You know, it can’t be said often enough: despite the fact that these days DC’s fantasy characters from the late 70s and early 80s generally sell worse than Firestorm on its worst day, they’re all still pretty neat characters.

Valda was the main supporting character-slash-love interest in Arak, Son Of Thunder, which itself was a pretty decent fantasy comic (kind of like Conan, but with a Native American hero and a vaguely real-world setting). She was the daughter of Bradamante, the legendary lady knight of Charlemagne’s court, and herself a knight like her mother was. Also, she teamed up with Arak to fight demons and ogres and evil knights and so forth.

All of this is perfectly decent fantasy fare, but what elevates Valda for me is this: look at what she’s wearing! No chain mail bikini for Valda – no, she’s going to wear a full chain shirt, thank you very much! High heels? Those are for courtesans: Valda wears practical boots. And pants! (Okay, tight leather pants, but at least she’s got pants on.) For a female character in any genre fiction this is pretty damned impressive – for a female character in a sword-and-sorcery fantasy epic it is practically unheard of. Such practicality is quite awesome, and yet she remains terribly fetching, I must say.

Recently, Valda seems to have been transported to the future for some reason – she’s shown up a couple of times in various Shadowpact stories, but never in any great detail or with an explanation for why someone who was born in the 7th century is, you know, still around and all. But let us not overlook the fact that this means she can teach certain female characters about the virtue of practical clothing.

TANGENTIALLY RELATED FUN FACT: Arak, Son of Thunder is the ancestor of Flying Fox, whose magic cloak was a legacy left behind by Arak. Nifty.

It is the glorious return of this… thingy!

Now, I am well-known as a fan of the Legion of Super-Heroes, but keeeeeriiiist there are limits, you know? And the Wanderers go right up to those limits and stomp all over them. The Wanderers are stupid. This is how lame-ass the Wanderers are as a super-hero group: when the Legion first met them, and then were fooled into thinking the Wanderers were bad guys, they decided to have a contest to see who could capture a Wanderer the easiest. When you go through their ranks, this is not shocking.

Celebrand: The guy in blue. The leader, but with no powers at all, making him like, the Captain America of the Wanderers (except not, in so many ways). Nonetheless managed to be the least stupid of the Wanderers, thus showing why he was so valuable to the team. He had a raygun, though!

Ornitho: A guy with wings who could change into any type of bird imaginable. Thus, he had the power to fly and hold a weapon, and then lose the ability to hold a weapon. He was also good for making Chameleon Boy break out into giggling fits along the “what, are you serious?” line of questioning.

Quantum Queen: Had the power to control light. She probably could make it onto a real superteam somewhere if she felt like it, except that Celebrand had those dirty pictures of her back from when she was young and didn’t know the right people in the 30th century superheroing business.

Elvo: Not an elf. Had an energy sword. Kind of like the Persuader, except heroic and lame. Or like the Swordsman, except heroic and lame. Or… well, you get the gist.

Immorto: Mr. Immortal from the Great Lakes Avengers. Well, not officially, but you can see it happening, since his power, like Mr. Immortal, is to not die. He, too, had a raygun, which puts him one up on Mister I Change Into A Bird.

Psyche: An empath capable of affecting emotions, Psyche also probably could have gotten a real job somewhere else, but come on, can you imagine a better boost to your ego than surrounding yourself with these losers and feeling better by comparison? I mean, at least Psyche has powers. Celebrand and Elvo don’t, and Immorto’s is passive to say the least. And then there is

Dartalg: Who has a ridiculous name, a ridiculous outfit (a green skullcap plus a green tea-towel worn over the waist?) and possibly the stupidest superhero gimmick ever: he is a man who, in the far future, uses a fucking blowgun to fight evil. A blowgun. This isn’t just Green Arrow using a bow in the 21st century; this is the far future and this dipshit is using a blowgun and claiming superhero status.

Anyway, the Wanderers sucked. But they sucked in a distinctly Silver Age way, so that can be forgiven, and at least during the Great Darkness Saga they showed up again to help fight against Darkseid. Well, they mostly got their asses kicked there too, but at least they pitched in.

But then, someone at DC wanted a new 30th-century comic, possibly hoping to turn the era into a sub-franchise for DC. (This was back when the Legion had really good sales, you see.) So the Silver Age suck was stripped away, and replaced with distinctly late-80s suck, as the Wanderers were reborn for a new generation! Celebrand was killed off, and the remaining six re-imagined!

Aviax: The former Ornitho was given a ridiculously gay costume, and kept all his (dubious) powers. However, now he had a weakness: he had brittle birdlike bones! This made him edgy. The most notable thing Aviax did during the entire series was fuck a prehistoric bird in order to save its species. No, I am not even remotely kidding. Wanderers #12, people. Check it out. He doesn’t even have to be forced to do it – he comes up with the plan himself.

Dartalon: Dartalg was given actual powers, turning into a human porcupine! And a new name, supposedly combining “dart” and “talon,” but looking like it is pronounced “DART-uh-lon.” He spent most of the (thankfully brief) series whining about how he’s a monster now. (Like anybody was going to fuck him while he was wearing his previous outfit.)

Elvar: Still only with his energy sword, but at least now he looks like a reject from Elfquest, so that’s all right. He was the “bad boy” of the Wanderers. Sort of. Kinda.

Psyche: Same powers, but now she became an emotional vampire, feeding off people’s emotions and making them emotionless, which justified all the bad dialogue. It was Psyche making their language choices stiff and disjointed! Not the writer! (Doug Moench, if you were wondering.) Also, she was kind of crazy.

Quantum Queen: Same powers – better, even – but now with a slutty costume!

Re-Animage: The former Immorto traded up to quite possibly the worst superhero name in comics history. He also got the ability to resurrect people (only immediately after death). This was written as brilliantly as you would expect in a series where the characters thought “Re-Animage” was a good name.

Given this revamp, I feel the need to issue two separate Rex Ratings. Firstly, for the Silver Age Wanderers:

And for the modern:

Because the Silver Agers, while kind of loserish, never had a member who went on a superhero mission to fuck a bird.

Okay, I know that Tomahawk is DC’s Revolutionary War hero (complete with vaguely NAMBLAesque sidekick situation, just so you know he’s a DC property), but even so, the idea of a dastardly villain who is a British officer is still kind of comical. It’s totally a mindset thing; you have to initially shake off the mental image of him saying things like “Pip pip, cheerio, old boy – oh, Tomahawk, you dasher, you’ve winkled my plans but good, you Yankee devil you!”

But I really love the art here, because it really does make Lord Shilling look like a nasty badass, or like Jason Isaacs’ total bastard character in The Patriot (a movie which, while often kind of silly, at the very least had Jason Isaacs in it – plus, Donal Logue as A Racist Who Learns A Lesson!) – competent, merciless, and one hundred percent All Business. Lord Shilling doesn’t have any superpowers beyond being an excellent athlete and a brilliant spy, but he doesn’t need any powers to fuck you up. And if you beg Lord Shilling to show you a gentleman’s mercy, he’ll do it by cutting your throat open. He’ll be polite, though, and wait until after you’re dead to remark upon how bloody stupid a request that was.

Really, the more I look at Lord Shilling, the more I like him. He’s from the other school of British characters, the James Bond/John Steed/anonymous badass SAS colonel mode. He’s exactly what a good bad guy should be: competent, cool, can shoot your eyebrow off at fifty paces with a flintlock pistol, and likely has a cutting remark for any situation, even when Tomahawk barely manages to one-up him.

Still – shame about the wig, though.

Mike W. Barr, during his run on the Outsiders, had a real knack for creating mediocre bad-guy teams. The original Force of July set the bar fairly low, and then Mike W. Barr consistently failed to meet that bar of his own creation. The Nuclear Family, the People’s Heroes… he just kept churning them out. Every team had to have a theme of some kind, no matter how silly. It didn’t matter, because his stories were more about the interpersonal relationships within the Outsiders anyway; nobody really cared who the Outsiders beat up because it was secondary to the idea of the comic. But they had to beat up somebody.

At one point, he more or less abandoned the theme method and just went with his gut.

He should not have done that.

Ostensibly, the theme of Strike Force Kobra is “Kobra’s elite team of supervillain mercenaries.” But it’s Kobra. Kobra sucks. He has always sucked; he will always suck. Kobra is the Toledo Mud Hens of DC supervillains. So, in addition to that theme, Mike W. Barr gave them another theme: they would all be based on Batman villains.

Except not so much.

Going through the team in alphabetical order:

Clayface. Not a new concept, but it’s not like there haven’t been heaps of Clayfaces. Adding one more isn’t going to dilute (heh) the Clayface concept. So we’ve got a Clayface. This is an eminently reasonable beginning for a fourth-tier supervillain team.

Elemental Woman. Has powers kind of like Element Lad or Metamorpho, neither of whom was ever a Batman villain. This is the point where you realize the “Batman villains theme” is in fact kind of bullshit and Mike W. Barr was just throwing stuff out there. Regardless, Elemental Woman is a generic supervillainess with a generic name and a generic costume. She is a very President’s Choice supervillain. (Americans may not understand this reference. Please replace “President’s Choice” with your generic supermarket chain-branded food line of choice.)

Planet Master. Planet Master has superpowers based out of his costume, which allow him to simulate the conditions on each of the nine planets. So he can do Mercury (hot), Venus (hot and poisonous), Mars (cold), Jupiter (cold), Saturn (cold), Uranus (cold, makes people snicker), Neptune (hot – I know, you weren’t expecting that!), and before Pluto was downgraded presumably he had access to the amazing coldness of Pluto as well.

But here’s the thing: each planet-power is contained within its own, individual costume. So if for some reason he’s fighting in his Mercury outfit and needs access to his cold powers, he needs to change his costume. Planet Master is the only supervillain in history who presumably brings along a portable changing screen to every super-fight. And why does he need costumes for all the cold planets? Why not just one “cold” planet with whatever additional features are useful (maybe Saturn comes with little rocks or something) and one good “hot” planet. Or, here’s a wacky idea, put all the powers in one costume. It’s just cold and hot – supervillains with both cold and hot powers are not new.

Spectrumonster. A “living bolt of energy” with powers much like Halo of the Outsiders. Created because Halo needed somebody to fight and presumably a monster made of light would be ironic, like in that Alanis song. You know, “Hand In My Pocket.” That’s an ironic song! (Because she doesn’t have a hand in her pocket, you see.) Spectrumonster is redeemed somewhat for being a cool concept and having a decent name, though.

Zebra-Man. Oh, god. Zebra-Man. Guess what his powers are. If you said “something related to zebras” – you’re wrong! Zebra-Man’s powers have nothing to do with zebras; he has the power to shoot rays from his hands which can repel or attract objects. Like a magnet, but not. (Or, for fans of the Zoo Crew, like Yankee Poodle.) However, despite the fact that this power has absolutely nothing to do with zebras, he dresses up like a zebra and calls himself Zebra-Man. I am fairly sure Zebra-Man has a really weird sexual fetish compelling him to do this thing.

So, to sum up: we have two reasonable if nothing-special villains, one very generic villainess, and two of the most impressive losers to come down the pike in a very, very long time.

I’ll give props for Clayface IV, who eventually found some use within the Batman titles during the pretty decent “Mud Pack” storyline. But Spectrumonster sadly got blown up, and as for the rest… ehhh.

Any discussion of Dr. Spectro…

…no, sorry, I’ll start again. When considering Dr. Spec…

sorry… uh… Dr. Spectro is worth talking about because…

…OH GOD HE LOOKS LIKE A FUCKING DISCO BALL.

That is his superpower. He is a walking disco ball. He uses bright lights to confound and hypnotize his enemies. And that’s all he can do. The entry takes pains to point out that he is completely useless in a fight beyond being a walking disco ball of evil.

You know what this means? Daredevil doesn’t even have to try hard to beat him. Lucky thing Daredevil’s a universe or three to the left, but even so.

There are a lot of DC supervillains like this, who are technical geniuses but can’t throw a punch to save their asses. You’d think at some point some of them might figure, “hey, maybe one day I’ll have to fight Batman. Maybe it would be good to last more than three seconds against him.”

I want to make more fun of Dr. Spectro, but I’m pretty sure he died in an issue of some comic John Ostrander wrote. He sort of has that feeling about him. “Yep, this guy’s gonna die in an issue of Suicide Squad.” It just seems cruel to pick on him, even if he does have the fucking ugliest costume of all time.

Every Thursday, mightygodking.com returns to the pages of Who’s Who, the classic 1980s DC comic book encyclopedia of their characters. Every week, a character shall be judged on the only scale scientific enough that matters: the Rex The Wonder Dog scale of fantasticosity.

I have to admit, I am completely torn this week.

On the one hand, the Manhawks are blitheringly stupid. First off, the fact that their enemy is Hawkman is just all kinds of dumb – Man-Bat was already pushing the “reverse name” villain concept to its utmost, but at least Man-Bat has a decent concept attached to him. The Manhawks are… giant hawks.

From outer space. With spaceships, which they apparently invented with their talons. And they’re telepathic. And they can fly through space (which kind of begs the question why they ever needed spaceships, but I guess they’ve got them). And they wear humanoid masks. Which shoot eye lasers. And their entire modus operandi is that they just really like stealing things a whole lot. (Because they don’t really need money. Because they are giant hawks.)

It’s like DC’s bullpen was getting drunk one night and decided that this time, they really, really had to see how far they could go before some kid looked up from his comic and said “Mom, what the hell is this shit?”

But on the other hand, I know that when I was eight I would have eaten this shit up with a fucking spoon. And I am a big proponent of the theory that superhero comics should be accessible to – and indeed, whenever possible, targeted at – eight-to-twelve-year olds. Plus, there’s some nice touches in there, like the fact that the Manhawks change masks every time they rob a planet, so their new masks match the appearance of the race they’re robbing. You have to admire an evil kleptomaniac alien race that just decides to fuck with other civilizations’ heads.

I’m going split decision on this. The Manhawks actually manage to make less sense than a Nazi vampire gorilla or Ice coming back from the dead. But they’re still kind of cool, in their way.

EDIT TO ADD: I am only rating the Silver Age Manhawks here, not the updated Manhawks, who reek of “we can make this cooler! To the EXTREEEEEME” and are everything that is wrong with comics.

Every Thursday, mightygodking.com returns to the pages of Who’s Who, the classic 1980s DC comic book encyclopedia of their characters. Every week, a character shall be judged on the only scale scientific enough that matters: the Rex The Wonder Dog scale of fantasticosity.

Comics are weird in that every so often, a writer can knock a character concept right out of the park and the vast majority of fans simply won’t notice. We recently saw this in The Order, where Matt Fraction put together at least half a dozen stellar character concepts and wrote them all brilliantly and so of course the series got cancelled in ten issues. It happened with Skrull Kill Krew, probably the only superhero team to plausibly have an English racist skinhead as a member. And it happened in Young All-Stars, with Flying Fox.

Flying Fox is a fantastic superhero. His powers are ill-defined, yes, but they’re ill-defined that way because, having read the series, I can explain what Roy Thomas was trying to do: create a golden-age equivalent of Batman for the All-Star Squadron. Young All-Stars existed in part because, after Crisis On Infinite Earths, the All-Star Squadron didn’t have access to Batman, Superman or Wonder Woman – hence, Flying Fox, “Iron” Munro and the golden age Fury all got pressed into service as replacements. And where Batman had a utility belt, Fox had “Indian magic,” but the concept remained the same – he was the “thinker” of the team.

And he worked. (Fury didn’t. “Iron” Munro kind of did, but not as well as was needed, unfortunately.) There are characters who just have it, the magical quality of cool. Flying Fox is cool, seriously cool. He has a good costume, a good but not overly strong power set, got a lot of good lines (not bad for a native son only recently introduced to the modern world, really), and most importantly hit that exact point on the Batman Scale in between “brilliant, monomaniacal asshole” and “clubby, chummy super-dork” where you get the perfect superteam “thinking badass.”

He’s due for a reintroduction, frankly. I mean, no reason one of his “Indian magic” powers can’t be longevity.

Would have gone slightly higher, but the tufted crests on his mask are a bit too owly to be foxish.

Every Thursday, mightygodking.com returns to the pages of Who’s Who, the classic 1980s DC comic book encyclopedia of their characters. Every week, a character shall be judged on the only scale scientific enough that matters: the Rex The Wonder Dog scale of fantasticosity.

The DC Universe is not, let us be honest, one that is famed particularly for international criminal/terrorist groups. Marvel Comics has HYDRA, AIM, the Hand, the Maggia, Roxxon, and of course all the splinter groups that come along with those big, important evil ones – so that whenever a Marvel comics writer needs a villainous terrorist with a psycho-death gorillabot, he can just invent Radically Advanced Ideas in Destruction or Maliciously Advanced Ideas in Larceny or Transformative Realizations Of Advanced Ideas in Nanorobotics and the reader will instantly know “oh, it’s just AIM again, except not.” And this is fine, although they never really explain why the guys in AIM dress up like evil beekeepers.

Meanwhile, DC has tried time and again to invent their own equivalents of these same groups, and almost universally they fail. With the exception of the League of Assassins – which mostly gets by on Ra’s Al Ghul’s cred; I mean, I like Merlyn and all, but come on – they almost always end up sucking pipe. We have Kobra (“just like Cobra in “G.I. Joe,” except completely different and even less impressive”). We’ve got Intergang (“hey, are you a common criminal deluded enough to believe that sheer numbers can beat Superman? Then sign up today”). There’s The 1,000 (“like Intergang, but with a less interesting name”).

And those are the good ones. There are more terrible failed shadowy organizations in the DC universe then there are Green Lanterns, frankly. A short and not comprehensive list: the 2000 Committee, ASP, the Assassination Bureau, the Battalion of Doom, Black Ops, Cell Six, The Council, H.I.V.E., The DMT, Eurocrime, Locus, Les Mille Yeux, MAZE, the Oblivion Front, Scorpio, Shadowspire, SPIDER, The Veil, VULTURE, and no less than three separate unrelated outfits known as the Network.

Honestly, it’s kind of amazing that all these organizations manage to co-exist. Do they have their own human-resources divisions?

“So, Mr. Kelly. I see here you worked for three years at SPIDER as an arson specialist. How do you think you could help VULTURE’s accounts payable division?”
“Well, I could set the people we owe money on fire.”
“Interesting, interesting… You are aware that the health plan requires a buy-in if you want optical coverage, right?”

And then there is SKULL. If there is one saving grace to DC’s horde of indistinguishable villainous cartels, it is that they are homogenous; the same vaguely pan-Hispanarabic terrorists and criminals in every one (ah, the good old DC universe, where dusky-but-not-black skin almost always equals “evil”). But not SKULL. Simple swarthy looks are not enough for the likes of SKULL.

SKULL makes you dress up.

Now, unlike a lot of these criminal organizations, SKULL did not arise out of a shared interest in power and money. Rather, it arose because the Atomic Skull needed a lot of flunkies. Perhaps you’re thinking “but wait, the Atomic Skull is mostly a nobody.” And this is true. SKULL is an organization founded to serve the whims of a second-rate Superman villain. Okay, by itself it’s not that bad. For example, Kobra is pretty lame, but he’s got his own army. Which is also pretty lame, come to think. But he had his own comic! Which… you know, Kobra probably isn’t a good reason to justify the Atomic Skull having a terrorist army.

But it’s even sadder than that, because one day the Atomic Skull just said “oh, fuck this,” and left SKULL. But that didn’t stop the members of SKULL from continuing to do evil… stuff. It also didn’t stop them from keeping their original name. SKULL is like a Milli Vanilli cover band that chose to carry on after everybody found out that Rob and Fab weren’t actually doing any of the singing.

But they still have the uniforms with the skulls on them, so what are they supposed to do, huh? I mean, they’re already cutting costs. Every third meal is ramen, and when it’s not ramen they’re buying off-brand food, and they had to sell the Skullships for money so now everybody has to make do with bus passes, and Brenda cancelled the maid service so now they keep the evil headquarters clean via a chore rota. Getting new uniforms and coming up with a new name would be expensive, and everybody likes the skull motif anyway, so…

Yes, I know somebody’s going to say “but you can use them for a comedic riff on evil comic-book terrorist armies,” but the thing is that you don’t need SKULL to do that. You can just use a witless member of a GOOD evil comic-book terrorist army and it’ll be more effective (and funnier).

Every Thursday, mightygodking.com returns to the pages of Who’s Who, the classic 1980s DC comic book encyclopedia of their characters. Every week, a character shall be judged on the only scale scientific enough that matters: the Rex The Wonder Dog scale of fantasticosity.

There honestly isn’t that much to say about Carapax, because there’s sort of a trend for villains introduced in the pages of Blue Beetle or Booster Gold during the 1980s when those two titles, you know, existed and stuff. That trend was very simple:

1.) Show up
2.) Get ass kicked
3.) Disappear forever

Very old-school, mid-70s Spider-Man sort of villainy. (Big Wheel! Hypno-Hustler! And so forth.) And not without merit, because come on, when you’re getting your ass kicked by Blue Beetle and you have actual honest-to-god superpowers clearly you need to rethink your approach. Of course, nowadays that generally means “be reinvented as a serial killer” (it happened to Catalyst in JSA), or sometimes “join a larger gang of villains and then get killed off because you are a warm body” (the Madmen, for example).

Carapax is of course no exception, because despite being a man whose body was destroyed and whose mind became trapped within the form of an indestructible battle robot, he got his ass thoroughly outsmarted by Ted Kord, who dropped him into the middle of the ocean. Of course, indestructible battle robots generally don’t drown, so presumably Carapax went off somewhere afterwards to rethink his whole “five-year-plan.” I have no idea if he showed up anywhere else since.

But if he didn’t – well, he is an intelligent indestructible battle robot, and he’s got the whole “superpower as ultimate disability” thing going that’s worked for many a character (“I don’t have a body any more!”), and come on, he looks kind of cool, doesn’t he? Like an evil, bright red cross between Boba Fett and Voltron. Besides, let’s face it: Can you ever really run out of indestructible battle robots?

Mostly for potential and cool appearance, I admit, but let’s be honest: when Carapax briefly showed up, he did not suck. He did exactly what you would expect an indestructible battle robot to do: blow shit up and not get destroyed. And that deserves recognition!

Every Thursday, mightygodking.com returns to the pages of Who’s Who, the classic 1980s DC comic book encyclopedia of their characters. Every week, a character shall be judged on the only scale scientific enough that matters: the Rex The Wonder Dog scale of fantasticosity.

See, once upon a time, Kana would have been all right. When he first arrived on the scene, ninjas were a novelty. There was no American Ninja, no Shinobi video game for the Sega Genesis (and indeed no Sega Genesis), not even a Storm Shadow or Shredder. Kana is a refugee from a simpler time, when men were men and women were women and ninjas were ninjas and dammit, that was enough.

Unfortunately, just because he’s old school doesn’t really make him very interesting. Kana is perhaps the most generic ninja character of all time. The stereotypical ninja origin – he has an oath of vengeance! (Which, curiously, he carries out by being an agent for the West, which really doesn’t make any sense when you think about it for more than two seconds.) Look at his “powers” – the most generic set of ninja abilities ever created. Good with weapons! Hides in shadows! Can meditate! Boy all of this is really fascinatzzzzzzzzz.

The reason nobody knows what happened to Kana is because nobody cares. Or perhaps, more accurately, Kana is so boring that we in fact do know, but nobody can be bothered to tell the story. “Yeah, he did some ninja stuff for a while. Then he opened a dojo and taught ninja stuff to young ninjas.” (It would have been a car wash, but a car wash would be in its own small way interesting and distinctive, so Kana would have none of that. If there isn’t a bamboo mat involved for him to meditate upon and a bowl of rice at the end of the day, he’s not interested.)

But in his own way, Kana is a throwback. Kana is the product of a time when ninjas were the new, the perfect example of cultural exploration at a time when risotto and hummus and reggae and General Tso Chicken were all considered daring and risque novelties of the Other Part Of The World. Back then, he didn’t need to be anything more than a ninja. And that’s kind of cool, in a way.

“Generic ninja” is a flat twenty-five percent, but Kana gets bumped up a bit for being the definitive generic ninja, if you will.

Every Thursday, mightygodking.com returns to the pages of Who’s Who, the classic 1980s DC comic book encyclopedia of their characters. Every week, a character shall be judged on the only scale scientific enough that matters: the Rex The Wonder Dog scale of fantasticosity.

So who’s this guy?

He’s Unimaginable.

Yeah, but who is he?

I just told you.

You did?

Yeah, I did. He’s Unimaginable.

I get that, but what’s his name?

That’s his name.

What?

Unimaginable.

Is his name?

Yes.

What does he do?

He’s Unimaginable.

I thought that was his name.

It is also his thing.

His thing is that he is unimaginable.

Yeah.

So he can do anything.

Well, he couldn’t convince the Justice League to let him join.

He wanted to join the Justice League?

Yeah.

That seems kind of imaginable to me.

Well –

I mean, I can imagine joining the Justice League.

Fair enough.

So he’s not really unimaginable.

Well, he might be unimaginable. He might not be very imaginative, though.

How did the Justice League beat him?

They probably came up with –

A ha! You were going to say “a plan!” But to have a plan to beat somebody, you have to imagine their weaknesses! That means the Unimaginable is imaginable!

You have trapped me in the sharp points of your logic.

That’s nothing. I could also prove that black is white, but I don’t want to get run over at a zebra crossing.

Wise of you.

Because essentially the Unimaginable is Mr. Mxyzptlk minus the derby hat. But come on, what would Mr. Mxyzptlk be without the derby hat?

Every Thursday, mightygodking.com returns to the pages of Who’s Who, the classic 1980s DC comic book encyclopedia of their characters. Every week, a character shall be judged on the only scale scientific enough that matters: the Rex The Wonder Dog scale of fantasticosity.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. “Wait,” you are thinking, “didn’t Golden Age Superman already have multiple enemies who were middle-aged men and had a “childhood aspects recast as vaguely menacing villainy” motif?” And yes, the Puzzler is just doing something which the Prankster and the Toyman did better. However, in fairness, one must point out that the Puzzler actually showed up first, two issues before the Prankster and another twelve before the Toyman.

This is about the only thing you can say in the Puzzler’s favour, really.

Because let’s be honest: the Prankster is witty and clever, and the Toyman is, depending on frame of reference, anywhere from innocently creepy to supremely creepy. They have evolved beyond “grown man who plays with kiddie things” into character hooks and concepts that can work in multiple ways. And who knows, maybe somebody can come along and make the Puzzler interesting again.

But it’s kind of an uphill climb. You know why? Because the Puzzler, in addition to everything else, really isn’t very smart. I mean, you’d expect someone whose entire thing is puzzles to be, like, good at them, but no, the Puzzler kind of sucks at his chosen obsession. Consider: he enters a tournament of mixed games of chance, and doesn’t win a single one, losing at poker, bridge, hearts, rummy, cassino and blackjack.

So he decides to take his revenge on the guys who actually won in thematic ways. Okay! This is supervillain type stuff. Perfectly acceptable. So first he tracks down the poker champ, and… beats him to death.

With a poker.

No giant maze of cards, no ingenious deathtrap involving a 52-card-shuffle theme, not even something involving clubs. The Puzzler’s idea of deliciously ironic revenge is to beat a guy to death with something with the same name as what he lost at. This is repeated when he tries to kill the bridge champ by pushing him off a bridge, and tries to kill the blackjack champion with a blackjack. Possibly it was a good thing that Superman stopped the Puzzler before the villain decided to kill the rummy champ by beating him to death with a bottle of Captain Morgan.

So the Puzzler is really quite unique: unlike the Prankster or the Toyman, who attempt to counter Superman’s awesome power with keen intelligence and a madcap sense of unpredictability, the Puzzler attempts to defeat Superman by being kind of stupid.

Every time I think of the Puzzler pulling off one of his “super-crimes,” I think of him doing the double-thumbs-point-at-self thing and saying “PUZZLER!” in a loud shouty voice, because he thinks it’s awesome when you do that. “Hey! Poker champion! I just beat you to death with a poker! Now you’re dead! PUZZLER!”

I’m being a bit generous, because it’s still possible somebody could revamp the Puzzler into something worthwhile. I mean, did you see how awesome Kurt Busiek made the Prankster recently? Nothing is impossible. (Plus, I have to give props to a fellow wearer of the goatee.)

Every Thursday, mightygodking.com returns to the pages of Who’s Who, the classic 1980s DC comic book encyclopedia of their characters. Every week, a character shall be judged on the only scale scientific enough that matters: the Rex The Wonder Dog scale of fantasticosity.

Okay, Stalnoivolk is pretty cool.

Why? Because he is a super-powered Stalin lookalike.

Now, admittedly, this is not quite as cool as a Russian graduate student with no powers who idolizes Stalin and uses Stalin’s image to commit crimes, or the actual Stalin himself as a sorcerer fighting Black Magic Hitler. (And, curiously, with a bit of a speech impediment.) But Stalnoivolk is pretty damn cool, even if he is not at the apex of coolness.

I mean, he does all his supering in a nice suit. Don’t we all often wish that more superheroes just did their jobs while wearing nice suits? After seeing a number of Marvel movies, you begin to appreciate that tights look kind of silly sometimes, and not everybody has to wear them. So let’s give praise to Stalnoivolk for wearing a nice three-piece.

However, Stalnoivolk has also met up with Deadshot, and indeed been out-badassed by Mr. Floyd Lawton. While this is no great crime (after all, being out-badassed by Deadshot is pretty common, because Deadshot is totally badass), it does mean that when assessing Stalnoivolk’s rating, we have to take into account that he is definitely below Deadshot’s tier.

Thus:

(Originally costed at 73%, but dropped five points because “Stalnoivolk” is really hard to spell.)

Every Thursday, mightygodking.com returns to the pages of Who’s Who, the classic 1980s DC comic book encyclopedia of their characters. Every week, a character shall be judged on the only scale scientific enough that matters: the Rex The Wonder Dog scale of fantasticosity.

Mysto is quite possibly the first ever character whose spectacular origin actively makes him worse. I mean, he starts out as a bush pilot. Bush pilots are cool, right? You even get a glimpse of him up in the corner as a bush pilot. That looks pretty cool!

And then he lands in Tibet and saves a swami sort of person from bandits (well, tries to save – note that Mysto’s general aura of sheer pathos starts early), who teaches him ancient mysticism and sleight of hand. Not actual magic, you understand, in the bibbity-bobbity-boo Harry Potter/Merlin/turning you into a frog sense. The swami teaches him parlour tricks. Which, we would point out, makes this Tibetan guru in the hills quite possibly the lamest wise old hermit in the entire history of comics and quite possibly all fiction ever.

So Mysto returns to civilization when the swami dies, and stops being a bush pilot and instead becomes a children’s magician. Not even a nightclub magician: his magical skills are good enough to fool kids. So he’s not even that good a magician.

All of which leads him to conclude that his mastery of second-degree prestidigitation would best be used to fight crime.

Again: this is the DC Universe (well, early on in it to be sure, but it’s not like there weren’t actual magical characters in the Golden Age). And he’s planning to fight crime with fucking card tricks.

And I’m being generous!

Every Thursday, mightygodking.com returns to the pages of Who’s Who, the classic 1980s DC comic book encyclopedia of their characters. Every week, a character shall be judged on the only scale scientific enough that matters: the Rex The Wonder Dog scale.

FUN FACTS YOU MIGHT NOT HAVE KNOWN ABOUT VIKING COMMANDO

1.) Honestly, why DC have not brought back Viking Commando in some form is beyond me. He is a Viking who fights Nazis. Do I need to repeat that? A Viking who fights Nazis. I’m just going to say it again in case the pure cool factor has not sunk into someone’s brain here: a Viking who fights Nazis.

2.) The following are the lyrics to the theme song from the shortlived Japanese television series adaptation (title loosely translated: “Ancient Mighty Beard Warrior Versus Magic Hitler Dream Army”)

VIKING COMMANDO
VIKING COMMANDO
HE’S A NORMAL VIKING MAN TRANSPORTED FORTH IN TIME TO FIGHT THE HUNS
HE’S ARMED WITH A VIKING AXE THAT SOMEHOW BEATS PEOPLE WHO HAVE GUNS
VIKING COMMANDO
VIKING COMMANDO
HE WILL TOTALLY FUCK YOUR SHIT UP WITH HIS EIGHTH-CENTURY NORDIC WAYS
AND SOMEHOW HE KNOWS MODERN ENGLISH, NOW DOES THAT NOT AMAZE
VIKING COMMANDO
VIKING COMMANDO

3.) Valoric (IE, the Viking Commando) was originally going to be the star of The 13th Warrior until Antonio Banderas made it big. Then Antonio Banderas became somewhat less big in a hurry and the movie studios felt very, very stupid.

4.) Did anybody else notice that according to the writeup – that the Viking Commando, a warrior without peer, can’t die until he’s killed in battle? What happens if he can’t find someone capable of killing him in battle? Doesn’t that make him technically immortal? Damn, now I have to do a “I Should Write The Legion” where he shows up. The only thing better than a Viking with an axe and a machine gun is a Viking with an Atomic Axe and a psionic ray blaster.

5.) You just know he totally nailed Mademoiselle Marie at some point.

And the tale of the tape is…

Very high! And do you know why?

Because he is a Viking who fights Nazis.