The Great Ten
8 years ago - China forms it's national superhuman team, the Great Ten.
Membership: 34-year-old Fang Zhifu, 64-year-old Gu Lao, Shaolin Robot, 20-year-old Xu Tao, Yang Kei-Ying, Hu Li Jing, Immortal Man in Darkness
Membership: 34-year-old Fang Zhifu, 64-year-old Gu Lao, Shaolin Robot, 20-year-old Xu Tao, Yang Kei-Ying, Hu Li Jing, Immortal Man in Darkness
7 years ago - Wu Mei-Xing becomes the Super-Functionary Mother of Champions, joining the Great Ten.
Membership: 35-year-old Fang Zhifu, 65-year-old Gu Lao, Shaolin Robot, 21-year-old Xu Tao, Yang Kei-Ying, Hu Li Jing, Immortal Man in Darkness, 31-year-old Wu Mei-Xing
Membership: 35-year-old Fang Zhifu, 65-year-old Gu Lao, Shaolin Robot, 21-year-old Xu Tao, Yang Kei-Ying, Hu Li Jing, Immortal Man in Darkness, 31-year-old Wu Mei-Xing
6 years ago - Yao Fei surrenders to the Chinese Government, becoming a Super-Functionary allowing him to work in the open.
Membership: 36-year-old Fang Zhifu, 65-year-old Gu Lao, Shaolin Robot, 21-year-old Xu Tao, Yang Kei-Ying, Hu Li Jing, Immortal Man in Darkness, 31-year-old Wu Mei-Xing, 27-year-old Yao Fei
Membership: 36-year-old Fang Zhifu, 65-year-old Gu Lao, Shaolin Robot, 21-year-old Xu Tao, Yang Kei-Ying, Hu Li Jing, Immortal Man in Darkness, 31-year-old Wu Mei-Xing, 27-year-old Yao Fei
5 years ago - Fang Zhifu represents China in the Global Guardians.
Membership: 37-year-old Fang Zhifu, 67-year-old Gu Lao, Shaolin Robot, 23-year-old Xu Tao, Yang Kei-Ying, Hu Li Jing, Immortal Man in Darkness, 33-year-old Wu Mei-Xing 28-year-old Yao Fei
Membership: 37-year-old Fang Zhifu, 67-year-old Gu Lao, Shaolin Robot, 23-year-old Xu Tao, Yang Kei-Ying, Hu Li Jing, Immortal Man in Darkness, 33-year-old Wu Mei-Xing 28-year-old Yao Fei
4 years ago - Fang Zhifu is pulled from the Global Guardians after the attack of Warmaker One.
Membership: 38-year-old Fang Zhifu, 68-year-old Gu Lao, Shaolin Robot, 24-year-old Xu Tao, Yang Kei-Ying, Hu Li Jing, Immortal Man in Darkness, 34-year-old Wu Mei-Xing, 29-year-old Yao Fei
Membership: 38-year-old Fang Zhifu, 68-year-old Gu Lao, Shaolin Robot, 24-year-old Xu Tao, Yang Kei-Ying, Hu Li Jing, Immortal Man in Darkness, 34-year-old Wu Mei-Xing, 29-year-old Yao Fei
3 years ago - Zou Kang first becomes Thundermind, the most beloved Super-Functionary of the Great Ten. Chen Nuo becomes the newest Immortal Man in Darkness.
Membership: 39-year-old Fang Zhifu, 69-year-old Gu Lao, Shaolin Robot, 25-year-old Xu Tao, Yang Kei-Ying, Hu Li Jing, 26-year-old Chen Nuo, 35-year-old Wu Mei-Xing, 30-year-old Yao Fei, 26-year-old Zou Kang
Membership: 39-year-old Fang Zhifu, 69-year-old Gu Lao, Shaolin Robot, 25-year-old Xu Tao, Yang Kei-Ying, Hu Li Jing, 26-year-old Chen Nuo, 35-year-old Wu Mei-Xing, 30-year-old Yao Fei, 26-year-old Zou Kang
1 year ago - The Great Ten join the battle against Mageddon.
Membership: 41-year-old Fang Zhifu, 71-year-old Gu Lao, Shaolin Robot, 27-year-old Xu Tao, Yang Kei-Ying, Hu Li Jing, 28-year-old Chen Nuo, 37-year-old Wu Mei-Xing, 32-year-old Yao Fei, 28-year-old Zou Kang
Membership: 41-year-old Fang Zhifu, 71-year-old Gu Lao, Shaolin Robot, 27-year-old Xu Tao, Yang Kei-Ying, Hu Li Jing, 28-year-old Chen Nuo, 37-year-old Wu Mei-Xing, 32-year-old Yao Fei, 28-year-old Zou Kang
Noteworthy Teams
Complete Membership
This is likely going to be a controversial inclusion. These characters aren't obscure, exactly, they had a fairly high profile in their brief appearances. If anything, I believe these characters were designed to feel uncomfortable to a regular comic reader as a way to highlight how different the culture that birthed them was.
In the end, you get this group of very strange characters that are meant to show that the world of DC has some very different stuff in it. We all thought that DC is more interesting with the Great Ten in it, so here they are.
In the end, you get this group of very strange characters that are meant to show that the world of DC has some very different stuff in it. We all thought that DC is more interesting with the Great Ten in it, so here they are.
The Great Ten Comic HistoryGrant Morrison's Great Ten was first introduced in the pages of the crossover event 52 in 2006. They were a state-run superteam from China, and were deliberately designed to reflect a different set of cultural ideas. In some cases, This meant diving into tropes of Chinese history or religion, like Shaolin Robot or Celestial Archer, but in some cases it was characters like Socialist Red Guardsman or Mother of Champions that were pretty scathing cultural commentary.
This isn't a superteam that got a lot of appearances, And I think a lot of that is because there are elements of it that are deliberately meant to be unpleasant. The core concept here is that they're not meant to be traditional American Superheroes. Superheroes are an intrinsically American invention, so the question of what a Superhero would look like from another country and culture is a really interesting one. In this case, I think it can be argued that Grant Morrison's penchant for working more with metafiction than the actual narrative is on display. These characters weren't meant to be featured in their own stories, but were meant to contribute to the larger DC narrative simply by existing in it. Still even within that limited scope, though, I think there's fun to be had by the inclusion of these characters. Let us know what you think! |