FAQ: Do You Have A Plan For THIS Character?
One of our most commonly recurring topics of conversation is what characters we are or aren't using. Obviously, there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of DC characters that we've elected not to include, and lots of people have had a lot to say about a lot of them. We needed a place specifically to answer all the questions or comments about characters, asking if we're going to use them, or simply sharing their thoughts about the characters
Dragon King
~"Do you have any ideas for the Dragon King?"
This character's name has come up quite a bit, as we work through different bad guys to try to tell different stories. He's never quite fit, not just because he was usually not quite the vibe we were looking for, but also because golden age villains with Asian influence can be problematic in a number of ways.
Dragon KIng manages to sort of thread the needle and come out the other end without being all that offensive, but it does mean that in most stories where you might use him, you’re better off with someone else. |
Sarge Steel
~"Any plans for Sarge Steel?"
This is interesting, because Sarge Steel seems to work for DC kind of the same way MOST characters seem to work for us, in that we often will mold characters into new shapes or rethink their back stories or even their whole vibe to fit into our story the way we want them?
Sarge Steel started out as a Charlton Comics character back in the 60s, but was acquired along with the rest of the Charlton lineup in the 80s. Since then, he's been used several different ways in lots of different stories, acting as a cop, military guy, government agent, or director of various government organizations I think by default then, he kind of fills the same role for us. He's probably going to show up as a secret organization director down the line when some story presents the need for that character. |
Onomatopoeia
~"Any plans for Onomatopoeia from Green Arrow?"
Onomatopoeia is actually an invention of Kevin Smith, from his really good and almost absurdly popular Green Arrow run, which I think is the main reason he's considered a character with any amount of pedigree, because without that, he's really just one more assassin character like Shrike, or Brutale… or one more serial killer character like Murmur. None of them are particularly innovative, other than their central gimmick; in this guys case, he only speaks using sound effects.
I guess you could make a case that this sort of character is basically the 90s equivalent of the goofy gimmick villains of the golden & silver age, characters that all needed other writers years later to make them interesting? In any event, If we wanted to find a use for Onomatopoeia we'd really need SOME sort of story to build a timeline out of. Frankly, if we were in a position where we needed a dangerous assassin/serial killer character? I don't know that this would be the one we’d use. |
Max Mercury
~"Do you have plans for Max Mercury? I didn't see him mentioned in Do You Have Plans For This character FAQ page."
So Max Mercury has an interesting history. The character originally appeared in Quality Comics in the 40s, where he went by the name Quicksilver and was basically just copying the original Flash without much of his own backstory at all. DC acquired the Quality comic characters in the 50s, but quicksilver was not among the characters they found a use for despite owning them (Kinda. There is some dispute over whether all the Quality Comics were available to BE purchased, or if they were actually public domain, but that's a different subject). Mark Waid reimagined the character in his 90s Flash run, using a new name since Marvel now had their own Quicksilver, and made him a mentor character for Wally West & Bart Allen.
Do we need him? I'm sure if we were particularly compelled to use him we could find something for him to do, but we’re not really convinced he's necessary. If we want a mentor character Jay Garrick is right there. |
Duke Thomas
~"Hi! Do you plan on adding any furher members to the Batfamily? Specifically, I would love to see your take on Duke Thomas/Signal."
We got this question shortly after we finished the last of the Batman Supporting Characters, which actually included a new hero character for our project; Batwing. This was specifically because we had a story to tell with him; the events that start to evolve Gotham into the future cityscape it becomes... absent that sort of situation, we might actually be just about done with the Bat Family.
Duke Thomas is a character out of the Scott Snyder run Batman, which I've always struggled with. I often say that I need the character to contribute something to the overall story. I do get that Duke is the first powered member of the Bat Family, and that he protects Gotham during the day? Which is great, but neither of those things is an event you can add to a timeline. I just haven't seen a point to the character, which tends to be how I feel about all of Snyder's Batman work. Rather than building out of what came before, it seemed like he was just throwing paint at the walls. I certainly don't want to sit here telling you he's not a good character, though! If you like him, then I can't wait to see how you use him! |
Alura & Zor-El
~"Will Zor-El and Alura get pages in the future?"
Alura & Zor-El are Supergirl's parents, and as you might imagine, a character that has had subtle changes to their backstory over the years has produced a wide variety of versions of their parents. Sometimes they are even still alive, and can wind up becoming antagonists. I think that Zor-El wound up becoming some sort of Cyborg Superman during the New 52?
They do absolutely exist in our project, but I don't know if our version of these two will generate enough content to necessitate pages of their own. I can definitively say that they are both dead; they would have put themselves in suspended animation on Argo, the moon of Krypton, but sadly only Kara's life support pod was still functional when Clark found them 29 years later. I suppose that since Kara was fifteen when Krypton was destroyed there could be some relevant events in her childhood? Generally speaking, though, I think Kara's backstory is pretty well set, and we'd be better off digging into her life on Earth for more stories. |
Volcana
~"Do you have any plans for Volcana? I know she is a DCAU character mostly, but I think she is a really interesting character who sorta shows what Superman could have become If he was raised by people instead of the Kents"
That's actually an interesting observation. It's a good thematic role for her, but unfortunately, I don't know if that specifically translates into actual events we can use to build her a timeline. Her appearances in the Superman Animated Series depicted her as a firestarter who had essentially been victimized by a military complex that planned to make her a living weapon, and her first appearance ended with her essentially living on a desert island with Superman bringing her regular supplies... it was a weird way to end it, and if we were to try to use this character, we'd basically have to invent her whole story from scratch?
although, we've of course done that before. Maybe if we have a particular story we're trying to tell that she just happens to fit the mold for, you might see her. |
The Phantasm
~"Have you ever considered adding Andrea Beaumont aka The Phantasm?"
I was actually planning to put a big old spoiler warning on my response here because Mask of the Phantasm really is one of the best Batman movies you're ever going to see, but then I realized that your actual question is a spoiler. So I can just go ahead and answer, and if anyone gets mad at me for spoiling a 30-year-old movie... blame this guy!
So, yes, this is the titular character from the 1993 animated movie Batman: Mask of the Phantasm. Clever twist aside, the appeal of Andrea Beamont is really twofold. It's a really great design, as you can see here in her 2021 comic continuity debut in Tom King's Batman/Catwoman miniseries. It's an unofficial adaptation of another character from Batman continuity, the Reaper, but I think it's fair to say this is just a better-looking character. The other appeal is the story between Andrea Beaumont and Bruce, which is really the main thrust of the movie. We did consider including her when we went through Bruce's love interests, but the fact that she's basically been non-canon until recently makes her hard to integrate into Bruce's timeline as we know it. Add to that the fact that she manages to be pretty redundant with Selina, and I'm afraid we just didn't have a sense of a role for her. |
Detective Chimp
~"Do you plan on using Detective Chimp. He's a wonderful character and a great fit on the Shadowpact and the magical side of DC as a whole. I've scowered the site but I haven't found my boy"
We didn't, for a long time. When we originally did the Shadowpact he didn't strike any of us as especially necessary for the team to work, and the choice to not do the mental gymnastics to include yet another intelligent primate character was an easy one. I think that even as the character's fanbase got broader, we were still struggling with a way to make him somehow stand out from the other intelligent apes, and we just didn't have a sense of how to do it, or of a reason to do it.
We did eventually find one though, we think. It'll take a more specific shape when we get around to redoing pages for the Shadowpact because it will involve doing some rewrites for both Jim Rook & Nightshade, but I think at this point we're pretty locked in that you'll see Bobo eventually. |
Maxwell Lord
~"I’m sure you’ve been asked this a bunch, but I can’t find it mentioned in the FAQ or Unused Characters sooooo….. Do you have any plans for Maxwell Lord?"
I actually haven't been asked this one a lot? The answer is no, we don't have any plans for him.
Maxwell Lord was invented as a smarmy 80s yuppie who helps assemble the JLI, who is later revealed to have all sorts of sinister motives and aspirations of global mind control, but that's all pretty clearly a deliberate retcon. I'm of the opinion that if a person WERE to try to use them, you'd be better off ignoring all the later villainous redesigns and just sticking with the two-faced businessman? Frankly, however, he's going to wind up being a character for whom some purpose will suddenly arrive fully formed as part of some particular storyline. Absent that, however, I don't think he's a character we feel any need to work to include. |
Xanthe Zhou
~"Do you have any plans for Xanthe Zhou? They're a very new character, but I think they're easily one of the most unique new characters to come out of DC in the past decade and I could especially see them shining in this context, where the resident sword-wielding Asian person connected to the spirit world (that's an incredibly reductive way of framing the character but still the similarities are there) is firmly retired now."
We DON'T, but that's more of a function of them just being so new we haven't come up with the right way to approach them. The superlatives here are just out of this world; this is SUCH a fantastic character that the prospects of adapting them into the DC continuity is actually kind of intimidating?
As of right now, there really isn't a version of DC as we recognize it that they can be a part of; I believe they're coming from the current Lazarus Planet crossover. That means that for now, all we'd really be doing is just transposing them into the DCCP with a close aproximation of their current canon adventures intact, and just sort of hope that we can find some way to work them into our timeline that does themjustice? We're VERY open to suggestions, so if this was the next character we got pummelled with ideas for, that would be very cool. |
Greg Saunders (Vigilante)
~"Do you have plans for the first Vigilante, Greg Saunders?"
Not PLANS, per se... but we do have this very loose idea that we're still pretty on the fence about. It would require a specific loophole in our time travel rule.
Currently, there are references to the Sheedan Time Seeds in the timeline for Frankenstein. If we did a story in which the Sheedan Empire, a civilization of fae from the distant future, was reaching back into time to change the past (probably Merlin's banishment of the fae), and creating ripple effects where individuals from different periods of history were being drawn along, and had to all work together in a one-time effort to stop them? Suppose there were... seven of them? You could include an actual cowpoke named Greg Saunders who manages to acquire a also-time-displaced motorcycle, and sacrifices himself by ramping it into a spaceship or something? This is a REALLY rough idea and it currently causes way more problems than it solves, but that's where we are with Vigilante. |
The Red Hood Gang
~"Did the Red Hood Gang exist in your universe? And if so, did the leader becomes the Joker?"
We haven't had any specific reason to mention the Red Hood Gang. We're making a very specific choice to reject ANY sort of backstory for the Joker, since we all agree that there's simply no possible backstory that could work better than him just arriving fully formed. Without the reference to the Joker being Red Hood, there doesn't really need to be any sort of connection to the modern character.
I think there are times when characters names being a sort of connection to the legacy of another (Like Jason Todd Red Hood identity being a sort of twisted Joker legacy) does have some narrative weight in the right hands, but given that our Red Hood isnt Jason Todd, and our Joker was never Red Hood... then there's really just no reason to dip back and create this weird gang in Gotham's history that doesn't really serve a purpose. |
Slipknot
~"Slipknot could be a fun addition, if not for just "how do we make this guy work?""
This might actually be a good reference, because this is very specifically something we DON'T do. We add characters because they bring something to the party, we're not generally taking characters with nothing to add and trying to square peg them into the project. It doesn't take much, sometimes it's just because they happen to fill a role in the story that we need filled, but it needs to be something.
So, to answer your comment, as of right now I think the best way to use this particular character is just how we're using him right now; by not including him. |
Atlee (Tera III)
I don't actually think anyone has specifically asked about Atlee, but it's she's still a character we discuss a lot. This is a really tough one because everyone absolutely loves Atlee. She's a character by married creators Amanda Conner & Jimmy Palmiotti who basically just continually included her in everything they worked on practically without explanation and certainly without apology, and she's just delightful. She became a sort of sidekick to Power Girl for a while.
The problem is that her origins in continuity are obviously just an excuse for her to exist; she's a refugee from an underground civilization of people who gave her geokinesis powers, which just introduces a bunch of concepts that just don't work within the context of the larger continuity. We've gone around the world talking about Atlee both in the comments and the discord trying to come up with a way to use her, but every time it's like we're practically remaking her from scratch, which is just always a clear sign that you're not getting it right. |
The Court of Owls
~"Any plans for the Court of Owls? Their concept is pretty new, but has already entrenched itself as a highlight of modern comics, and doesn't include multiverse shenanigans."
We've had more than a few people bring up the Court of Owls as one of the few examples of stories to come out of the New 52 that people actually like. As I understand it, they're even going to show up in the sequel to The Batman, so we're very aware that they're popular, and we're not trying to dissuade anyone from using them in YOUR fan timeline, but for us, we knew pretty early on we weren't using them.
I think the best way to articulate what we don't like about them is to compare them to the Multicolor Lantern Corps. Clearly, they're very different, but what they're essentially doing is retconning already-existing lore about the history of Gotham and the Waynes, and stripping away something with a lot of depth and character in favor of something that feels very cookie-cutter, which to us has always felt like moving in the wrong direction. We want things to feel messy and weird. Gotham should be a chaos of warring crime families and psychopaths, not be secretly controlled by an orderly cabal. All that said, we actually do have some preliminary ideas about a way we might be able to use them elsewhere, which I am sure plenty of people will hate, so we are pretty excited about it. |
Apollo & Midnighter
Of all the characters to have been ported over to the DC universe proper from Wildstorm when the worlds were merged after the New 52, these two are almost certainly the highest profile. Debuting in Warren Ellis's Stormwatch, and then serving on the uber-popular series The Authority, they're probably the most popular Wildstorm characters, and when James Gunn announced that his slate of movies would include the Authority, it only guaranteed we'll be getting plenty of questions about including them.
We go into greater detail about this in other parts of the site, particularly in our version of the Elite, which we've built so that it reproduces the feel and style of the Wildstorm universe... but Wildstorm really isn't an original enough property to stand out when it's paired with the original stories it's emulating. It's all meant to be an exciting examination of the tropes of other popular comics. Midnighter & Apollo are a really, really obvious, deliberate spin on Batman & Superman. It was their whole appeal. It was awesome when it was in its own universe, but it does not, and hasn't ever, worked as part of the main DC universe. |
Libra
~ "I'd love to see your version of Libra!"
This was a comment, and it really stumped us, because for the life of me, I had no idea why anyone would even consider asking about him. As far as I know, Libra is a character with essentially no origin or backstory who showed up once to form the original Injustice Gang, and then basically vanished from the timeline forever until Morrison tapped him as the John the Baptist allegory for Final Crisis... and so I really don't see anything there to adapt?
He's really just an interesting-looking costume that was featured in a major crossover one time. |
Ghost-Maker
We've had a few requests to take a look at Ghost-Maker... and I've gone back and read a bunch of the James Tynion IV Batman to get a sense of this character. Tynion really seems to have been focused on adding new characters to the Batman mythology, and while I don't know if it's necessarily the case here, that's often an indicator that the writer doesn't have anything to actually say with the character they're actually writing?
As best as I can tell, this guy is just... Batman, but edgier? It's almost a parody of the sort of edgy self-insert character a 14-year-old would invent? We COULD try, but we'd basically have to invent a whole story and personality and motivation for him, and at that point, why are we even doing it? |
Commander Blanx
Blanx was proposed specifically because the person wanted to put a face to the White Martians that caused the extinction of the Green Martians, and this is the guy responsible in Pre-Crisis continuity.
We will eventually be doing a page for the White Martians (if we haven't done it already by the time you're reading this) so this is largely unnecessary, but it's also a larger problem we've had with Martian Manhunter, as his lack of a good rogues gallery has given us a bit of a problem here and there. Still, I think we just need a little more to work with. |
Tula
We got several comments describing a few different ways we could try to adapt Tula, the silver-age addition to the lore of Aquaman and the eventual girlfriend of his sidekick Aqualad. There were a few pretty good ones that really leaned into a sort of 'Undersea Game of Thrones" vibe that we really appreciated. Her most popular appearance to modern readers seems to be her appearances in Young Justice, and she's also been updated in the post-52 DC as an Atlantean soldier and the half-sister of Orm Marius.
Ultimately, however, Tula hasn't really ever had a strong role to play, outside of ultimately being killed in the first Crisis. There are other characters we DO use whose main contribution is their death, of course... Jason Todd comes to mind... but in this case, with us doing it with an existing love interest, it just felt way too much like building a character pre-fridged. |
NIghthawk & Cinnamon
~"Are Nighthawk and Cinnamon going to be in this continuity but without the Hawk-connection like they were in the comics prior to the 2000s, or are they being erased entirely?"
So, for context, these are two Western characters with a few appearances from across the Silver Age; Nighhawk was a recurring backup character in Western Comics in the 50s, while CInnamon had maybe two or three appearances in Weird Western Tales in the 70s. They remained back catalog characters because there was really no interest in them.
So, when Geoff Johns introduced the idea that, rather than a single reincarnation as had always been canon, Hawkman, and Hawkgirl had lived many lives across history, they began looking for back catalog characters who could conceivably be Hawkman reincarnations, they deliberately looked for people who had nothing going on at all. Once you remove the connection to Hawkman, you could probably make an argument that Cinnamon is at least engaging in her way, but Nighthawk really doesn't have anything going on at all. |
Sojourner Mullein
~"I'm curious as to how you feel about Jo Mullein, the newest Green Lantern. She's a human, but she's fully removed from Earth, which I personally find really cool and refreshing."
I'm sure I've said this somewhere in this site, but I'm a huge, huge fan of Raymond Chandler. I love classic noir mystery thrillers in pretty much every format, and a lot of stories we all love are really just classic Chandler thrillers with a fresh coat of paint. When you give me a science fiction Chandler thriller, you almost always wind up giving me one of my favorite stories of all time, so from that perspective, Far Sector is amazing. It's an absolutely gorgeous comic with some beautiful worldbuilding, and Jo is an amazing character. If this was an Elseworlds story it would be one of my favorite comics of all time.
Unfortunately... Sojourner being a human means she just doesn't work within continuity. Yes, she's far from Earth, but she's still FROM there, and that makes NO sense. I would say this story should be in continuity if she wasn't human, but honestly that just isn't quite the same story. My preference then is to just let this amazing comic stand as it is without trying to force it into continuity where it really doesn't fit anyway. |
Kite Man
We'll often start getting comments about including a character when they start to show up in the pop culture zeitgeist one way or another, usually because they've been plucked from obscurity and given a new role to play in some new media, leading to a lot of new fans. A great example is Peacemaker, who was a very easy character to ignore for a long time, until suddenly he very much wasn't. Even then, we weren't really trying to adapt the version of Peacemaker from his media appearances, we were instead looking to adapt the actual comic character.
Kite Man weirdly had TWO zeitgeist moments almost on top of each other; he was given a new pseudo-tragic backstory in Tom King's flashback story the War of Jokes and Riddles, and then he became a fan favorite fun character in the Harley Quinn animated series. Neither appearances have actually done much to make what is essentially a joke character any more usable, and unfortunately our timeline format makes it hard to adapt joke characters, so for now, even with the fan interest, we just don't have a way to use him. |
Jessica Cruz
I wish we had an easy answer here. I should probably start by saying... I haven't actually read a comic featuring Jessica Cruz that made a compelling argument to include her. I'm not saying the books she appeared in were BAD, just that I haven't seen anything that I felt needed to be included here.
That doesn't mean I dislike HER. It just puts us in a weird position, where there are no specific stories involving this character that we want to include, where her origins run in direct conflict with the central tenets of our project (no multiverse, so no Earth-3 Power Ring), and we also have a very good reason not to include her (for the love of god, stop adding new human Green Lanterns. Sector 2814 had something like 9 trillion inhabited planets, it's insane that even two Lanterns are from Earth. We have five.) But even I am aware that there's real potential in Jessica Cruz. I saw the Justice League vs the Fatal Five, I get the appeal. And let's be honest, we've jumped through some hoops to include the Lanterns we've included, so there's every reason to jump through some more to include Jessica as well. As she is... we just haven't come up with a way for this character to actually be in the timeline. |
Also, while this next character was actually never in the timeline, I think he does deserve some consideration here, since our choice to exclude them does occasionally come up.
General Immortus
The very first villain the Doom Patrol ever faced and actually an important part in their history. We eventually discover that Niles Caulder, as a young scientist, recieved a generous operational budget from a mysterious benefactor that allowed him to do his research and eventually build the Doom Patrol. This mysterious benefactor was Immortus, who wanted access to the immortality syrum Caulder was working on.
That story is a good one, and we pretty much fully stole it. In our version, we just replaced Immortus entirely with Vandal Savage. Savage's desire to have another Immortal being to live through eternity with is a really great motivation, and helps provide a lot of the fuel for Scandal Savage's story. Unfortunately, using Vandal here essentually made Immortus completely redundant. |
Green Lantern Baddies We Skipped
A blog entry from 04/30/2019 - When working on pages for Green Lantern villains, these were the ones we chose to not create.
Hector Hammond
Hector Hammond is, somewhat inexplicably, a major enemy of Hal Jordan's. He was even included in the Ryan Reynolds movie, getting so much screen time I actually felt like I was going insane. I've never read a version of this character that contributed in any way to my enjoyment of the character, he always just felt like a lead weight in the plot.
It's not like this concept can't be done in a fun way. Everyone loves Modok. Ultimately, thought, Modok is ridiculous and acknowledges it. We're somehow meant to take Hammond seriously, and that's just never going to happe, (Hector has come up several times in conversations about possible Martian Manhunter villains, but we maintain that this guy, in fact, sucks, so we're pretty commited to not using him) |
The Tattooed Man
This guy and his ability to animate his tattoos has been around a LONG time. He goes so far back that his original incarnation basically looked like Popeye. There was even an attempt at a heroic version of this character during Final Crisis. At some point thought, you have to just look at a thing and say... why? There's just no way to make this guy make much sense.
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Evil Star
I have no reason to exclude this character other than the fact that I have yet to find any story anywhere that justified him. He's an alien scientist. That's literally it. There just doesn't seem to be anything in his story that makes him stand out in any way that made it worth creating a use for him.
I mean, the costume is kind of cool, maybe. But Starro and Despero already exist. He's just a weaker version of a concept that has been done much better in a lot of other places, and without a more concrete contribution to the narrative, there's just no place for him. (We did, much later, actually find a REALLY great story to use Evil Star in!) |
Goldface
Goldface started out as a Green Lantern villain, but later on was also associated with the Flash. In either case, however, he made almost no impression whatsoever. He's a "criminal scientist" who drank a serum that gave him strength and invulnerability. If anything at all, he presented a challenge to Hal because he was yellow. That's just such a limited character, I couldn't begin to think of some way to make him useful. I have a LOT of "criminal scientists" to invent functional backstories for, so they really need to bring SOMETHING to the table.
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Major Force
While he's technically a Captain Atom villain, Major Force is so closely associated with Kyle Rayner that he managed to effectively become his arch-nemesis.
The problem, of course, is that the guy has no personality and no motivation beyond just being a bad guy, and is responsible for one of the singular worst story beats in comics (which is saying something, because comics can get really messed up sometimes.) We've done a good amount of work to try to strip away some of the ugliness from that story, and one of the easiest parts of that was to just bin this character completely. |
The Shark
I have never for the life of me understood what this character is even doing here. He's a shark that was mutated by atomic radiation so that he grew a humanoid body, and telepathic powers. I mean, this is the same medium that brought us Gorilla Grodd... but...
Even if we didn't want to use him as a Green Lantern villain and decided to use him as a baddie for Aquaman which would MAYBE make a little sense... this dude also exists in the same comic universe as the infinitely more entertaining King Shark. There is literally no point to him at all. |
Black Hand
Modern readers probably won't even recognize this version of Black Hand as he's been so thoroughly reworked into the new mythology of the multi-colored lantern corps as the wielder of the Black Lantern ring... which is powered by the emotion of... death? or something? This is really where I tuned out.
But even if you wanted to use Black Hand's original incarnation he's just a guy who invented a gadget that allows him to absorb Green Lantern constructs. There are ways to Force this to work, but at some point you have to stop and recognize that you're not adding anything new or interesting to the story. It's just one more baddie for the sake of adding one more baddie. |
And all THIS stuff...
I've said it several times, but I'll just add it here once more; the introduction of the multi-color Lantern Corps are really where DC lost me. I'm sure lots of people love it, and that's totally fine. To me, it reduced every single character in the Green Lantern mythology to the same idea repeated over and over. It's not what I want. I do of course introduce small pieces of it in the existence of Atrocitus and Saint Walker, but other than them I've just left out all of this. That likewise goes for any ideas introduced during the Blackest Night arc.
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