's telepathic abilities, he re-integrates the multiple personalities into David's core personality. Some of the personalities resist Karami, and two prove to be formidable opponents: Jack Wayne, a swaggering adventurer, who commands David's telekinetic power, and Cyndi, a temperamental, rebellious girl who controls David's pyrokinetic power. Wayne intends to destroy Karami's consciousness to preserve his own independent existence within David's mind. Neither personality succeeds, and Karami, Wayne and Cyndi continue as David's dominant personalities.[1]
During his time at Muir Island, David emerges from his catatonia, and his psionic abilities emerge. Soon after, David is possessed by the Shadow King, who used his powers to psychically increase the amount of hatred in the world and feeds on the malignant energy. The X-Men and X-Factor fight the Shadow King, and as a result, David is left in a coma.
David awakens after a few years with his fractured mind healed and a new goal: He will help his father realize his dream of human-mutant coexistence by killing Magneto, Xavier's greatest opponent, before he has a chance to amass power. He travels 20 years into the past, when Xavier and Magneto are orderlies at the mental hospital. Several X-Men follow him but are unable to prevent David from attacking Magneto. Xavier, saving his friend's life, steps into the path of the attack and dies.
The normal reality ceased to exist, replaced by an alternate timeline known as the Age of Apocalypse, in which Apocalypse has conquered much of the world. With the help of the Age of Apocalypse's X-Men, the time traveler Bishop travels back in time and saves Xavier. He channels the psychic energy back into David, showing him the horrors that he might have caused. The shock of this forced psychic bond kills both Legion and the Age of Apocalypse version of Bishop.
[edit] Powers and abilities
Legion is an immensely powerful telekinetic, telepath, and pyrokinetic. He suffers from multiple personalities. The manifestation of Legion's individual powers are generally associated with his different personalities. The Jack Wayne personality uses telekinesis, Cyndi is a pyrokinetic, and Jemail Karami is a telepath. Before his death, Legion displays the ability to travel through time, alter his appearance, and the creation of a "psychic knife" (these are all psionic abilities). He was also said to possess ten times the psi his father has even when untrained{2}.
[edit] X-Men: Evolution
In the animated series X-Men: Evolution, Legion's backstory remains mostly unchanged, although the David Haller is a fairly normal boy with no visible mutant powers. David is kidnapped by a Scottish goth/punk named Lucas. In reality, Lucas is David. In the series, David's body can somehow change (it's never fully explained) to match whichever of his multiple personalities is dominant, with personality and body shifts sometimes happening at random. It's possible that David is using his strong psionic abilities to alter people's perception of his appearance rather than actually changing. His personalities sometimes appear in two places at once; again, it is possible that he his altering people's perception rather than physical matter. Lucas lured Professor Xavier to Scotland and tricked him into locking David's other personalities away, leaving Lucas free to be himself. It was never explained what Lucas's goals were after this. The show was canceled before his storyline could be further explored.
[edit] Ultimate Marvel
The Ultimate Marvel incarnation of Proteus appears to be an amalgamation of Legion and Proteus. While Ultimate Proteus possess the Classic Proteus' powers and has the same mother, Moira MacTaggert, he's also named David and his father is Charles Xavier. He also has his father's last name.
[edit] Trivia
The name "Legion" is taken from that of a Biblical demon. The biblical Legion was supposed to be several demons inhabiting one human body, and is mentioned in Mark 5:9, when asked his name by Jesus the demoniac replies; "I am Legion, for we are many." David's name "Legion" comes from his multiple personality disorder; a "legion of personalities".
Legion has also been described as both autistic and schizophrenic by a number of writers.
[edit] Footnotes
2. The Uncanny X-men #320, Legion Quest Part 1
