Also known as Umbra in the Reboot, Tasmia Mallor has a lot of ties to the DCU, or rather, a lot of DCU lore was written based on her. The Talokians were created in 1966 when we see the first appearance of Tasmia's brother (or cousin, it varies) Grev Mallor, aka Shadow Kid, from Talok VIII. Tasmia was introduced in 1968 and received an emergency membership into the Legion. Several years later, Mikaal Tomas is created as a present-day (70s) character, but he is from Talok III. Turns out that Talok III colonized Talok IV and VIII. Also turns out that Tasmia and Grev's family tree goes back to the 20th century.
During the Great Darkness Saga, we find out that Shadow Lass had an ancestor Lydea Mallor whose DNA was manipulated by Darkseid to create one of his servants. She was noted to be one of their greatest champions. We eventually are introduced to Lydea in the pages of the L.E.G.I.O.N series as the daughter of Lyrissa Mallor (also planetary champion). They both have darkness powers. Evidently, the Mallor line has a strong connection to this extradimensional energy and their descendents are generally the planet's Shadow Champion. We never really learn where this energy comes from except a cave on Talok VIII.
Marvel Comics has any character with darkness powers tied to a Darkforce dimension. DC Comics, has not tried to unify anything. Many characters, like The Shade and Obsidian, receives their powers through a connection to the Shadowlands (possibly once called the Darklands). Another character Nightshade derives her powers as a being from another dimension called the Land of Nightshades. It has never been suggested these are connected in any way nor that any of them are connected with the Mallors. The Mallors were not the first characters at DC to possess darkness powers. Like the Shade, Tasmia was weakened by intense light. For Shady, it's a silly weakness and makes her pretty worthless, but this detail seems to be used less in later years.
Many of the modern-day darkness users are able to create different effects with their abilities. Tasmia and Grev could only generate darkness fields. There was a story where Shady teamed up with Night Girl who could also see in her darkness. Unfortunately for them, their opponent also could and he had a laser gun. Other times, it was noted that only beings like Mon-El or Sensor Girl had the power to see through Tasmia's darkfield. Regardless of which, I found Shady's powers to be very limited. Yes, I know she was once able to defeat the Emerald Empress, but I have always believed that you can only get the drop on Sarya once as Sensor Girl eventually found out. Shady never had a rematch
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Like most of the OG female Legionnaires, Shady has purely defensive powers. Most female Legionnaires had to rely on hand-to-hand combat as a result. I don't find it redeeming in the slightest. HTH combat does nothing if there is a fleet of spaceships attacking, which leaves the threat more for the males to handle with their energy blasts and super-strength. I feel Levitz/Giffen had an opportunity to increase Shady's powers in Annual #3 from 1984. She and Grev are captured and their powers are used to cover the galaxy in darkness. At that point, they could have decided to increase their powers in some form, but did not.
Adult Lydea came on the scene in 1990, after Levitz finished his many year run with the LSH. She appeared to have much greater powers than Shady, as she could focus her shadows into sharp weapons to impale her opponents or simply create some type of concussive force. Appears those writers thought Tasmia's powers were too limited to be useful. Side note: when the Legion fought Lydea as a servant of darkness, her powers were noted as darkness and physical strength, unknown how much of that was from Darkseid.
We see Shady make a few appearances in 5YL. It is not quite clear from the dialog, but appears her powers may have a mood altering component to them in this version. At this point, it's not long before Zero Hour and we don't see her in action much more.
Umbra
The Reboot, however, brings us a new iteration of Tasmia who goes by Umbra. She too has some hand-to-hand skills. Sometimes we see her fire blasts of concussive force or drain the energy out of a ship's engines. She also appears to make her powers tangible to hold an opponent and possibly make weapons as constructs. These abilities are more keeping with some of the other DCU darkness users.
We see an Elseworlds version of Shadow Lass who appears to also do the same. Her powers, however appear to be magically derived.
Skipping Threeboot Shadow Lass because I don't recall her using her powers much at all. In Legion of Three Worlds, we see Umbra and OG Shadow Lass use their powers in tandem, to help drain the solar energy out of Superboy Prime. I'm OK with this actually. It's still a superhero comic.
When Levitz returns for the Retroboot, he returns her to the original darkness casting powers with no apparent updates. I'm sad. Oddly, during the holiday special from 2010, DnA write a Legion story and they use Shady with tangible tendrils that she could control. So it really was Levitz that kept her down, both in powers and characterization.
Shady's characterization is quite the sore spot for me for many reasons. Originally, she seemed very capable for battle. When she took down the Emerald Empress, her one arm was in a sling so she wasn't afraid of pushing herself. I don't feel like Levitz really how to use her well, so he really pushes the narrative of her being Mon-El's girlfriend. This is both good and bad for Shady. Levitz really liked Mon-El. Levitz also liked putting couples together on missions which helped to increase Shady's panel time. This appears to become a bit of a trope though as we begin to see a lot of Shady and Mon, Jo and Tinya, Val and Jeckie, Wildfire and Dawny, Brin and Ayla, etc. It was an easy way to focus on the couples dialogue so it worked in some respects for characterization, but also mixing together defensive and offensive powers showed teamwork.
Consider the Prophet and Omen story. Shady, Phantom Girl, Invisible Kid and Timber Wolf are sent to investigate a research station. The four of them deal with a threat despite Jacques having insecurity in the combat situation. Before long, Jo and Mon show up to bail out their girlfriends, which basically means they are not powerful enough to deal with the situation themselves. I might review the Prophet and Omen story later, but basically it becomes Mon and Jo's show now. Yes, I know Shadow Lass is helpful in defeating the Prophet, but that's only because they wrote a weakness that would make Shady useful.
With the focus on her relationship with Mon, we saw a shift in Shady's personality. She became less of a fighter and more inclined to let Mon-El do everything because she didn't need to. She became vain, at one point putting on body make up to make her look caucasian I know there is a reason Levitz did this, to harken to story about a science asteroid but it's not one of my favorite moments. She and Phantom Girl had become good friends, but also the mean girls in the Legion, ganging up on the other girls sometimes. It's a sad turn for the Shadow Champion of Talok VIII.
Now we are treated to one story on Talok VIII after the Baxter series started which was told in the Tales series. It's a pretty decent story focusing on their society and the Persuader butting in. Shady defeats Persuader then Lady Memory, but doesn't get to fight Persuader again as Mon-El swoops in and knocks him out. Again, Mon-El is the calvary. I would have much preferred that Shady defeated Persuader on her own and prove why she is the Shadow Champion. Unfortunately, that was the last combat significant story Shady would see for the Baxter era as her remaining stories focused on her being Mon-El's girlfriend/wife. She deals with Mon-El who is plagued by his Phantom Zone memories and later, after a severe beating by the Time Trapper, his immunity serum starts to wear off, so she leaves the Legion.
The biggest slight to her character came during the Retroboot when Levitz returned to the title. Volume 6 alludes to some a breakup of Mon and Shady. We never find out the exact reasons but it is barely amicable. Xenophobic Earth-Man joins the team. He's obviously not too xenophobic to shtup a blue woman with pointy ears. But Shady was a willing participant in all of it. No mind control. This was an unforgivable blight on her character. My explanation for this is that Levitz only knows how to write her as "girlfriend-of" and since he wanted to do some different things with Mon-El, her affections were moved to a different character. If you know the story, Earth-Man dies at the end of vol 6.
Vol 7 opens with Shady heartbroken over Earth-Man. We see her still mourning over him in the first couple issues and then after that, she is basically a background character for the next 12 issues. She gets a panel or two but she is mostly seen training the newbies. Didn't they learn ANYTHING in the Academy? It's only after Mon-El is severely injured by the Emerald Empress that Shady comes forward, wanting to take Mon-El away to get him help. Christ, am I reading the end of the Baxter series again? Yes, they had a long term relationship for several years, but we get no regrets from her over the Earth-Man thing. Of course by that time, the series was cancelled so might as well kill it dead.
And Shady barely uses her powers against villains, instead, she relies on hand to hand combat. *sigh*
My last complaint about Tasmia is her costumes: usually titillating as she runs around in dental floss bikinis. Yuck. I enjoyed her costumes much more when they were less revealing.
The Future
So I really hope the next iteration of Shadow Lass has absolutely no connection with the character Levitz turned her into. Granted, Umbra could be a bit of a sourpuss at times, but she was her own character. There are several ways to accomplish this, such as not tying her romantically to Mon-El or moving her relationship to another character (Threeboot had her with Karate Kid). I think the easiest way to solve a lot of her problems is simply making her more powerful by redefining her powers.
1. Define the darkness. This seems like a silly thing but who can really see through it? Anyone with night vision? Only those with enhanced vision powers? Remember that villain who could still see through her shadows; well, we have technology now that helps us see in darkness so one has to assume that it is much more prevalent in 1000 years. Personally, I think not even Daxamite vision should be able to penetrate her darkfield, making her shadows absolute darkness. This of course would cause problems for any usage of Night Girl, but we can fix Lydda some other time.
1a. I have tried to refrain from using the word "shadow" to define her powers. Her powers aren't related to shadows, it's darkness. They aren't the same thing because you can still see something if it is covered in shadow because of reflected light. Also, one needs a light source to create a shadow. Without light, it's all darkness!
2. Increase the applications. This is where one needs to be careful. I would caution against using shadow teleportation as that can limit using other characters with teleporting powers. Again, her powers are not related to shadows. Obviously, solidification is an easy possibility, allowing her to do make tendrils or create weapons. This may also go with using her powers as a concussive force. Really make her like Umbra.
2a. Perhaps we could also see her do something totally different, like negating certain energy. This could have both defensive and offensive uses. Light is energy, right? It was once suggested that she could use her powers to absorb radiation on the visual spectrum, but why stop there? This could potentially stop attacks from energy wielding opponents, like Radiation Roy. She could focus her energy in a single attack to stun her opponents by disrupting their electrical nerve impulses, even affecting those who derive their powers from solar energy, like Daxamites and Kryptonians. I don't recall seeing any character with darkness powers being able to do something like this so it would really help set her (and Grev) apart from other characters. Her powers could act as a natural counter to the Emerald Empress.
3. Augment her powers from an outside source. The reason for my Talokian history lesson earlier was because of Mikaal Tomas. What if she acquires Mikaal's sonic crystal? While most of the listings of Mikaal's powers are from wikis and therefore may not be accurate, we could assume that there may be some enhanced strength, durability and flight, but also the ability to fire concussive energy blasts. In Tasmia's case, they can look like black energy blasts. Meanwhile, she still keeps the ability to create darkfields. This would be a huge bump and move her up in the ranks of most powerful Legionnaires. Maybe there is another story waiting somewhere involving the entire Talok system that could be added to her history.
The powers really are secondary to good writing, but it may help make it easier and give writers more cause to use her without focusing on stories about her relationships.
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