Simpler times.

The Monster Society of Evil was a society – of evil! – dedicated to one thing, and one thing only. Killing Captain Marvel. Because they hates them some Captain Marvel. The original Monster Society was probably, by our standards, the most mainstream and serious. Formed by Mr. Mind – and you know Mr. Mind already, I would guess, but if not, he’s an evil little worm who wants to conquer the universe – and featuring Oom (the big gray guy who beat the crap out of his enemies), Nyola (a demonic sorceress), the Dummy (a psychotic little bastard who later was adapted to become the first Vigilante’s archnemesis), Ramulus (a sort of plant-human hybrid wizard) and Mister Who, possessed of one of the worst supervillain names of all time. Seriously, when Roy Thomas brought back the Monster Society in All-Star Squadron, he basically had Dr. Fate and Hourman do an Abbott-and-Costello riff on Mr. Who’s name.1

Then things… changed. Mr. Mind’s first Monster Society didn’t quite work out, so he started recruiting more guys. The evil Goat-Men! The evil (and unimaginatively named) Evil Eye! The evil Crocodile Men! Well, actually only two of them. Herkimer and Sylvester. But they sure hated Captain Marvel! They hated him so much.

When attacking Captain Marvel with the furry brigade resulted more or less in what you would expect (hint: abject defeat), Mr. Mind went out and got more guys, fetching Dr. Sivana and Ibac and Captain Nazi, all definite challenges for the Big Red Cheese. Also, he got Mr. Banjo. Mr. Banjo is a spy who played the banjo, and by this fact quite probably had a worse supervillain name than Mr. Who. Seriously, “Mr. Banjo?” One kind of has to wonder at Mr. Mind’s overall strategy. “All right, I’ve got a demonically-powered strongman, a massively superpowered Nazi, the evilest mad scientist on the planet… hey, this guy plays the banjo! Let’s bring him in!”

Of course, Mr. Banjo was better than Nippo from Nagasaki. No. Seriously. That is what they called him. Nippo from Nagasaki. You have to love that DC Comics didn’t bother trying to hide this in the pages of Who’s Who, regardless of how racist and tasteless it was. Their sole concession was suggesting that possibly “Nippo from Nagasaki” was not his real name, but instead a codename given to him by his self-hating Japanese masters. Still, regardless of his bosses’ need for serious therapy regarding their self-esteem issues, Nippo was in the Monster Society! Because he hated Captain Marvel.

Also, there was Jeepers, the intelligent rat-man. The less said about him, the better.

Of course, these guys got their asses handed to them too, because surprisingly Captain Marvel had no weaknesses involving banjos or racism. Decades later (thanks to DC wanting to explain why there were no Captain Marvel comics between the 1940s and 1970s, they handwaved up a suspended-animation sort of solution), Mr. Mind would again bring about the return of the Monster Society of Evil, this time with serious heavyweights: Sivana again, of course, and Ibac, but also King Kull, who was sort of a superpowered Neanderthal, and Black Adam (who wasn’t yet as badass as he eventually became), and Mr. Atom the atomic, vaguely dildo-shaped robot – and Oggar, who was essentially one of the Wizard Shazam’s former bosses who got laid off and was still bitter about it.

And then Captain Marvel beat them all up again. Because that is what Captain Marvel does.

Okay, so the Monster Society are goofy. But you have to admire their inclusivity. If you hate Captain Marvel, you’re a member! And that’s why there are so many of them.

Top comment: One of the great things about DC is that all the rogue galleries have a unique theme behind them. Superman’s villains are all twisted reflections of him, vying philosophies of what makes a “super man”. Batman’s villains each exemplify an anxiety of modern man whipped into a killing frenzy. Wonder Woman fights about the dark dead-ends and criticisms of empowerment. The classic rogues of The Flash mix common sense and fraternal affection into their culture.

The Monster Society of Evil, meanwhile, is a bunch of guys who find stumbling down the street, drunk, at four in the morning, constantly running into each other and belligerently yelling, “Fuck Captain Marvel! Fuck that guy!” — NCallahan

1. This was when Dr. Fate had the half-helmet, which allowed him to magically possess a sense of humour, but also made him much, much less cool as a result. [↩]

BEEP
You have forty-seven new messages.
BEEP
“Lucy? It’s Bertram. I know I’ve been kind of busy lately, and I know you were all on me to get a job, so I’ve been thinking – maybe I should become a professional criminal? I mean, I’m already an entomologist. That’s kind of like being a professional criminal, because I study cockroaches. Get back to me. I want your opinion on this.”
BEEP
“Lucy, Bertram again. Now, I know I could go about this the honest way and work at your father’s car wash for fifteen years to build up the money to build my robotic insect prototypes, but I want you to know that I’m thinking about us when I say I can’t do that. I mean, come on, Lucy. Our kids are going to need a real role model in their life, and you can’t do that working at the freaking car wash, you know? I – call me back, passing under a bridge…”
BEEP
“Yeah, it’s Bert. Look, robotic pest control will eliminate pesticides as an industry. They’re green! And think of the security applications. The patents are all mine. I mean, they’re all ours. We just need to seed it a bit. You see where I’m going with this, right?”
BEEP
“Lucy, does purple go with acid green? The tailor is saying they go together, but I think he just wants to offload extra fabric he doesn’t want. Get back to me ASAP on this one.”
BEEP
“I did the math and it’ll only take six, uh, you know, “jobs.” Tops. The first two build the robots for the last four, and if half of those robots survive we have enough prototypes for corporate demonstration purposes. The rest of the seed money goes toward buying a house in Denver and maybe a trip to Tahiti. Just you and me. How’s that sound?”
BEEP
“Got your note. “Bug-Eyed Bandit” doesn’t really sing to me as a name. Where’s all your stuff?”
BEEP
“Okay, now I get that the note was actually an insult. Look, just call me back, okay? We really need to talk. I don’t like “Bug-Eyed Bandit,” but if you need me to use it, I can be flexible.”
BEEP
“Dammit, Lucy, this is just classless. Your friends won’t tell me where you are, you don’t return my calls… all I want is to talk. Also, I want my universal remote back. You know the buttons on the TV don’t work properly and I haven’t seen Letterman all week because the channel is stuck on ABC. Why would you even take the remote, anyway?”

Top comment: Here’s a question….why do so many dangerously unstable individuals have degrees in science in Comicbookland?

Yes, yes….in our world too, but Oppenheimer never turned himself into a bat on a whim. — Marvinmartian

(Hello to all of John Rogers’ close personal friends and relations. My, but there are quite a lot of you.)

People nowadays look back at Amethyst: Princess of Gemworld and can’t help but wonder what people were thinking. Nowadays the concept of an ongoing fantasy comics series targeting young girls seems like the sort of thing that makes DC editorial go “hsssst!” and then cower in the darkness. “Catering to different demographicsss.. it burns us, precious, it burrrrrns.”

But here’s the rub: Amethyst was actually pretty goddamned good for what it was, namely an all-ages fantasy epic. It had perfectly acceptable writing and gorgeous art by Ernie Colon, and a fully realized world that was imaginative and unlike “our” world to an extent that made it fresh and exciting. Twelve houses based on birthstones? A world where everybody uses magic and where the laws of physics don’t necessarily apply? It was pretty wicked awesome, doing a lot of what the Harry Potter books did, and long before J.K. Rowling was telling people about how she came up with Harry Potter when she was broke in a cafe somewhere.

It begs the question why there hasn’t been a relaunch or reboot. Can you imagine Neil Gaiman getting his hands on this? Admittedly, Amethyst showed up briefly in Infinite Crisis – but that, much like just about everything to do with Infinite Crisis, was something of a bad idea. (Actually pretty much everything to do with DC trying to integrate Gemworld into the DC Universe proper was kind of a bad idea. Turning Gemworld into Zerox, the Sorcerer’s Planet? Bad idea. Making Amethyst a Lord of Order? Bad idea. It’s your classic case of square peg into dork-shaped hole.)

Of course, to have a great fantasy epic you need a great villain, and Amethyst had one – Dark Opal, one of the truly great fantasy comics badasses of all time. (You know he’s evil because he put “Dark” in front of his name. That’s just classy. He advertises his evilness. Dr. Doom would approve.) And… just look at him, will you? That is fucking awesome visual design right there. That is a villain who will fuck your shit up. It is obvious just from that artwork that Dark Opal is not only a magician but knows how to cut you to pieces with a sword (which he does). Plus he has crazy tattoos and blue skin and an amulet that mirrors his facial expressions. That is some awesomely fucked up shit right there.

Dark Opal is like an evil version of Valda. (Who not coincidentally was also drawn by Ernie Colon. Man, Ernie Colon was so great.) Sometimes you just see a character and you know: this guy is just waiting to be wicked cool once again.

(No, I’m not going to write “30 Reasons Why I Should Write Gemworld.”)

Top comment: Man, I love how *stabby* he looks. Bad guys just aren’t stabby-looking enough these days. — Cookie McCool

Flash Comics #1 was an auspicious comic. Of course, it was the very first appearance of Jay Garrick as the Flash, but it was also the first appearance of Hawkman. That’s a heckuva comic right there: the Flash and Hawkman, both appearing for the first time. But wait! On top of that, it was also the first appearance of Johnny Thunder! That’s two major players and a classic second banana, all in one comic!

And then there’s the Whip.

The Whip is a working-class hero. No powers for this guy! Just his facility with a whip. Rodrigo “Rodney” Gaynor (no, really!) was a descendant of the very first Whip, a Mexican superhero of the 19th century who fought for right and protected the poor. Kind of like Zorro! But with a whip instead of a sword. Well, actually Zorro used a whip too sometimes. So basically think Zorro, but no sword.1

Anyway, Rodney used his, I dunno, one-sixteenth Mexican-ness (“just enough beaneater to use their traditional ethnic weapons, but not so much that you can’t take him home to Mother, girls!”) to master the whip and call himself The Whip, as his ancestor did before him. At some point you would think that he would come up with a better name, but no such luck. In a stunning development, he mostly fought… evil Mexicans. The symbolism of a white guy fighting Mexicans was apparently glossed over at the time.

Presumably at some point Rodney joined the All-Star Squadron, as did just about every other vigilante who ever existed. And that is more or less all there is to be said for the Whip. (Except that his granddaughter also became the Whip briefly before dying as one of the Seven Soldiers of Victory.) But that’s okay. Rodney is one of the rank and file. A spear-carrier. A red-shirt. He is there to fill in crowd scenes and show up as a fourth-tier guest star when another superhero visits 1940s Mexico, and that’s all we can expect of him, and that is fine. Not everybody has to be a Flash or a Hawkman.

The Whip did not ask for much from comics, and he mostly got it. And things could be worse. The fifth star of Flash Comics #1 was a guy named Cliff Cornwall. Who the fuck is Cliff Cornwall? Because I sure as hell don’t know.

Although it’s kind of a shame that there are numerous superheroes within the DCU that are more prominent and known for the expertise with the whip (Catwoman and Mr. America, to name two). I mean, he’s called the Whip. You’d think he would be like the Green Arrow of whips, or something.

Top comment: He’s a *millionaire* and he’s using his whip to “protect the poor from exploitation and injustice”?!?! Gosh, it’s a good think he didn’t waste his money on something completely ineffective in that regard, like going to law school. — robin

1. Sidenote: does anybody remember a TV movie or something similar where Zorro was in jail or wounded or something, and his cousin took over, but his cousin was crap with a sword but great with a whip so he only used a whip, and called himself “the Red Zorro”? Did I just hallucinate that? [↩]

…no.

Just… no.

NOOOOOOO.

Top comment: Even then, if they’re just going for a Jetson-ish “modern” 50s family, they could be disgustingly liberal and accepting. “Oh dear, Brat and Dog have killed another cat. He’s probably just in that rebelling stage. Now go take out the recycling, honey, while I finish paying my taxes and we’ll all hug it out until dinner. Then, we destroy the world.” — Zifnab

You kind of have to feel sorry for poor old Carcharo. Todd McFarlane and Roy Thomas wanted to tell a story about a villainous shark-man. But the problem with villainous shark-men is that there are already some people who have firmly claimed that niche as their own – Tiger Shark, Killer Shark, King Shark, the Shark (he’s the one with no adjective), and of course Jabber Jaw. The essential point being made here is that there are no end of shark-themed supervillains. If you’re going to create a new one, you need to bring something new to the table.

What Carcharo brings to the table is giant shoulder pads. Cable-quality metallic shoulder pads, a full four years before Cable was created. (Or maybe afterwards. Cable is a time-traveller, you see.) That is what distinguishes him from all the other shark villains. Other shark villains think “I will be like a shark – sleek, hydrodynamic and deadly.” Carcharo, on the other hand, decided that he was so sharky he needed a handicap, so clearly he needed giant shoulder pads to slow him down!

Beyond the shoulder pads, there’s really very little that makes Carcharo unique. I mean, blah blah genetic experimentation as baby yada yada yada I think there are like six shark villains all with that same origin. You’d think at some point there’d be a shark villain who just decided after watching Shark Week one week that this was his ticket to supervillainy, but no – it’s always genetic experimentation as a baby.

Also, Carcharo died of a combination of cyanide poisoning and being stabbed with shrapnel. How do you even manage that? Cyanide is not supposed to be a slow death! You get enough of it in you and BAM, that’s it, there’s shouldn’t be enough time to say “hey, don’t stab me with that met-“.

In fairness to Carcharo, he apparently did manage to score himself a pair of lady companions, (who presumably were banned from most aquariums) and that’s more than most shark villains do. What with them being sharks and all.

Top comment: OK, just a quick question. His mother is alleged, but the unknown father gets a pass on that? How, exactly, does that work? — Ambrael

I fucking love the Forgotten Villains.

Look at them. These are old-school villains, who know the value of a good maniacal laugh, who know that good henchmen are hard to find but easy to slaughter in a fit of rage, who know that if you haven’t given the hero at least one tiny way to escape from your deathtrap then you just don’t understand the point of deathtraps.

Granted, only Enchantress is still around with any regularity these days and she’s kind of a good guy right now, but the rest of them deserve to make comebacks. Look at their lineup. First, there is Kraklow. Kraklow is a Polish wizard from the 18th century and he knows that proper evil wizards wear robes and have pointy fucking hats and these kids today with their techno-magic and their voodoo babble don’t know how to properly summon a cacodaemon worth a good goddamn. Kraklow is a giant Polish roll of fuck yes.

Then there is Atom-Master. He masters atomic thingies and basically made a helmet that turns him into Firestorm. He goes into combat wearing glasses because what the fuck are you going to do to his glasses that won’t just make him turn you into nitrogen? He is your classic mad-scientist villain and he, too, is awesome.

How about Mr. Poseidon? Okay, so his name makes no sense considering he has no sea-related powers, but he has rings which let him shrink down like the Atom and he controls the horrible Ultivac, the Indestructible Computer That Walks Like A Man (If That Man Were Really, Really Large And Made Of Metal And Computer Parts). Come on, you’ve got to love a guy who calls himself something that makes no sense. Assuming it’s not just his name. Maybe it is his name. Like, he is Dave Poseidon, and he decided, “fuck this name shit, I’m just going to build a giant destructo-computer-man.”

And then there is Chun Yull, the Faceless Hunter From Saturn (that is his entire villain name), who can turn things into bombs just by touching them, so basically he is an eight-foot-tall combination of the Question and Gunfire with Spock ears and orange skin and also he is from Saturn.

And last but not least, there is Yggardis, who is an evil sorcerer who happens to also be a fucking planet. Yes, if Mogo were A) evil and B) capable of casting magic spells, he would be Yggardis. Also Mogo would need to get himself a set of colossal metal tentacles, because Yggardis figured out pretty early on that in order to really be evil, you need something with which to make dramatic gestures. Because otherwise, what’s the point of being evil?

Like I said: I fucking love these guys.

Also, they fought the Forgotten Heroes. You know who the Forgotten Heroes are? Animal Man, Cave Carson, Congorilla and the Sea Devils. HOW FUCKING AWESOME IS THIS SHIT?

Top comment: I’d love to see Yggardis take on Mogo while a dozen or more heavy hitters in DCU just watch from space, like “well, what the hell are we supposed to do about THIS?” — Garfield

Fifteen reasons why Brain Storm sucks.

1.) His helmet looks like an exotic dildo.
2.) He first attacked the League because he thought they had killed his brother, but in fact, he had accidentally teleported his brother himself, using his own powers – to France.
3.) Seriously, it says that right there. Teleported his brother to France.
4.) It says right in his roundup that he will run away if “threatened with physical harm.” So he’s a pussy.
5.) Why do all villains with mental powers always suck at fighting? Haven’t they figured out yet that being able to throw a good punch is worth at least 1/3rd of a telekinetic bolt in comics?
6.) Dildo helmet.
7.) His name is two words rather than one.
8.) His real name is Axel Storm, so this is Silver Age Example #735 of a guy who couldn’t come up with a good super-name until he took a look at his own name and thought, “well, what can I do with this?”
9.) I know I’m hating on the dildo helmet, but – while we’re discussing sartorial choices, what is up with those shoulder things? Did he decide “yeah, I should look like a 1959 Cadillac, that will strike fear into the heart of all who behold me,” or what?
10.) That having been said – dildo helmet.
11.) His nickname is the “Star-Bolt Warrior,” which makes him sound like one of the toys from Crystar or a similar crappy toy line that didn’t even last one season on teevee.
12.) His failure to recognize that a pencil moustache in everyday life might make you look like Clark Gable, but once you put on a supervillain costume you stop looking like Clark Gable and start looking like Vincent Price.
13.) He invents a floating hoverchair and, rather than becoming rich, uses it for supervillainy. This isn’t, like, Captain Cold or somebody, who invented something that’s basically only good for killing people. He invented an air-chair, for fuck’s sake.
14.) Did I mention that his brother was named “Fred,” incidentally? Because – yeah, what kind of parent names their two children “Axel” and “Fred,” anyway? The type of person who names their kid “Axel” is not going to name their other kid “Fred.” Well, maybe their dad wanted to name the second kid “Diego” or “Slice” or something, and their mom put her foot down and said “this one is Fred, goddamnit.”
15.) In conclusion: dildo helmet.

Blinky dildo helmet.

People have been asking for this guy for approximately since I first started doing these Who’s Who bits, and I feel it is only proper to reward patience (and give into repetitive begging). So:

FIVE THINGS ABOUT VARTOX

ONE. Now, admittedly, at first one might look at Vartox’ clothes and say “my god, this guy is gayer than all of the Village People combined.” But that is unfair. Firstly, Vartox arrived in the Bronze Age, in the early 70s, a time when thigh-high leather boots, a Speedo and a vest with no shirt was the height of heterosexual male attire. Secondly, you have to be beyond manly to wear that with a completely straight face (and sexuality). Besides, Vartox is nothing if not serious about his fashion.

TWO. Vartox is powerful. He is really powerful. He had to be, because he was immediately established as a romantic rival for Superman, as he began a relationship with Lana Lang (whose affection for Superman was, it seems, matched only by her affection for Tom Selleck moustaches). Vartox has approximately eleventy billion “hyper-powers,” the origin of which was never actually explained (not even a lousy two pages of “cosmic rays something something”) and among them, as specifically listed in Who’s Who, is the ability to “project various kinds of energy to do an array of things.”

An array of things.

THREE. Vartox married an alien chick who died when a woman on Earth, her “bionic twin,” was shot and killed. The fact that this makes absolutely no sense whatsoever did not stop Vartox from pursuing the murderer of that Earth woman and bringing him back to face justice on his home planet, by aging him sixty years in a matter of minutes. Superman was apparently just fine with this horrific punishment and lack of any real trial, because, hey, alien guy.

FOUR. Vartox worked briefly as a security guard. This is probably the greatest deal of overkill in a secret identity in the history of comics. Can you imagine being the petty thugs who decided to steal a pallet of toaster ovens from Vartox’ warehouse? Man, it sure would suck to be those guys. He would hit them with his various kinds of energy and do an array of things to them!

FIVE. Vartox makes a cameo in “Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow?”, which puts him one up on chumps like the Teen Titans, who have never even been in an Alan Moore comic. (Alan Moore has a secret love of thigh-high leather boots, Speedos, and shirtless vest-wearing.)

Come on. He deserves the love.

Top comment: So what’s the square thing sticking out of the calf on his right boot? Unless it’s specifically cited, I’m going to assume it’s where he keeps his Marlboro Reds because he doesn’t have any sleeves to roll them up in. — ps238principal

Dragonsword is kind of weird. I mean, it starts out as a perfectly standard fantasy epic: apprentice tasked to go slay a dragon, apprentice slays dragon, sword becomes magic dragon-blade that gives him dragon-powers, and eventually heroic dragon-blade wielder must fight against evil emperor with transform-into-a-dragon power.

See, that’s fine. That makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is the ending:

He defeats the emperor, then tells everybody “no more evil emperors!” and to make sure of this, he leaves, putting his talking chimpanzee buddy in charge of everything.

Now, if I were going to make sure that my fantasy world would never be plagued by tyranny ever again, here are a list of the top ways I would do it.

1.) Not leave, but instead stay, find myself a nice bit of mountaintop, occasionally eat a sheep, and roast any potential tyrant to death.
2.) Leave, but first establish a representative form of democratic government.
3.) Leave, but first roast everybody so that nobody can ever be tyrant again. (AKA “the literalist approach.”)

And so on. But seriously – a talking chimpanzee? That’s this guy’s plan for preventing tyranny forever? After all, unless I’m missing something it’s not an immortal talking chimpanzee, so all tyranny has to do is wait thirty years or so and hey, time to be tyrants! And even during the chimpanzee’s lifetime, it’s not like the chimpanzee has any special powers other than the ability to talk. What’s stopping the potential tyrants of the world from just killing the chimpanzee and taking over? The chimpanzee’s ability to talk about how much he loves bananas?

And another thing, what’s to stop the chimpanzee from becoming a tyrant, anyway? Have you ever read about chimps? They’re pack animals, and once you get past the mental image of them driving a truck and being a cute sidekick, it turns out that they actually really mean little fuckers who will rip your head off if you look at them the wrong way.

Man, Dragonsword did not think this thing through.

Top comment: Sheesh. You people are so quickly dismissive. Have you READ the Talking Chimp King’s 19 Point Plan to end Poverty and Secure National Safety? Its fucking genius man! — LurkerWithout

Sometimes this column is difficult, because a concept is so sublimely wonderful. These are rare moments, but true ones, ones to be savoured.

Do I really need to explain how fantastic this is?

First off, it is a giant wheel. We all remember the brief villainous stint of Big Wheel in the Spider-Man comics fondly – he was the one who drove his wheel-like attack vehicle into the river and drowned because he was an idiot. But his giant attack wheel was nifty. Now take Big Wheel and multiply his novelty value by about ten million percent. That is the War Wheel. The Nazis did not fuck around when it came to war machinery in real life; therefore, comic book Nazis would obviously have to come up with even crazier shit.

It is a wheel made for warring. The War Wheel is eleventy stories high. It has spiked teeth, just in case its massive weight wasn’t enough to provide grip. Its axle provides a natural mounting point for machine gun nests. It is made of solid Holycrappium, the toughest element known to mad science, and it is powered by an occult fusion engine running on a million gallons of baby blood. Hitler used it to conquer Denmark all by itself, which is why now, in the DC universe, Danish people shit themselves whenever they see a unicycle.

The War Wheel knows no pity, no mercy, no fear. (Because it is a wheel.) IT WILL CRUSH YOU.

Totally deserved. You know this.

Top comment: The War Wheel turns when all the Nazis inside lean to the right or left. — Bill Reed

Once upon a time, there was a band of kiddie heroes in the Golden Age. And that was all right!

Okay, so maybe there being the presence of a fat kid in tights named “Tubby” is the sort of thing that now seems ludicrous. As does a pretty girl – hell, any girl – voluntarily hanging out with kids in blue leotards and masks and fighting crime. (Seriously, Little Miss Redhead is so out of the Blue Boys’ league it is not even funny.) And of course, her special weapon is a rope! Which she can use as a lasso or a bola or it’s fucking rope, people!

And yeah, the idea of these kids beating organized criminal rings with their “cleverness and athletic skill” is kind of a stretch. Especially when you look at Tubby. Obviously there’s not a lot of athletic skill there, but with that dopey grin I’m thinking he’s short on the cleverness too, so I have to wonder how useful he was. Maybe they threw him at the bad guys, I don’t know.

But, still – Golden Age. More innocent time. There was a war on. And so forth. My point is that although these guys are not exactly on the scale of a Robin or Bulletman, they’re at least forgivable as products of their time.

But nothing excuses this.

What. The. FUCK.

One of the worst things about DC’s appealing to “tradition” is that it tends to occasionally fetishize its own history. Don’t get me wrong; it’s cool that someone like Nemesis gets reinvented as a love interest for Wonder Woman (not least because Steve Trevor is a fucking dink and we are well rid of him), or that Ma Hunkle gets brought back to be the JSA’s housekeeper. But it can go badly as well, even by the best of writers: Kurt Busiek creating a “new” Haunted Tank in Power Company is one of the most egregious examples I can think of, but I’m sure you people can come up with a laundry list.

But this – this thing – is the worst of them. Ever. It is a rebirth of Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys – the team absolutely nobody demanded return – as second generation XTREEEEEEM reimaginings! They are the sons of the original Blue Boys! (Apparently Tubby reproduced. Possibly asexually.) One of them is an electronics expert and his nickname is “Static!” One of them uses a skateboard and his nickname is “Slats!” They are so fucking pathetically the product of a middle-aged mind that I’m almost hoping Little Boy Blue “does a rap.”

Yo I’m the LBB and I am here to say
that we three fight crime in our particular way
Slats rolls on his board, Static does his thing
and I’ll hit you with a bat, badda boom badda bing

And they beat Doctor Light, but that’s all right because now we know they could only beat him because Zatanna made him into a retard with magic. But seriously, even retarded-by-magic Doctor Light deserves better than to lose to these little assholes, whose soullessness is so evident that it makes me wince just looking at them.

Golden age version:

Modern-day version:

Comment that wins the thread: The modern team carries a baseball bat, a screwdriver, and a skateboard with a curious bashing-lip on the front. Clearly, if evil knows what’s good for it, it’ll hand over it’s wallet quietly. — wyrmsine

By popular (okay, one repetitive) request:

First off, understand that Roy. G. Bivolo (yes, that is apparently his real name, which is one step above Kite-Man’s real name being Charles Brown) is an embittered super-criminal who turned to a life of super-crime because he could have been a truly great artist if only he had not been born colourblind! Of course, the fact that you can create perfectly brilliant works of art in monochromatic tone (Escher did it all the time) never seemed to pierce Roy’s psyche. So probably he was lying about being a potential artistic child prodigy.

But it would make sense that he was lying, because Roy didn’t build his super-powered light generators himself – his father made them for him, shortly before dying of natural causes. How lame is that? At least Weather Wizard killed his brother to get that weather-wand. How does Roy have any self-respect at the super-villain club nights? Really, it’s supervillainy, not soap box derby racing.

“Yeah, I fell into a vat of super-chemicals and they turned me into a massively strong giant. How’d you come up with that light thing you do?”

“…my dad made it for me…”

On top of that, the powers themselves? Well, he’s got a sort of made-in-Chinatown version of the Green Lantern ring since he can create solid-light objects, although he never uses it for anything other than to create rainbows to travel upon. But even less impressive than that is his power to use colors to influence emotions. For example, he can use red light to make you angry! I imagine this is particularly useful when he is fighting Hawkman.

Hawkman: I am going to stop you, Rainbow Raider!
Rainbow Raider: A HA! Red light in your FACE!
Hawkman: I WILL KILL YOU AND WEAR YOUR BALLS AS A HAT! MACE MACE MACE!
Rainbow Raider: Oh, fu- (rest of sentence ended by mace smashed violently into mouth)

Finally, it is worth noting that among a criminal history that included such noteworthy moments as teaming up with Dr. Double-X (“less randy than Dr. Triple-X, more daring than Dr. Single-X”), one of the Raider’s most infamous criminal moments was attempting to drain all the colour out of Central City. Which left all the other criminals scratching their heads, because… why?

“Now they won’t be able to use… traffic lights! The city’s traffic will come to a standstill without giving me the riches I demand!”

Oh, Roy. Roy, Roy, Roy.

There’s a reason Geoff Johns used this guy as a stupid whipping-boy.

Top comment: This character makes much more sense if you assume he’s trying to get revenge on the world not over his colorblindness, but over his father cursing him with a really stupid name. I mean, come on… Roy G. Bivolo? It’s like his father wanted him to have the crap beaten out of him in school. — Skemono

“Fear me, Legionnaires! I am your doom! For mine is the power of ultimate bondage!

I see that your taut, sinewy muscles struggle against my cosmo-restraints! But your struggle is futile. Even as solitary beads of sweat inevitably roll down your lean, firm stomachs, so is your continued imprisonment within my clutches inevitable! There is no safeword you can utter that shall free you, Legionnaires! The 30th century belongs to Grimbor the Chainsman!

For Cosmic Boy, chains of invulnerable ceramic! For Element Lad, ropes of solid, untransmutable energy! For Colossal Boy and Shrinking Violet, size-changing proton-bonds! For Chameleon Boy, shape-adaptive manacles! For Dawnstar, Tyborian wing-shackles! For Mon-El, links of superdense Zarnium, laced with lead! For Karate Kid – well, for Karate Kid I just have regular old chains, to be honest, but they will do the job! There is no Legionnaire that Grimbor cannot entangle!

Within my confines, Legionnaires, you are vulnerable! And within my confines – which imprison, but do not harm, at least not without prior consent – you shall ultimately submit to the authority of Grimbor! Only through submission shall you be freed!”

The early 70s were a different time.

DC has oft-times gone to ridiculous extent to justify its tradition of kid sidekicks and teenaged superheroes. But every so often you come across one that they quietly swept under the rug – specifically the stupidest possible concepts they came up with. This is one such.

Yes, it is the Kiddie Version of DC’s tradition of theme paramilitary units – Easy Company, the Losers, the Haunted Tank, the Creature Commandos, and the lesser lights like the team of acrobatic brother-soldiers who repeatedly got caught on Dinosaur Island. But that wasn’t enough: they needed a young team to whom the Kiddies could better relate. And hence… the Boy Commandos.

Led (or possibly owned, it is unclear) by Captain Rip Carter, the Boy Commandos were not just a standard frontline unit but indeed an elite special missions team, every single one of its members apparently precocious in all the deadly arts. There was Andre, the handsome charming French lad; Alfy, the fat stupid English boy; Jan, the “soft-spoken” Dutch boy with stereotypical page-boy haircut; Tex, who – and I am certain this will surprise you – was a young cowboy who did rope tricks; Percy, who wore glasses and was therefore an intellectual powerhouse; and of course, there was Brooklyn, about whom the less is said the better.

(Except you can’t say “less” about Brooklyn, because thanks to the stupid, stupid need of DC comics writers to desperately tie every little goddamned thing together in their vast patchwork universe, Brookyln eventually grew up to become Dan “Terrible” Turpin, and therefore also eventually became Darkseid as well. I assume that at some point there will be horrible, horrible fanfic about this demonstrating how Brooklyn’s experiences in World War Two eventually led to him becoming Darkseid.)

You can say so many things about this that are righteously terrible things, but let’s put it this way. If DC decided to do a modern-day revival of Boy Commandos?

Oh, yeah! Best comic book ever!

Seriously, when Mark Waid used these guys in Brave and the Bold last year, I simply had to be impressed with his sheer ballsiness and/or lack of common sense. Some things can stay in the vault.