Sometimes you don’t hit that sweet spot right off the bat. Such is the case here with the Untouchables, who were originally known as the “Intangibles,” and who wore super-spacey-futurey outfits. This made them generic and boring, which is not where you want to go with a supervillainous team of Kitty Pryde wannabes.
And so the Intangibles went into DCU limbo for a long time, no doubt making snide fourth-wall-breaking references alongside Merryman, until some genius writer took a look at the concept and respun it. Hey, what’s another word for “intangible”? Well, “untouchable.” And waiiiiiit a minute…
And there you have it. Brilliant revision of a mediocre concept, done almost entirely out of a sense of style. Phasing gangsters with a dual-meaning name. It’s exactly what comics should be. Which is why I’m pretty sure we’ve never seen them since. (Heck, Karl Kesel reused the phasing villain concept when he created Loophole in Adventures of Superman. The Untouchables should sue! Or, since they are villains, shoot him. With phase-proof bullets.)
Sometimes you just have to stand back and admire simple creative elegance. This is one such time.
Ah, yes.
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I remember the Kesels using them during their run of Hawk & Dove and having fun with them. They also showed how you can make effective use of a hero with a passive superpower that is, basically, being smarter than you (Dove counting the bullets of their guns).
I miss fun comics :'(
“Eliton Ness and his men race toward Capone’s hideout!”
Damn I wish I was the first poster.
I had to go back in the archives a bit to find the right example to demonstrate how blah these characters are to me.
These characters are only slightly more impressive to me than Knodar, a guy who took tech from his own time and tried to dress up like the criminals of the past. True, these guys are dressed better, but its the same basic silliness.
Besides, I don’t think we need another group of 1920’s gangster wanna-bes leading towards the inevitable and ultimately painful Peter Lorre impersonations.
If memory serves me right, right now, Ralph and Sue Dibny are a bunch of mystery-solving ghosts.
Meanwhile, these guys are practically tailor-made to commit “locked-room specials”, the supposed niche of the Elongated Man.
It concerns me when awesome comics write themselves and everyone’s too busy reinventing Wonder Woman to notice.
There is no Peter Lorre impersonation that goes unwasted. Ever.
But isn’t a Peter Lorre impersonation its own reward?
Yes, the Untouchables showed up in ‘Hawk and Dove’ #4, written by Karl and Barbara Kesel, and they were truly awesome in that appearance. In fact, that issue produced one of my favorite comics quotes of all time: “I can think of fourteen ways to keep you from firing that gun. Six are painful.”
Jeez, John, that line sure does strike my ear as a lift from Dark Knight Returns.
… I miss the Kesels’ Hawk and Dove SO MUCH. May whoever leaked the Armageddon 2001 plot BURN IN HELL.
I have that DC Comics Presents issue where they first appear (notable for Superman using telescopic and microscopic vision on them for no reason, and for the crooks thinking a gun full of Superman’s vision powers would turn him intangible, not blind him like it actually did); got it at a used book store when I was about twelve. I remember my dad telling me that “The Intangibles” was a clever joke on somebody called the Untouchables. I can’t imagine the joke was accidental. They didn’t come up with it later, they just went whole hog.
Had to browse back a bit to find these, but a mere seven months since you talk about them they have at last returned in the pages Superman, in all their untouchable glory!
To be immediately taken out by Black Lightning, who seems just as confused by his sudden reappearance in Metropolis as everyone else, but it’s a start.
Nice set a’ pins on that dame, too…
/accent