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Considered the first true superhero, although he actually built on tropes that had appeared in early pulp novels. Superman is famous; the last survivor of the alien planet Krypton, whose parents managed to launch him to Earth in an escape shuttle before Krypton's core destabilized and the planet exploded. Raised by good-hearted farmers in the Kansas village of Smallville, he dedicates himself to fighting for truth, justice, and <s>The American Way</s> <s>liberty for all</s> a better tomorrow.
Considered the first true superhero, although he actually built on tropes that had appeared in early pulp novels. Superman is famous; the last survivor of the alien planet Krypton, whose parents managed to launch him to Earth in an escape shuttle before Krypton's core destabilized and the planet exploded. Raised by good-hearted farmers in the Kansas village of Smallville, he dedicates himself to fighting for truth, justice, and <s>The American Way</s> <s>liberty for all</s> a better tomorrow.


He is perhaps most infamous as ([https://www.fecundity.com/pmagnus/godman.html one of]) the most absurdly overpowered character in comics, with an arsenal of abilities that includes flight, superhuman strength and speed, nigh invulnerability, ocular heat rays, superhuman hearing and vision that can see through walls, and a freezing breath weapon. Ironically, he actually started out almost mundane; in the original comics, Superman's powers stemmed from his species having evolved on a planet with significantly higher gravity than Earth, making stronger and toughter than any human. Instead of flying his super-dense muscles allowed him to run at astonishing speds and leap vast distances; this is where the "leap tall buildings" thing came from. The very first cartoons retconned him into being empowered by the light of Earth's yellow sun and gave him the ability to fly for dramatic effect, and that as where it started. Later, a popular radio drama introduced his most iconic vulnerability in the form of Kryptonite, the radioactive remnants of his homeworld. The Sliver Age would expand this to the point of absurdity; there's an entire blog about it called [https://superdickery.tumblr.com/ Superdickery] because the shit from that era pretty much has to be read to be believed.
He is perhaps most infamous as ([https://www.fecundity.com/pmagnus/godman.html one of]) the most absurdly overpowered character in comics, with an arsenal of abilities that includes flight, superhuman strength and speed, nigh invulnerability, ocular heat rays, superhuman hearing and vision that can see through walls, and a freezing breath weapon. Ironically, he started out almost mundane; in the original comics, Superman's powers stemmed from Krypton having significantly higher gravity than Earth, making him stronger and tougher than any human. Instead of flying his super-dense muscles allowed him to run at astonishing speds and leap vast distances; this is where the "in a single bound" thing came from. The very first cartoons retconned him into being empowered by the light of Earth's yellow sun and had him fly for dramatic effect, and that was where it started. Later, a popular radio drama introduced his most iconic vulnerability in the form of Kryptonite, the radioactive remnants of his homeworld. The Sliver Age would expand these to the point of absurdity; there's an entire blog about it called [https://superdickery.tumblr.com/ Superdickery] because the shit from that era pretty much has to be read to be believed.


We have a [[Superman|seperate article about him]], mainly because he's iconic in his own right. Superman is one of the only superheroes who has won against evil in real life: [[Wikipedia:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The Adventures of Superman (radio series)|that radio drama]] had Supes fight the Ku Klux Klan and make them look like such chumps it depressed their recruitment for years.  
We have a [[Superman|seperate article about him]], mainly because he's iconic in his own right. Superman is one of the only superheroes who has won against evil in real life: [[Wikipedia:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The Adventures of Superman (radio series)|that radio drama]] had Supes fight the Ku Klux Klan and make them look like such chumps it depressed their recruitment for years.  


Ironically, compared to Batman, he has the smallest "family" of superpowered knock-offs, of which the only relevant ones are his cousin '''Supergirl''' and his super-powered dog, '''Krypto'''. There's also '''Power Girl''', an alternate dimension's version of Supergirl mostly known for her huge rack who crossed over into the mainstream dimension and stayed there after her own was destroyed. However post-Crisis it was decided Superman should be the '''Last''' Son of Krypton and not the penultimate one. Only Supergirl and Power Girl survived, but both stuck with increasingly ''odd'' new origins (like "merged with some quasi-angel" and "daughter of a sorcerer whose son from the future then impregnated her with himself") before everyone just gave up and restored their original ones. They also killed Supes off for a while and had four knockoffs show up to keep fans guessing as to which, if any, was the real one. The only one of any historical relevance is '''Steel''', a black man in power armor who got to keep hero-ing with the "S" logo after the real deal came back and was the subject of a terribad Shaq vehicle.
Ironically, compared to Batman, he has the smallest "family" of superpowered knock-offs, of which the only relevant ones are his cousin '''Supergirl''' and his super-powered dog, '''Krypto'''. There's also '''Power Girl''', an alternate dimension's version of Supergirl mostly known for her huge rack who crossed over into the mainstream dimension and stayed there after her own was destroyed. However post-Crisis it was decided Superman should be the '''Last''' Son of Krypton and not the penultimate one; Supergirl and Powergirl were kept due to their bankability but left with some frankly batshit origins until the next reboot. They also killed Supes off for a while and had four knockoffs show up to keep fans guessing as to which, if any, was the real one. The only one of any historical relevance is '''Steel''', a black man in power armor who got to keep hero-ing with the "S" logo after the real deal came back and was the subject of a terribad Shaq vehicle.


For decades, DC's official policy was that Kryptonians aren't cross-fertile with humans and they avoided introducing a Superbaby despite Clark Kent being married to Lois Lane for several years. ([https://www.larryniven.net/?q=man-of-steel-woman-of-kleenex-by-larry-niven A certain essay by a famous SF writer] may have had something to do with it.) This would be changed when one of their regular continuity shattering events undid the retarded New 52 and brought back the old continuity. After this, the main Earth's Clark and Lois had a son, Jon, while they were off screen and he's now ~10+ish. Despite needing a retcon to exist, Jon was well loved due to good writing, especially his father-son relationship with his dad and friendship with Damian Wayne as the "Super Sons", and that he struggles to control his powers instead of being a Mary Sue. Naturally Brian Micheal Bendis set out to destroy all that when DC went full retard and hired him despite being obviously insane and no longer capable of writing his way out of a paper bag.
For decades, DC's official policy was that Kryptonians aren't cross-fertile with humans and they avoided introducing a Superbaby despite Clark Kent being married to Lois Lane for several years. ([https://www.larryniven.net/?q=man-of-steel-woman-of-kleenex-by-larry-niven A certain essay by a famous SF writer] may have had something to do with it.) This would be changed when one of their regular continuity shattering events undid the retarded New 52 and brought back the old continuity. After this, the main Earth's Clark and Lois had a son, Jon, while they were off screen and he's now ~10+ish. Despite needing a retcon to exist, Jon was well loved due to good writing, especially his father-son relationship with his dad and friendship with Damian Wayne as the "Super Sons", and that he struggles to control his powers instead of being a Mary Sue. Naturally Brian Micheal Bendis set out to destroy all that when DC went full retard and hired him despite being obviously insane and no longer capable of writing his way out of a paper bag.
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===Green Lantern===
===Green Lantern===
'''Alan Scott''' was a railroad engineer who survived a sabotage induced train wreck thanks to a lantern that, unknown to him, is an ancient magical artifact. The lantern tells him how to forge its green metal into a ring, Alan uses its vast and poorly-defined powers to go after the guy responsible for the wreck and becomes a superhero. Alan would drop out of continuity in 1948, bob in and out of the DC Universe a few times over the decades and finally be revived as a gay man in the 2020s in one of many reboot events.  
'''Alan Scott''' was a railroad engineer who survived a sabotage induced train wreck thanks to a lantern that, unknown to him, was an ancient magical artifact. The lantern tells him how to forge its green metal into a ring, Alan uses its vast and poorly-defined powers to go after the guy responsible for the wreck and becomes a superhero. Alan would drop out of continuity in 1948, bob in and out of the DC Universe a few times over the decades and finally be revived as a gay man in the 2020s in one of many reboot events.  


The revival in the 1959 reboot would change the man holding the title and, unlike Flash, the basic concept. '''Hal Jordan''', a test pilot, receives his power ring from a dying alien and travels to the distant world of Oa, where he becomes a Lensman-style space cop. The Green Lantern Corps operates under the self-proclaimed authority of the Guardians of the Universe, a group of wrinkled blue Jewish (the "poster boy" Guardian, Ganthet, is based on the likeness of [[Wikipedia:David Ben-Gurion|Israel's first prime minister]]) midgets who claim to be the first sentient species to evolve. In this version the power ring is a "living computer" and universal translator; each ring channels the limitless psychic energy of the Guardians, shaped by the user's will into green energy constructs that can do effectively anything, limited only by the Green Lantern's imagination and willpower.  
The revival in the 1959 reboot would change the man holding the title and, unlike Flash, the basic concept. '''Hal Jordan''', a test pilot, receives his power ring from a dying alien and travels to the distant world of Oa, where he becomes a Lensman-style space cop. The Green Lantern Corps operates under the self-proclaimed authority of the Guardians of the Universe, a group of wrinkled blue Jewish (the "poster boy" Guardian, Ganthet, is based on the likeness of [[Wikipedia:David Ben-Gurion|Israel's first prime minister]]) midgets who claim to be the first sentient species to evolve. In this version the power ring is a "living computer" and universal translator; each ring channels the limitless psychic energy of the Guardians, shaped by the user's will into green energy constructs that can do effectively anything, limited only by the Green Lantern's imagination and willpower.  


Since then, the title character has changed a few times, and the series has become a playground for writers and artists looking to do trippy science fantasy stuff with lots of weird aliens. In the 2000s DC started introducing other colors of lantern powered by emotions rather than will, like the [[Khorne Berserker|Red Lanterns]] who are literally powered by [[rage]] and recruit from [[Cat|some of the angriest beings in the galaxy]].
Since then, the title character has changed a few times, and the series has become a playground for writers and artists looking to do trippy science fantasy stuff with lots of weird aliens. In the 2000s DC started introducing other colors of lantern powered by emotions rather than will, like the [[Khorne Berserker|Red Lanterns]] who are literally powered by [[rage]] and recruit from [[Cat|some of the angriest beings in the galaxy]]. Both incarnations have had really lame weaknesses in comparison to their incredible power: Alan Scott was unable to affect things made of wood, while Hal Jordan and most of his successors can't impact anything that was yellow-- the details vary. Less weaksauce is the charge limitation: The ring needs recharging on a regular basis via a special Lantern, at first once every local day, nowadays working more like a cell phone battery that depletes with use.
 
Both incarnations have had really lame weaknesses in comparison to their incredible power. Alan Scott was unable to affect things made of wood, while Hal Jordan and most of his successors can't impact anything that was yellow-- the details vary. Less weaksauce is the charge limitation: The ring needs recharging on a regular basis via a special Lantern, at first once every local day, nowadays working more like a cell phone battery that depletes with use.


===Green Arrow===
===Green Arrow===
Oliver Queen is Batman ''but with a bow and arrow''. Attempts to separate him from that, a shared series with Green Lantern (which existed for no other reason than the two characters with less than great sales having names starting with green) where the two butted heads over political issues and Robin Hood influence have gradually given him socialist leanings. Got more popular after he a TV show that made him a slightly more willing-to-kill Batman, though it's often really easy to tell the writers wanted to do a Batman show but got cockblocked by WB. His Robin ''but with a bow and arrow'' sidekick Speedy is more notable than he is since the aforementioned comic turned him into a junkie; obvious puns about "speed" aside the writers wanted an existing character to avoid the pitfalls of using a "bad kid" with no history but whom nobody ''actually'' cared about enough to cry foul over, and Speedy fit the bill. Since then he's been used as a paper doll by DC creative for whatever story idea for a non-powered hero comes along, especially stories that call for an [[Twilight|angsty but sexy]] bad-boy types.
Oliver Queen is Batman ''but with a bow and arrow''. Attempts to separate him from that, a shared series with Green Lantern (which existed for no other reason than the two characters with less than great sales having names starting with green) where the two butted heads over political issues and Robin Hood influence have gradually given him socialist leanings. Got more popular after he got a TV show that made him a slightly more willing-to-kill Batman, though it's often really easy to tell the writers wanted to do a Batman show but got cockblocked by WB. His Robin ''but with a bow and arrow'' sidekick Speedy is more notable than he is since the aforementioned comic turned him into a junkie; obvious puns about "speed" aside the writers wanted an existing character to avoid the pitfalls of using a "bad kid" with no history but whom nobody ''actually'' cared about enough to cry foul over, and Speedy fit the bill. Since then he's been used as a paper doll by DC creative for whatever story idea for a non-powered hero comes along, especially stories that call for an [[Twilight|angsty but sexy]] bad-boy type.


=== Aquaman ===
=== Aquaman ===
A Namor ripoff that has become better known than the original due to Marvel's refusal to include Namor in non-comics media... mostly because, unlike Aquaman, Namor is consistently characterized as an arrogant asshole. The lame ''Superfriends'' cartoon made an entire generation consider him a joke character since broadcast standards, bad writing, and sharing many powers with the rest of the group led to his main uses being swimming and talking to fish, ignoring his title as King of Atlantis and the superhuman strength and endurance that lets him operate at the crushing depths of the ocean. Later writers have gone out of their way to try to dispel this stigma: later comics and the DCAU ditched his goofy goldfish suit and recast him as a grizzled badass who only works with the Justice League because the things they fight are a bigger threat to Atlantis than human pollution, while ''Batman: The Brave and the Bold'' would make him '''outrageous''', a boisterous oaf who could quote [[Minsc]] and not break character.
A Namor ripoff that has become better known than the original due to Marvel's refusal to include Namor in non-comics media... mostly because, unlike Aquaman, Namor is consistently characterized as an arrogant asshole. The lame ''Superfriends'' cartoon made an entire generation consider him a joke character since broadcast standards, bad writing, and sharing many powers with the rest of the group led to his main uses being swimming and talking to fish, ignoring his title as King of Atlantis and the superhuman strength and endurance that lets him operate at the crushing depths of the ocean. Later writers have gone out of their way to try to dispel this stigma: later comics and the DCAU ditched his goofy goldfish suit and recast him as a grizzled badass who only works with the Justice League because the things they fight are a bigger threat to Atlantis than human pollution, while ''Batman: The Brave and the Bold'' would make him '''outrageous''', a boisterous oaf who could quote [[Minsc]] and not break character.
=== Hawkman ===
[[File:Comicbooks.jpg|thumb|Hawkman's history in one image]]
A dude in a He-Man S&M getup, with enhanced senses plus wings and a mace made of "Nth metal", a super-metal that can defy gravity and repel the supernatural, plus whatever else the writer needs it to do that issue. When he's on the Justice League he's usually the one most likely to punch first and ask questions later and the most willing to kill. Frequently he has a girlfriend/counterpart named '''Hawkgirl.'''
That's literally all we can say that's common to every version of Hawkman because there's been so goddamn many of them. Seriously, he's been a reincarnated Egyptian, a lawman from the planet Thanagar, the avatar of a bloodthirsty hawk-god, and sometimes more than one of those at once, and they're ''all'' connected by a mix of reincarnation and the aforementioned hawk-god. He's the personification of the continuity clusterfucks that bedevil modern comics, and the fact that the biggest Hawkman fansite [https://www.hawkworld.org/p/hawkman-and-hawkgirl-are-two-of-most.html claims] "Hawkman's history isn't that confusing" in a five-thousand-word article about it speaks volumes. Despite this he still has an enduring fanbase thanks to his no-nonsense pulp appeal and [[Barbarian|ability to smack uppity wizards down with juidicious use of mace to the head]].


=== Captain Marvel ===
=== Captain Marvel ===
Billy Batson was an orphaned twelve year old living with a miserly, abusive, uncle that kept him around to leech off his inheritance. One day he wandered onto a train that took him to a wizard, who judged him worth of a magic power: by calling the wizard's name "Shazam!" Billy can transform into the champion Captain Marvel, blessed with the [[Derp|"wisdom"]] of '''S'''olomon, strength of '''H'''ercules, endurance of '''A'''tlas, power of '''Z'''eus, courage of '''A'''chilles, and speed of '''M'''ercury, plus the lesser-known ability to give your classics teacher fits. If Captain Marvel is merely Billy in a buff magical alternate form or a separate person entirely has varied over the years, though modern incarnations go with the first. Billy is perhaps the earliest child superhero that wasn't under adult leadership. He would later gain a long-lost sister named Mary, and she quickly gains the power of the wizard as well. Unlike her brother, saying SHAZAM! transforms Mary into Mary Marvel, who looks like Mary in a version of Captain Marvel's costume and possesses the Grace of '''S'''elena, Strength of '''H'''ippolyta, Skill of '''A'''riadne, Speed of '''Z'''ephyrus, Beauty of '''A'''urora, and Wisdom of '''M'''inerva. Since Hippolyta was already taken in the DC universe as Wonder Woman's mom the different empowering entities was dropped post-Crisis. Retards have claimed her "only change is the costume and powers" nature makes her the first [[/a/|magical girl]], but this would mean Go Nagai wasn't [[Wikipedia:Cutey Honey|first at something]] and is therefore objectively wrong.
Billy Batson was an orphaned twelve year old living with a miserly, abusive, uncle that kept him around to leech off his inheritance. One day he wandered onto a train that took him to a wizard, who judged him worth of a magic power: by calling the wizard's name "Shazam!" Billy can transform into the champion Captain Marvel, blessed with the [[Derp|"wisdom"]] of '''S'''olomon, strength of '''H'''ercules, endurance of '''A'''tlas, power of '''Z'''eus, courage of '''A'''chilles, and speed of '''M'''ercury, plus the lesser-known ability to give your classics teacher fits. If Captain Marvel is merely Billy in a buff magical alternate form or a separate person entirely has varied over the years, though modern incarnations go with the first. He would later gain a long-lost sister named Mary, and she quickly gains the power of the wizard as well. Unlike her brother, saying SHAZAM! transforms Mary into Mary Marvel, who looks like Mary in a version of Captain Marvel's costume and possesses the Grace of '''S'''elena, Strength of '''H'''ippolyta, Skill of '''A'''riadne, Speed of '''Z'''ephyrus, Beauty of '''A'''urora, and Wisdom of '''M'''inerva; this was dropped post-Crisis. Retards have claimed her "only change is the costume and powers" nature makes her the first [[/a/|magical girl]], but this would mean Go Nagai wasn't [[Wikipedia:Cutey Honey|first at something]] and is therefore objectively wrong.


Originally created by also-ran Fawcett Comics, their similarity in abilities to Superman led to legal brawls that were resolved when Fawcett got out of the superheroes game during the 1950s interregnum and sold their properties to DC. After this the Marvel Family started crossing over with the DC universe and was incorporated into it proper after the Crisis on Infinite Earths. Captain Marvel's interaction with Superman is of note because while their powers and, in many ways, personality (childlike innocence vs. honest boyscout) are very similar, the slight differences make a really big impact: Superman has the life experience to realize that he can't save everyone and being good doesn't always mean being nice, while the Captain's magical origin means he has an inherent advantage as Supes' obscene toughness doesn't include a ward save. He also has the dubious dishonor of sparking a long-running feud with [[Marvel Comics]] over a similarly named series of characters that DC ultimately lost, forcing a rebranding of the guy as "Shazam". This is incredibly stupid ([[Bloody Path|how can he say his own name without changing back?]]) but that's modern comics for you.
Originally created by also-ran Fawcett Comics, their similarity in abilities to Superman led to legal brawls that were resolved when Fawcett got out of the superheroes game during the 1950s interregnum and sold their properties to DC. After this the Marvel Family started crossing over with the DC universe and was incorporated into it proper after the Crisis on Infinite Earths. Captain Marvel's interaction with Superman is of note because while their powers and, in many ways, personality (childlike innocence vs. honest boyscout) are very similar, the slight differences make a really big impact: Superman has the life experience to realize that he can't save everyone and being good doesn't always mean being nice, while the Captain's magical origin means he has an inherent advantage as Supes' obscene toughness doesn't include a ward save. He also has the dubious dishonor of sparking a long-running feud with [[Marvel Comics]] over a similarly named series of characters that DC ultimately lost, forcing a rebranding of the guy as "Shazam". This is incredibly stupid ([[Bloody Path|how can he say his own name without changing back?]]) but that's modern comics for you.
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John rarely actually "does magic", and instead tricks his enemies into doing what he wants, such as promising his soul to multiple [[demon]] lords at once, risking a new [[Blood War]] for the soul of one measly mortal if they don't cure him of his [[cancer]]. A big part of his characterization is that he doesn't really believe in magic, but the demons and ancient spirits he's dealing with do, so when he does need to "do magic", he uses his high Charisma score and Arcana checks to bullshit [[/tv/|Kandarian]] demons into destroying themselves. As long as the caster doesn't break character and throws enough magic spell components together, the universe just lets it happen, much like a GM letting you cast spells so long as you've got "some gold" and "a component pouch."
John rarely actually "does magic", and instead tricks his enemies into doing what he wants, such as promising his soul to multiple [[demon]] lords at once, risking a new [[Blood War]] for the soul of one measly mortal if they don't cure him of his [[cancer]]. A big part of his characterization is that he doesn't really believe in magic, but the demons and ancient spirits he's dealing with do, so when he does need to "do magic", he uses his high Charisma score and Arcana checks to bullshit [[/tv/|Kandarian]] demons into destroying themselves. As long as the caster doesn't break character and throws enough magic spell components together, the universe just lets it happen, much like a GM letting you cast spells so long as you've got "some gold" and "a component pouch."
He actually ''is'' magical, though, being the current incarnation of the "[[Cegorach|Laughing Magician]]," all of whom are just as shitty as he is; it's also actually implied that he was never supposed to ''be'' the Constantine, and that was supposed to be his [[Vilitch the Curseling|twin brother]], who he killed in the womb and has been tampering with his life ever since, orchestrating events so that one day [[Nurgle|John will give up to despair and give his soul over to him]]. Another running theme through all of his incarnations is that he'll sacrifice his friends and use them as pawns to get ahead of whatever's trying to kill him at the moment.


Was for a long time kept in a sort of limbo: he was the posterboy of the Vertigo imprint ("mature" horror/fantasy with [[SJW|social commentary]], technically canon to DC but very rarely interacting with mainline titles) until DC folded everything with a reboot in 2011. Since then, he's been more or less a part of the DCU even though his solo-run comics aren't, because DC's done a lot more rebooting since then (including a reality reset by Dr. Fucking Manhattan, which made Constantine and Watchmen's creator [[Elminster|Alan Moore]] [[Butthurt|very mad)]].  
Was for a long time kept in a sort of limbo: he was the posterboy of the Vertigo imprint ("mature" horror/fantasy with [[SJW|social commentary]], technically canon to DC but very rarely interacting with mainline titles) until DC folded everything with a reboot in 2011. Since then, he's been more or less a part of the DCU even though his solo-run comics aren't, because DC's done a lot more rebooting since then (including a reality reset by Dr. Fucking Manhattan, which made Constantine and Watchmen's creator [[Elminster|Alan Moore]] [[Butthurt|very mad)]].  
===The Justice League===
The biggest and most notable superhero team in the DC universe, made up of all its best and brightest. The precise backstory varies between iterations, but generally boils down to Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, and whichever other "big name" DC heroes the writers feel like promoting (there's usually a Flash and/or a Green Lantern onboard) hooking up to face some massive threat that proves too much for any single one of them to handle alone and then deciding "hey, teamwork rocks, and it's actually nice to hang out with other people who get this crazy costumed do-gooder shit; let's do this again!" and founding a team.
The '''Justice Society of America''' is an equivalent organization made up of Golden Age (aka, World War 2) superheroes and/or their proteges. Sometimes may exist in an entirely separate branch of the multiverse.


===Teen Titans===
===Teen Titans===
A Justice League knock-off made up of younger superheroes and former sidekicks. The original version was made up of the five most famous sidekicks of the Silver Age; Robin (Dick Grayson), Kid Flash (Wally West, who later became ''The'' Flash), Wonder Girl (Wonder Woman's sidekick whom nobody remembers these days aside from being a continuity clusterfuck), Speedy (Green Arrow's Robin rip-off) and Aqualad (Aquaman's sidekick). This version didn't do very well. Then the ''New'' Teen Titans came out in the Bronze Age, and this is the team that everybody remembers; Robin returned to lead, and brought Wonder Girl and Kid Flash back, before fleshing it out with Beast Boy (green animal shapeshifter and former sidekick to the Doom Patrol), Cyborg (Afro-American teen turned into a cyborg by his father after an experiment hideously mutilated him), Raven (angsty half-demon Goth psychic)<ref>In the original comic, Raven was the one who brought the Teen Titans together. Her angst centers around her father, Trigon, who has ''plans'' involving using her against her will.</ref>, and Starfire (gorgeous alien flying brick)<ref>In the initial version, and in most retellings, her rescue is part of the first adventure of the Titans</ref>.
A Justice League knock-off made up of younger superheroes and former sidekicks. The original version was made up of the five most famous sidekicks of the Silver Age; Robin (Dick Grayson), Kid Flash (Wally West, who later became ''The'' Flash), Wonder Girl (Wonder Woman's sidekick whom nobody remembers these days aside from being a continuity clusterfuck), Speedy and Aqualad (Aquaman's sidekick). This version didn't do very well. Then the ''New'' Teen Titans came out in the Bronze Age, and this is the team that everybody remembers; Robin, Wonder Girl and Kid Flash came back, plus Beast Boy (green animal shapeshifter and former Doom Patrol sidekick), Cyborg (black teen [[Iron Hands|mutilated and rebuilt]] due to his scientist father's reckless experiments), Raven (angsty half-demon goth witch constantly trying to keep a lid her father Trigon), and Starfire (orange-skinned flying brick from the planet Tamaran and canonically the hottest piece of ass in the DC Universe).


The New Teen Titans, aside from being much darker and edgier than the original team (with a high death rate to match), also inspired the two Teen Titans cartoons of the 2000s (save that both dropped Kid Flash and Wonder Girl as main characters). Over time interest for the New Teen Titans started to peter out thanks to a mix of meddling executives and long-time writer Marv Wolfman feeling the fatigue working on a book where he was forced to use characters he didn't like (and being on the same comic for almost 16 years straight is a LONG time), and the book was cancelled in the mid-90s. Several relaunches were attempted including one with most of the old team, but they either were trash fires or just didn't sell well, and the creation of Young Justice poached most of the more interesting characters. Then the cartoon came out and the then-ongoing Titans and Young Justice were axed in favor of a comic based on the show. After that run ended the Titans comic became extremely edgy and kept violently killing off its characters. From there the comic devolved into a series of false starts on runs that didn't last long either through quality, nobody cared about them because they were not the "main" cast or DC decided on yet another reboot. The Titans are languishing to this very day, being only a shadow of what they were in the 80s even with most of the bronze age cast being there.
The New Teen Titans, aside from being much darker and edgier than the original team, also inspired the extremely [[Weeaboo]] Teen Titans cartoon of the 2000s and is still the iconic version of the team. Over time interest for the New Teen Titans started to peter out thanks to a mix of editorial politics and writer Marv Wolfman feeling the fatigue of working on a series he wasn't married to for 16 years, and the book was cancelled in the mid-90s. Several relaunches were attempted including one with most of the old team, but they either were trash fires or just didn't sell well, and the creation of Young Justice poached most of the more interesting characters. After the cartoon and its tie-in comic ended the new Titans series became extremely edgy and kept violently killing off its characters. From there the Titans name devolved into a series of false starts on runs that didn't last long either due to being terrible, not being more New Teen Titans or yet another crisis event rebooting the canon. The Titans are languishing to this very day, being only a shadow of what they were in the 80s even with most of the Bronze Age cast.


And Beast Boy ''still'' isn't allowed to grow up past being a teen.
And Beast Boy ''still'' isn't allowed to grow up past being a teen.


===Static===
=== Doom Patrol ===
Nerd Virgil Hawkins is pressured to go to an upcoming gang meet and shoot one of his tormentors. He rejects the temptation but the meet soon turns into a war and police deploy an experimental marker they believe will mark gang members to be tracked down later. This winds up giving a lot of people superpowers, Virgil included, or killing them instead. As a comic nerd granted electricity powers in a city that now has a bunch of superpowered criminals, he naturally becomes a superhero. Much like fellow teen hero Spider-Man, he enjoys mocking his enemies to throw them off guard.
Stop me if you've heard this one: a crippled super-genius in a wheelchair gathers a group of superpowered misfits who reluctantly fight to protect a world that fears and hates them. They quarrel with each other and angst a lot, and the villains they fight are just as bizarre as they are.


One of the many, many black males with electric powers. Originally part of the Milestone imprint and its separate canon, Static proved to be ''by far'' to be the most interesting and popular character from the line. While it's not that big an accomplishment (note the distant second, Icon, managing to be an interesting ''person'' dragged down by horrifically bland powers), he managed get an animated series (originally in its own canon but later clumsily merged into the DCAU despite previously mentioning DC heroes as fictional characters) which propelled him to mainstream popularity.
Yes, this ''is'' the series Stan Lee blatantly stole to create the X-Men, though the original roster of Robotman, Elasti-Girl, Negative Man and the Chief more in common with the Fantastic Four. A few years later they would bring on the teenage Beast Boy as a sidekick, though these days he's inextricably linked with the Teen Titans instead. Today they're mainly known for three things: being incredibly weird (they were created in the 60s when DC was trying desperately to copy Marvel's success and Grant Morrison's coke-addled reboot doubled down on it), being the first team to be canceled by dying (blown up by their archenemy General Zahl in an attempted "Sophie's Choice" plot) and the infamous Doom Patrol Fandom.


===Doctor Fate===
You see, very few people actually like the Doom Patrol enough to buy their comics, but the people who do are all pretentious art majors who whine about their precious Doom Patrol to Editorial ''constantly,'' leading to the team getting a new ongoing every few years that invariably sucks shit and fails before it can pick up steam. DC has a number of gimmick titles from the 60s that get similar treatment (the Metal Men, Metamorpho) but the Doom Patrol gets it the worst; they even got an embarassingly Reddit-tier live-action series, which not even the inspired casting of Brendan "Just Fuck My Shit Up" Fraser as Robotman could save.
A sorcerer wearing the Helmet of Fate, within which resides the Lord of Order, Nabu.
 
===Animal Man===
Not as notable but still pretty well known, he's the avatar of the red who can take the powers of all animals, his comics are known for being very weird, meta and breaking alot of conventional superhero tropes.  
 
His original comic run was very meta, with alot of 4th wall breaking and shocking moments<ref>Notably, The Coyote Gospel, which casts a Wile E. Coyote expy as a full-on allegory for Jesus. Played seriously. And widely praised as one of the greatest single issue comic stories ever.</ref>, on the 26th issue he even met the author (It sounds very self masturbatory but it's actually really good<ref>In part because it's at least as much about said author acknowledging what he did and why he did it and engaging in heavy self-critique.</ref>.)
 
Had a new run for the New 52 that while not as good as the original, it still had a lot of charm and was very well written.


==Notable Villains==
==Notable Villains==
===Lex Luthor===
===Lex Luthor===
Superman's archenemy. Started out as a mad scientist, then turned into a corrupt businessman with slimy politician undertones in the 80s. Currently tends to be depicted as a combination of both; he's a legit supergenius in his own right, but unlike other mad scientists, he was business-savvy enough to parlay his inventions into a mostly legal fortune and now he uses his wealth to employ other mad scientists or criminal underlings rather than doing the dirty stuff himself.  
Superman's archenemy and typically the leader of the "anti-Justice League" in whatever form it currently takes. Started out as just a mad scientist, then turned into a corrupt businessman with slimy politician undertones in the 80s; he got himself elected President before the idea was even a wrinkle in Donald Trump's ballsack. Currently depicted as a combination of both, one of the few supergeniuses to realize that using his technology to make a fortune and become an IRL supervillain is way easier than holding the world for ransom. While he likes to pretend his vendetta against Superman is a case of [[Humanity Fuck Yeah|a normal man against a paternalistic alien god]], he's just jealous of the genuine power and respect Superman has that Luthor has always bribed his way into. In some depictions this even extends to Lex finding evidence of Superman's secret identity and ''refusing'' to believe it, being so arrogant that the mere idea of anyone as powerful as Supes lowering himself to "mild-mannered" is unthinkable.
Whilst he likes to delude himself that his vendetta against Superman is a [[Humanity Fuck Yeah|case of normal humans standing up to oppressive alien gods]], the comics make it very clear that he's actually just jealous of Superman being more powerful and/or popular than he is, and/or he resents that Superman's ''actual'' power makes him somebody that Luthor can't bully into submission.
 
===The Joker===
Batman's archenemy. A crazed criminal who looks like a clown and who commits crimes in accordance with his own insane view of mirth and whimsy. Has actually gone through a number of distinctive phases over the years, from comedy-themed gimmick gangster to a psychotically artistic mass murderer to (most recently) a mentally-ill victim and villain of society. [[Meme|You don't want to know how he got his scars]].
 
====Harley Quinn====
Joker's chief flunky, who was originally invented with the Animated Series. Harleen Quinzel was a psychiatrist in Arkham who was tasked with the unenviable task of trying to crack the Joker's psyche and instead ended up broken instead. Eventually she threw away her life and became his chief henchman-slash-arm candy, hiding her wits and craftiness with a ditzy demeanor. That said, their relationship's fluctuated a lot over the years from mere puppy love to a seriously fucked-up abusive power dynamic.
 
A more recent development's seen her breaking away from the Joker, whether forcibly or because she's finally gotten fed up with his shit. This has also resulted in her turning into a criminally-insane antihero more in the vein of Deadpool. Occasionally she might work with any of Gotham's supervillains (including a totally not-straight relationship with Poison Ivy), but other times she'll be a sort of loose cannon aide for Batman.
 
===Ra's Al Ghul===
Batman's ''other'' archenemy, from the other direction. Runs the League of Assassins, a clandestine organization that essentially works as hired hitmen with a goal of creating a world free from the corruption that ensnares it. Bruce used to train with them at one point, but left because he viewed their policies as too tyrannical considering that the league was the sole arbiter of who was considered corrupt - Despite this, Ra's views Batman as a potential successor for his position if he were more ruthless.
 
A skilled martial artist and and intellectual, he doesn't exactly have any superpowers besides from access to the Lazarus Pools, which contain mystical properties that can raise the dead - something he has exploited to become effectively immortal, if at the cost of his mind. His daughter is one of the most common love interests for Batman and is the mother of his son, Talia Al Ghul.
 
===Deathstroke===
Slade Wilson was an American undercover operative who gained low-level regeneration abilities as part of a black ops bio-augmentation experiment. It also drove him kind of cuckoo, but his wife leaving him after he accidentally got his son's throat slashed (which he survived, but he was left mute) drove him deeper over the edge and he became a gun-for-hire, though he sometimes branches out into super-terrorism or other villainous goals too. He's actually the prototype of Marvel's Deadpool, who was created as a parody of the guy. Most remembered for his appearance in the 2003 Teen Titans cartoon, and yes, he was actually the team's archenemy for a while in the comics too.


===Reverse-Flash===
===Reverse-Flash===
In the far, far flung future, there was a guy who looked up to and admired the Flash. He was such a fanboy he came up with a way to duplicate the Flash's powers, just so he could travel back in time to become the Flash's sidekick. Talk about a nerd. But things went horribly wrong and he came to despise the man he had once admired above all others, and now he has become the Reverse-Flash. As stupid as the name is, he's a twisted son of a bitch who uses his Flash-tier super speed and status as a living temporal paradox to travel freely through space, time and dimensions  to achieve his goal of making the Flash's life ''utterly miserable''. [[meme|"It was me, Barry!"]]
In the far, far flung future, a scientist named Eobard Thawne became ''obsessed'' with the Flash. So obsessed, in fact, that he figured out how to replicate the accident that gave the Flash his powers and traveled back in time just to be his sidekick. Talk about a nerd. Unfortunately he arrived just in time to learn he was destined to become "Professor Zoom the Reverse-Flash" and promptly went nuts. As stupid as the name is, he's a twisted son of a bitch, just as fast as the Flash and much more willing to use that to its full muderous potential. Several crisis events later and he's become a living paradox, able to freely travel through time without breaking reality like other speedsters and impossible to remove from the timestream. He uses this power to make Barry Allen's life ''absolutely miserable''. [[Meme|''"It was me, Barry!"'']]


===Brainiac===
===Brainiac===
An alien artificial intelligence determined to become the ultimate intelligence, usually through some apocalyptic method or another - stealing cities by putting them in bottles or blowing up whole worlds after copying all their data are old favorites. Actually was entirely separate from Superman originally, they just fought each other, but the DCAU in the 90s came up with the idea of making him a Kryptonian invention and it's popped up here and there in pop culture.
An alien computer determined to become the ultimate intelligence, sampling the science and knowledge of countless worlds before destroying them; originally he was just a mad scientist who stole cities to rebuild his homeworld and fucked with Superman for the lulz, the nerdpocalypse robot thing was retconned onto him in the Bronze Age. He's effectively DC's answer to Ultron: a robotic supervillain who can shit out armies of high-tech drones and rebuild himself from IBM mainframes and scrap metal after being supposedly destroyed.  
 
===Doomsday===
A bioengineered super-soldier created in the 90s for the most shocking comic storyline imaginable at the time: killing off Superman himself. And how do you make a Doomsday? Step one: Go to prehistoric Krypton, which is a full-fledged [[Death World]]. Step two: genetically engineer a baby humanoid with the power of Lamarckian evolution. Step three: Yeet said test-tube baby out into the primordial hell-planet and wait to see what kills it. Step four: Harvest the cells from your dead test-tube baby. Step five: Clone a new bio-engineered baby from these harvested cells. Step six: Repeat steps three through five until you create a creature that can regenerate from pretty much anything, and also modifies its own body in response to deal with whatever threat it encountered. Step seven: [[Not As Planned|Get your ass murdered by your perfected Doomsday monster]] because it has been so traumatized by the genetic memory of its millions upon millions of clone-deaths that it has become imprinted with the genetic drive to slaughter every living thing it encounters to preserve its own existence. Step eight: [[Fail|Wonder as you lay dying why the fuck you went through all this without thinking to put some kind of control mechanism on the damn thing.]]
 
===General Zod===
The idea of an "Evil Superman" is something that DC has experimented with several times. One of the subtler and older efforts is General Zod, a Kryptonian general turned war criminal who had the good fortune to not only get his ass yeeted into the [[Ethereal Plane|Phantom Zone]] before Krypton blew up, but also to have the blueprints for the device that could undo said yeeting be included in Kal-El's digital library of Kryptonian knowledge aboard his rocket-powered lifepod. Cue a younger, more foolish Superman messing with said device and freeing Zod back into this dimension again. He's basically a weaker but nastier Superman, and has sometimes teetered on anti-villain technology.


===Sinestro===
===Sinestro===
Once a champion of the Green Lanterns, Sinestro became their greatest failure when he argued the Green Lanterns should bring peace to the universe by enforcing draconian law and tyrannical order with violence and intimidation instead of being just super-cops. Expelled from their order, he literally went "screw you guys, I'll invent my own Lantern Corps, with blackjack and hookers!" and created the Yellow Power Rings, which actually draw their power from fear and harness it in yellow light, similarly to how the Green Power Rings harness willpower. It started out with just the one, but eventually he created his own Yellow Lantern Corps made up of terrorists, would-be dictators and sadists, all united by their belief that fear was power.
Once a champion of the Green Lanterns, Thaal Sinestro became their greatest failure when he argued the Green Lanterns should bring peace to the universe by ruling it with an iron fist instead of being just super-cops. Expelled from their order, he literally went "screw you guys, I'll do it myself" and created a knockoff power ring that uses yellow light rather than green, making it immune to GL's tricks. Originally the yellow ring was powered by the antimatter world of Qward, he later creates the Sinestro Corps with rings powered by the yellow light of fear and builds an army of terrorists and psychos united by their belief that fear is power.


===Black Adam===
===Black Adam===
The Anti-Captain Marvel (or "Anti-Shazam" since the 2010s), an ancient empowered mortal who is basically Captain Marvel, but empowered by the Egyptian gods and with a Bronze Age definition of heroism. He's usually depicted as kind of like Marvel's Doctor Doom; initially he was just seen as the evils of a man obsessed with power, but shifting cultural outlooks seen him only caring about is ruling his stomping grounds from when he was a god-king the first time around, he'll ignore the rest of the world so long as they don't attack his nation.
The Anti-Captain Marvel (or "Anti-Shazam" since the 2010s), an ancient empowered mortal who is basically Captain Marvel, but empowered by the Egyptian gods and with a Bronze Age definition of heroism. He's usually depicted as kind of like Marvel's Doctor Doom; initially he was just seen as the evils of a man obsessed with power, but shifting cultural outlooks seen him only caring about is ruling his stomping grounds from when he was a god-king the first time around, he'll ignore the rest of the world so long as they don't attack his nation.


===Darkseid===
===Darkseid & The New Gods===
The ultimate big bad of the DC universe, the literal god-like embodiment of tyranny and suffering who rules the appropriately-named Apokalips. Wants to find an "Anti-Life Equation" that will disprove the concept of free will and thusly enslave the entire universe to his will, allowing him to force them to suffer just because he's a dick that way.
The final boss of the DC Universe, Darkseid is the face of the '''New Gods''', the magnum opus of comics icon Jack Kirby. The New Gods were created to be a mythic pantheon for the 20th century and Darkseid is their Satan, the god-like embodiment of tyranny and suffering who rules the appropriately-named Apokolips. His goal is to find the Anti-Life Equation, which he believes will disprove the meaning of life as a concept and give him complete control of every mind in the universe, so he can gain Real Ultimate Power and torture everybody for the lols. His powers are fittingly godlike, able to beat Superman to a pulp and instantly kill or banish anything with his "Omega Beam" vision, and he has a gang of New God cronies who are each almost as evil as he is. He is bad news: Batman had to ''pick up a gun'' ''and shoot him'' (with a magical anti-god bullet) to put him away during Final Crisis and even ''that'' wasn't enough to kill him for good. He's so powerful that an entire other character (Mongul) exists solely to be Darkseid Lite so that the genuine article doesn't suffer from being repeatedly beaten and looking like a chump.
 
===Vandal Savage===
A Caveman who became immortal due to a meteorite. He proceeded to wage wars of conquests and build empires or advise them at various points in human history, and he claims to have been several historical figures, such as Julius Caesar and [[Genghis motherfucking Khan]]. Though some of those claims are probably fake and he's just taking credit.
 
Got his big bump in relevance with a major arc in the 2004 Justice League show where he traveled back in time, shoved Hitler into a cryochamber so he could rule the Third Reich and conquered both [[The World Wars#The Second World War|World War II]] and the rest of the planet with advanced tech.
 
===Suicide Squad===
A government-sanctioned organization that forcibly recruits supervillains into performing jobs that can't be traced back to them. Each member is [[Penal Company|implanted with some sort of explosive in order to ensure their obedience]], but since the roster is constantly rotating it's uncertain just how effective these are.
 
====Amanda Waller====
The unfortunate government official whose job it is to corral the extremely dangerous criminals into the Suicide Squad. As such, she's not keen on taking any shit from anybody. That said, she's one of the more "depending on the writer" characters in DC. She's always a tough-as-nails, take-no-shit bitch, but given her definining  character traits are amorality, her devotion to the United States government as a concept, and her belief in hard men (and women) making hard decisions, she can vary from a tough-but-fair leader who has a legitimate point to a dirty-as-sin scheming snake who uses the Suicide Squad as her own personal hitsquad to a "America Fuck Yeah" jingoistic loony.
 
===Legion of Doom===
 
===Anti-Monitor===
 
==Core Appeals==
 
For those homebrewing their own [[supers]] setting, some notes on the "core appeal" of some of these characters, for use in your <s>knock offs</s>expies:
 
* '''Superman''': ''The Morality of Power'', ''Be Better''
* '''Batman''': ''Crime Stories'', ''Detective Superhero'', ''Found Family'', ''Modern Heroic [[Ninja]]''
* '''Wonder Woman''': ''Feminine/ist Superhero'', ''Greek Mythology Superhero'' (who's not Hercules)
* '''Green Lantern''' (space cop version): ''Space Opera'', ''Space Opera Crime Stories''
* '''John Constantine''': ''Political Urban Fantasy'', ''Wizard as Con Man'', ''Punk Wizard''
* '''Darkseid''' & company: ''Nature and Kinds of Evil'', ''Greater Scope Villain Who Can Actually Kick Your Ass''
 
==Cartoons, Shows and Movies==
Much like their rivals at [[Marvel Comics]], DC has always been willing to try porting its characters from comic book to film, live action serial, or cartoon. In fact, they are ''much'' more willing than Marvel in many ways, with an enormous library of live action serials and cartoons starting as early as the 1950s (Adventures of Superman in 1952) and 1960s (their first cartoons, and the legendarily campy Adam West-led Batman serial, began in 1966).  
 
Most of these works have been kind of forgotten, although in their heyday serials like the 1960s Batman or the early 2000s Smallville (a drama series based on Clark Kent's teenage years) were really big. The most well-known of DC's vast library of early cartoons is, sadly, "Superfriends", a legendarily stupid cartoon based on the Justice League, but toned ''way'' down.
 
===DC Animated Universe===
When it came to cartoons, DC hit the ground running; from 1966 to 1992, there were ''very'' few years in which there wasn't at least one DC cartoon on the airwaves! But they didn't make much of a hit, especially due to the tendency to focus on being "kid friendly" by being very dumbed down and aimed at really young kids.
 
Then came 1992's "Batman: The Animated Series", and that all changed. It was the first in a new cartoon universe, which expanded in 1996 with "Superman: The Animated Series", and was followed up with "Batman Beyond" and "Justice League" (as well as "The Zeta Project", a forgotten spin-off to Batman Beyond, and the initially-unconnected "Static Shock" mentioned above). Aided by a number of explicit tie-in animated films, which were widely regarded as better than their live action counterparts of the time, this was the DC Animated Universe.
 
What made it different? In a nutshell, more mature storytelling: the DCAU treated its audience as having the ability to handle things that were darker and heavier than the campy Silver Age fun of the 1960s, and wrote accordingly. Batman TAS featured lots of pathos, with dramatic, often tragic storylines and even adding a layer of sympathy to its villains. Before Batman TAS, Mr. Freeze was just a goofy villain of the week; a mad scientist who used a freeze ray to rob banks. Batman TAS reinvented him as a mutated cryogenic scientist who could never interact with the human world again due to needing super-low temperatures to survive and whose only motivation was to cure his wife's fatal illness so she could be removed from her cryogenic slumber. Even the lighter and softer Superman TAS often had dark themes to it, and once Justice League came out as the official sequel to both Batman TAS and Superman TAS, with Batman Beyond as a sequel to both Batman TAS and Justice League, whoa did things get grim and gritty!
 
The reason these five cartoons (seven, if you count "The New Batman Adventures" - the later seasons of Batman TAS with a new artstyle, and "Justice League Unlimited", the later seasons of Justice League, as being different cartoons) came to be known ''as'' the DCAU was simple: connectivity. Whereas Marvel's cartoons of the 90s would occasionally have characters from different franchises show up for interactions with the hero of their series (Spiderman TAS had appearances by the X-Men, Iron Man and Ben Grimm from the Fantastic Four, for example), the DCAU went out of its way to establish that their worlds would be connected. Plots and characters from one series would be directly referenced in a later series, with Justice League and Batman Beyond in particular frequently invoking storythreads left dangling by their precursor series.
 
After the DCAU ended in 2004, DC went on to create new cartoons, dropping the shared universe concept entirely. However, these cartoons of the mid 2000s did take some lessons from the DCAU, even the lighter and softer ones like "Batman: The Brave and the Bold" (which was essentially a cartoon equivalent to the Silver Age Batman of the 1960s serial), "Teen Titans" or "The Batman".
 
===Arrowverse===
DC did quite a few TV serials from the 1950s onwards, although with the exception of the ten-year-long Smallville series, these shows tended to be fairly short-lived "flash in the pan" affairs, lasting from 1-6 years on average. Then came 2012's "Arrow".
 
The idea was simple: take a B-lister character, Green Arrow, and then exploit that character's lack of an established fanbase compared to the likes of Batman or Superman to do something more experimental. The result was to lean back on Arrow's "Left-Wing Archer Batman" characterization and throw in a dash of the Punisher; "Arrow" revolved around Oliver Queen taking up the costumed identity of the Green Arrow to become a vigilante avenger, tracking down and killing criminals connected to a conspiracy that had killed his father and almost killed him. He slowly built up a vigilante team, softened his methods, and basically exploded in popularity, going from a media nobody to a media darling.
 
That opened the floodgates for other series set in the same universe. In 2014, "The Flash" would debut, being established as living in the same world as Oliver Queen and his Arrow team - the two superheroes would even team up in some crossover episodes. Then things began to expand. 2015's "Supergirl" focused on the titular female Kryptonian, bringing the Martian Manhunter in as her ally, and then established her as native to one of the alternate dimensions in this new DC multiverse when she crossed paths with the Flash. 2016 would bring in "The Legion of Tomorrow", a team of time-traveling second-string characters from Oliver Queen's dimension. 2018's "Black Lightning" and 2019's "Batwoman" would finish the direct members of the Arrowverse.
 
At the same time as the Arrowverse was taking shape, however, DC was also airing a number of other TV serials that were, at least originally, not connected to the Arrowverse. These included Gotham (a take on the Batman story focusing on Gotham during Bruce Wayne's childhood and with future-Police Commissioner Gordon as the protagonist), Krypton (a two-season story about Superman's parents), and others. Several of these shows - Titans, Doom Patrol, Swamp Thing, and Stargirl - would later be established as being "Arrowverse Adjacent", taking place in the Arrowverse multiverse but not in the dimensions of either Arrow or Supergirl. Several of the more well-received historical DC tv shows would also be retconned into being part of the Arrow multiverse as well, including the legendary Smallville.
 
Whilst on the surface the Arrowverse was inspired by Marvel's idea to do tie-in serials to the MCU based on B-tier and lower characters, in fact, DC actually beat them to the punch; the earliest MCU tie-in serial, "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D", didn't debut until 2013, and the others releasing between 2015 to 2017.
 
===DC Extended Universe===
DC has been doing movies for a ''long'' time. Their first film<ref>If one ignores film serials. Then you get either the Captain Marvel or Batman serials of the 1940s.</ref> was 1951's "Superman and the Mole Men", a glorified pilot for the 1952 TV show. But for most of their history, their films tended to follow a formula of being Superman or Batman films that built up a universe of sequels and then ultimately crashed as they got progressively crappier, only to be rebooted. There are a number of non-Supes/Bats films in their "old school" library, but they tend to be forgotten as they often aren't very good.
 
Then came 2013, and with the Marvel Cinematic Universe in full swing, DC tried to catch up by launching their own equivalent film-based universe. The general consensus, however, is that... they failed. Oh, they established a universe alright, but nobody really cares, because the films tend to be largely seen as... bad, due to a combination of just inherently bad plots, bad acting, and the obvious attempt to forcibly create a counterpart to the MCU, rather than letting things emerge more organically. There are exceptions - generally considered as Wonder Woman, Aquaman and Shazam - but for many DC fans, the DCEU is considered something of an embarrassment. With the exception of Hack Snyder fanboys. It doesn't help that certain actors in the franchise have seen the fickle winds of public opinion turn against them.
 
It should be added that the name "DC Extended Universe" originated as a joke: The studio refused to label the universe they were creating, so one Entertainment Weekly writer joking named it that, and the name rapidly spread from there. By the time ''Justice League'' had come out, WB had settled on "the Justice League Universe", but the DCEU name had stuck, to the point that that's what HBOMax (Warner Brother's streaming platform) calls the franchise.


==/tg/ Relevance==
==/tg/ Relevance==
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A better-regarded example was [[DC Heroes]], one of a handful of games to use the Mayfair Exponential Gaming System. Essentially, each point of stat is an exponential increase over the one before it, which helps explain, say, how Batman could last for more than a microsecond in a physical contest with Superman. Thanks to the nature of 90's game design, there are way too many granular powers (each random element has got an associated blast ''as well as energy blast''), and if you don't know what you're doing the combat is an incoherent mass of charts. That said, if you ''do'' know what you're doing (or if there's someone around to provide training wheels on the experience), it's a great time and does a better job of keeping to the feeling of a comic book than many games of its ilk.
A better-regarded example was [[DC Heroes]], one of a handful of games to use the Mayfair Exponential Gaming System. Essentially, each point of stat is an exponential increase over the one before it, which helps explain, say, how Batman could last for more than a microsecond in a physical contest with Superman. Thanks to the nature of 90's game design, there are way too many granular powers (each random element has got an associated blast ''as well as energy blast''), and if you don't know what you're doing the combat is an incoherent mass of charts. That said, if you ''do'' know what you're doing (or if there's someone around to provide training wheels on the experience), it's a great time and does a better job of keeping to the feeling of a comic book than many games of its ilk.
==Footnotes==

Latest revision as of 04:34, 20 December 2025

This is a /co/ related article, which we allow because we find it interesting or we can't be bothered to delete it.
This article is autistic and stinks of fanboy drooling. You can help by making it less bloated.


DC Comics, proper name Detective Comics, is the oldest of the two most popular comics companies of all time. If you haven't heard of them, you've been living under a real rock. They are iconic for their work in the Supers genre.

Compared to Marvel Comics, the DC Universe mostly defines itself by a "Supergods" motif; its characters tend to be extraordinarily powerful and it views their adventures in a largely "neo-mythical" light. Whilst it does have its share of street-level heroes, most DC stories are about national-level threats at least. In general, DC has consistently stuck closer to the Silver Age in general feel than Marvel, with a heavy emphasis on aliens, monsters, weird science and colorful heroes who were created or bought up by DC and kept around for decades after. In the Bronze Age this led to a slump in sales; the DC Universe was collapsing under the weight of its own canon, while Marvel had retconned or written out characters as needed to keep its universe fresh and unified. DC had also largely lost the "social consciousness" race to Marvel, which cost them even more sales with younger audiences and is something they still haven't fully lived down. Considering Marvel was presenting civil rights and integration in a matter-of-fact, this-is-how-it-is-now-so-deal-with-it fashion and the "Distinguished Competition" decided the best way to respond was "Lois Lane spends the next 24 hours as a Black woman!" it's not hard to see why.

These factors (plus DC editors tired of being buried in letters from the IRL version of The Simpsons' Comic Book Guy over minor continuity errors) became the seed of DC's other, more dubious claim to fame: massive, turgid metaplot events, shoehorned into the company's entire output with about as much subtlety as a roleplaying game's metaplot and often ending with a mass retcon of the entire universe. When this was first done in the 80s with Crisis on Infinite Earths it was a fresh and exciting way to replace the ancient DC canon with something new readers could digest, but these days it happens about as often as Exterminatus in 40k and with about as much enthusiasm from the audience.

Notable Heroes[edit | edit source]

Superman[edit | edit source]

Considered the first true superhero, although he actually built on tropes that had appeared in early pulp novels. Superman is famous; the last survivor of the alien planet Krypton, whose parents managed to launch him to Earth in an escape shuttle before Krypton's core destabilized and the planet exploded. Raised by good-hearted farmers in the Kansas village of Smallville, he dedicates himself to fighting for truth, justice, and The American Way liberty for all a better tomorrow.

He is perhaps most infamous as (one of) the most absurdly overpowered character in comics, with an arsenal of abilities that includes flight, superhuman strength and speed, nigh invulnerability, ocular heat rays, superhuman hearing and vision that can see through walls, and a freezing breath weapon. Ironically, he started out almost mundane; in the original comics, Superman's powers stemmed from Krypton having significantly higher gravity than Earth, making him stronger and tougher than any human. Instead of flying his super-dense muscles allowed him to run at astonishing speds and leap vast distances; this is where the "in a single bound" thing came from. The very first cartoons retconned him into being empowered by the light of Earth's yellow sun and had him fly for dramatic effect, and that was where it started. Later, a popular radio drama introduced his most iconic vulnerability in the form of Kryptonite, the radioactive remnants of his homeworld. The Sliver Age would expand these to the point of absurdity; there's an entire blog about it called Superdickery because the shit from that era pretty much has to be read to be believed.

We have a seperate article about him, mainly because he's iconic in his own right. Superman is one of the only superheroes who has won against evil in real life: that radio drama had Supes fight the Ku Klux Klan and make them look like such chumps it depressed their recruitment for years.

Ironically, compared to Batman, he has the smallest "family" of superpowered knock-offs, of which the only relevant ones are his cousin Supergirl and his super-powered dog, Krypto. There's also Power Girl, an alternate dimension's version of Supergirl mostly known for her huge rack who crossed over into the mainstream dimension and stayed there after her own was destroyed. However post-Crisis it was decided Superman should be the Last Son of Krypton and not the penultimate one; Supergirl and Powergirl were kept due to their bankability but left with some frankly batshit origins until the next reboot. They also killed Supes off for a while and had four knockoffs show up to keep fans guessing as to which, if any, was the real one. The only one of any historical relevance is Steel, a black man in power armor who got to keep hero-ing with the "S" logo after the real deal came back and was the subject of a terribad Shaq vehicle.

For decades, DC's official policy was that Kryptonians aren't cross-fertile with humans and they avoided introducing a Superbaby despite Clark Kent being married to Lois Lane for several years. (A certain essay by a famous SF writer may have had something to do with it.) This would be changed when one of their regular continuity shattering events undid the retarded New 52 and brought back the old continuity. After this, the main Earth's Clark and Lois had a son, Jon, while they were off screen and he's now ~10+ish. Despite needing a retcon to exist, Jon was well loved due to good writing, especially his father-son relationship with his dad and friendship with Damian Wayne as the "Super Sons", and that he struggles to control his powers instead of being a Mary Sue. Naturally Brian Micheal Bendis set out to destroy all that when DC went full retard and hired him despite being obviously insane and no longer capable of writing his way out of a paper bag.

Batman[edit | edit source]

You know who Batman is. In many ways, he is a direct continuation of the shadowy avengers and vigilantes that proliferated in pulp fiction; even his backstory as a wealthy man who has spent years training and preparing for a war on crime is straight out of old pulps, while his colorful collection of crazed criminal contemporaries owes as much to the likes of Dick Tracy's circus-freak gangsters as it does to pulp supervillainy.

We have a separate article about him, as much like Superman his icon status and /tg/ relevance is mostly separate from the DC Universe. The most notable part of Batman's appeal is perhaps his versatility: the core of his character is so archetypal and has been developed in so many directions that you can do almost anything with him and make it work with a little creativity.

Wonder Woman[edit | edit source]

One of the first recognizable superheroes and arguably the first female superhero, Diana is a magical woman - a clay baby brought to life as a superhuman Amazon by the Greek gods - reared on the hidden paradise of Themyscira‎, home of the Amazons. After their isolation was broken by a male international spy who crash landed on the island, she willingly embarked on an expedition to "man's world", both to return him and as an ambassador of the Amazonian ways of justice, compassion, tolerance and love. (Also teaching grade-schoolers how to harness their feminine energy to lift tanks, but most people try to forget that.)

Ironically, despite being considered one of "the big three" with Batman and Superman, Wonder Woman has long struggled to actually keep her titles afloat. This might have something to do with the fact that she is generally defined as "The Feminist Superheroine", meaning every writer attached to her has used the Amazons to push their specifc vision of what feminism is on readers, going back to her creation at the hands of William Marston. (This includes positive and negative versions of feminism; mentioning that time Themyscira attacked the US with giant killer bees is a good way to get some eye-twitches out of a comics geek.) Marston being a grade A sicko who called femdom with bondage a "respectable and noble practice" in the 1940s probably didn't set a good precedent in this regard, but it did set a good precedent in lots of art of Wondy getting tied up with her own mind-controlling Lasso of Truth. Combined with the continued publication of her title being based on a contractual mandate rather than strong sales and Diana herself lacking a consistent personality of her own and it's not surprising that she's had a rocky history despite being such a major character.

She had a TV series in 1976, loosely based on the Golden Age comic's wartime stories. Needless to say it was less than wondrous, though par for the course of 70s television; it's most fondly remembered for the sweet R&B theme song and Lynda Carter's ability to fill out the character's classic leotard in a flattering manner.

The Flash[edit | edit source]

Jay Garrick was an ordinary college student until a freak accident turned him into the fastest man alive. One of the first "legacy heroes", with the Silver Age version using a new character with the same powers named Barry Allen. The story that had them meet ("Flash of Two Worlds!") spawned the idea of the original Golden Age characters living out their lives in a separate "Earth-Two" and the multiverse mess that's been giving comics readers headaches to this day, while Barry would be succeeded by former sidekick Wally West (Kid Flash) in turn. Usually a giant fucking nerd, a crude goofball, or both. His rogues gallery is literally called the Rogues and is known for having some of the silliest villains to have survived to the present day with minimal edgy reboots, like Captain Boomerang (literally an Aussie bloke with a bunch of trick boomerangs) and Mirror Master (a dude in an ugly yellow unitard who does party tricks with his reflection).

Martian Manhunter[edit | edit source]

J'onn J'onzz is a green Martian. He was essentially created as a Superman-but-not; DC was worried about devaluing their most popular characters through overexposure at the time. He even has a long-lost female cousin called Miss Martian to mirror Supergirl. Originally transported to Earth by a scientist in a freak accident, the shock of seeing him causes the scientist to die from a heart attack. Stranded, J'onn assumes the identity of "John Jones" and decides to fight crime as both a superhero and a mundane detective; initially this was a temporary thing until Martian civilization could effect a rescue, but stories written after probes proved Mars was dead depict him as the last of his kind so he can engage in some shared brooding with Supes. Tying into this, J'onn often struggles to fit in with human society and tends to be one of the more cerebral members of the Justice League. Martian Manhunter, unlike Superman, managed to keep his absurd and poorly-defined slate of powers even after the Silver Age: shapeshifting, flight, intangibility, telepathy, telekinesis, regeneration of the "from a single cell" variety, and more. And despite all of that, he's still vulnerable to fire somehow. Well, fire and Oreos, though whether the latter is an actual addiction or an attempt to give an overpowered chracter some foibles varies with the writer.

Green Lantern[edit | edit source]

Alan Scott was a railroad engineer who survived a sabotage induced train wreck thanks to a lantern that, unknown to him, was an ancient magical artifact. The lantern tells him how to forge its green metal into a ring, Alan uses its vast and poorly-defined powers to go after the guy responsible for the wreck and becomes a superhero. Alan would drop out of continuity in 1948, bob in and out of the DC Universe a few times over the decades and finally be revived as a gay man in the 2020s in one of many reboot events.

The revival in the 1959 reboot would change the man holding the title and, unlike Flash, the basic concept. Hal Jordan, a test pilot, receives his power ring from a dying alien and travels to the distant world of Oa, where he becomes a Lensman-style space cop. The Green Lantern Corps operates under the self-proclaimed authority of the Guardians of the Universe, a group of wrinkled blue Jewish (the "poster boy" Guardian, Ganthet, is based on the likeness of Israel's first prime minister) midgets who claim to be the first sentient species to evolve. In this version the power ring is a "living computer" and universal translator; each ring channels the limitless psychic energy of the Guardians, shaped by the user's will into green energy constructs that can do effectively anything, limited only by the Green Lantern's imagination and willpower.

Since then, the title character has changed a few times, and the series has become a playground for writers and artists looking to do trippy science fantasy stuff with lots of weird aliens. In the 2000s DC started introducing other colors of lantern powered by emotions rather than will, like the Red Lanterns who are literally powered by rage and recruit from some of the angriest beings in the galaxy. Both incarnations have had really lame weaknesses in comparison to their incredible power: Alan Scott was unable to affect things made of wood, while Hal Jordan and most of his successors can't impact anything that was yellow-- the details vary. Less weaksauce is the charge limitation: The ring needs recharging on a regular basis via a special Lantern, at first once every local day, nowadays working more like a cell phone battery that depletes with use.

Green Arrow[edit | edit source]

Oliver Queen is Batman but with a bow and arrow. Attempts to separate him from that, a shared series with Green Lantern (which existed for no other reason than the two characters with less than great sales having names starting with green) where the two butted heads over political issues and Robin Hood influence have gradually given him socialist leanings. Got more popular after he got a TV show that made him a slightly more willing-to-kill Batman, though it's often really easy to tell the writers wanted to do a Batman show but got cockblocked by WB. His Robin but with a bow and arrow sidekick Speedy is more notable than he is since the aforementioned comic turned him into a junkie; obvious puns about "speed" aside the writers wanted an existing character to avoid the pitfalls of using a "bad kid" with no history but whom nobody actually cared about enough to cry foul over, and Speedy fit the bill. Since then he's been used as a paper doll by DC creative for whatever story idea for a non-powered hero comes along, especially stories that call for an angsty but sexy bad-boy type.

Aquaman[edit | edit source]

A Namor ripoff that has become better known than the original due to Marvel's refusal to include Namor in non-comics media... mostly because, unlike Aquaman, Namor is consistently characterized as an arrogant asshole. The lame Superfriends cartoon made an entire generation consider him a joke character since broadcast standards, bad writing, and sharing many powers with the rest of the group led to his main uses being swimming and talking to fish, ignoring his title as King of Atlantis and the superhuman strength and endurance that lets him operate at the crushing depths of the ocean. Later writers have gone out of their way to try to dispel this stigma: later comics and the DCAU ditched his goofy goldfish suit and recast him as a grizzled badass who only works with the Justice League because the things they fight are a bigger threat to Atlantis than human pollution, while Batman: The Brave and the Bold would make him outrageous, a boisterous oaf who could quote Minsc and not break character.

Hawkman[edit | edit source]

Hawkman's history in one image

A dude in a He-Man S&M getup, with enhanced senses plus wings and a mace made of "Nth metal", a super-metal that can defy gravity and repel the supernatural, plus whatever else the writer needs it to do that issue. When he's on the Justice League he's usually the one most likely to punch first and ask questions later and the most willing to kill. Frequently he has a girlfriend/counterpart named Hawkgirl.

That's literally all we can say that's common to every version of Hawkman because there's been so goddamn many of them. Seriously, he's been a reincarnated Egyptian, a lawman from the planet Thanagar, the avatar of a bloodthirsty hawk-god, and sometimes more than one of those at once, and they're all connected by a mix of reincarnation and the aforementioned hawk-god. He's the personification of the continuity clusterfucks that bedevil modern comics, and the fact that the biggest Hawkman fansite claims "Hawkman's history isn't that confusing" in a five-thousand-word article about it speaks volumes. Despite this he still has an enduring fanbase thanks to his no-nonsense pulp appeal and ability to smack uppity wizards down with juidicious use of mace to the head.

Captain Marvel[edit | edit source]

Billy Batson was an orphaned twelve year old living with a miserly, abusive, uncle that kept him around to leech off his inheritance. One day he wandered onto a train that took him to a wizard, who judged him worth of a magic power: by calling the wizard's name "Shazam!" Billy can transform into the champion Captain Marvel, blessed with the "wisdom" of Solomon, strength of Hercules, endurance of Atlas, power of Zeus, courage of Achilles, and speed of Mercury, plus the lesser-known ability to give your classics teacher fits. If Captain Marvel is merely Billy in a buff magical alternate form or a separate person entirely has varied over the years, though modern incarnations go with the first. He would later gain a long-lost sister named Mary, and she quickly gains the power of the wizard as well. Unlike her brother, saying SHAZAM! transforms Mary into Mary Marvel, who looks like Mary in a version of Captain Marvel's costume and possesses the Grace of Selena, Strength of Hippolyta, Skill of Ariadne, Speed of Zephyrus, Beauty of Aurora, and Wisdom of Minerva; this was dropped post-Crisis. Retards have claimed her "only change is the costume and powers" nature makes her the first magical girl, but this would mean Go Nagai wasn't first at something and is therefore objectively wrong.

Originally created by also-ran Fawcett Comics, their similarity in abilities to Superman led to legal brawls that were resolved when Fawcett got out of the superheroes game during the 1950s interregnum and sold their properties to DC. After this the Marvel Family started crossing over with the DC universe and was incorporated into it proper after the Crisis on Infinite Earths. Captain Marvel's interaction with Superman is of note because while their powers and, in many ways, personality (childlike innocence vs. honest boyscout) are very similar, the slight differences make a really big impact: Superman has the life experience to realize that he can't save everyone and being good doesn't always mean being nice, while the Captain's magical origin means he has an inherent advantage as Supes' obscene toughness doesn't include a ward save. He also has the dubious dishonor of sparking a long-running feud with Marvel Comics over a similarly named series of characters that DC ultimately lost, forcing a rebranding of the guy as "Shazam". This is incredibly stupid (how can he say his own name without changing back?) but that's modern comics for you.

John Constantine[edit | edit source]

Star of the "mature audiences" series Hellblazer, John Constantine is the posterboy for the "tricksy urban mage" concept and was doing it before Harry Dresden was even a twinkle in Jim Butcher's eye. His creator Alan Moore and several of the writers that succeeded him have sworn up and down to have met John in real life at least once; while the latter are definitely bullshitting we can't be sure about Alan, considering the crazy fuck's as close to a wizard as you'll find.

John rarely actually "does magic", and instead tricks his enemies into doing what he wants, such as promising his soul to multiple demon lords at once, risking a new Blood War for the soul of one measly mortal if they don't cure him of his cancer. A big part of his characterization is that he doesn't really believe in magic, but the demons and ancient spirits he's dealing with do, so when he does need to "do magic", he uses his high Charisma score and Arcana checks to bullshit Kandarian demons into destroying themselves. As long as the caster doesn't break character and throws enough magic spell components together, the universe just lets it happen, much like a GM letting you cast spells so long as you've got "some gold" and "a component pouch."

Was for a long time kept in a sort of limbo: he was the posterboy of the Vertigo imprint ("mature" horror/fantasy with social commentary, technically canon to DC but very rarely interacting with mainline titles) until DC folded everything with a reboot in 2011. Since then, he's been more or less a part of the DCU even though his solo-run comics aren't, because DC's done a lot more rebooting since then (including a reality reset by Dr. Fucking Manhattan, which made Constantine and Watchmen's creator Alan Moore very mad).

Teen Titans[edit | edit source]

A Justice League knock-off made up of younger superheroes and former sidekicks. The original version was made up of the five most famous sidekicks of the Silver Age; Robin (Dick Grayson), Kid Flash (Wally West, who later became The Flash), Wonder Girl (Wonder Woman's sidekick whom nobody remembers these days aside from being a continuity clusterfuck), Speedy and Aqualad (Aquaman's sidekick). This version didn't do very well. Then the New Teen Titans came out in the Bronze Age, and this is the team that everybody remembers; Robin, Wonder Girl and Kid Flash came back, plus Beast Boy (green animal shapeshifter and former Doom Patrol sidekick), Cyborg (black teen mutilated and rebuilt due to his scientist father's reckless experiments), Raven (angsty half-demon goth witch constantly trying to keep a lid her father Trigon), and Starfire (orange-skinned flying brick from the planet Tamaran and canonically the hottest piece of ass in the DC Universe).

The New Teen Titans, aside from being much darker and edgier than the original team, also inspired the extremely Weeaboo Teen Titans cartoon of the 2000s and is still the iconic version of the team. Over time interest for the New Teen Titans started to peter out thanks to a mix of editorial politics and writer Marv Wolfman feeling the fatigue of working on a series he wasn't married to for 16 years, and the book was cancelled in the mid-90s. Several relaunches were attempted including one with most of the old team, but they either were trash fires or just didn't sell well, and the creation of Young Justice poached most of the more interesting characters. After the cartoon and its tie-in comic ended the new Titans series became extremely edgy and kept violently killing off its characters. From there the Titans name devolved into a series of false starts on runs that didn't last long either due to being terrible, not being more New Teen Titans or yet another crisis event rebooting the canon. The Titans are languishing to this very day, being only a shadow of what they were in the 80s even with most of the Bronze Age cast.

And Beast Boy still isn't allowed to grow up past being a teen.

Doom Patrol[edit | edit source]

Stop me if you've heard this one: a crippled super-genius in a wheelchair gathers a group of superpowered misfits who reluctantly fight to protect a world that fears and hates them. They quarrel with each other and angst a lot, and the villains they fight are just as bizarre as they are.

Yes, this is the series Stan Lee blatantly stole to create the X-Men, though the original roster of Robotman, Elasti-Girl, Negative Man and the Chief more in common with the Fantastic Four. A few years later they would bring on the teenage Beast Boy as a sidekick, though these days he's inextricably linked with the Teen Titans instead. Today they're mainly known for three things: being incredibly weird (they were created in the 60s when DC was trying desperately to copy Marvel's success and Grant Morrison's coke-addled reboot doubled down on it), being the first team to be canceled by dying (blown up by their archenemy General Zahl in an attempted "Sophie's Choice" plot) and the infamous Doom Patrol Fandom.

You see, very few people actually like the Doom Patrol enough to buy their comics, but the people who do are all pretentious art majors who whine about their precious Doom Patrol to Editorial constantly, leading to the team getting a new ongoing every few years that invariably sucks shit and fails before it can pick up steam. DC has a number of gimmick titles from the 60s that get similar treatment (the Metal Men, Metamorpho) but the Doom Patrol gets it the worst; they even got an embarassingly Reddit-tier live-action series, which not even the inspired casting of Brendan "Just Fuck My Shit Up" Fraser as Robotman could save.

Notable Villains[edit | edit source]

Lex Luthor[edit | edit source]

Superman's archenemy and typically the leader of the "anti-Justice League" in whatever form it currently takes. Started out as just a mad scientist, then turned into a corrupt businessman with slimy politician undertones in the 80s; he got himself elected President before the idea was even a wrinkle in Donald Trump's ballsack. Currently depicted as a combination of both, one of the few supergeniuses to realize that using his technology to make a fortune and become an IRL supervillain is way easier than holding the world for ransom. While he likes to pretend his vendetta against Superman is a case of a normal man against a paternalistic alien god, he's just jealous of the genuine power and respect Superman has that Luthor has always bribed his way into. In some depictions this even extends to Lex finding evidence of Superman's secret identity and refusing to believe it, being so arrogant that the mere idea of anyone as powerful as Supes lowering himself to "mild-mannered" is unthinkable.

Reverse-Flash[edit | edit source]

In the far, far flung future, a scientist named Eobard Thawne became obsessed with the Flash. So obsessed, in fact, that he figured out how to replicate the accident that gave the Flash his powers and traveled back in time just to be his sidekick. Talk about a nerd. Unfortunately he arrived just in time to learn he was destined to become "Professor Zoom the Reverse-Flash" and promptly went nuts. As stupid as the name is, he's a twisted son of a bitch, just as fast as the Flash and much more willing to use that to its full muderous potential. Several crisis events later and he's become a living paradox, able to freely travel through time without breaking reality like other speedsters and impossible to remove from the timestream. He uses this power to make Barry Allen's life absolutely miserable. "It was me, Barry!"

Brainiac[edit | edit source]

An alien computer determined to become the ultimate intelligence, sampling the science and knowledge of countless worlds before destroying them; originally he was just a mad scientist who stole cities to rebuild his homeworld and fucked with Superman for the lulz, the nerdpocalypse robot thing was retconned onto him in the Bronze Age. He's effectively DC's answer to Ultron: a robotic supervillain who can shit out armies of high-tech drones and rebuild himself from IBM mainframes and scrap metal after being supposedly destroyed.

Sinestro[edit | edit source]

Once a champion of the Green Lanterns, Thaal Sinestro became their greatest failure when he argued the Green Lanterns should bring peace to the universe by ruling it with an iron fist instead of being just super-cops. Expelled from their order, he literally went "screw you guys, I'll do it myself" and created a knockoff power ring that uses yellow light rather than green, making it immune to GL's tricks. Originally the yellow ring was powered by the antimatter world of Qward, he later creates the Sinestro Corps with rings powered by the yellow light of fear and builds an army of terrorists and psychos united by their belief that fear is power.

Black Adam[edit | edit source]

The Anti-Captain Marvel (or "Anti-Shazam" since the 2010s), an ancient empowered mortal who is basically Captain Marvel, but empowered by the Egyptian gods and with a Bronze Age definition of heroism. He's usually depicted as kind of like Marvel's Doctor Doom; initially he was just seen as the evils of a man obsessed with power, but shifting cultural outlooks seen him only caring about is ruling his stomping grounds from when he was a god-king the first time around, he'll ignore the rest of the world so long as they don't attack his nation.

Darkseid & The New Gods[edit | edit source]

The final boss of the DC Universe, Darkseid is the face of the New Gods, the magnum opus of comics icon Jack Kirby. The New Gods were created to be a mythic pantheon for the 20th century and Darkseid is their Satan, the god-like embodiment of tyranny and suffering who rules the appropriately-named Apokolips. His goal is to find the Anti-Life Equation, which he believes will disprove the meaning of life as a concept and give him complete control of every mind in the universe, so he can gain Real Ultimate Power and torture everybody for the lols. His powers are fittingly godlike, able to beat Superman to a pulp and instantly kill or banish anything with his "Omega Beam" vision, and he has a gang of New God cronies who are each almost as evil as he is. He is bad news: Batman had to pick up a gun and shoot him (with a magical anti-god bullet) to put him away during Final Crisis and even that wasn't enough to kill him for good. He's so powerful that an entire other character (Mongul) exists solely to be Darkseid Lite so that the genuine article doesn't suffer from being repeatedly beaten and looking like a chump.

/tg/ Relevance[edit | edit source]

There have been a number of roleplaying games tied into the DC universe released for players.

One of them was a reskin of 3rd Edition Mutants and Masterminds with no mechanical changes, just the examples changed to use DC characters.

A better-regarded example was DC Heroes, one of a handful of games to use the Mayfair Exponential Gaming System. Essentially, each point of stat is an exponential increase over the one before it, which helps explain, say, how Batman could last for more than a microsecond in a physical contest with Superman. Thanks to the nature of 90's game design, there are way too many granular powers (each random element has got an associated blast as well as energy blast), and if you don't know what you're doing the combat is an incoherent mass of charts. That said, if you do know what you're doing (or if there's someone around to provide training wheels on the experience), it's a great time and does a better job of keeping to the feeling of a comic book than many games of its ilk.

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