I’ve decided that this is now a regular feature here at mgk.com (well, until I get bored with it, but who knows how long that will take). Every week, we will return to the pages of Who’s Who, the classic 1980s DC comic book encyclopedia of their characters. Every week, they shall be judged on the only scale scientific enough that matters: the Rex The Wonder Dog scale.

Now, it is obvious that no character can approach Rex The Wonder Dog for sheer quality, so we need not worry about dispensing a 100% Rex rating, which is for Rex and Rex alone. But I believe we can create a sort of a field, if you will:

100 Percent Rex: Rex The Wonder Dog
99 Percent Rex: Batman, Superman
90 Percent Rex: Brainiac Five, The Shade
75 Percent Rex: Blue Devil (pre-“I’m cursed to be a demon” Blue Devil, obviously), Guy Gardner
60 Percent Rex: The All-New Atom, Hawkman (all of them)
45 Percent Rex: Booster Gold when he was in that mecha-armor suit
30 Percent Rex: Kid Quantum I, Hal Jordan (shut up, I have determined this through science)
10 Percent Rex: that sorta-vampire dude from Team Titans
.21 Percent Rex: Superboy-Prime post-insanity

So, now that you have an idea of the playing field, let us judge our first entrant.

Fun facts you may not have known about Roy Raymond, Television Detective:

1.) He legally changed his name to “Roy Raymond, Television Detective.” He had to sue Metropolis City Hall for the legal right to insert the comma in his name, and Raymond v. Metropolis was a groundbreaking case in the DC universe common-law tradition.

2.) Who’s Who claims that he “could be a great detective but prefers investigating different types of enigmas.” These include such mysteries as the Missing Fritos Of 10:30 and The Secret To Getting Into Julie From Accounting’s Pants.

3.) He gets more pussy than you do, and you’re just going to have to deal with that.

4.) Will Ferrell based his Ron Burgundy character off of Roy Raymond, Television Detective, only removing the “detective” part in final script rewrites to avoid legal trouble.

5.) Roy Raymond, Television Detective is so laid back, he breaks the fourth wall so he can lean against the side of his own panel.

And the final verdict is…

 Roy Raymond, Television Detective starts off with a high 65 rating for pure balls and also because he rocks that pipe like a motherfucker. However, his insistence on shouting things aloud like “by the Throne of Zeus!” over and over again got old after the first couple of movies times he did it, and this loses him eighteen points.

This is Firestorm.

For those of you who do not know such things, Firestorm is a superhero with the power to transmute nonliving matter from one type of matter to another. So, for example, he can turn oxygen into iron, or lead into gold, or helium into plutonium, and so forth. Note that his power is not limited only to base elements, but indeed to more complex molecules. He’s not really limited in terms of scale when it comes to this power. (As an afterthought, he can also fly and shoot “nuclear blasts” at his enemies.)

Now, the more cunning among you may have noticed that this makes Firestorm, at the very least, a ridiculously powerful demigod, one of the most powerful superheroes imaginable. So you would think that his rogues’ gallery would compose some of the most fearsome villains ever created. Right? Right?

First up, let us consider the Enforcer – a character which is actually two characters, each wearing the exact same suit of armor. (This despite the fact that the first one is a big, brawny guy, and the other is a slender woman.) Apparently it’s a very form-fitting suit of armor. So, let’s see – it’s got boot-jets, and a laser gun, and super-strength. It’s maybe a bit generic, but as super-suits of armor go, it’s not bad.

But Firestorm can turn it into talcum powder with a thought whenever he feels like it.

Now the Hyena is just kind of depressing. First off, the Hyena is a woman who turns into a male hyena monster, which is, well, definitely a new spin on the were-monster stereotype, to say the least. And note that even though this naked were-monster is male, we’re still not allowed to see so much as a nipple. And yes, the Hyena is of course completely outmatched by Firestorm in every possible way.

But what’s really depressing now is that the Hyena has become DC’s token Villain You Can Kill Off. The Hyena has died, by my count, three times in the last decade. I have no idea if any of them were this particular Hyena. Maybe the whole Hyena curse or disease or whatever it is nowadays is transmissible, and when you get bitten by a Hyena, you become a Hyena (and thus a third-rate supervillain, good enough to be killed by Jason Todd or Deadshot, probably not so good to appear as a threat in The All-New Atom).

Also: he/she/it is presenting. And that is just wrong.

So, let me get this straight: Her name is Silver Deer. She is a Native American supervillainess. Her powers are turning into spirit animals and super-gambling?

If her weakness turns out to be liquor, how wrong would that be?

And again: turning into spirit animals and magically affecting games of chance versus “I can convert the air above you into giant rocks” is not a good matchup.

Now, Slipknot is interesting, because I mostly like the costume (that noose motif on the mask is cool, admit it) and the gimmick. He’d probably make a good Batman villain, the sort who shows up for one issue of Detective Comics when Alan Grant was writing and get his ass handed to him after a decent fight drawn by Jim Aparo.

But he is going up against Firestorm. Firestorm’s handle is “the Nuclear Man.” Slipknot’s handle is “the guy who’s really good with rope.” I don’t care if it’s fancy super-rope that Slipknot treated with fancy super-chemicals; Firestorm can still turn it into a puff of nitrogen at will.

Later, Slipknot got his arm blown off in an issue of Suicide Squad, but managed to survive. We know this because he showed up (with one arm) in Identity Crisis, as a prisoner who had taken up the worship of Kobra, DC’s very own third-rate cult leader supervillain with world-conquering ambitions. Understand that becoming the sworn follower of a lame-ass dictator wannabe with delusions of adequacy was just about the best Slipknot could manage.

His superpower is: he is a fucking furry. Why on earth is he appearing in a Firestorm comic? Ever? Dear god, somebody tell me that Weasel died in an issue of Suicide Squad or something. Weasel is the sort of pathetic supervillain that you actively wish Geoff Johns would kill off. That’s how bad he is.