Introduction: History and common features of all versions
Pre "Crisis on infinite Earths" Lar Gand (Mon-El, Bob Cobb), Superboy's big brother (1961-1985).
Post "Crisis On Infinite Earths" / Pre Mordru-verse Lar Gand (Pocket Universe Mon-El, Bob Cobb, 1985-1991).
Mordru-verse (1991).
Post Mordru-verse/Pre "D.O.A" Lar Gand (Valor, 1991-1994).
Dead On Arrival / End of an Era / Zero Hour-- Crisis in Time (1994)
Post "D.O.A"/Pre "End of an Era" Lar Gand (Valor, 1994).
Post "Zero Hour - Crisis in time" Lar Gand (Valor, M'Onel, 1994 - today).
Recent and future Appearances
  Kurt Busiek on Valor and End of an Era 

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Lar Gand: 1) Pre-Crisis, 2) post CRISIS pre DOA/Zero Hour (L.E.G.I.O.N.) , 3) post CRISIS pre DOA/Zero Hour (after L.E.G.I.O.N.) 
4) SW6 Valor and post zero Hour Valor, 5) M'Onel, 6) At the end of "Foundations".

Introduction

Lar Gand is a historical character of DC comics who is introduced the first time in Superboy #89, June 1961, as "Mon-El". Mon-El has a clear editorial history up to 1985, when the chaos begins. His story becomes rather convoluted, and even an expert in space-time paradoxes would have his head aching in trying to figure out "what actually transpired".
Lar's life has seen a series of key events whose causes and links have been changed several times, whenever the timeline has been redesigned by all-powerful entities who altered the past, thus changing all history.

The common elements of all versions of Lar history are roughly the following.

1. Lar's home planet is planet Daxam.
2. Planet Daxam orbits a red sun. As a consequence, when Daxamites move under a yellow sun, they gain superman-like powers, as Kryptonians do. In particular, on Earth, Daxamites acquire superman-like powers.
3. However, when under a red sun, daxamites are normal human beings, with no meta-human abilities.
4. Daxamites are allergic to lead. If they live in an environment where lead is present, they die of lead-poisoning after some time. In particular, when entering Earth's atmosphere, they rapidly die of lead-poisoning.
5. Lar leaves his home-planet Daxam, where he has been living all his life, when he is still rather young, actually a teen-ager.
6. Lar arrives on earth in an amnesiac state some time after leaving Daxam.
7. Lar is banished into a dimension where he will live in a ghostly state for one thousand years without ageing, but with the possibility to look into the normal reality all the time. He can see and hear people, but cannot be heard or seen by anybody. This experience will drive Lar into half-madness.
8. Lar is rescued after one thousand years of solitude by the legion of superheroes in the 30th century, when he is extracted from the phantom/stasis/twilight zone and comes back to a solid body and a fully living existence once again.
9. Lar joins the legion of superheroes and has a long career as a legionnaire in the 30th century.

Pre "Crisis on infinite Earths" Lar Gand (Mon-El, Bob Cobb), Superboy's big brother (1961-1985).
Post "Crisis On Infinite Earths" / Pre Mordru-verse Lar Gand (Pocket Universe Mon-El, Bob Cobb, 1985-1991).
Mordru-verse (1991).
Post Mordru-verse/Pre "D.O.A" Lar Gand (Valor, 1991-1994).
Dead On Arrival / End of an Era / Zero Hour-- Crisis in Time (1994)
Post "D.O.A"/Pre "End of an Era" Lar Gand (Valor, 1994).
Post "Zero Hour - Crisis in time" Lar Gand (Valor, M'Onel, 1994 - today).
Recent and future Appearances
  Kurt Busiek on Valor and End of an Era 

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Pre "Crisis on infinite Earths" Lar Gand (Mon-El, Bob Cobb), Superboy's big brother (1961-1985).

Lar is travelling in space, but at some point finds himself lost. He lands on Krypton, where Jor-El gives him a stellar map and directs him towards Earth.  Lar re-enters his spaceship and keeps on travelling towards Earth in suspended animation. In the meantime, Krypton explodes but before dying in the explosion Jor-El sends his little child Kal-El to Earth with a roket. Krypton dies. The roket lands in Smalville, Kansas, and Kal-El is found  and adopted as a baby by the Kents. Kal is given the earth name of Clark Kent. Clark shows immediately superman-like powers, and growing into a teen-ager he assumes the role of Superboy. In the meantime Lar has been travelling in suspended animation and finally reaches the planet Earth (this is actually Earth 1) while Clark Kent is still a teen-ager, and discovers that, in the alien environment of Earth, he possesses super-powers identical to Superboy's. However, Lar is in an amnesiac state. Since he possesses the same powers as Superboy and his rocket incorporates Kryptonian design, Superboy thinks Lar might come from Krypton as well, having survived Krypton's explosion in some way, as Superboy himself did. Superboy believes Lar to be a brother of his. Since Superboy's Kryptonian family name is "El" and he finds Lar on monday, he gives the name "Mon-El" to the amnesiac Lar, and adopts him with the Kent family in Smallville, under the identity of "Bob Cobb". After a time, Superboy tricks Lar with a faked kryptonite (lethal to Kryptonians) that is actually painted lead. However, to Superboy's amazement, Mon-El becomes really sick. Deadly sick. The fact is that Mon-El is Daxamite, not Kryptonian, and to Daxamites lead is as fatal as Kryptonite is to Kryptonians. So what had to be an half innocent joke turns into a potential tragedy. To halt the physical deterioration wrought by the lead poisoning and thus save Mon-El's life, Superboy projects his friend into the Phantom Zone. He will remain there unaging, until the thirtieth century A.D., when, thanks to a special "antidote serum" developed by Brainiac 5 of the Legion of Super--Heroes, he will be released from the Phantom Zone permanently to assume a regular role in the Legion of Super-Heroes. The LSH is a team of super-powered teen-agers living in the 30th century and whose creation has been inspired by the hystorical deeds of Superboy himself in the 20th century. After being rescued from the phantom zone, Lar has his new life in the 30th century, where he frequently meets his old friend Superboy who often joins the Legion through time-travel. Lar starts a long career as a superhero in the Legion and, after a while, marries Tasmia Mallor (Shadow Lass of the Legion). They keep on working together with the Legion.

Therefore, in this original version, Lar arrives on Earth because he was there directed by Superman's father Jor-El. Lar is sent into the Phantom Zone by Superboy, the Superman to be, to avoid death by lead poisoning. Superboy and the Legion, including the rescued Lar, meet often in the future because Superboy often time-travels one thousand years in the future into the Legion time.

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Post "Crisis On Infinite Earths" / Pre Mordru-verse Lar Gand (Pocket Universe Mon-El, Bob Cobb, 1985-1991).

The chaos begins here, in 1985. The Antimonitor and the Spectre, together with heroes and villains from the whole fifty years history of several publishing companies, battle at the dawn of time in the climax of the gigantic crossover "Crisis on infinite Earths", one of the most impressive comicbook series of all times, with hundreds of characters, parallel worlds.... The Antimonitor is trying to redesign history to his advantage, and the Spectre is trying to stop him. In the end, a bunch of parallel universes in the multiverse collapse in one universe, a single universe incorportating elements from several of the previous "parallel" universes.
In this new order Superboy never existed, since Clark Kent waited until adulthood before going public with his superpowers. There was never a Clark Kent-Superboy in this new unique time-line. Now superboy is not Superman when he was a boy in Smallville in the past ("Kryptonian Superboy"), but a young attempted clone of Superman living in the present of the DC universe ("Kon-El Superboy"). Therefore, the story of Lar had to change. Moreover, since the Legion was originally inspired by the Kryptonian Superboy, Legion history had to be re-arranged as well. The remedy was based on the character named Time Trapper. The Time Trapper is a personification of Entropy, who rules at the end of time. The Trapper has studied several potential timelines, and has observed that without intervention the Mage Mordru would gain control of the Galaxy in the 30th century, creating an order that would eventually prolong the life of the universe and retard the arrival of final entropy. Therefore the Trapper plans to change the time-line to avoid Mordru's rise, so as to favour the arrival of final entropy. He does this by creating a pocket universe, an universe identical to the main universe but with a few details changed. In this pocket universe many events happened exactly in the same way as in the Earth-1 universe pre-"crisis". In this pocket universe, differently from the new "true" universe, Clark Kent was Superboy. The pocket universe contains only two inhabited planets, Earth and Krypton. The Legion is part of the True Universe, but when travelling into the past, the Legion would be diverted by the Time Trapper  into the pocket universe past, not into the true universe past (where there is no Superboy). Thus, Superboy can still be an inspiration to the Legion, and Mon-El is now part of the pocket universe as well. Since there is no inhabited Daxam in the pocket universe, Mon-El probably leaves Daxam of the true universe, but is then diverted by the Time Trapper and lands in Krypton of the Pocket Universe. There he meets Jor-El and everything proceeds as in the pre-crisis continuity. The pocket-universe Lar will re-enter the true universe when rescued by the Legion in the 30th century. Superboy enters the true universe each time he time-travels  into the future, since the Time Trapper diverts him in the true universe's 30th century. Differently, Superboy would travel into the 30th century of his (pocket) universe. This machinery allows the Time Trapper to have a Legion of Superheroes inspired by the Kryptonian superboy in the universe post crisis. The Legion opposes Mordru and succeeds in stopping Mordru's rise to power. Eventually, in a story involving the Pocket universe Superboy, the Legion and the the true universe Superman (who was never Superboy), the Time trapper plan is discovered. The first meeting of the true universe Superman with the pocket universe Superboy is interesting. At the end of this story Superboy dies in his brother Lar's arms after saving the pocket universe earth. Some time later the poket universe earth is destroyed in a story of  Superman. Some time later, Mon-El confronts the Time Trapper in the remains of the pocket universe. The Time Trapper informs Mon-El that if he is destroyed, the Legion will cease to exist, since without the Trapper all the plans to stop Mordru and create the Legion will not have been implemented any longer. But Lar takes a chance, thinking of all the people and worlds who have suffered and will suffer because of the Trapper, and delivers the final blow....
and
    everything
                turns
                     white

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Mordru-verse (1991).

Now the timeline has redesigned itself with the disappearance of the Time Trapper. Now in this new reality without the Trapper manipulation the Legion does not exist, and nobody has stopped Mordru from taking the power. Now Mordru rules supreme across the galaxy in the 30th century. However, some people who would have been legionnaires in the previous time-line are now opposing Mordru. With the help of these rebels Glorith, who in the previous time-line had been an enemy of the legion related to the Time Trapper, casts a spell to alter the time-line once again, so that the Legion could exist and oppose Mordru once more. Glorith does this because she hopes to become the Time Trapper of the new reality. The spell works and once again
    everything
                turns
                     white

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Post Mordru-verse/Pre "D.O.A" Lar Gand (Valor, 1991-1994).

Now the timeline has redesigned itself with the Time Trapper replaced by Glorith. In this timeline there never was a pocket universe, a Kryptonian Superboy never existed at all, nor did Mon-El exist at all. Therefore the Legion inspiration has to come from some other source than Kal-El/Superboy, and Mon-El cannot exist any longer. There has to be a different history for Lar Gand. Previously, Mon-El had been the pocket-universe transferred Lar Gand. Now, the pocket universe related  Lar Gand no longer was, so that Lar Gand needed an history occurring in the real universe. In this new timeline Lar leaves Daxam for Earth because his father died in helping Earth against an alien invasion. Lar is curious about the planet for which his father gave his life, and leaves into space with the purpose of exploring the Galaxy and to finally reach Earth. Lar reaches Earth and after a period of adventures in space with L.E.G.I.O.N. (not to be confused with the Legion of Superheroes), an interplanetary private police force or sort of, settles on his own. During his period with L.E.G.I.O.N. Vril Dox gives Lar an anti-lead serum that prevents Lar from lead poisoning.
Lar is dubbed "Valor" by Superman after a particularly heroic deed in a story involving several heroes of the DC universe.  In his time in the 20th century Lar manages to halt a second Dominion attempt to invade Earth. After stopping the Dominion attempt, Lar organizes the seeding of several worlds in the galaxy with the humans who survived the Dominion camps and who had developed meta-human abilities partly as a consequence of the Dominators' experiments. A network of planets develops, many of which will form the 30th century United Planets where the Legion of Super--Heroes will be born. These planets will have to keep the Dominators at bay. Thus Lar Gand/Valor becomes a legendary, almost religious figure of the 20th century. At this point Glorith shows up and says she had been maneuvering events so that Lar could become the legendary figure he now was, and suggests Lar joins her in the 30th century to rule the Galaxy. Lar refuses, and as a punishment Glorith banishes him in the twilight zone in the 20th century for one thousand years. In this timeline it is Lar/Valor who has been the inspiration for the Legion, who was formed in the 30th century to mirror the legendary ideals and deeds of the 20th century hero. Lar is rescued in the 30th century by the Legion whose creation he has inspired, and joins the Legion. Afterwards, everything follows roughly the same events as in the old pre-crisis timeline, with some adjustments due to the absence of Superboy. Again, Lar has a long career with the Legion, marries Tasmia Mallor and so on.

So in this timeline Lar leaves Daxam because of his father's death on Earth, Lar has no connection with Krypton, never met any Kryptonian Superboy (although he met and even fought Superman several times), never was Bob Cobb in Smallville, has stopped a Dominion invasion of Earth, has become a legendary hero/saint named Valor, and has been banished into the twilight/phantom zone by Glorith as a punishment for not obeying her.

As if the situation had not been messy enough at this point... now the real mess begins. One day in the 30th century, when legionnaires are adults and are fighting to free Earth from a new invasion, a younger version of the legion wakes up in an abandoned Dominion laboratory in Metropolis, Earth. Are these clones of the older Legion? It will be revealed later on that these are copies of the legionnaires, which have been split by the original legionnaires in the past years of the 30th century and have been put here by the Time Trapper. Indeed, contrary to what had been believed, the Time Trapper still exists in this reality, although Glorith has attempted to replace his role after the Mordruverse. However, the new group of young (copies of) legionnaires, called SW6 Batch, includes a copy of the legionnaire Lar Gand, who will be called from now on "SW6 Valor". To sum up, we have now an adult Valor in the 30th century, who was rescued by the Legion several years earlier form the twilight zone and who is married to Tasmia Mallor, and a younger SW6 Valor in the same period, who is a copy of the adult Valor taken from his past in the 30th century, taken probably slightly after he had been rescued by the Legion. Some time after exiting the dominion laboratory, the SW6 Valor meets the adult 30th century Valor...

The SW6 Valor and the adult Valor cooperate against the dominators...

Shortly after the SW6 Lar settles to discover the origin of the SW6 Batch (he does not know it has been a Time Trapper's creation) and vanishes after starting time-traveling by means of a time-bubble...

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Dead On Arrival / End of an Era / Zero Hour-- Crisis in Time (1994)

In the "meantime", Glorith is messing up with the 20th century Lar Gand in the past. Glorith has accelerated Lar's lead poisoning, wearing off the anti-lead serum, and offers to save Lar if, once again, Lar accepts to rule the galaxy at her side. This is a very sad story. The two eventually fall in love, and their feelings are sincere, but their views are too different. When the 20th century Lar refuses to join Glorith in enslaving the galaxy, Glorith lets him die "on arrival" of lead poisoning, while desperately mourning for being forced to let her love die.

Now the situation is really delicate: Because of Glorith's manipulations, Valor is dead in the 20th century. Therefore there will no longer be a Valor to be rescued by the Legion in the 30th century, there never will be the united planets, because Valor had not seeded the worlds yet, and there will never be a Legion, since now their source of inspiration is dead before accomplishing his legendary deeds. The time-stream is going to be disrupted and mahyem is going to occur along all the times as the continuum starts to become unstable... everything is lost, unless....
... at this point, when the 20th century Valor has just died in Glorith's arms, the SW6 Valor materializes from a time-bubble on the scene.

There is only one remedy: The SW6 Valor has to take the place of the 20th century original Valor and relive his mission, stop the Dominion invasion, seed the worlds, and enter in the twilight zone for one thousand years of solitude once again. This is a very hard choice. Re-living one thousand years of emptiness, madness, loneliness... and if this is a time loop, this will happen again and again. Lar has the possibility to alter the past by refusing to re-live his mission. Yet, Waverider of the linear men (guardians of time) informs him that if he chooses to do so, the whole time-stream will probably collapse. If Lar wants existence to have a chance, he has to re-live his past mission. The dialogue goes like this:

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Post "D.O.A"/Pre "End of an Era" Lar Gand (Valor, 1994).

At this point we have the original 20th century Valor who is dead and has been replaced by his future self (SW6 Valor) trapped in the twilight zone, waiting one thousand years to be freed; "meanwhile", in the 30th century future, the adult Valor, together with his wife Tasmia and the rest of the "adult" Legion plus some of the SW6 Legion is facing a series of time paradoxes and instability of the time-stream, partly due to Glorith messing up with the 20th century history. It seems the sacrifice of the SW6 Valor has not been enough to ensure stability of the time-line. The future keeps being unstable. The Time Trapper returns and reveals he is still alive. Glorith is threatened by the Trapper's return and thus frees the wizard Mordru and joins forces with him to fight the Legion and balance the Trapper's power. The legion is disoriented by the instability of the time-stream. Some members do not recall their past, or rather what they remember constantly changes or becomes confuse, the possible pasts intermix and the legion seems lost... when a legendary figure materializes. It is the Kryptonian Superboy, inspiration of the Legion in realities that (seemingly) no longer exist. Superboy is so strong an inspiration in any reality and any timeline that the Legion immediately regains confidence. Eventually, Superboy and the 30-th century adult Lar, with help from the Legion, defeat Glorith (and Mordru), but at the cost of Tasmia's life. Tasmia is dying, fatally injured in the fight. Lar reaches her an kneels at her side...

At this point, what remains of the Legion has lost its strongest member, vanished from existence as a consequence of the disruption of the space-time continuum, so that discomfort and despair spread among the Legion disordered ranks. But once again Superboy acts as that great source of inspiration he has always been...

...before vanishing himself out of existence.

Superboy digression:
It will be seen in the Superboy comicbook that after vanishing from the 30th century, the Kryptonian Superboy is going to appear in the 20th century post-crisis Smalville, where he will meet the post-crisis clone-Superboy in a very touching story where he finds he is out of place in the world, coming from a reality that no longer exists. In the real Smallville, the Kryptonian superboy talks to the real-world post-crisis Superboy...

Then  the original Kryptonian Superboy blinks out of existence, it is believed for the last time. But fortunately, five years later, in the Hypertime story-arc "hyper-tension" of 1999 it will be revealed that the Kryptonian Superboy has just gone back to Earth 1. Notwithstanding Crisis on Infinite Earths and Zero Hour, Earth 1 or a copy thereof still exists as a part of hypertime, and the Kryptonian Superboy who showed up at "End of an Era" came from there and went back there. There remains the doubt whether the SW6 Valor, the adult Valor and all other heroes who vanished at the "End of an Era" in the wake of ZeroHour are still alive somewhere in hypertime, as occurred for Superboy. Some later issues of the Legion seem to suggest so...

End of the Superboy digression and back to the legion: After Superboy vanishes into nonexistence, the Legion resumes the fight to put reality back together, but notwithstanding help from the Time-Trapper himself, in a surprising role,

reality cannot be mended. Finally, it's the

Following the events of the crossover Zero Hour, involving the rest of the heroes of the DC universe, a new controlled Big Bang occurs at the dawn of time
and
    everything
                turns
                     white
 
 

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Post "Zero Hour - Crisis in time" Lar Gand (Valor, M'Onel, 1994 - today).

In this new timeline the 30th century is rebooted from scratch, and the story of the Legion is rewritten from the beginning, although the main elements from the previous continuity are maintained. The 20th century story of Lar Gand in this new timeline is the same as in the Post Mordru-verse/Pre "D.O.A" universe: Leaves Daxam after his father dies for Earth, joins L.E.G.I.O.N., reaches Earth a first time where he is dubbed Valor by Superman, stops a new invasion attempt from the Dominators, seeds the worlds... at this point the story changes from the Post Mordru-verse version. Some months later, Lar Gand arrives on Earth in an amnesiac state. The anti-lead serum he gained in L.E.G.I.O.N. is wearing off, and Lar is dying of Lead Poisoning. Lar fights with the post-crisis Superboy, when he remembers who he is. The poisoning comes to a critical stage and Lar is going to die. In order to save him, the post-crisis Superboy brings him to the Star Laboratories and projects him into the Stasis Zone, where the poisoning is suspended. There Lar will live for one-thousand years in an immaterial state, able to see everything in the physical world but unable to be seen or heard by anybody. After one thousand years of solitude, Lar will be rescued by the Legion in the 30th century, where he joins the legion and starts as a Legionnaire. Due to the fact that Valor from the 20th century is a celebrated religious figure in the 30th century, the Legion keeps Lar's identity secret to avoid Lar being worshipped, and Lar assumes the code-name M'Onel, which in ancient martian language means "the wanderer". Lar joins the Legion with a special status of space explorer and begins his new adventures in the 30th century.

You will notice that this post Zero-Hour version of the character reminds the original one, starting from the name (Mon-El/M'Onel), and owing to Superboy (although a completely different Superboy) being put in the stasis zone to avoid death from lead-poisoning. There has been no interest shown for the current version of Tasmia Mallor so far, and a marriage between the two appears rather unlikely in this new timeline. This is the final version of Lar up to date, and it will probably remain the final one in the mainstream DC universe, at least for some time.

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Recent and future appearances

Currently Lar is part of the rebooted Legion in the 30th century. Lar appeared in the Titans/Legion crossover "Universe Ablaze" of 2000, and earlier in 1999 in the good "Legion of the Damned" storyline.

Lar has not been part of the maxiseries "Legion Lost", a recent and good attempt of DC comics to relaunch the Legion comicbooks.

However, recently Lar appeared during his 20-th century imprisonement in the phantom zone in Superman #167, diverting some evil supermen of the phantom zone and giving enough time to Kal El (Superman) and Lois Lane to escape.

Lar: Go now, while you can!
Kal: VALOR?! Is it really you? ....  He is right, Lois. Let's go.
Lois: Is he going to be okay? Who was that?
Kal: A hero, and yes, he'll be... fine.

Kal says this with a look of  helplessness and preoccupation as he leaves Lar behind in the Zone. Remember that in this timeline Superman met Lar Gand in the past (battle between Vril Dox of L.E.G.I.O.N. and Brainiac, Armageddon 2001, Panic in the sky, Eclipso-The Darkness within) and even dubbed him "Valor" in the Eclipso saga, but he never met Lar as the legionnaire M'Onel in the future. Maybe Kal does not know that Lar will be rescued by the Legion in about one thousand years, unless some other time-traveller told him so. Superman might have met the 30th century Lar of the current continuity in Legion of Super-Heroes V4 # 100 (january 1998), when the part of the legion that had been displaced in the 20th century is finally reunited with legionnaires coming from the 30th century. The Titans (and Wally West/Flash in particular) might have told Kal about Lar in the 30th century after Universe Ablaze, had the whole adventure not been retroactively erased... a further possibility is that the current Superboy Kon-El, who has met and helped the Legion rescue Lar from the stasis zone in the future, has informed Kal of Lar's future participation in the Legion. This would explain the "he'll be... fine" comment of superman.

Lar has also appeared in the Legion mini-series following Legion Lost, "Legion Worlds". The first issue has indeed spotlighted Lar in his role of unique planetary defender after the Legion's disappearance and during the year of legion lost. It was good to see a whole issue devoted to Lar after such a long time.

In the "Young Justice" issue of the 2001 crossover event of DC, "Our worlds at war", Lar has appeared as an inspirational leader of the Legion of Super-Heroes against a cosmic threat, wearing a Superman costume as an attempt to inspire courage in Earth's heroes. This is kind of ironic, if one thinks about the above "Superboy/Mordru-verse/Valor as Superboy's legion inspiration replacement" mess.

During the Legion run of Abnett and Lanning ("DnA"), an interesting run in many respects, Lar has been kept as a secondary figure, often downplayed and considerably underused. Particularly debatable the absence of Lar from the Darkseid saga "Foundations", given also the central role of Daxam in the earlier Pre-crisis Darkseid (Great Darkness) Saga. Again, as a mythical figure from the past Lar could have been an ideal inspiration to fight Darkseid in a much more epic version of "Foundations". This has certainly been a wasted opportunity. The only good aspect concerning Lar Gand in this saga is that at the end of this arc Lar goes back to his classical "Mon-El" like costume.

The Legion is going to reboot once again in 2004, as Mark Waid comes onboard as main author and the series restarts from issue 1. There will be no Lar Gand in the rebooted Legion, says Mark Waid, even though he might appear at a later time. This sounds like bad news. Waid was also the mind behind the "three Valors saga" seen in D.O.A. above.

Finally, I would like to point out that I put emphasis on the DOA/End of an Era versions of Lar Gand (and of the Legion) because those are the stories I most liked, although I did not read all the pre-crisis Mon-El appearances. What is somehow paradoxical is that this story stems from a multitude of continuity errors concerning Superman, Superboy and the Legion, but it is precisely thanks to those fiascos that we have been given this beautiful saga. This story is tied into the Zero Hour crossover, and I find these minor crossovers of Valor, the Legion and Superboy to be the best part of the whole Zero Hour operation. The author of the Valor part of End of an Era, Kurt Busiek, was kind enough to reply to a post of mine at the DC universe message boards. I report the message here, since it concerns mostly Valor.

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From the DC/Warner JLA/Avengers message board.

Kurt, I hesitate to ask since you answered already so many questions...

but in case you are willing to answer a few more

a) One of the first stories of yours I read was the end of the Valor series (end of an era/zero hour tie-in). It was a rather touching sequence. Had you been drafted on the title last minute or was it something you liked/looked forward to work on?

Kurt: I was brought in to write the last 4 issues of VALOR, knowing it was a limited run. So "End of An Era" was already planned at that time, but not so worked out that I didn't get to help build it. I came up with the explanation of what the SW6 Legion were, for instance, the use of the old-school Superboy, and the merging sequence at the end. It was fun, since I'm a longtime Legion fan, and it was a thrill to get to work with them at all. Doing the grand farewell and helping make it a proper one was a ton of fun.

b) Would you like to go back to writing the legion? It would be great to see a kind of "legion forever" I think.

Kurt: I'd like to do the Legion someday, yes.

c) About Valor/Mon-El: Do you think that is a superfluous character or do you like his peculiarities (1000 years exile etc)

Kurt: I like his peculiarities.

d) and finally, thanks for bringing back Jack of Hearts (in avengers). Is there any hope of seeing you working on a Jack of Hearts mini anytime soon?

Kurt: Probably not any time soon, no. But glad you enjoyed it.

And now, some links.

For frequently asked questions on Zero Hour (and information on several other main events in the DC universe) click here.

Crisis on infinite earths, the classic gigantic maxi-series that originated some confusion on Legion history is described for example in this excellent site.

There is an excellent and impressive web site with tons of micro-heroes. I have taken the Lar Gand micro-hero pictures from this site. The link is
http://jerome.galica.free.fr/  
(please contact me for any acknowledgment/rectification request)

Finally, for on-line discussion on the current Legion of Super-Heroes, featuring Lar Gand, you may visit DC Comics' message boards (where you need select "DC Universe" and then "The Legion")

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