Art by Paul Davidson
- Name: David Haller
- Code Names: Legion
- First Appearance: New Mutants #25 (Mar ’85)
- Powers: A different power for every personality
- Teams Affiliation: X-Men
About
People thrive for control. The unknown is a dark expanse and anything we can to shine a light on it matters. It makes us feel safe because we want to be the ones responsible for our own outcomes. We want to make our own luck. Having control of a situation is one thing, but having control of our own bodies? That’s something we take for granted. For many it’s a recurring nightmare to be trapped in a body they can no longer control. To be like Legion and have a mouth, but be unable to scream.
Portrayed by Dan Stevens in Legion
David Haller was born in Israel to Gabriel Haller, a Holocaust survivor and ambassador, and a father of no importance, at least not to him. His mother was assigned to Paris, alongside David’s godfather and David grew. He was a bright boy, if a little shy, but he had a loving family and a fun life. That existence was threatened by bad men with Uzis and a vendetta against the Israeli nation. It all happened too fast, he heard the crack on gunshots, felt the hard floor, and saw his godfather Daniel push him out of the way. His next sight was Daniel crumpled on the ground next to him, still except for the leaking blood. It triggered something in him and almost instinctively he lashed out with his mind. The room fell silent as a tomb and the gunmen lay still on the ground dead across from a catatonic David.
Art by Bill Sienkiewicz and Glynis Oliver
His mind was cracked, shattered into hundreds, maybe thousands of segments. The years past but David couldn’t cope. He body was moved, placed in the care of Moira MacTaggert on Muir Island, but he remained comatose. Inside his head, a war was being waged, a war for control. There was Cyndi, the pyromaniac who didn’t need a lighter to get her fix, Jack Wayne, the rough riding adventurer with the ability to move things with his mind, and Jemail, the telepathic terrorist. Each of these aspects of his personality worked for their own means. Jemail holed himself up behind a giant black dome and got to his work while Jack and Cyndi looked for a way in. Behind the walls of the dome, Jemail went to work trying to repair David’s fragile psyche, his telepathy allowed him to feel the poor boy’s fear and gave him a sense of empathy. Cyndi just wanted to cause chaos and Jack, well, Jack wanted control over the whole mind.
Art by Bill Sienkiewicz and Glynis Oliver
The battle caused his mind to absorb Charles Xavier and his New Mutants. They were met by Jack and Cyndi who saw the mutants as their key to winning. They stormed the dome and were shocked to see Jemail trying to fix Legion’s mind. Wayne revealed his true colors and the New Mutants were able to defeat him. Awake for the first time in the real world, Legion saw his father, Charles Xavier. Charles was working in Israel years ago when he met Gabby while providing psychological care to Holocaust survivors. Though unethical, they fell into a whirlwind romance that was over almost as soon as it began. Gabby never told the boy.
Art by Bill Sienkiewicz and Glynis Oliver
David remained on Muir Island to heal and acclimate to the world, and he continued to get better. That is until the Island came under siege by the Reavers. With the X-Men presumed dead, Banshee and Moira enlisted every mutant on the island to fight as the new Muir Island X-Men, Legion included. However, Jack and Cyndi began to slip into control when Legion started to use their abilities. Their reckless, impulsive, and sometimes maleficent behavior caused the deaths of Sunder, Stonewall, and Destiny, but the conflicted Legion was able to keep his role in the deaths secret. His internal struggled was heightened when the Shadow King covertly made David his host as he took over and corrupted the island.
The Shadow King’s possession had an unexpected side effect and began to repair David’s shattered mind, and David desired that most of all. He didn’t stop the Shadow King and worked with him as he controlled more mutants on Muir Island. The combined might of the X-Men and X-Factor was barely enough to stop the assault but it came at the cost of reducing David to a coma again. His father, distraught at what happened to his son, sent him home to Tel Aviv, to his mother, to recover.
Art by Steve Butler and Joe Rosas
He awoke some time later, free from the Shadow King but retaining the whole mind he was given. Seeing clearly for the first time, he decided to make his father’s dream a reality. Ever since his mind was restored his powers were manifesting more and more, and David discovered he had the power to manipulate time and reality itself. He traveled back in time to kill Magneto, the greatest stumbling block on to the road to Xavier’s dream. He didn’t anticipate the friendship that Charles and Eric shared (having not watched a single X-Men movie), nor did he expect his father to take the fatal blow intended for Magneto. This caused an apocalyptic splinter timeline where everyone had amazing hair but the world was kinda horrible otherwise. The Bishop of that world was able to go back and stop Legion from killing his father but is caused Bishop and Legion to be shunted into the multiversal no-time known as Limbo.
Art by Roger Curz
The event obliterated David’s once whole mind. All the healing was for not and his brain was now the battleground for thousands of personalities, each with their own abilities. In Limbo, he found the realms one-time ruler, Magik, who offered to bring him back to reality if he would do one favor for her. He agreed and was found in Colorado by the reformed New Mutants who took him back to Utopia to recover. Led by Dr. Nemesis, the X-Club was able to help Legion control his mind, imprisoning the rogue personalities and gaining the ability to take their power without losing control.
Art by Nathan Fox
From then on, Legion found balance. He was in control of his personalities, they weren’t in control of him. He was instrumental in stopping the Nimrod Sentinel attack on Utopia, after some coaxing and statements of pride from his father. He fulfilled his promise to Magik and effortlessly destroyed the Cthulu-like Elder Gods that had haunted her for her whole life. Nemesis even found a new way to treat him by killing off his excess personalities, though not all of David wanted to be cured. A new personality created an alternate reality around the island of Utopia where David was a hero. He didn’t want to give up this life but he knew that the right thing was to return the world back to the way it was and absorbed the personality.
Legion eventually retreated to the Himalayan mountains to train with a mutant shaman. He had his many aspects like The Origamist, the Chronodon, Skinsmith, and Non-Newtonian Annie trapped behind bars. He was in control. That is until Cyclops murdered his father and the psychic backlash fired his mind. Soon his personalities ran wild, overtaking David’s body and forcing him to hid in his own mind, but David found strength. He defeated one of his personalities, Tyrannix the Abominoid, and its’ ability for his own. He crossed the globe, controlling his divergent personalities and finding out, at his core, who he was. When the X-Men confronted him, calling him Legion, David had had enough. He was more than his disability, he wasn’t a group of divergent personalities, he was David. Empowered by the revelation he took back his mind.
Art by Jorge Molina and Rachelle Rosenburg
It was about this time that David started dating the mutant Blindfold. She could see the future and knew that David would one day lose all control and begin destroying the world. She also saw that she was the one to spot him. As much as the two lovers fought against the future, David still lost it. Having the greatest of power gave him the ultimate sense of responsibility and the stress of that, the stress of living up to his father, was too much. He realized that he couldn’t control his illness, that was impossible even for him, but he could find a way to manage it. David just happened to choose the nuclear option. He wrote himself out of existence rather than live in a world where he couldn’t rule himself. One sliver, one memory remained inside the mind of Blindfold, and she resolved to carry out David’s legacy.
Art by Tan Eng Haut, Craig Yueng, and Jose Villarubia
Must Read
Look, the early stuff that Claremont and Sienkiewicz did with the character was good, so was the stuff Zeb Wells and Mike Carey did with him, but what Si Spurrier was able to create was next level. In his run on X-Men: Legacy he elevated the character to an art form. He took flawed, half-concepts and grew them into a masterful twenty-four issues of comics. He made David not only sympathetic but admirable even in his flaws. There is not a Legion TV show (especially one with as masterful a creator as Noah Hawley) without this run. Find it on Marvel Unlimited or in omnibus form.
Art by Mike Del Mundo
Ranking
So I like Legion a lot, but most of that comes from Si’s run. Up until then, he was just a plot device with a face. He was a guy they could rely on to create an alternate reality or hand wave problems. No longer, because Si made him a living being with aspirations. After scanning the list, he goes above Arcade, a character with the depth of a puddle, but below Dazzler who was been in more consistent runs her entire career. That puts Legion in at number 23 in the Xavier Files.
If you are as excited for FX’s Legion as I am make sure you subscribe to my new podcast Legion Quest. Newsrama reviewer Matt Sibley and I are going to be talking about the show every week after it airs on February 8th. Our first episode is up now so go on and give it a listen here.
Legion was requested by Drew J. Thanks for the request! If you have a request just submit it at the bottom of this article and I will add it to the list that currently stretches well into 2018! If you want to cut to the front of the line, we have a Patreon if you want to support it and get a line cutting reward for just a $1 pledge. We just hit our 2nd goal and now I guess I am reviewing X-Books so that will be coming soon. Oh and we also have exclusive physical items so check those out!
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Next week we continue the February onslaught of media tie-ins! See you then!
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Zachary Jenkins runs ComicsXF and is a co-host on the podcast “Battle of the Atom.” Shocking everyone, he has a full and vibrant life outside of all this.
