Element Lad first appears in Adventure Comics (vol. 1) #307 (1963). In this first story he is briefly known as "Mystery Lad" as the Legionnaires try to guess his superpower. Jan is the last survivor of Trom; with all of the planet's natives sharing Jan's abilities, the other Trommites had been massacred by the space pirate Roxxas for refusing to transmute valuable elements for him. With the aid of the Legion, Roxxas is brought to justice and Jan joins the Legion, using the codename Element Lad. He is a member of the Legion for many years, serving terms as leader and deputy leader. He is eventually linked romantically to Shvaughn Erin, the Science Police's Legion liaison, who herself first appeared in Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes #241 (July 1978). Element Lad and Roxxas faced off in the '70's...Jan with the intention of killing him, but thanks to Chemical King, was spared that. Roxxas ultimately went insane and ended up in an unspecified asylum (possibly the same one that Brainiac 5 was sent to after his own mental breakdown).
His mental discipline guarded him from accidentally killing people with a stray thought.After Legion of Super-Heroes (vol. 4) #61 (September 1994), DC Comics rebooted the Legion continuity as part of the Zero Hour company-wide crossover storyline. In post-Zero Hour continuity, Jan is still the last survivor of Trom, however the Trommites had been killed by the heat vision of Daxamite White Triangle terrorists who had decimated Trom from space. After a brief period of the traumatized Jan being brainwashed into becoming the villainous Starfinger, this version of Element Lad serves with the Legion for some time. Jan's previous history with Shvaughn Erin is erased in this continuity.
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