Happens more often than you'd think. We all know them, we love seeing them, and yet few of us don't have the first idea on how to use them in a meaningful way outside of group shots or cameos.
I'll start; Remember Red Tornado? He's a wind elemental.....inside an android.
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The Question...he just detective and like a woman now
Victor Sage has a solid gimmick, just never really utilized for some reason. I don't really count Renee Montoya because I prefer her as a GCPD detective. I guess The Question doesn't get much of a push these days because that would draw more attention to the fact that both he and Detective Chimp are better detectives than Batman
Jonah isn't pushed because of the wild west theme. If he were pushed more, you'd get more weird shit with him in modern day or something
Your not wrong about Jonah but honestly I just want anything Jonah Hex. Like I'm starving for my Jonah!
Only Didio ever cared about him it seems.
God I love Red Tornado. He is so cool. Frick DC for not pushing him more. Both him and Jonah Hex.
>Both him and Jonah Hex.
NO. Jonah Hex actually escaped his fate and had an ending. I hope he's never used again.
The Wind Elemental stuff doesn't seem to come up that often, normally Red Tornado's just written as an android. Despite him being the one that appeared slightly earlier, he's normally like DC's off-brand version of the Vision, with a much more mundane life (normie wife and adopted kid instead of marrying a witch and having magic babies), and as recently as the mid 2000s he had a lot of focus in the first arc of the JLA relaunch, then his own mini that gave him two brothers and a sister. But to most writers he's just that guy on the Justice League you can have the villain destroy to show how serious a threat he is, the same thing seems to happen to androids and cyborgs in team books all the time.
Behold the mighty!.....Inconsistent....uhh....semi-famous Firestorm, The Nuclear Man???
Is he/they an old professor and a student? Two students? Is he black or white? Is he basically Doctor Manhattan, or a low rent Human Torch? Does he need to know the atomic structure of elements before transmuting them, or can he just say "aw frick it! You're made of glass now!"? We don't fricking know, just look at that flaming head! We just divided up his bad guys to Flash and any given hero.
Firestorm would have been forgotten if he was not a Superfriend.
Don't forget that most recently, Johns decided to retcon their origin from
>It was an accident
to
>The professor was working for the government and secretly groomed Ronnie into being there at the exact time when the "accident" was going to happen so they could become Firestorm and he could have metahuman powers
And most recently, Ronnie fused with some random S.T.A.R. Labs scientist to become Firestorm.
I think I'm beginning to see where the dislike for Johns comes from if he's just tossing out retcons and "important moments" all willy-nilly.
Bumping with Metal Men
At least BATB generated some interest in them. I remember when that episode aired and so many anons had never heard of them.
there's just too many of them, 6 characters with like 4 personalities max
What do you think would be a good way to differentiate them?
just get rip of at least 2 of them
keep the chick, the snarky red guy and the wimp. not one single soul gives a shit about the other 3
You need Gold. He's the normal hero guy of the bunch.
It be more interesting if Will Magnus played that role. Someone who's a capable leader yet doesn't have powers is more interesting then another Metal guy to fill that role.
I remember liking the old comics when someone storytimed them a long time ago, even though there was some rather blatant recycling of plots and Lead and Iron felt like they overlapped too much. It was crazy how many bullshit things could be claimed by either chemical properties or applications of the element in question there were.
didn't they just use these guys in the batman and superman run going on?
DiDio liked these guys for some reason.
The last cool Red Tornado take was in Primal Force in 1994
I feel like DC has a lot of characters like this that'll sit on the backburner and go without a book or steady supporting role for years. There's like a dozen characters and a few teams who are basically guaranteed to have an ongoing until the end of the time, and then there's everyone else.
Zsasz has potential to be one of the most heinous and terrifying villains Batman has ever gone up against and i personally love his involvement in arcs like knightfall. Too often they use him as cannon fodder side villain or have him do a "villain team-up" like in the awful war of jokes and riddles. He was my personal wish for the next "The Batman" villain.
Hes too small scale, hes just a normal regular serial killer. Guys like this exist in the real world and are a dime a dozen, there are plenty of them, watch a few episodes of whatever true crime show on A&E or whatever. This kind of person should barely be a blip on Batmans radar
If his tally count is even 25% correct, he is the most prolific and murderous man to exist in the modern world. Most serial killers not get above 20, but he easily has over a hundred people dead. The fact he has gotten away and orchestrated so many murders is worth investigation alone.
I imagine there's multiple Batman villains who have killed over a hundred people ON-PANEL.
That's true, to be fair. However, I would still way someone as skilled as Zsasz is with as few resources he has is still big enough for Bruce. Especially for a budding crime-fighter/detective.
The difference is that Zsasz is nothing more than a guy with a knife and a can-do attitude.
Keep in mind a lot of those were other criminals or people who had it coming in some way.
Thankyou! My point exactly. Dude saying he's small scale wants nothing but moronic huge capeshit happening on every page so his mind cant slow down enough to think about anything.
One day I'll take a random picture of Zsasz and compare him to Harold Shipman and other high-kill count fictional serial killers like Trinity from Dexter. It's that the number of tallies can change between the panes let alone stories that dissuades me from doing so.
No, I'm not autistic just obsessive-compulsive.
I mean a lot of batmans villains are small-scale. I think some of his best stories are told in small scale. Alberto Falcone was nothing more than a rogue mafiosos son and the long halloween is legendary. Gotham by gaslight is about jack the ripper and people love that comic. Professor Pyg is small scale and he is a fan favorite. I was also trying to say he is often written poorly, like when he picks a side in the war of jokes and riddles. Thats unrealistic of his character to even be involved in. Some of the greatest batman comics involve him catching serial killers and zsasz's only notable story is like 4 issues in shadow of the bat.
Pyg really isn't small scale.
Off the top of my head: Intergang, Toyman, Livewire, Metallo, Prankster, Conduit, Parasite. All of them perfectly viable for everyday villainy. Though when you're dealing with someone on Superman's level "everyday villainy" is a bit contextual.
He's also got a wife and kid.
Adam Strange is one of my favorite cameo characters. Any time a story goes into space it eventually leads to Rann and it's always a good time. Frick Tom King.
>Adam Strange is one of my favorite cameo characters. Any time a story goes into space it eventually leads to Rann and it's always a good tim
Agreed
He would actually make for a good movie too
Forever a jobber
She's been doing well in the Moon Knight book, perhaps the first time in her entire history
For someone named Tigra, she isn't nearly as bulky as expected. Tigers are big cats.
Also doesn't he have a daughter and a wife?
The grand majority of these characters.
i think one of the big problems with supes villains is that a large majority of them are world ending threats, and because of that, if you use them too often they lose all impact. luthor and braniac become jokes over time and it's hard to justify darkseid or doomsday showing up more than every so often
supes could use some more everyday villains that are interesting and save the big boys for punctuating story beats
I like how maybe three of them are literally “Superman but evil”
Four counting Zodd, if you think about it.
True
Hey now two of them are superman but evil robot
DC has like a million of these guys. Remember the Blue Demon? Remember that they own The Human Bomb? etc
honestly i really like it, it makes the world feel really diverse and lived-in
with marvel everyone's either an avenger or an x-men and they all just live in new york fighting red skull and doctor doom
Blue Demon deserves a movie, damn
She was in Thor semi-recently but outside of "oh yeah you're here" She doesn't get to shine.
what a dumb, pointless, spiteful decision it was to sell her to marvel
Tell me about her. I love reading stories about corporate homosexuals screwing over people they don't like, to remind me the industry isn't my friend.
The long and short of it is that back in the day Neil Gaiman worked on Spawn/Image comics stories with Todd Mcfarlane. He was in a super long lawsuit with Image/Mcfarlane for Miracleman and with marvels help ended up getting the rights to Miracle Man and Angela. Angela is an Angel bounty hunter who was a sometimes enemy sometimes friend of Spawn and to my memory either in payment for or deciding to after Gaiman sold her to Marvel after getting the rights. Marvel used her immediately and had her join the guardians of the galaxy as well as made her the secret half-sister of Thor which I think was used for the Ragnarok movie with Hela. But since then she's appeared only a hand full of times as cameo or as a brief member in short lived team-up books, she's not necessarily forgotten but her character makes sense for the Spawn universe being that Heaven and Hell are constantly at odds, but for Marvel/Thor she's very out of place causing her to be seen as more of a generic hot alien warrior.
To be honest, I don’t think writers know how to use Wonder Woman. She’s more popular for her reputation than any stories/villians/themes. She’s really boring. Same thing with super girl, though she was fun in the justice league cartoon
>writers know how to use
Meant to say what to do
Shame her personality is that of cardboard with a particular tendency for snapping necks.
I wish they'd go full Mythology with and just make her DC's Thor. Tying her in with cosmic new god vs old god plots is always fun imo.
Supergirl is far more interesting a character than Wondy though. She's a window into Kryptonian culture (the only one not Phantom-Zoned), a confused teenager thrusted into a position with very high expectations for her (does she actually want to be a hero or is she pressured into it by her cousin's status in society) and an all-around endearing character that you could watch grow in real time if that was a thing in comics.
Can I say Scorpion?
>Starts off being portrayed as Peter's physical superior whom is a dark reflection of him funded by Jameson to hunt him down
>Gets turned into a jobber afterwards who can get one shotted and have his jaw knocked off
He really does have nothing going for him
>Rhino does the whole brute stronger than Peter thing better
>Venom is a better evil Spider-Man
>Shocker's a better lovable jobber
>Ock has the better gimmick in mechanical appendages
>In terms of being made to get Spidey the Spider Slayers do it better by bringing in variety
Jonah Hex. I think you can do stuff with him but, DC seem a mix of unwilling and don't know what to do. The lack of stuff is probablysome combination of: him being at best C-list, the time period he is in being disconnected from the vast majority of other DC characters, the popularity (or lack) of Westerns, and especially now things that are 'problematic' such as him having been a slave to Native Americans and having fought for the Confederacy.
the entire of wonder woman legacy characters
Donna? just Titans Diana
Cassie , the same but for YJ
and so on
Fricking Artemis was better in Outlaws than her own story in the WW books.
Why the frick there is no sensational comics with stories for these characters?
I'd like to see more torture porn of him lol
Funny how almost every post ITT is about DC characters (and I agree with most of them)
It's almost like the only plans the company has are Batman related and they go out of their way to snuff any attempt at getting other characters into the spotlight.
New 52 fricked over a lot of these characters. The 90s-2000s had a lot of solos/cameos from a ton of characters but the Flashpoint-New 52 pipeline went from what was supposed to be a drip feed of reintroduction into a much smaller less interesting DC universe. Rebirth was 7 years ago and they still haven't fully brought everyone back yet. Honestly one of the worst decisions by the big two they've ever made.
You know, on one hand the New 52 hold a special place in my heart since it's what got me into comics in the first place. On that note they sure succeded, at least bringing in one (1) more reader.
But having since gone back and explored the actual DCU I'm hard-pressed to agree, it was a huge mistake. Especially the way they did it. Either you completely reset everything with a solid future plan or you keep things going, you can't have your cake and eat it too.
Modern DC hates /ourguy/ Richard Dragon
I completely forget he fricking existed till Arrow tried to use him.