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Laurel Gand, Andromeda was a Daxamite member of the Legion of Super-Heroes, with all the powers of Superman. She was introduced to the team during their initial draft, but later had to leave due to her conflicting relationship with the White Triangle.
Laurel Gand spent most of her life in a White Triangle community, being indoctrinated in the "horrors" of interspecies co-operation before the Triangle's political clout led her to become the Daxamite representative in the Legion. Away from Daxam's red sun, she gained powers similar to Superman's, but the race-wide hypersensitivity of Daxamites to lead that meant even minuscule amounts could prove fatal even to a powered-up Daxamite, forcing her to wear a transuit at all times. This did not trouble her, since it meant she never had to actually touch any non-Daxamites.
Her Triangle-derived beliefs hampered her effectiveness as a Legionnaire, thanks to her reluctance to physically engage with any enemies, but the real problems started after she let several Triangle members go after a mugging, shortly after which they beat and almost killed Triad. Angered more for their defiance of her than for the beating, when she was ordered away to prevent the Composite Man gaining her powers, she flew after them. Immediately, they tore her transuit and directly exposed her to lead, and she barely managed to turn them over to the Science Police before crashing through the walls of Legion HQ.
While Brainiac 5 worked on devising an anti-lead serum, he confronted her about her beliefs, and after discovering the serum Vril Dox, his direct ancestor, had created for Valor and tailoring it to her genetic structure to allow it to work properly on her (much to her surprise, as she had been taught that all members of the same race were identical), he forced her to confront the fact that he wasn't her inferior before giving her the serum. While this was happening, however, Shrinking Violet discovered a White Triangle necklace in her room and connected it to the group which had assaulted Triad and destroyed Trom, telling the rest of the team.
Confined to quarters after an unsuccessful attempt by Cosmic Boy to have her removed from the team, she used her super-senses to see Ambassador Roxxas gloating, but he managed to bully her into giving him the anti-lead serum. Taking it himself and giving it to four other Daxamites, they proceeded to cause mass destruction on Earth. When Andromeda herself confronted Roxxas over what he was doing and had made her do, she was almost defeated when Violet began thrashing around in his head, before coming out and telling Andromeda to take him down. As she pummelled him repeatedly, he destroyed the covering of an "atomic furnace", and both were thought to have died in the resulting inferno (causing Brainiac 5 severe depression). Only Cosmic Boy was told that she had survived and voluntarily exiled herself to Planet Hell.
Later, she was brought out of this exile by Live Wire after Cosmic Boy had told him where she was as part of a way to build up a "Legion Rescue Squad", and she was awed by Valor, himself being another member. However, she declined to rejoin the Legion after the Squad had served its purpose, preferring to head off into deep space.
Although Andromeda was erased from history along with the Legion and her entire future because of the Infinite Crisis,[1] she reappears as a regular member of the Legion during Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds.[2] She appears to be an acting member of the Legion again, alongside Legionnaires who would never have otherwise been chronologically teammates with her, such as the second Kid Quantum.[3]Like all Daxamites, lead is anathema to Andromeda. Protracted exposure to lead will ultimately prove fatal.
![]() Legion of Super-Heroes member |
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