The Question

38 years ago - A newborn infant is dropped at St. Catherine's Orphanage in Hub City. They take in the child, giving him the name Charles Victor.

32 years ago - 6-year-old Charles Victor is first punished by the nuns of St Catherine's for asking too many questions, labeled a troublemaker.

23 years ago - 15-year-old Charles Victor, still a ward of the orphanage, is sent away to live on his own in the Hell's Acres apartments.

20 years ago - 18-year-old Charles Victor, as a ward of the state, is accepted into the local state school, starting to study philosophy, still looking for objective truth.

19 years ago - 19-year-old Charles Victor befriends Aristotle Rodor, a research scientist teaching chemistry classes in his school, one of the only people he enjoys talking to.

18 years ago - 20-year-old Charles Victor tries psychedelics for the first time. His experience leaves him angry at the unexplained chaos of the world. He changes his focus from philosophy to journalism.

17 years ago - 21-year-old Charles Victor drops out of college to start working at KBEL News in Hub City.

14 years ago - 24-year-old Charles Victor begins working as a correspondent for KBEL, creating his on-camera persona Vic Sage.

12 years ago - 26-year-old Vic Sage becomes the new anchor for KBEL news in Hub City. He is frustrated at his inability to find the real truth behind the stories he's reporting.

11 years ago - 27-year-old Vic Sage reports on a new medical product being manufactured in Hub City, but suspects that information is being withheld. He finds that the inventor of the material, Pseudoderm, is his college professor Aristotle Rodor, who reveals that the material is dangerously reactive to human biochemistry. With Rodor's help, Sage creates a pseudoderm mask to hide his identity and find the truth, inventing his alternate persona as The Question. Finding evidence of plans to sell pseudoderm products in South America despite failing medical review, they release it to the public, using Sage's role as news anchor.

9 years ago - 29-year-old Vic Sage continues to expose corruption in Hub City as the Question until mayoral advisor Jeremiah Hatch hires Sandra Wu to find and stop him. Defeated, Hatches' men beat him almost to death and throw him in the river. Sandra saves him and takes him from Hub City to Richard Dragon's farm in the mountains where he slowly recovers, training under Dragon.

8 years ago - 30-year-old Vic Sage returns to Hub City, his perspective on objectivity altered by his experience. Instead of working to expose the city's corruption, The Question begins to fight it directly. He saves the life of corrupt cop Izzy O’Toole, who chooses to turn his life around and start working to clean up the police. Jeremiah Hatch keeps the mayor’s wife Myra Fermin locked away as insurance.

7 years ago - 31-year-old Vic Sage finally confronts Jerimiah Hatch, stopping him from sacrificing Myra Fermin. Myra kills Hatch in retaliation. Her husband, Mayor Wesley Fermin, lost after Hatch’s extensive drug treatment, refuses to step down, causing the city to plunge deeper into chaos.

5 years ago - 33-year-old Vic Sage & Myra Fermin finally sleep together when she tells him she plans to run for mayor of Hub City. He exposes a conspiracy to use tampered voting machines, and fights the biker gangs brought into Hub City to affect the election. Myra wins the election, but is shot by her husband, leaving her in a coma.

4 years ago - 34-year-old Vic Sage survives the decimation of Hub City by a hurricane. Myra Fermin, awakened from her coma, tries to work towards recovery, but street gangs begin to take control of the city. The only remaining police, led by Izzy O’Toole, begin evacuating the population. Vic fights nonstop without sleep until Richard Dragon arrives, helping him finally let go. They work to get Myra out of the city, but in the end Myra chooses to stay.

3 years ago - 35-year-old Vic Sage, recovering from Hub City in Tibet, discovers evidence of human trafficking. Again donning the mask of the Question, he begins unravelling an international conspiracy that takes him to Gotham City. He works with Renee Montoya, uncovering an arm of the Golden Dragon headquartered in Santa Prisca. Montoya disapproves of Vic destroying their facilities rather than bringing them in.

1 year ago - 37-year-old Vic Sage hears that Myra Connelly is wanted for murder. He returns to Hub City, navigating its militarized police force of former gang members. He finds Myra, who was framed by industrialist Rory Limbo. He exposes the criminal conspiracy trying to build his proposed factories in Hub City. Myra is cleared, but when she agrees to allow the factories to be built because they would bring much-needed industry to Hub City, Vic leaves.

I think most DC fans know the Question from his appearances in the animated Justice League Unlimited series, and that's absolutely a good thing, he's fantastic there. His comic appearances, by contrast, can be a little melodramatic and wordy, not to mention sometimes pretty dated culturally, but they still represent a really fascinating portal into the versatility of the medium. He's essentially a dialogue between two legendary comic creators, and the resulting character and his adventures are absolutely fascinating.

The Question's Comic History

The Question is a creation of comic legend Steve Ditko during his time at Charlton Comics, debuting in 1967 in a backup story in Blue Beetle #1. He was in essence a more comic code friendly reimagining of Ditko’s character Mr. A from the magazine Witzend, also published in 1967. The Question was a suit-wearing faceless vigilante who stood steadfast against stories of corruption, exposing them despite possible repercussions, essentially standing up for the idea that there is an objective moral truth about good and evil. Where he really stands out is in his incredibly striking design, something almost completely unique in the landscape of comic heroes. He made several appearances across the short-lived Charlton Comics line, even starting in the one-shor Mysterious Suspense. When DC bought the Charlton characters in 1985 they were featured in the Crisis of Infinite Earths, and as they started getting their own series the Question made a few appearances before debuting in his own series in 1987.

Writer Denny O’Neil and artist Denys Cowan too a very particular approach to their depiction of this character that was so heavily tied to his creator's moral philosophy. Rather than try to work from within that philosophy they almost immediately upended it. The Question is metaphorically (and almost literally) killed in the first issue before undergoing a sort of metamorphosis, recovering under the tutelage of another O’Neil character, Richard Dragon. They essentially broke free of the constraints of the original character, instead exploring ideas of transcendentalism as the book explored a vast array of moral grey areas, sympathetic villains doing the wrong thing for good reasons, or despicable normal people doing good things for horrible ones. Famously, the letter section of each issue came with suggested reading lists, urging you to explore the ideas at play yourself.

The book went on for several years until ending with issue #37, with the Question and his supporting cast finally leaving Hub City as it descended into anarchy. This was followed by a quarterly series telling his further exploits. The Question was understood to continue to exist, and would have a few more series in the 90s & 2000s, but his earlier series has really thoroughly explored the character, and no one seemed to have anything further to say with him.

After the 2006 crossover Infinite Crisis, one of the major ongoing plotlines in the ongoing series 52 involved Vic Sage worked alongside ex Gotham detective Renee Montoya as they tried to unravel the various mysteries at foot. During the course of the story, Vic eventually succumbed to lung cancer, and from that point on Renee took over as the new Question. She went largely unused for some time, although she's recently appeared in a weirdly out of character western design in her own series set on the Justice League satellite.

Also, the series 52 brought about the reintroduction of several new takes on the classic multiverse, and included a reference to a new Earth clearly themed around Charlton characters, even though the never technically had their own Earth before, arriving in continuity with the original crisis. There was also a Charlton-themed Earth in Grant Morrison's Multiversity project in 2015. Both projects feature a version of the Question, although i don't think you can really say it's the same character.

Our Question Story

There's a very real shift that happens in Vic Sage's story as he transitions from the character as envisioned by Steve Ditko into the character as interpreted by Denny O'Neil. It's largely a change in the types of stories being told, but we also made it a change in what Vic is actually doing, changing from merely trying to uncover the truths of corruption in Hub City to actually doing something about it.

Almost everything we adapted came right from the O'Neil series, which is really where almost all worldbuilding of substance happened (Ditko very deliberately didn't give his original characters inciting incidents). We took the events of his childhood, of his career, and even the major plot beats of the whole series, and just laid them out a little bit more linearly, so that it all feels like events naturally follow each other, and so that Vic's motivations feel clearer. Ultimately his choice to leave Hub City needs to feel like breakthrough for him, allowing him to finally let go of his obsessions and heal.

You'll notice that we don't replace Vic with Renee Montoya. We maintain that doing that robs you of TWO awesome characters in favor of a mediocre one. There's a lot of fun to be had with Vic Sage, and our DC is better with him in it.

Related Characters