Origin
L-Ron is a robotic servant constructed by Manga Khan. He was traded to the Justice League for Despero in fetus form. He acted as an assistant to the team, especially J’onn and Max, until Despero returned and then with the help of Kilowog he sacrificed his body in order to construct a control device to act as a control collar for Despero. The procedure accidentally imprinted L-Ron’s consciousness into Despero’s body. L-Ron, in Despero’s body, returned to Manga Khan.
Later, still inhabiting Despero’s body, L-Ron returned and became a part of the Justice League Task Force, led by J’onn J’onzz. He began to struggle with Despero’s bestial tendencies and later faced an interstellar tribunal attempting to try him for Despero’s crimes. Eventually he was restored to his robotic body.
L-Ron moves to the American city of Smallville. He is living with his friends Beatriz DaCosta and Tora Oladsdottir, upstairs from a hair salon.
Powers and abilities
While controlling Despero’s body, he was able to utilize the same abilities Despero had.
- Super Strength – Despero has great strength, possible exceeding even Superman or Captain Marvel.
- Invulnerability – Despero has invulnerability sufficient to repel bullet fire and resist damage from punches from beings similar in strength to Superman
- Super Speed – Despero has super-human speed.
- Telepathy – Despero’s hypnotic third eye grants him telepathic abilities that rival Martian Manhunter. While controlling Despero’s body, L-Ron used hiss hypnotic abilities to determine the innocence or guilt of people.
- Illusion Casting – Despero was also capable of creating illusions with his third eye.
- Mind Control – Despero was also able to control or paralyze people with his telepathic abilities
- Psychic Fire – Despero could project bolts of fire from his third eye. When L-Ron lost control of Despero’s body momentarily Despero used psionic flames to combat Supergirl‘s magical ones.
- Flight – Despero was shown to be nearly as fast as Martian Manhunter and is capable of flight in space.
- Telekinesis – His third eye gives him telekinetic abilities; L-Ron once created a telekinetic bubble to save 5 people from drowning.
In Other Media
Television
Young Justice: Invasion
L-Ron appears in the episode “Cornered” voiced by Phil LaMarr. In the show, L-Ron is depicted as the personal servant, and majordomo of Despero, and is shown helping the villain trap the Hall of Justice within a force field so that he can force the Justice League to battle him. L-Ron is later destroyed by Billy Batson, although his head remained alive long enough to activate self-destruct protocol that utterly destroyed the Hall of Justice, nearly killing Miss Martian, Superboy, Bumblebee, Zatanna, and Mal Duncan. Thankfully, Captain Marvel was able to shield them from the blast, while Zatanna, who was outside at the time, flew clear when the Hall fell apart.
This version of L-Ron spoke with a more eloquent tone of voice than the relaxed, casual tone employed by his comic-book counterpart. He took his job as Despero’s majordomo quite seriously, and was quite the showman in introducing his master to the Team, as well as making sure that his “opponents” fought fairly, informing Zatanna after Despero had paralyzed her that magic was considered “cheating”, and that his master preferred a more “hands-on” approach. He would end certain words with the suffix “-ism” frequently, and before arriving on Earth, was shown to address Despero in an alien language consisting of electronic beeps and clicks.
L-Ron also had far more physical capabilities than his comic-book counterpart, the most noticeable being his ability to fly, not having legs like his predecessor. He was also equipped with a variety of offensive armaments that seemed to come from every inch of his body, which he displayed in anger after Zatanna turned Despero’s power against him, which he saw as cheating in his master’s “game.” However, their full capabilities are unknown, due to the timely intervention of Billy Batson, who short-circuited him with a bolt of mystic lightning. Another major offensive feature L-Ron possessed was a self-destruct protocol, apparently packing enough of blast power to level the Hall of Justice.
A more passive feature of L-Ron’s was his detailed archive of information documenting Earth’s superhumans, a database initially compiled by the Kroloteans during their time undercover planetside. It was through this collection of dossiers that he was able to relay to his master that Superman and several other powerful heroes were currently detained on Rimbor, and thus unable to be targeted for Despero’s cage-match.