Jeanne Chu
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Machiavellian idealist, or power-hungry manipulator? Some day, maybe Jeanne Chu will reveal whether the United Planets was a dream in which she really believed, but just took to extremes, or whether it was merely an avenue to power for her, and every thing she did for it was a lie.
Biography
In her early career, Jeanne Chu was an attaché to EarthGov President Thawne. Impulse #25
A decade and a half later, after R.J. Brande's invention of the Stargate, Chu, now herself President of Earth, saw the potential for joining many planets together under one central authority. While a few planets immediately joined the United Planets, the idea was not an easy sell for many planets' rulers, though, so she secretly manipulated the worlds Titan and Braal into a war, which she and her new organization would then be able to come to a truce with the prominent help of the United Planets federation. Her plan came to fruition, and following the peace agreement, many planets agreed to join this confederation and, right before a meeting to establish the U P. charter, she agreed to a suggestion from R. J. Brande that a group of super-powered youngsters from member planets exist as a symbol of the planets' unity LSH v4 #0. At the charter meeting, this Legion of Super-Heroes stopped an attempt to destroy the United Planets while young, and Chu, flush with victory, was riding high Lgs #0.
However, Chu kept a close watch over the Legion, and was in charge of most aspects of its operation. For political reasons, she instituted a draft, which had many member planets send representatives who the Legionnaires had to accept as their teammates, like it or not LSH v4 #62, #66. After the death of Legionnaire Apparition, she kept an even tighter rein over the Legion's membership roster, demanding no new members LSH v4 #72.
One rule she established in the United Planets was that time travel be illegal, in order that all her doings not be undone through such a mechanism. When she discovered the Legion was involved in time travel Lgs #32, she decided that the Legion could not merely be controlled, it had to be destroyed. To do this, she took Jan Arrah, whom she had previously kidnapped in order to have him attack non-U. P. planets in order to have the Legion save them and thereby show them the advantages of joining the confederation Lgs #29, and had him attack both the Time Institute (which she had closed down when the Legion's time-travel breakthrough was made) and the Legion LSH v4 #76 Lgs #33-34. She also had Brainiac 5, who invented the time machine, imprisoned and interrogated so that she might somehow remove the knowledge of time travel from his mind, or at least use his knowledge of time travel to develop a way of preventing time travel LSH v4 #77. She implanted in Arrah's mind an image of Ambassador Winema Wazzo attacking him so that she wouldn't be implicated, and of a Sun-Eater, which she could then use to convince the Legion to assemble a "Fatal Five", who would then kill them.
To this end, she also contacted the criminal Tharok and got him to lead the villainous team into killing the Legion. When the group failed to accomplish this task, she had them move on to the next job...re-igniting the hostilities between Braal and Titan so that the U. P. could once again achieve prestige for calming the tensions. Her plans were undone, though, by the Legion and its leader Cosmic Boy, who was warned by Doctor Micah Aven of Titan that the president was not all she seemed, and therefore set into motion a secret plan that would get her to confess her wrongdoing, and have her removed as president. She was replaced by R.J. Brande LSH v4 #78-80 Lgs #36.
Some time after she was deposed, it was discovered that she had stashed the inert body of the Composite Man in a U. P. warehouse for possible later use rather than send him back to Durla. The Composite Man eventually escaped, but was recaptured by the Legion Lgs #55.
