This profile focuses on Lightning Lad during his Silver Age appearances in Adventure Comics and Action Comics. Over time, Lightning Lad came under the thrall of Prince Evillo, and was forced to join his Devil's Dozen. Lightning Lad (real name Garth Ranzz) is a founding member of the Legion of Super-Heroes in the 30th Century, and is character and superhero in DC Comics.. He returned to the Legion Clubhouse, and Garth was forced to amputate his arm to save off infection, but was a given a cybernetic prosthetic.
Born on the planet Winath, he gained electric powers during an encounter with Lightning Beasts on Korbal. Impressed by thee teens' bravery, Brande made a petition to the United Planets to form a Legion of Superheroes, an ever-growing cosmic team inspired by the exploits of the twentieth century heroes Superboy and Supergirl. She managed to stay on the team however, as her powers altered only a short time later.Garth's final adventure involved the Time Trapper, as the conclusion ended with the destruction of the Legion's timeline in a cosmic crisis brought back by Hal Jordan, who was mind-controlled by Parallax.Although the Legion survived the Crisis, the Time Trapper took advantage of the chaos to isolate and weaken them. After Earth-Man's defeat, Lightning Lad took Superman back to his own time, as the two recalled old times when they were younger. )In trying to change the universe’s fate by ending the life of an otherwise unimportant mortal, they gave Garth and his siblings the power to be important. They were changed, imbued with electrical powers even greater than those of the Lightning Beasts. Using their new powers they easily recharged their spacecraft and returned home.He became wealthy doing this. Garth used that wealth and the foodstuffs they grew to help the UP, battered by the Great Collapse of the economy after the Magic Wars. He and Imra recently had two more children, twin daughters named Dacey and Dorritt, who show telepathic aptitude. Also, his brother Mekt is reformed and sane and is one of his lieutenants at the Plantation.However, Garth’s luck continues to be poor in some ways. His son Garridan (formerly Validus) has been found to carry a virus as a legacy of his abduction by Darkseid. The Validus Plague affects Winathians and Titanites, causing deformation and in some cases death.During the Adventure Comics era, Garth had these stats:Garth’s career with the Legion has been extremely eventful. As a founder, with dynamic powers and personality, he was always one of the more powerful and prominent Legionnaires, especially in the early days of the team.Garth’s new pattern of triumphs proved to be short-lived, as his term was particularly tumultuous. The stress was immeasurably worsened when he contracted a strange illness, a fever which began subtly causing his electrical powers to feed back into his own brain.Before that, however, one of Lightning Lad’s doctors took the opportunity to hypnotize Lightning Lad into acting as his criminal catspaw as the villain Starfinger. The Legion eventually captured Garth/Starfinger, and Saturn Girl freed Garth from the true villain’s hypnotic commands.“We’re going about this all wrong ! We forgot the most basic element of strategy : the best defense is a good offense !”Garth is a tall man of fairly muscular build, with bright blue eyes and red-blonde hair.Writeups.org John Colagioia has raised the interesting possibility that maybe Garth really is Garth, and only thinks he is Proty. ”Not lying, but wrong. Figures he died, and was brought back to life with foggy memories, but with all of Proty’s crystal clear memories, including his plan to sacrifice himself. What would *you* think ?”Note that neither Lightning Lad nor anyone else knows about the Luck Lords’ perennial interference in his life.Their first attack resulted in him gaining his lightning powers. On at least two other occasions the Luck Lords intervened, trying to manipulate Lightning Lord into killing Lightning Lad. Their last failure apparently caused them to decide that they had failed and they would not intervene again. In other words, Lightning Lad bought off the Unluck Drawback.Note that these are NOT traits of Lightning Lad originally. They were written into the character about 30 years after the fact. Confusing, huh ?Unfortunately Mekt had become a super-villain called Lightning Lord and he was a mainstay of the Legion of Super-Villains. Mekt’s imbalances only worsened over the years, and on several occasions he has tried to murder his brother.Helper(s): John Colagioia, Mayfair’s Legion Sourcebook v.1 and 2995 Sourcebook; age and personal chronology from 2995 LSH Sourcebook; history and background from Who’s Who and Who’s Who in the Legion.As a result Garridan has to live on Quarantine World away from his family while a cure is sought. (On the plus side, Garridan retains the “mental lightning” powers he had as Validus. During the two seasons of the show, Garth had a flirtation with Saturn Girl but never properly developed a romance.