Blog

Imagine having immeasurable power to control just about any facet of reality. Now imagine you can’t really control them. David Haller has this problem for most of his life. Near Infinite power with near infinite problems, kind of sums up his life. How did the guy get this way? Let’s find out.

David Charles Haller is the son of Gabrielle Haller and Charles “Professor X” Xavier. David grew up not knowing his father, his father didn’t even know he existed, and he lived with his mother as a diplomat of Israel. Gabrielle’s job made her the target of terrorists and they attacked them in their home. David was scared and this was when his mutant power activated. David destroyed the terrorists with telekinesis, but he also activated his telepathy which caused him to feel what his attackers were feeling as he destroyed them. He also absorbed their leader’s, Jemail Karami, mind so now he housed his mind and Karami’s at once, this would begin David’s splitting of his mind to maintain control over his powers.

David would enter a catatonic state and Karami would learn that he was now in control of David’s telepathy and would use it to explore the boy’s psyche and realized he and the people Karami was trying to kill were good people. He would do his best to help repair David’s mind as he laid catatonic in a hospital. Karami would discover two new personalities, Jack and Cyndi, who each controlled one of David’s other psychic abilities. Jack controlled telekinesis and Cyndi controlled pyrokinesis. Each was its own distinct personality with Jack being an arrogant adventurer and Cyndi being a rebellious teen.

David was in his late teens and moved to Muir Island to be helped by those who specialized with mutants, particularly Moira MacTaggert, who was an associate with Charles Xavier. While Karami and Jack waged war in David’s mind over if he could be healed by Karami or controlled by Jack. This caused David’s powers to begin interacting with the world and two of MacTaggert’s friends had their minds taken into David’s mind. Moira would call in Xavier and he’d bring his New Mutants team along with him to help. Just before leading the team into David’s mind, Xavier would learn that David was his son.

Once in David’s mind, the team would be tricked by Jack into helping him try and rid Karami from the shared mindscape along with many of the other personalities cropping up. Danielle Moonstruck was able to help save Karami and thus David and everyone else trapped in his mind by getting everyone who had a body back to it. All that remained were Karami, Jack, and Cyndi, as well as David who’s mind was still that of his 10 year old self from when his powers activated.

Now with David back in control of his body, he’d find that he would have to lend control of his body over to whoever was in charge of one of his powers. So when David uses his telekinesis to try and save some of the New Mutants team, he’ll then end up giving his body over to the Jack personality who takes control and revels in it.  This would be the main problem for poor David for a while until the villainous Shadow king, a powerful enemy of his father’s and the world, came to possess David and thus becoming another resident in his mindscape.

At this time David is pushed back as the Shadow King takes over and begins to rain hell on Xavier and the world. Vengeance is his goal and using David as the weapon to destroy the world to just really rub it in that Xavier will likely have to kill his son if he wishes to stop the Shadow King. So when David is physically injured the Shadow King is weak and they are able to stop him but David is left in a coma with Xavier and other telepathy able to find his psyche anywhere.

David would eventually return to his body and let people believe he was in a coma so he could secretly enter his father’s dreams to convince him to kill Magneto. David was the only personality left so he was in full control now and believed in his father’s vision of a world of peace between humans and mutants but found Magneto to be roadblock. Xavier disagreed even in dream form and David revealed he was alive and woke to escape the hospital he was in.

During his time being controled by the Shadow King, David had killed the mutant precog, Destiny. Now Destiny spurned David on with visions of the future causing David to do what he could to save thenworld. When you can do nearly anything, that makes one’s attempts at saving the world all the more dangerous if not handled with care. David would go back in time with the intent to kill Magneto before he could cause so much damage to everyone but accidentally killed his father instead and created the alternate timeline known as the Age of Apocalypse in which there never was an X-Men. Eventually reality would be reset to David’s father being alive once more but David disappeared during this reset.

To recover, David had forged many new personalities to help bring him back, including Jack. He was found and rescued by a woman named Marci Sabol who took care of him until one of his new murderous personalities killed her and absorbed her. Magik, who had threatened Jack and other hostile personalities before finally made good on her promise and destroyed Jack to help save David. David was brought to the X-Club, the science team of the X-Men to help rid David of the excess and dangerous personalities. Unfortunatley, to protect the personalities a new more powerful one was formed to make it harder for telepathy to assist David so he was sent to work with Merzah the Mystic to learn self mastery of his powers and personalities.

Able to better command himself, David would defeat a dangerous personality and save the lives of mutant twins who were imprisoned by an anti-mutant organization and found a kinship with them in a parental sense. Knowing the X-Men would train the children even at a young age to be warriors, he did not wish for them to be adopted by his father’s school. This would put him at odds with the X-Men and he’d face off with the powerful telepath, Blindfold, Ruth Aldine. Eventually the children would choose to join the X-Men while David and Ruth would spark up a relationship. David would help her deal with her murderous brother while David developed a new powerful personality to help him keep the others in line. David was now dedicated to being proactive instead of reactive like his father and using visions frim the future he’d realize it was best to wipe himself from existence but hiding out within Ruth’s psyche, waiting to be needed once more.

There you have it! Legion is one of, if not the most, powerful mutants and possibly all characters in the Marvel universe. He’s recently made his small screen debut by having a television series with a somewhat more streamlined life story but thinges still get pretty out there. Psychic stuff can get real wild. It’s unclear if David will ever jump to the big screen or if any of the big screen mutants will cameo on the show. David will likely get some tweaks if and when he returns to be more in line with his television counterpoint. See you next time!

Suggested Reading
New Mutants #25
New Mutants Vol. 3
X-Men: Legacy
X-Men Omega

Dr. Bustos
drbustos@comicattack.net