The Elite
4 years ago - Manchester Black discovers a renegade living inter-dimensional ship. He severs it's connection with it's Daemonite masters and names it Bunny. He uses his powers to cut all ties with his handlers and begins assembling the Elite. Their tactics bring them into conflict with 31-year-old Superman, who eventually defeats them. While his powers are temporarily deactivated, he is imprisoned. His sister 26-year-old Vera Black speaks to him in prison, and gets him to reveal how to access his ship. Membership: 32-year-old Manchester Black, 33-year-old Paul Booker, 21-year-old Pamela Sonjia, 24-year-old Haruto Satou (Rampotratek)
3 years ago - 33-year-old Manchester Black's powers return. He escapes and attempts reassemble the original Elite to kill Superman, but only 25-year-old Haruto Satou (Rampotratek) joins him. His sister Vera Black reassembles the remaining Elite, Pamela Sonjia & 34-year-old Paul Booker, and leads them against him. Pam & Paul kill Rampotratek. Defeated, Manchester takes his own life. His death ends his protection of Bunny from the Daemonites, and Vera only survives their attack thanks to Rip Hunter. She assembles a group of Daemonite victims to form a new Elite. The Khereubim move Cole Cash's resources into Bunny, manning the ship.Membership: 27-year-old Vera Black, 22-year-old Pamela Sonjia, 24-year-old Clara Kendall, 41-year-old Cole Cash, 29-year-old Rac Shade, 17-year-old Raquel Eruin, Augustus Freeman IV
1 year ago - the Elite battles against Mageddon alongside the Justice League, and become officially sanctioned in the aftermath.
Noteworthy Teams
Original Members
Current Members
The Elite existed in a very particular time in DC's continuity. To understand WHY it existed, we first need to talk about Wildstorm.
One of the biggest, most noteworthy things to happen in the transition into the new 52 universe was the integration of the Wildstorm characters with the DC Universe proper. DC has a history of buying up other companies compendium of characters and maintaining them as a separate universe for a time, but most of these were done before the Crisis of Infinite Earths, when they were all brought together into a single timeline. Wildstorm stands out because it was much more modern, created as part of Image Comics imprint of characters in 1992 and acquired by DC in 1998.... but only occasionally crossing over until 2011 when the Flashpoint event smashed them together.
Unlike a lot of other external companies acquired by DC, Wildstorm is noteworthy because in many ways it was crafted to actually emulate existing characters. When Image was founded by a bunch of ex-Marvel artists they all started their own creator-owned series and a lot of them were essentially carbon copies of the books they had left. Wildstorm-founder Jim Lee's submission was Wildc.a.t.s., a team book that allowed him to get as close as possible to drawing the early 90's X-men without risking a copyright infringement. His team featured a group of alien-empowered warriors fighting a secret war against an invading alien force that disguised themselves to live among us. Wildstorm would go on to include Stormwatch, Gen 13, and perhaps most notably The Authority.
The Authority commanded the superhero landscape during the turn of the century. Created by Warren Ellis as a barely-veiled allegory for the Justice League, they operated as the absolute final moral authority (see what they did?) over the everyone, using their god-like powers to save the world by any means necessary. They were violent to the point of being brutal, they approached cataclysmic events with a detached pragmatism that bordered on megalomania, and they seemed to be the modern evolution of Super Heroes. How could the old-world idealism of the comics your grandparents read stand up to the unrelenting objective effectiveness of a team like the Authority?
The answer is actually contained inside a single comic. 2001's Action Comics #775. In a story written by Joe Kelly titled 'What's So Funny About Truth, Justice, & The American Way?", we are introduced to the Elite; a team of heroes within the DC universe that were just as much allegories for the Authority as the Authority were allegories for the Justice League. This smaller team aped the tactics and mentality of the Authority, and even featured cockney punk Manchester Black as their leader, an obvious send-up of the Authority's leader Jenni Sparks (and probably a little bit of a wink at Warren Ellis himself). The Elite confronted Superman and made his ethically upstanding way of superheroing look hackneyed and outdated. I'm not going to spoil what happens next for you on the off chance that you haven't read this issue (or seen the very faithful animated adaptation, Superman vs. The Elite). Various publications have named it the #1 single issue published in 2001, #1 in the top ten comics of the decade, and the 'greatest superman story of all time' by Wizard magazine. Suffice to say, Superman proves his relevance.
The team bearing the name Elite continued to play a part in DC... earning their own ongoing series with a slightly different line-up called Justice League Elite, but the point seemed to have been made. In a world that features Superman and the rest of the Justice League, no team could wield absolute moral authority, because that was what the bad-guys do. The Authority continued to be published, but eventually the Wildstorm universe was combined with DC's central continuity, and the team was more or less broken apart.
Why bring all this up? because... if we're doing the full DC timeline, then we need to understand what role the Wildstorm characters play in it. While it might seem fairly simple to just start bringing them in, the fact is that many of the characters are deliberate copies of existing Marvel or DC characters. We COULD include Midnighter & Apollo, but it would just be an excuse to include another allegory of Batman and Superman. We COULD include Warblade, Spartan & Mister Majestic of the Wildc.a.t.s., but only if we felt like we needed slightly forced versions of Wolverine, Cyclops... and Superman, again. The purpose of this project was never to include every piece of DC's fabric, but instead to make it into something BETTER. So... what CAN we use from Wildstorm? What story elements will feed the tapestry we're trying to create?
Immediately, It seems smartest to begin simply with the title that has already been built as DC's equivalent of a Wildstorm team. The Elite already have a huge role to play in DC thanks to their story with Superman, and we should absolutely allow that to be the backbone of what we're building. Just like in the comics, the Elite needs to grow into something else after it is proven to basically be a group of particularly charismatic Superman villains, but rather than turning it into a budget Justice League, we decided to morph it into something that actually approximates the mission of Wildstorm's very first team: Wildc.a.t.s. There are, as it turns out, quite a few characters in the DC universe whose story would benefit from the inclusion of a secret invading alien army. So by introducing the Daemonites, we can actually take the framework of the Elite and turn it into something entirely new. In the end, we actually wound up using almost no actual Wildstorm characters; as we said, they tend to be pretty derivative. Instead, rather than trying to take those characters and force them to work within DC's narrative structure, we can import Wildstorm's unique storytelling ideas and give THEM a home right in the middle of DC.
One of the biggest, most noteworthy things to happen in the transition into the new 52 universe was the integration of the Wildstorm characters with the DC Universe proper. DC has a history of buying up other companies compendium of characters and maintaining them as a separate universe for a time, but most of these were done before the Crisis of Infinite Earths, when they were all brought together into a single timeline. Wildstorm stands out because it was much more modern, created as part of Image Comics imprint of characters in 1992 and acquired by DC in 1998.... but only occasionally crossing over until 2011 when the Flashpoint event smashed them together.
Unlike a lot of other external companies acquired by DC, Wildstorm is noteworthy because in many ways it was crafted to actually emulate existing characters. When Image was founded by a bunch of ex-Marvel artists they all started their own creator-owned series and a lot of them were essentially carbon copies of the books they had left. Wildstorm-founder Jim Lee's submission was Wildc.a.t.s., a team book that allowed him to get as close as possible to drawing the early 90's X-men without risking a copyright infringement. His team featured a group of alien-empowered warriors fighting a secret war against an invading alien force that disguised themselves to live among us. Wildstorm would go on to include Stormwatch, Gen 13, and perhaps most notably The Authority.
The Authority commanded the superhero landscape during the turn of the century. Created by Warren Ellis as a barely-veiled allegory for the Justice League, they operated as the absolute final moral authority (see what they did?) over the everyone, using their god-like powers to save the world by any means necessary. They were violent to the point of being brutal, they approached cataclysmic events with a detached pragmatism that bordered on megalomania, and they seemed to be the modern evolution of Super Heroes. How could the old-world idealism of the comics your grandparents read stand up to the unrelenting objective effectiveness of a team like the Authority?
The answer is actually contained inside a single comic. 2001's Action Comics #775. In a story written by Joe Kelly titled 'What's So Funny About Truth, Justice, & The American Way?", we are introduced to the Elite; a team of heroes within the DC universe that were just as much allegories for the Authority as the Authority were allegories for the Justice League. This smaller team aped the tactics and mentality of the Authority, and even featured cockney punk Manchester Black as their leader, an obvious send-up of the Authority's leader Jenni Sparks (and probably a little bit of a wink at Warren Ellis himself). The Elite confronted Superman and made his ethically upstanding way of superheroing look hackneyed and outdated. I'm not going to spoil what happens next for you on the off chance that you haven't read this issue (or seen the very faithful animated adaptation, Superman vs. The Elite). Various publications have named it the #1 single issue published in 2001, #1 in the top ten comics of the decade, and the 'greatest superman story of all time' by Wizard magazine. Suffice to say, Superman proves his relevance.
The team bearing the name Elite continued to play a part in DC... earning their own ongoing series with a slightly different line-up called Justice League Elite, but the point seemed to have been made. In a world that features Superman and the rest of the Justice League, no team could wield absolute moral authority, because that was what the bad-guys do. The Authority continued to be published, but eventually the Wildstorm universe was combined with DC's central continuity, and the team was more or less broken apart.
Why bring all this up? because... if we're doing the full DC timeline, then we need to understand what role the Wildstorm characters play in it. While it might seem fairly simple to just start bringing them in, the fact is that many of the characters are deliberate copies of existing Marvel or DC characters. We COULD include Midnighter & Apollo, but it would just be an excuse to include another allegory of Batman and Superman. We COULD include Warblade, Spartan & Mister Majestic of the Wildc.a.t.s., but only if we felt like we needed slightly forced versions of Wolverine, Cyclops... and Superman, again. The purpose of this project was never to include every piece of DC's fabric, but instead to make it into something BETTER. So... what CAN we use from Wildstorm? What story elements will feed the tapestry we're trying to create?
Immediately, It seems smartest to begin simply with the title that has already been built as DC's equivalent of a Wildstorm team. The Elite already have a huge role to play in DC thanks to their story with Superman, and we should absolutely allow that to be the backbone of what we're building. Just like in the comics, the Elite needs to grow into something else after it is proven to basically be a group of particularly charismatic Superman villains, but rather than turning it into a budget Justice League, we decided to morph it into something that actually approximates the mission of Wildstorm's very first team: Wildc.a.t.s. There are, as it turns out, quite a few characters in the DC universe whose story would benefit from the inclusion of a secret invading alien army. So by introducing the Daemonites, we can actually take the framework of the Elite and turn it into something entirely new. In the end, we actually wound up using almost no actual Wildstorm characters; as we said, they tend to be pretty derivative. Instead, rather than trying to take those characters and force them to work within DC's narrative structure, we can import Wildstorm's unique storytelling ideas and give THEM a home right in the middle of DC.