Lar Gand

Lar Gand, known also variously as Mon-El, Valor, or M'Onel, is a fictional character in DC Comics' universe who is affiliated with the Legion of Super-Heroes, Superboy, and later Superman.

Lar Gand is a Daxamite, an alien from the planet Daxam. He landed on Krypton and was given a map to Earth. He then went into suspended animation. After a few years he landed on Earth and met Superboy. Although Gand suffered from amnesia upon landing on Earth, he and Superboy became good friends. Under Earth's yellow sun he had powers like Superman's; this led Superboy to believe that Gand might be his heretofore unknown long-lost brother. Superboy named the amnesiac alien "Mon-El": "Mon" because he landed on Earth on a Monday, and "El" for Superboy's own Kryptonian family name (a fanciful justification allowing the writers to associate the "Man of Steel" nickname with the newly-invented monel alloy).

However, Daxamites are affected by lead in the same way as Kryptonians are affected by Kryptonite. After heavy lead exposure, "Mon-El" was dying, so Superboy transported him into the extradimensional Phantom Zone until a cure could be found. Gand spent one thousand years as a poisoned, insubstantial, telepathic phantom, able to watch everything that happened in the outside world, but unable to affect it in the slightest.

In the 30th century Saturn Girl created a temporary antidote to this poisoning allowing him to be released from the Zone for brief periods of time. During this period he was considered an honorary Legionnaire. Brainiac 5 later created a permanent antidote, based on Saturn Girl's serum, with the addition of Kryptonite.

After passing his Legion test (including inventing flight ring metal) under the name "Marvel Boy", Mon-El then joined the Legion of Super-Heroes, using the "Mon-El" moniker Superboy had given him, and later married fellow Legionnaire Shadow Lass.

Following the Crisis on Infinite Earths, Gand's history was unchanged, except that his encounter with Superboy took place in a pocket universe created by the Time Trapper, a mysterious being living at the end of the universe, as Superboy was no longer part of the DCU Superman's history.

Valor

Following a number of "rewrites" of Legion history by various incarnations of the Time Trapper, Lar Gand replaced the non-existent Superboy as the Legion's inspiration.

In his new history, Lar Gand was inspired by his father's sacrifice in the crossover story Invasion! to become a hero. He briefly joined L.E.G.I.O.N., where it was Vril Dox II who cured his lead poisoning.

Gand left L.E.G.I.O.N after a disagreement and travelled to Earth. He played a significant part in the Eclipso crossover, in which Superman gave him the name "Valor". After this began relocating the humans the Dominators from Invasion! had been experimenting on. These humans all had metahuman abilities, and he intended the planets he "seeded" with them to be the first line of defence should the Dominators return. Not very coincidentally, these were the planets the Legionnaires would come from. These events were described in his own comic Valor which lasted for 23 issues. After #12 however, things became complex.

Prior to Valor #12, Gand's history in the Legion was explained thus: the villainess Glorith, who in the new history was acting as the Time Trapper, was attracted to him. When he rebuffed her, he was cast into the "Buffer Zone" that Bgtzlians such as Phantom Girl use to "phase". He was discovered by Phantom Girl after 1000 years in the Zone, and released to great acclaim by the United Planets. He was, after all, practically a religious figure to these people. After this, his history with the Legion was assumed to have continued much as before, including his marriage to Shadow Lass.

Glorith had continued altering the timeline, inadvertently recreating the original Time Trapper in the process. Travelling back to when Lar Gand was a young man in another attempt to win his affection, she accidentally caused his death. She attempted to undo the damage this caused history by making a duplicate Valor from the Legion's time take his other self's place, but this was unsuccessful. This was one of the many destabilisations of the timestream that eventually led to Zero Hour, and the "Legion Reboot".

M'Onel

After the Reboot, Valor reappeared in Superboy #17. He was amnesiac, but had vague memories of his time with L.E.G.I.O.N. and the events of his own series. Tricked into a fight with Superboy (the modern clone version), he discovers Dox's anti-lead serum is wearing off. To save him Superboy places him in the "Stasis Zone", an extradimensional space used by the minor supervillain Loophole. (It was later confirmed that the Stasis Zone, the Buffer Zone, and the Phantom Zone were all different names for the same dimension.) Once again, he remained there for a thousand years, before being released by the Legion, and injected with Brainiac 5's improved version of his ancestor's serum. To avoid the religious fervor his return would cause, the Legion kept secret the fact this new Legionnaire was the legendary Valor. He took the name "M'Onel", which, he claimed, was Martian for "the Wanderer".