David Haller (Earth-616)
From Marvel Database
Contents |
History
My name is Legion, for I am many! 
- -- Legion
David Charles Haller is the son of Charles Xavier, who later became the founder of the X-Men, and Gabrielle Haller, who later became the Israel ambassador to Great Britain. Xavier and Gabrielle Haller had an affair in Israel nearly two decades ago, and Xavier was unaware when he left Israel that Haller was pregnant with his son. Haller concealed the fact that Xavier was the father of her son, David, and Xavier himself only learned that he was David's father recently. Because Xavier was himself a superhuman mutant, David was born a mutant with the potential for superhuman powers.
Early Life and Power Development
When David was living in Paris with his mother, who was a member of the Israel diplomatic service, her home was invaded by a terrorist assassination team out to kill every Israeli they could find there. They murdered David's godfather, Daniel Shomron, before his eyes. David's terror catalyzed his latent psionic powers, which he used to incinerate the brains of the assassins. However, as he did so, he found himself making telepathic contact with each of his victims, thus experiencing their thoughts and emotions as they died. The horror of all this deeply traumatized the gentle, loving David, forcing him into a catatonic state. The consciousness of the leader of the assassins, Jemail Karami, was absorbed into David's mind.
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Karami's consciousness merged with David's, and it took Karami years to separate his consciousness from his psychic captor's. Nevertheless, although Karami regained his own sense of self, his consciousness remained trapped within David's mind. Karami discovered that he somehow gained control of David's mutant telepathic power and used it to read David's mind. Karami thus discovered that David was essentially a gentle, innocent person. Karami then read the minds of Gabrielle Haller and others, and thus gained an understanding of Karami decided to restore David's mind to normalcy. The terrible trauma that David had suffered had splintered David's personality into multiple personalities. Each of these many personalities controlled a different psionic power. The nature of most of these powers is as yet unknown. Karami began re-integrating these personalities into David's core personality, which was that of a little boy desperately needing parental help. However, some of these personalities resisted Karami's efforts, and two proved to be particularly formidable opponents: Jack Wayne, a swaggering adult roustabout adventurer, who commanded David's telekinetic power, and Cyndi, a temperamental, rebellious girl who controlled David's pyrotic power. Wayne was especially hostile, and intended to destroy Karami's consciousness somehow in order to preserve his own independent existence within David's mind. Karami found himself fighting a war with Wayne and the other resisting personalities within a dreamscape world within David's mind that resembled a mad blend of Paris (from David's childhood memories) and Beirut (from Karami's memories).
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On Muir Island
When David was in his late teens he had gone from being catatonic to being autistic and had been placed by his mother in the care of Dr. Moira MacTaggart, a renowned scientist engaged in the study of mutants, and a longtime colleague of Charles Xavier. David began to manifest his psionic abilities uncontrollably in the real world, and absorbed the psyches of two of MacTaggart's friends, Tom Corsi and Sharon Friedlander. MacTaggart summoned Xavier to her research center on Muir Island off the coast of Scotland, and he brought with him several of the New Mutants, including Cypher, Mirage, and Wolfsbane. David absorbed MacTaggart and Wolfsbane's consciousnesses, or their astral selves, into his mind. Xavier's astral self attempted to probe David's mind, bringing Mirage's astral self with him for assistance. David's mind then absorbed the astral selves of Cypher and Gabrielle Haller, and the astral selves of Xavier and Mirage followed them into David's mind. It was just before Xavier actually entered David's mind that he learned that David was his son and that the multiple personalities called themselves Legion (after the Biblical quotation "My name is Legion for I am many").
All of the consciousnesses that Legion had just "captured" retained their independent existences within David's mind. These new arrivals found themselves teaming up with Wayne and Cyndi against Karami, having been deceived by Wayne as to Karami's true motives. However, Mirage prevented Wayne from destroying Karami, who told her and Gabrielle Haller how he had been trying to help David. Working with the reluctant Wayne, Mirage and Karami completed the task of restoring David's mind to near-normalcy, and Mirage and Karami returned the consciousnesses absorbed from outside (including Mirage's own) back to their own bodies. (Since Karami's body was long dead, his psyche remained within David's mind.)
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However, Karami was unable to integrate the Wayne and Cyndi personalities into David's core persona, and so they remained separate personalities within David's mind. Wayne and Cyndi sometimes spoke to people in the real world through David, as could Karami, whose consciousness also remains an independent entity within David's mind. However, David himself was no longer autistic, and his normal, core personality was in control of his mind and body. Since he had been autistic for half his life, David's dominant personality was still that of a ten-year-old boy, the same as it was before he suffered the trauma. Apparently the conflict within David's mind among his splinter personalities affected his physiognomy, accounting for his unusual appearance. (Perhaps one of his personalities controlled shapeshifting powers.) It is not known whether or not David would have become more normal in appearance now that his normal personality had been restored to control of his body.
Legion Quest
An alternate future dubbed the "Age of Apocalypse" was created when Legion went back in time to kill Magneto before he could oppose Xavier's dream, but instead Legion ended up inadvertently killing Xavier. It became the X-Man Bishop's task to set things straight as the only person able to remember the proper events. When Bishop went back in time to just before Xavier's death he used Legion's own power to create a psionic loop which forced him to see the damage he had caused by accidentally killing his father. The energy released in doing this was so intense that only one of them could survive, and thus Legion seemingly passed away. Since Bishop had thus prevented Legion from killing Xavier, the X-Men's normal timeline was safe.
Return of Legion
Bishop' knife made of David's thoughts hurt David and his personalities. They went to a place one of Legion's personalities refered to as the "no-time." This personality claimed that "the bad sometimes caught others"[2] and made them slaves like him. The entrapment of the other minds upset David in such a way that he brought himself back to where the "fixers" would be.
After going on a mission to investigate a report of mutant activity in Colorado, Danielle Moonstar and Karma went missing. Upon learning of his former teammates' disappearance, Cannonball received permission to form a team to investigate consisting of Sunspot, Magik, and Magma. Cannonball and Sunspot found Karma's unconscious body in a backroom at a bar. Meanwhile, Magik and Magma found Legion inside a metal box contained in the cellar of a private residence. Though it seemed as though Karma was asking to be released from the box, she was actually asking to be released from inside his mind; as possibly as a psychic entity, David absorbed Karma's mind.
Illyana eventually located Karma, killing Jack Wayne with her soul sword in the process, within David's mind and Marci brought them to David. He was upset and afraid that he had done something bad again when all he wanted was be fixed. When Marci told David that the other personalities had her doll Morrie, which David corrected as being Moira, the group went in search of the doll. The doll, Moira, allowed the carrier control of David's body. They located the doll just in time to save the rest of Illyana's friends. Emma Frost arrived soon after with Scott Summers and they took David away in a helmet that would flatline David's brainwaves, but just for the trip home.
Powers and Abilities
Powers
Legion was a mutant with three superhuman psionic powers. David is described as an Omega-level mutant by Scott Summers[3].
He was a telepath, capable of reading minds and projecting his thoughts into the minds of others. He was a telekinetic, who could levitate objects at will and create protective force fields around himself that could repel oncoming objects. He was also a pyrokinetic, who could psionically start fires. The extent of his powers within the real world is unknown.
His telepathic power was controlled by the consciousness of Jemail Karami within his mind,
Telepathy: capable of displaying various psionic feats with the minds of others including reading and communicating with thoughts over vast distances.
- Telepathic Tracking: enhanced psionic senses enable him to detect and track other sentient beings by their unique psionic emanations (thought patterns contained in the psionic portion of the spectrum) especially if they pose a threat to his well-being in his immediate vicinity.
- Telepathic Cloak: Can mask his presence from being detected by others. His abilities can at times go undetected or be counteracted by other more powerful telepaths depending on their level of skill in using their own psi abilities. He can extend these defenses to others around him as well.
- Psychic Knife: described as "the focused totality of his psychic powers," by intensely channeling and focusing his psionic powers to his hands to create “psychic blades”, razor-sharp edges of pure mental energy which are said to be the ultimate physical manifestation of his powers which he plunges into the brains of his targets directly, which he often used to disrupt the neurons of his foes by driving the glowing "blade" of mental energy into their skulls.
- Mind Control: capable of controlling the minds of others but only one at a time and if the target is in his physical presence.
- Telepathic Illusions: ability to create illusions to make himself seem to be invisible, look like someone else, or make others experience events that are not truly happening.
- Mental Paralysis: ability to induce temporary mental or physical paralysis
- Mental Amnesia: Can erase any awareness of particular memories or cause total amnesia.
- Psionic Blasts: can project psionic force bolts which have no physical effects but which can affect a victim's mind so as to cause the victim pain, unconsciousness or death.
- Astral Projection: can project his astral form from her body onto astral planes or the physical planes. In the physical plane he can only travel in astral form over short distances. In the astral plane, he can mentally create psionic objects and manipulate the aspects of her environment.
His telekinetic power was controlled by his splinter personality Jack Wayne,
Telekinesis: can psionically manipulate the physical aspects of reality, including levitating objects weighing at least 10 tons at will and creating protective force fields around himself that could repel oncoming objects. Legion could project his telekinetic energies as powerful blast beams directed from his brain that could apparently affect matter with concussive force
And his pyrokinetic power by his splinter personality Cyndi.
Pyrokinesis: could psionically generate and project intense heat and flame from and around his body or direct it at certain distances. The exact radius remains unknown. He was also able to manipulate flame created from other sources and could magnify their intensity or snuff them. The flames Legion generated could also be illusory in effect; for example, he could focus the power on an object making it appear to be on fire while it was not being damaged by the flames at all. Legion instinctively created a psionic force field about his entire body that protected him from the effects of the heat and flame he created and from other sources as well.
Time Travel: possesses the psionic power to displace himself and others at almost any specific point in the timestream and then reemerging in the physical world from as much as a few minutes to years by generating chronal energies. He could apparently travel in astral form as well. He could also travel to points in the future.
Teleportation: able to psionically transport himself, his clothing, and additional mass from one location to another.
For a long time David's dominant core personality could not control these powers; if Karami's, Wayne's, or Cyndi's personality took control of David then he could employ the power that personality controlled. Apparently, Legion's core personality finally took control of his splinter personalities' powers, since he manifested psionic abilities when he traveled back in time.
Strength level
In the real world Legion possessed the normal human strength of a young man of his age, height, and build, who engaged in no exercise for half his life, but thereafter began to engage in moderate regular exercise.
Trivia
- Legion's other splinter personalities could each control other psionic powers. Perhaps these powers died when these splinter personalities were absorbed into David's core personality.
Links
- Appearances of David Haller (Earth-616)
- Character Gallery: David Haller (Earth-616)
- Images that feature David Haller (Earth-616)
- Fan-Art Gallery: David Haller (Earth-616)
- Quotations by David Haller (Earth-616)
- http://marvel.com/universe/Legion_(David_Haller) David Haller (Earth-616) at Marvel.com
- David Haller (Earth-616) at Wikipedia.org
- Religious Affiliation of Comics Book Characters : David Charles Haller (Legion)
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