Salu Digby - Pre-Zero Hour

Pre-Zero Hour

In the original pre-Zero Hour continuity, she was the thirteenth person to join the Legion of Super-Heroes. She first appeared in Action Comics #276 (1961). She tried out for membership at the same time as Sun Boy and Bouncing Boy. At that same tryout, Supergirl and Brainiac 5 joined the Legion. Shrinking Violet joined the Legion later, as did her fellow applicants Sun Boy and Bouncing Boy. Despite her shyness, Shrinking Violet, known as Vi to her teammates, served as an exemplary Legionnaire. She became romantically involved with Duplicate Boy of the Heroes of Lallor.

Years later, she was kidnapped by Imsk-native radicals. She was replaced in the Legion by Yera, a Durlan actress who used her native shapeshifting abilities to assume Violet's identity (the radicals had told her that Violet wished to go on a secret vacation). Legion deputy leader Element Lad and Science Police liaison Shvaughn Erin became suspicious of the fake Violet when Yera, wearing Violet's form, suddenly fell in love with Colossal Boy, who harbored an unrequited crush on the real Violet for years. Yera's charade was exposed and the real Violet was rescued. After her recovery from the trauma of her abduction, Violet resumed her Legion career. More cynical in personality, she became decidedly aggressive in her dealings with criminals. Eventually, she became the most skilled female Legionnaire in hand-to-hand combat (with the exception of Dream Girl).

After returning to active duty, Violet broke up with Duplicate Boy when she learned that, although he had discovered Yera's secret some months earlier, he had neither told anyone nor tried to rescue her. She later had a short-term romantic relationship with fellow Legionnaire Sun Boy. Some time afterward, it was strongly implied (but never explicitly stated) that she entered into a longer, more serious romance with another teammate, Lightning Lass.

After the Legion's disintegration in the aftermath of the Levitz-written era, Violet returned to Imsk and was drafted to fight in a war against Braal, the home planet of her fellow Legionnaire Cosmic Boy. This ended with the "Battle of Venado Bay", during which she found herself saving a grievously-injured Cosmic Boy from her own comrades; he, delirious with pain, did not recognize her, and attacked her face, destroying her right eye and leaving her with a long scar along her face. The two later reconciled, and although she had her eye repaired, she chose to keep her scar as a reminder.

Before the Legion reboot, one of Violet's legs was disintegrated and subsequently replaced with an artificial one.

In the "Legion on the Run" storyline, she operated under the alias Virus, as Legion leader.

During the "Five Year Gap" following the Magic Wars, Earth fell under the covert control of the Dominators, and withdrew from the United Planets. A few years later, the members of the Dominators' highly classified "Batch SW6" escaped captivity. Originally, Batch SW6 appeared to be a group of teenage Legionnaire clones, created from samples apparently taken just prior to Ferro Lad's death at the hands of the Sun-Eater. Later, they were revealed to be time-paradox duplicates, every bit as legitimate as their older counterparts. After Earth was destroyed in a disaster reminiscent of the destruction of Krypton over a millennium earlier, a few dozen surviving cities and their inhabitants reconstituted their world as New Earth. The SW6 Legionnaires – including their version of Shrinking Violet – remained.