Who's Who in the DC Convergence #6

Darwyn Cooke

AMBUSH BUG
Created by Keith Giffen
Alter Ego: Irwin Schwab
Occupation: News correspondent for Channel 52
Known relatives: Cheeks (Ward? Adopted son? Sidekick? I guess it doens't much matter, as he's just an inanimate stuffed animal)
Base of Operations: Metropolis; mobile
First appearance: DC COMICS PRESENTS #52 (1982)

HISTORY
Ambush Bug's origins are shrouded in mystery, mostly because he seems to be insane, and therefore has a very poor grip on reality. That, and the fact that almost every single story he has ever appeared in has been comedic in nature–and even when he cameos in a serious story, it's usually a comedic cameo–so his origins are shrouded in bad jokes and comic book parody as well.

What we know for sure is that he began as a villain in a green bug-suit with very large antennae, within which were housed special devices that allowed him to teleport. At some point, he internalized that teleporting power. Also, after a few encounters with heroes like Superman, he decided to give up villainy and take up superheroics instead.

While he's served extremely brief stints with various Justice League groups–like Plastic Man's Justice League of Anarchy during the few days or weeks in which the concept of the Justice League was wiped from the minds of everyone on earth, and a short-lived Justice League that existed between Alexander Luthor and Superboy-Prime's attack on reality and Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman's reformation of the Justice League under the original name of the Justice League of America.

Of course, those stories–like his Ambush Bug: Year None miniseries and his recent gig as a shill for DC Comics in the advertorial Channel 52 segments–came long after Zero Hour, the point in time from which Ambush Bug was plucked to appear in Covergence. But as with all things related to the Bug, the application of the normal narrative rules of comic books need to be relaxed a bit.

POWERS & ABILITIES
Ambush Bug has the ability to teleport himself and objects or people he's touching at the time he teleports. The exact limitations of his powers are ill-defined, as he seems to be able to teleport not only anywhere on Earth, but anywhere throughout the DC Multiverse as well.

This may explain why he frequently possesses knowledge that only a resident of Earth-Prime/Earth-33 should have access to...that, or writers like Keith Giffen and Robert Loren Fleming simply have the character break the fourth wall for comedic effect. Both are equally likely.

For further reading: SHOWCASE PRESENTS: AMBUSH BUG (2009)

Alex Ross

KINGDOM COME BATMAN
Extrapolated by Alex Ross and Mark Waid from the character "created" "by" Bob Kane
Alter Ego: Bruce Wayne
Occupation: Full-time volunteer crime-fighter
Marital status: Metaphorically married to Lady Justice
Known relatives: Ibn al Xu'ffasch (son)
Base of Operations: Gotham City
First appearance: KINGDOM COME #1 (1996)

HISTORY
When Batman's secret identity was revealed to the world, he was attacke in Wayne Manor by two of his greatest and deadliest surviving foes, Two-Face and Bane. They defeated and crippled Bruce Wayne, but they couldn't kill The Batman.

Wayne abandoned any pretense of a normal life and dedicated himself to being Batman 24/7. He constructed a suit of super-battle armor that not only allowed him to move and fight like he did before his injuries, it also endowed him with flight, limited super-strength and an arsenal of weapons bigger and more powerful than any he could fit in a utility belt. Think of it as a wearable Batplane.

The Dark Knight further invented a bat-battlaion of advanced robotic crime-fighters called Bat-Knights that patrolled Gotham City in his stead, making it one of the safest–if suddenly scariest in a different way–cities in America.

When Superman and Wonder Woman decided to re-form the Justice League as a way to combat the rise in younger, deadlier, poorly-trained "heroes" who were wreaking havoc in the world–sometimes on purpose, sometimes not–Batman refused to join his estranged allies, instead pursuing his own, long-game approach to preserving law and order and combatting Lex Luthor's cabal of villains (Batman's former crime-fighting partner and ward, Robin/Dick Grayson, did join the new Justice League, creating a new costume and taking the new name "Red Robin")

When the brewing war between factions of superheroes reached a fever-pitch, and the United Nations planned to drop a nuclear bomb on them all, Batman suited-up with the many allies he was able to rally–Green Arrow Oliver Queen, former Black Canary Dinah Lance, current Black Canary Olivia Queen, Blue Beetle Ted Kord, Steel, and others–and joined the fray.

Batman took on Wonder Woman, and, by the time the dust settled, many of the super-people were dead. He reconciled with Superman and Wonder Woman, and together they agreed to be more present in the world.

POWERS & ABILITIES
He's Batman.

For further reading: KINGDOM COME (1997)

Paris Cullins

BLUE BEETLE II
Created by Steve Ditko
Alter Ego: Theodore "Ted" Kord
Occupation: Inventor, engineer and sometimes CEO of Kord Enterprises...or Kord Industries...or Kord Omniversal Research & Development, Inc, whatever the writer feels like calling the company, really
Marital Status: Single...so very single
Known relatives: Thomas Kord (father), Jarvis Kord (evil uncle)
Group Affiliations: The Justice League (Justice League America and Justice League International)
Base of Operations: Chicago, New York City
First appearance: CAPTAIN ATOM #83 (1966)

HISTORY
As an exceptionally brilliant young man, Ted Kord was probably always destined for some kind of greatness, but he was bitten by the superhero bug (Ah-ha-ha-ha! Get it? Bug?) during an adventure with his archeology teacher Dan Garrett, the original Blue Beetle. Garrett had a mystical scarab artifact that gave him super-strength and other super-powers. When Garrett suffered a lethal injury, he gave the scarab to Kord, asking him to carry on the legacy of the Blue Beetle.

Kord couldn't get the magic item to work for him, but he didn't let that stop him from fulfilling Garrett's dying wish. Kord started training, made a cool Steve Ditko-designed costume and then built a non-lethal weapon and an animal-shaped vehicle to put even the Batmobile and Batplane to shame.

As the Blue Beetle, Kord began his crime-fighting career in his hometown of Chicago, and was soon recruited by the extra-dimensional being known as The Monitor to help repel the attacks of the Anti-Monitor and his army of Shadow Demons.

In the wake of Apokolyptian agent Glorious Godfrey's attempts to discredit the world's superheroes, Kord joined the brand-new Justice League, lead by League veterans Batman, Martian Manhunter and Black Canary, and including such other newcomers to the League as Mister Miracle, Dr. Fate, Captain Marvel and Green Lantern Guy Gardner. This new League was rather quickly re-organized under the United Nations into a new team with a new, international mandate and a series of embassies in cities all over the world.

Kord served on this Jusitce League International for years, staying with the American branch with its embassy based in New York City. In fact, Kord ultimately became one of the longest-serving members in League history, remaining in the line-up through several different reorganizations. During his years with the League, Kord became particularly close with Booster Gold, Fire, Ice, Martian Manhunter and even the abrasive Guy Gardner, despite the fact that the pair had little in common and didn't even seem to like one another all that much.

POWERS & ABILITIES
Ted Kord is a gifted hand-to-hand combatant, athlete and a fairly-skilled acrobat, all of which he'd have to be to become a superhero with no super-powers. His greatest abilities come not from his body, but his brain, however.

A genius-level inventor and engineer, Kord built his own highly-advanced personal aircraft shaped like–what else?–a blue beetle, which he affectionately dubbed The Bug. While less gadget-dependent than the similarly power-less, animal-themed hero Batman, Kord also has a special hand-held gun sometimes referred to as his Beetle Gun or BB Gun, capagle of firing blasts of blinding light and super-compressed air, which he can use to knock opponents off-balamce.

For further reading: SHOWCASE PRESENTS: BLUE BEETLE (2015), JUSTICE LEAGUE INTERNATIONAL VOLS. 1-6 (2009-2011)

Dan Jurgens

THE CYBORG SUPERMAN
Created by Dan Jurgens, based on the character created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster
Alter Ego: Henry "Hank" Henshaw
Marital Status: Widower
Base of Operations: Mobile
Not to be confused with: Cyborg, Superman
First appearance: As Hank Henshaw, ADVENTURES OF SUPEMAN #466 (1990); as Cyborg Superman ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN #500 (1993)

HISTORY
Hank Henshaw and his wife Terri were among the four American astronauts aboard the space shuttle Excalibur performing a LexCorp-sponsored radiation expeiment. A sudden solar flare affected the experiment quite disastrously, however. Two of the crewmembers had their physical bodies destroyed, but their minds were more-or-less intact, and they created new bodies to house their minds out of radiation, in one case, and bits of wreckage and rubble (in the other). The Henshaws seemed fine, at least until arriving on Earth, at which poin Hank's body began to decay rapidly, and Terri's started being sucked into a different dimension.

The only thing worse than an experiment gone dangerously awry, apparently, is a science a science experiment gone dangerously awry in a comic book.

The two mutated crewmembers kill themselves, while Terri kills herself at the sight of her husband's transformation: While his physical body died, his mind survived, and he was able to build a new body of computers and machinery. Distraught over all the suicide going around, Henshaw downloaded his consciousness into Superman's birthing matrix (between Crisis and Zero Hour, Superman had a birthing matrix; don't ask) and, using it as a sort of vehicle, launched himself into space to continue to astronaut around.

While he didn't kill himself, Henshaw did go fairly insane as well, eventually throwing in with Superman villain Mongul and coming up with a pretty good plan for discrediting Superman, who he had come to blame for the loss of his body, his wife, and crewmates.

Upon learning of Superman's "death," Henshaw built himself a new body out of robotics and flesh and blood built out of Superman's own DNA. He returned to Earth claiming to be the one true Superman, somehow rebuilt and brought back to life after having given his life in the fight against Doomsday.

He made a pretty good case for being Superman, exiling Doomsday into space, saving the president of the United States and doing various super-deeds, seemingly passing a battery of tests administered by the real Superman's science buddy Professor Emil Hamilton and even passing a few close encounters with Lois Lane, who wasn't ready to count him out as not Superman immediately.

In fact, of the four Supermen to appear in the wake of the Man of Steel's death–the teenaged clone who would eventually be called Superboy, the dark visored Superman who would eventually be revealed to be the Eradicator, and the armored Man of Steel who would eventually shorten his name to Steel–The Cyborg seemed the most likely candidate.

He eventually showed his true colors, however, when he destroyed Coast City and transformed it into Engine City. He and his ally Mongul were about to do the same to Metropolis, but the combined forces of Superboy, Steel, The Eradicator, Supergirl, Green Lantern Hal Jordan and the real Superman–who turned out to not be dead, after all, simply completely exhausted of all solar energy, which plunged him into a months-long death-like state–were able to thwart the dastardly duo.

POWERS & ABILITIES
As a being of pure consciousness with no real body, Henshaw is essentially immortal and indestructible. He is able to inhabit, mold and control any form of machinery, generally building a "body" for himself out of it, while still able to control other machines.

In his Cyborg Superman body, his flesh components were based on Superman's kryptonian genetic code, and his metal parts were made from Kryptonian alloys. This made his body nearly indestructible, and gave him the full complement of Superman's many powers: Super-strength, super-speed, flight, heat vision and so on.

For further reading: While the Cyborg Superman eventually became a recurring villain for both Superman and The Green Lantern Corps, the version appearing in Convergence is from around the time of Zero Hour, and thus his only really relevant appearnces would be those in THE RETURN OF SUPERMAN (1993) or SUPERMAN: THE DEATH AND RETURN OF SUPERMAN OMNIBUS (2013)

Ross

KINGDOM COME SUPERMAN
Extrapolated by Alex Ross and Mark Waid from the character created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster
Alter Egos: Kal-El, Clark Kent
Occupation: Pretend farmer
Marital status: Widower
Known relatives who aren't dead: None
Group Affiliation: The Justice League
Base of Operations: The Arctic Circle, New Oa
First appearance: KINGDOM COME #1 (1996)

HISTORY
The Joker attacked the offices of The Daily Planet, killing most of the Clark Kent's friends and colleagues with the initial gas attack, but taking a more hands-on approach on the resourceful Lois Lane, who managed to get a gast mask on and attack the super-villain.

The greif-stricken Superman captured The Joker and delivered him to the police, but on the day of the mass-murderer's trial, he was attacked and executed by the newer superhero, Magog. He represented the newer, more violent, no-holds-barred breed of superhero who had begun to emerge.

When the public embraced Magog's brand of heroics, the disullionsed Superman withdrew to The Fortress of Solitude, abandoning his life as both Clark Kent and Superman for years (despite occasional visits and goadings by his long-time friend and colleague Wonder Woman).

Superman finally rejoined the world when Magog and a band of similar heroes accidentally destroyed and irradiated a large part of Kansas (Superman's adoptive home state) while trying to capture The Parasite. During the fight, the villain killed Captain Atom, unleashing his nuclear energies.

Superman reformed the Justice League with veteran heroes from four generations, from Golden Age Green Lantern Alan Scott to Superman's allies to the former Teen Titans to new recruits from the nost promising of the current generation of young heroes. They intend to set an example for the new heroes while simultaneously policing them...and imprisoning the very worst of them.

This lead to conflict not only with the new breed of heroes, but also Superman and Wonder Woman's old ally Batman and his co-horts, and a Lex Luthor-lead cabal of villains, who have a mind-controlled Captain Marvel as their ultimate ace in the hole.

When a four-way battle between the various factions reached a fever pitch, the United Nations decided to just nuke all of the heroes. Several of them were able to minimize the attack, at the cost of many of their lives.

Superman managed to reconcile with his old friend Batman, who promises to help he and Wonder Woman raise and train their child, and raise the next generation of superheroes right.

POWERS & ABILITIES
The Kingdom Come Superman has the same super-catalog of super-powers as his DCU/Earth-0 counterpart, but because he is a decade older and has thus soaked up ten more years worth of solar power, he's a bit more powerful.

For further reading: KINGDOM COME (Like many characters from Kingdom Come, Superman appeared in the rather uneven suite of comics collected under the umbrella title of The Kingdom, which revealed the birth of his son by Wonder Woman. He also showed up in a fun cameo in the Alex Ross-drawn section of Evan Dorkin's World's Funnest one-shot. The best post-Kingdom Come use of the character was in Geoff Johns and Alex Ross's run on JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA, if you simply must read more about him, but for the purposes of Convergence, KINGDOM COME itself should be more than sufficient)


KINGDOM COME WONDER WOMAN
Extrapolated by Alex Ross and Mark Waid from the character created by William Moulton Marston
Alter Ego: Diana
Marital status: Single, but chasing the widowed Superman pretty hard
Known relatives: Hippolyta (mother)
Base of Operations: New Oa
First apperance: KINGDOM COME #1 (1996)

HISTORY
After decades of failing to bring peace to "Man's World," Princess Diana was eventually stripped of her royal title, exiled from Themyscira/Paradise Island and her role as its official ambassador of Amazon values to the outside world.

She became increasingly alienated in her role as a superheroine as well, as colleagues Superman and Batman retreated in various ways from the world (the former due to his deep mourning over personal losses and the world's rejection of his values, the latter due to severe injuries). Meanwhile, a new, fourth generation of heroes and villains began to emerge, both sides more violent and less concerned for things like collateral damage than the super-humans of past generations.

When Magog, the best-known of most widely-embraced of the new generation of heroes, lead his Justice Battalion team against The Parasite, Captain Atom is killed, unleashing a devastating nuclear disaster. That is enough incentive for Wonder Woman's lastest plea with Superman to come out of retirement and reform The Justice League with her to finally convince the Man of Steel.

Together the pair recruit a large and powerful team consisting of heroes from several generations, including old allies and the most promising of the newer heroes. Their increasingly aggressive actions at policing the super-humans of the world–generally proposed and championed by Wonder Woman–rub certain factions the wrong way, including Batman and his large network of like-minded allies, and Lex Luthor and his cabal of villains.

When the League starts imprisoning recalcitrant superhumans, the various factions all go to war, with Wonder Woman leading the League's forces while wearing a new, slightly goofy-looking golden eagle shaped armor. She battles Batman while Superman deals with a mind-controlled Captain Marvel, and things ened pretty badly for everyone, when the U.N. launches a nuclear strike.

Wonder Woman survives the battle and its explosive end, eventually consumating her love for Superman and conceiving a child with him. She and Superman also reconcile with Batman.

POWERS & ABILITIES
This Wonder Woman has all of the powers and abilities of her younger DCU/Earth-0 counterpart: Super-strength, super-speed, flight, a high degree of invulnerabiltiy, proficiency in the martial arts of Themyscira and its bronze age weaponry. She also possesses the same arsenal of weapons as her counterparts, including the unbrekable bracelets, the golden lasso of truth and a tiara balanced to be used as a projectile weapon. She prefers to use a sword, spear and shield to these various weapons, however.

For further reading: KINGDOM COME (1996) and...yeah, that's probably all you need to read.

Who's Who In The DC Convergence #5

Vicente Cifuentes

FLASHPOINT AQUAMAN
Based on the character created by Paul Norris
Alter Ego: Arthur Curry
Occupation: Emperor
Marital status: Widower...and not happy about it
Known relatives: Orm/Ocean Master (brother)
Base of Operations: Atlantis
Hair style: Unfortunate
First appearance: FLASHPOINT #1 (2011)

HISTORY
Born in a world where he returned to the undersea kingdom of his ancestors at an early age, a world without a Justice League to provide him ties, allies and friends among the heroes of the surface world, Aquaman turned out quite differently. By young adulthood, he was the brutal emporor of the Atlantean Empire, and was set to marry Princess Diana of the Amazonian nation of Thmyscira, who he had met and fell in love with at a young age.

Their wedding was sabotaged by traitors within both kingdoms, however, and when someone (Amazon warrior Artemis) attempted to assassinate Diana on her wedding day and killed her mother Queen Hippolyta instead, blame was shifted to an Atlantean (Garth).

These and other machinations by conspirators at high-levels in both nations plunged Atlantis and the Amazons into war. At one point, Aquaman married Mera, but his queen was killed by Amazons. As the Atlantis/Amazon war grew in scope and ferocity, much of Western Europe was sunk by Atlantis, and they next targeted New Themyscira (the former UK). The U.S. attempted to enter the war, but The Flash Barry Allen and a rag-tag group of heroes intervened at ground zero, coming between Aquaman and Wonder Woman and re-setting the timeline so one of these events ever happened.

POWERS & ABILITIES
Like his pre-Flashpoint counterpart, Aquaman's most noteworthy power was his ability to psychically communicate with sea life, which could give him a great aptitude towards controlling the more pliant and agreeable among them. Flashpoint's Aquaman may have had even more psychic ability, as he seems to able to completely dominate all forms of sea life, without suffering any of the side effects the he would have pre-Flashpoint.

Like all Atlanteans, he was also incredibly strong, fast, somewhate invulnerable and bearing heightened visual and auditory senses, particularly on land, a result of having quickly evolved to be able to withstand the crushing pressures and relative darkness of the ocean floor.

Despite his personal powers and weaponry, like his ever-present trident, his greatest power may be his control over the Atlantean army and its advanced weaponry.

For further reading: FLASHPOINT (2012) and, if you really feel you must read more, FLASHPOINT: THE WORLD OF FLASHPOINT FEATURING WONDER WOMAN (2012)

Eduardo Risso

FLASHPOINT BATMAN
Based on the character "created" "by" Bob Kane
Alter Ego: Dr. Thomas Wayne
Occupation: Runs the Wayne Casino
Marital status: Martha Wayne (estranged life...in fact, their marriage is about as strange as it gets)
Known relatives: His son is deeaaaaaad!!!
Base of Operations: Gotham City
First appearance: FLASHPOINT #1 (2011)

HISTORY
One night prominent Gothamites Dr. Thomas Wayne, his wife Martha and their young son Bruce were attacked by a mugger, and Bruce was shot to death, plunging the Waynes into deep mourning that drove them both more than a little insane in different ways.

Thomas dealt with his greif by quitting the practice of medicine and devoting himself completely to waging a war on crime as the costumed crimefighter The Batman, opearting out of a cave beneath the abandoned Wayne Manor. In his public identity, Thomas Wayne helped bring gambling to Gotham City, and opened the Wayne Casino as a way to keep the city's crime and criminals close to him. He worked with Oswald Cobblepot and policeman James Gordon in this endeavor.

As Batman, he dealt with his foes rather permanently, killing Killer Croc, Hush, Poison Ivy, The Scarecrow and even Joe Chill, the man who murdered his son. One super-criminal he was never able to bring himself to kill, however, was The Joker, the colorful, killer identity that Martha took on after being driven very, very crazy by Bruce's death.

A meeting with The Flash Barry Allen revealed to Thomas that his world was even more wrong than he could possibly have imagined, and had only come about as the result of attempts to alter the timeline by The Flash and his archenemy The Reverse Flash...Barry being one of the few people in the world with any inkling of the old world, as it existed before the manipulations of the timeline and the ripple effect of unwanted changes it caused.

Wayne decides to work with Allen to restore to the world to the way it should be....and he becomes particularly devoted to the cause when hear learns that it was really he and his wife who were supposed to have died, while Bruce was meant to have survivedd. Pondering whether it was really worth ending his world to bring his son back to life, even if he would never meet him, Wayne sought the advice of Martha–during the course of trying to bring her to justice after she kidnapped Harvey Dent's twin children and tricked Gordon into shooting one of them before killng Gordon herself.

Their encounter didn't go well for Martha, but Wayne aided Allen, asking that The Flash deliver a letter to his son once the timestream was restored.

Together with The Flash and a handful of allies, Wayne helps end the Flashpoint timeline and restore the original one, although the unexpected and still unexplained interventions of the mysterious immortal known as Pandora again altered the timeline, so the reality The Flash returned to was a drastically different one than the one he left. Somehow, The Flash's memories remained–at least for a time–as did the now non-existent Thomas' letter to his son, which The Flash was able to deliver.

POWERS & ABILITIES
He's Batman.

For further reading: FLASHPOINT (2012), FLASHPOINT: BATMAN–KNIGHT OF VENGENACE #1-3 (2011) or FLASHPOINT: THE WORLD OF FLASPOINT FEATURING BATMAN (2012), although you can stop reading after you've finished Brian Azzarello and Eduwardo Risso's story, as the rest of the collection is fairly terrible.

J.H. Williams III

BATWOMAN
(Re-)created by Grant Morrison, Greg Rucka, Mark Waid, Geoff Johns, Ken Lashley and Alex Ross, based on the character created by Bob Kane, Sheldon Moldoff and Edmond Hamilton
Alter Ego: Katherine Rebecca Kane (But you can call her "Kate")
Occupation: Socialite
Marital Status: Funny story; ask DC's co-publishers next time you see them at a convention, why don't you
Known relatives: Colonel Jacob Kane (father), Captain Gabrielle Kane (mother; deceased), Elizabeth Kane/Alice (psychotic twin sister), Catherine Hamilton (step-mother), Bette Kane/Flamebird (cousin)
Group Affiliation: Batman, Inc
Base of Operations: Gotham City
Faith: Jewish
First appearance: 52 #7 (2006)

HISTORY
The Kane family suffered a particularly elaborate tragedy when Kate and her twin sister Elizabeth turned twelve. Their mother took the girls to a fancy restaurant to celebrate their birthday, but they were kidnapped. The girls' father, a colonel in the U.S. army, lead a rescue operation, but in the process his wife and the girs' mother was killed, and Elizabeth was presumed dead...only to appear as a costumed criminal in Gotham many years later, as so often happens.

As a young adult, Kate attempted to follow in her father's footsteps by pursuing a career in the army. Despite her excellent grades and performance at the United States Military Academy, she was thrown out when it was discovered that she was a lesbian, and thus in violation of the U.S. military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy (this will need to be retconned, eventually).

She would ventually embark on her own kind of war-fighting, when she was attacked by a mugger. She took the criminal down herself easily by the time Batman arrived to help her. At that point, she decided to become a crime-fighter, but was quickly busted by her father. He decided that if she was going to become an urban vigilante, she should have to do it right, and so he sent her off for two years of globe-trotting training (to compliment the combat skills and physical training she already acquired in the military), and by the time she geot back, Jake Kane had made her a super-tight Batwoman outfit (which is kinda pervy, when you think about it), an arsenal of weapons and a bunker in their home.

Batwoman made her debut during Batman's year off, following the reality-warping events of Superboy-Prime and Alexander Luthor's complicated, semi-coherent plans to remake the universe. While Bruce Wayne/Batman, Dick Grayson/Nightwing and Time Drake/Robin were traveling the world together and training as a team, leaving a then temporarily reformed Harvey Dent to protect Gotham City, Batwoman began investigating Intergang's plot to turn Gotham City into the Vatican of their Religion of Crime.

She worked with former girlfriend (and former police detective) Renee Montoya and The Question, and, later, Nightwing, who returned from the training trip early.

Batwoman would work with the Bat-Family on several occasions, joining Batman, Inc and occasionally being called in for particular missions, but she's not particularly close to any of them, nor invited into their secret identity-sharing circle. Most of her career as a crime-fighter has focused on dealing with the Religion of Crime.

POWERS & ABILITIES
While Kate Kane has no super-powers, she's in peak physical condition, and is a superb athlete and martial artist.

For further reading: 52 VOLS. 1-4 (2006-2007) or 52 OMNIBUS (2007), BATWOMAN: ELEGY (2011), BATWOMAN VOLS. 1-4 (2013-2014)

Scott Shaw

CAPTAIN CARROT
Created by Roy Thomas and Scott Shaw
Alter Ego: Roger Rodney Rabbit
Occupation: Cartoonist of Just'a Lotta Animals
Base of Operations: Gnu York, Gnu York; Follywood, Califurnia (Pre-Crisis Earth-C)
Team affiliations: The Zoo Crew
Not to be confused with: Hoppy The Marvel Bunny
First appearance: NEW TEEN TITANS #16 (1982)

HISTORY
The origin of Captain Carrot actually began on the parallel Earth once designated as Earth-1, where the hero Superman found the citizens of his city Metropolis beginning to act atavistically. He traced the problem to a meteor, but upon investigation, he and the fragmenting meteor appeared in a parallel earth populated by anthropomorphic animals. The fragments of these meteors endowed several of the citizens of this Earth, later designated as Earth-C, with super-powers.

Among the first of these was the anthropomorphic rabbit and cartoonist Roger Rodney Rabbit. He gained his fabulous powers after eating a carrot that was grown in his window box, where a tiny piece of the meteor landed. The "cosmic carrots," as he called them, gave him his super-powers, but the effect only lasted 24 hours (less, if he was using his powers quite a bit), after which point he'd need to eat another cosmic carrot, which is why he usually would go into battle with spares.

The other new heroes included Pig-Iron, an anthroporphic boar who fell into a vat of molten metal along with a piece of meteorite, emerging in a new, metal body with matching super-strength and invulnerability; Fastback, an anthropomorphic turtle with super-speed; and a bunch of others with significantly smaller roles in Convergence (Alley-Kat-Abra, Little Cheese, Rubberduck, Yankee Poodle).

Together they helped Superman defeat the threat that was devolving the citizens of both Earths–Starro–and then the Earth-C heroes decided to stay together as a super-team, calling themselves The Zoo Crew.

Before the reality-warping crisis in which The Anti-Monitor attacked all of reality shunted the characters' homeworld from an alternate Earth vibrating at a different frequency of an infinite number of others and into their own alternate dimension, the Zoo Crew would face such challenges as invaders from Earth-C- and navigating a war between Oz and Wonderland. After the new reality inadvertently created by the actions of the Anti-Monitor began to settle, Captain Carrot and The Zoo Crew reverberated on Earth-O in many minor ways. It was recently revealed that their Earth is actually one of the 52 known Earths of the local Multiverse, and it has been cataloged as Earth-26, while Captain Carrot (somewhat dramatically altered in appearance) joined the new Multiversal super-team dubbed Justice Incarnate.

POWERS & ABILITIES
Captain Carrot possesses super-strength and speed, a high degree of invulnerability, enhanced senses and the ability to hop great distances.

For further reading: SHOWCASE PRESENTS: CAPTAIN CARROT AND HIS AMAZING ZOO CREW VOL. 1 (2014)

Graham Nolan, I want to say...?

THE HUNTRESS
(Re-)created by Joe Staton and Joey Cavalieri, based on the character created by Staton, Paul Levitz, Joe Orlando and Bob Layton
Alter Ego: Helena Rosa Bertinelli
Occupation: Teacher
Marital Status: Single
Group Affiliations: The Birds of Prey, The Justice League
Base of opeartions: Gotham City
Faith: Catholic
First appearance: THE HUNTRESS #1 (1989)

HISTORY
Helena Bertinelli has three different origin stories, so her history depends on which version you want to read. The first has long been out of print, but the second two (see below) are still readily available. In all versions, however, Helena Bertinelli is the daughter of a prominent mafia family, and sees most or all of her family wiped out my a rival crime family when she was just eight years old. She then devotes herself to seeking vengeance for them when she grows to adulthood...not as the head of her crime family, but as a masked crime-fighter.

After her years of training, mostly in hand-to-hand combat, archery and the use of the crossbow, Bertinelli adopts a skimpy purple costume and cape and takes the name "The Huntress." She sets up shop in Gotham City, much to the annoyance of its alpha crime-fighter, The Batman. He doesn't like her recklessness or her (relative) bloodthirstiness, and most of her earliest interactions with The Dark Knight consist of Batman forbidding her from fighting crime or, when he's in a good mood, simply discouraging her from doing so.

By day, she works as a high school teacher, hoping to cause effect positive change in Gotham City by an entirely different route.

While Batman was slow to warm to The Huntress, the rest of his crime-fighting team didn't have as much trouble. Robin Tim Drake worked with her extensively very early in his career, Nightwing Dick Gryason occasionally partnered with her (and totally hooked up with her), and Oracle Barbara Gordon eventually recruited her to join her and Black Canary in their crime-fighting outfit The Birds of Prey. The line-up would shift over the years, but The Huntress and Black Canary would remain Gordon's most loyal agents.

While Max Lord once considered recruiting The Huntress to the Justice League while it was still operating under its international charter, she never officially joined the League until Batman sponsored her during the team's rapid expansion after Lex Luthor's Injustice Gang all but dismantled the small, ten-member League. When she asked why he decided to have her join the League after pushing her away from crime-fighting for years, he explained that he hoped the exposure to the likes of heroes like Superman and Wonder Woman would help her become a better hero.

The Huntress would remain with the team until the time Mageddon, the anti-sun weapon left over from a war of the Old Gods, nearly destroyed the world. In that time, she became close to Steel and Plastic Man (another of Batman's recruits, with whom she had a love/hate sibling-like relationship). Among her greatest achievements was helping Steel, Plastic Man, Zauriel and Barda repel the Justice Legion from The Watchtower, and helping come up with a cross-time strategy for defeating Solaris and Vandal Savage in the far-flung future.

POWERS & ABILITIES
While Helena lacks any super-powers, she's an excellent hand-to-hand fighter and in peak physical condition. She is particularly adept with her weapon of choice, the crossbow, and she's used several different versions of the weapon over the years, including a wrist-mounted one.

For further reading: For her origin stories, you'll want to read BATMAN & HUNTRESS: A CRY FOR BLOOD (2002) and/or HUNTRESS: YEAR ONE (2009); for her work with the Birds of Prey, you'll want the pre-Brightest Day Gail Simone run, collected in BIRDS OF PREY: VOLS 1-7 (2004-2008); for her JLA appearances, you'll want to read JLA VOLS. 2-4 (2012-2014), JLA: ONE MILLION (2004) or DC ONE MILLION OMNIBUS (2013); for her work with Batman and his allies, you can look for trades like BATMAN: CONTAGION (1996), BATMAN: LEGACY (1997), BATMAN: CATACLYSM (2015) and BATMAN: NO MAN'S LAND VOLS. 1-4 (2011-2014)...she plays similar supporting roles in other big Batman storylines, from HUSH to WAR GAMES to BATTLE FOR THE COWL, but those are all terrible.

Francis Manapul

JESSE QUICK
Created by Len Strazewski and Mike Parobek
Alter Ego: Jesse Belle Chambers
Occupation: CEO of Quickstart Enterprises
Marital Status: Married to Rick Tyler/Hourman II
Known relatives: Johnny Chambers/Johnny Quick (father; deceased...ish), Libby (Lawrence) Chambers/Liberty Belle (mother)
Group affiliations: Justice League of America; formerly The Justice Society of America and The Titans
First appearance: JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA #1 (1992)

HISTORY
Jesse Chambers was the daughter of two Golden Age superheroes, the speedster Johnny Quick and the masked Liberty Belle, who gained super-strength, increased agility and other weapons by mysterious means originally believed to be tied to the Liberty Bell after which she took her name.

Her father taught her the secret to his super-speed–reciting the mathematical formula "3X2(9YZ)4A" aloud–but her interest was in her education and business, rather than following in her dad's super-fast footsteps.

She gradually became more and more involved with the superhuman community after the original members of the Justice Society of America were freed from their never-ending battle in Ragnarok, and The Flash Wally West asked her to act as his stand-in, should he ever be unable to serve as The Flash.

Her father died protecting her from the villain Savitar, or at least died to the extent that any speedster could, as he became one with the mysterious extra-dimensional energy referred to as The Speed Force, the source of all speedsters' powers.

While she spent most of her time running her late father's business Quickstart Enterprises, she continued to super-hero occasionally, usually helping out West and fellow speedsters like Impulse and Max Mercury. She became much more active upon joining the re-formed Titans team, consisting of first generation Titans (Dick Grayson/Nightwing, Wally West/The Flash, Garth/Tempest, Donna Troy/Troia and Roy Harper/Arsenal), and recruits nominated by each of them. Jesse was Wally's choice for the new team.

After that team of Titans disbanded, Jesse began working with the new Justice Society, which had also just reformed. At first, she worked as the team's business manager, but eventually became an active member, trading in her "Jesse Quick" costume and persona to become new Liberty Belle. It turns out she inherited not only her father's super-speed powers, but also her mother's powers.

While a member of the JSA, she met Rick Tyler, son of the original Hourman, who once tried to carry on his legacy as Hourman II and quit, but had fairly recently returned to action after the android Hourman (who was therefore technically Hourman III) from the 853rd Century left the 21st Century. The pair fell in love, and eventually married.

Jesse would later switch back to her Jesse Quick identity, wearing a new costume that more closely resembled that of her father's, and was poached from the JSA by then-Batman Dick Grayson to join the new JLA, which had a roster heavily comprised of younger, third-generation superheroes at the time. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure she is the only superhero to ever be a member of the JSA, the Teen Titans and the JLA.*

POWERS & ABILITIES
Upon reciting or meditating upon her father's speed formula, Jesse can access the Speed Force, giving her incredible super-speed and its attendant related powers. While the upper-limits of her speed are not known precisely, she's not quite as fast as The Flash Wally West, nor as experienced as Max Mercury, known as "The Zen Master of The Speed Force."

Jesse also inherited her mother's super-strength, although she was unable to access it until later in her career.

For further reading: THE FLASH: TERMINAL VELOCITY (1995), THE FLASH: DEAD HEAT (2000), JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA: THE NEXT AGE (2008), ...THY KINGDOM COME PART ONE-PART THREE (2009-2010), ...BLACK ADAM AND ISIS (2010), ...THE BADSEEN (2010), ...AXIS OF EVIL (2010), JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA: THE DARK THINGS (2011), JUSTIE LEAGUE OF AMERICA: THE RISE OF ECLIPSO (2012)

Ed Benes

FLASHPOINT WONDER WOMAN

Based on the character created by William Moulton Marston
Alter Ego: Diana
Occupation: Queen of The Amazons
Marital status: She was engaged...once.
Known relatives: Hippolyta (mother; deceased)
Base of Operations: New Themscyria (formerly the United Kingdom)
First appearance: FLASHPOINT #1 (2011)

HISTORY
Diana, Princess of the Amazons, was betrothed to marry Arthur Curry, King of Atlantis, but rogue elements within her own country attempted to sabotage the union. When the Amazon Artemis attempted to assassinate Diana with a bow and arrow on her wedding day, Diana's mother Queen Hippolyta took the arrow instead, saving her daughter's life at the cost of her own. Artemis was able to frame the attack on Garth of Atlantis, plunging the two nations into war. Artemis and co-conspirators at the highest levels of government in both nations further sabotaged later attempts to sue for peace.

Diana lead her people in a war against Atlantis and pretty much all-comers, conquering the United Kingdom–and killing 12 million people in the process–while The Atlanteans sunk much of the rest of Western Europe, which resulted in an even more astronomical death toll.

In addition to her Amazon warriors, Diana also commands a group of super-powered and/or super-skilled women known as The Furies, and these include the likes of Starfire, Terra, Giganta, The Cheetah, Hawkgirl and others. They are opposed not only by the Atlanteans, but also "The Resistance," a popular movement that counts several superhumans among its members, and enjoys support from foreign governments.

With Atlantis threatening to sink New Themscyria with a tidal wave, the United States announces they would be entering the war. Wonder Woman was fighting her one-time financee Aquaman one-on-one in her kingdom when The Flash  and his new allies–including Batman, Cyborg, Captain Thunder, Element Woman and The Enchantress–arrived to join the fray. In the ensuing melee, The Flash learned why and how the world changed so drastically around him, and what he could do to set it right.

He proceeded to do so, but rather than restoring the timeline, he inadvertently created a new, altered version of it. This one was much closer to the one he left before the Flashpoint timeline, but one it was still rather radically altered–thanks in large part to the contributions of the mysterious immortal Pandora, who infused The Flash's timeline with elements from two other "universes."

For Wonder Woman, the changes were mostly minor, cosmetic ones, although her parentage and the history of her people suffered a more drastic change.

POWERS & ABILITIES
Flashpoint Wonder Woman seemed to have all of the most commonly used powers and abilities of Wonder Woman prior to the timeline divergence, including super-strength, super-speed, flight and invulnerability. She was additionally an incredible warrior, the best in an entire nation of warriors, proficient with the various bronze age weopanry most commonly employed by the Amazons (sword, shielf, spear, bow, etc), but relied most heavily on her magic lasso (an unbreakable rope that compels all ensnared in it to tell the truth and subvert their will to hers to some degree) and her bracelts.

For further reading: FLASHPOINT (2012) and, if you must, FLASHPOINT: THE WORLD OF FLASHPOINT FEATURING WONDER WOMAN (2012), but I must warn you that it is not very good.



*Well, Damage worked extremely briefly with the Justice League Task Force, later joined the Titans and later still joined the JSA, so if one wants to count the Task Force as the Justice League, then he too has been on incarnations of all three super-teams.

Who's Who In The DC Convergence #4

Mike Sekowsky

THE CRIME SYNDICATE OF AMERICA
Created by Gardner Fox and Mike Sekowsky, based on various Justice League characters created by various creators
Base of Operations: (Pre-Crisis) Earth-3
Line-Up: Ultraman, Superwoman, Owlman, Power Ring and Johnny Quick
First appearance: JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #27 (1964)

HISTORY
Hailing from an alternate Earth in a parallel vibrational frequency, The Crime Syndicate were the only beings with any super-powers, a result of the peculiarly "reverse" nature of their world's history (a world where, for example, President John Wilkes Booth was assassianted by Abraham Lincoln). With no super-heroes to challenge them, these five super-villains were soon bored with the challenge-free task of conquering and ruling their world.

This changed upon Ultraman, Earth-3's Superman analogue, acquiring the new power of "Ultra-Vision," which allowed him to see into different realities. He discovered the worlds designated Earth-1 (home of the Justice League of America, the core of which were composed of inverse versions of the CSA) and Earth-2 (home of the Justice Society of America).

Thrilled by the idea of a real challenge, The Syndicate attacked and were quickly defeated, but they managed to escape capture. In their better planned second tussle with the heroes, they first captured the JSA and fought the JLA on the neutral ground of Earth-2 (each team having a natural, home court advantage on their own world, ruled by differing cosmic laws; put simply, the good guys always win on the League's world, while the bad guys always win on the Syndicate's world).

This time the Syndicate were both defeated and captured, imprisoned in an unbreakable Green Lantern ring construct that was then jettisoned into the limbo between dimensions. The Syndicate would occassionally escape with outside aid from the likes of The Secret Society of Super-Villains or Per Degaton. They and their world were completely destroyed by an anti-matter wave unleashed by The Anti-Monitor during the crisis that collapsed the known Multiverse.

The Multiverse has a way of remembering and restoring all its lost, however, and different versions apparently based on echoes of the original CSA would appear in various forms throughout the years.

For further reading: CRISIS ON MULTIPLE EARTHS VOL. 1 (2013), VOL. 6 (2013)

Mark Texeria and Tony DeZuniga

HEX
Created by John Albano and Tony DeZuniga
Alter Ego: Jonah Woodson Hex
Occupation: Bounty hunter
Known relatives: Woodson Hex (abusive alcoholic father), Virginia Hex (mother)
Distinguishing characteristics: The entire right half of his face is deformed by terrible scarring, with a weird little skin bridge over the right side of his mouth
First appearance: ALL-STAR WESTERN #10 (1972)

HISTORY
Sold into slavery by his father at the tender age of 13, young Jonah Hex spent some of his formative years being relentlessly worked by his new Apache masters. When he saved their chief from a puma attack, however, he was adopted as the chief's own son, and raised as one of the tribe. That didn't last too long however, as his adpoted brother betrayed him and left him for dead with an enemy tribe, and Jonah once more found himself excised from his family.

He was rescued by the U.S. Calvary, but when he attempted to stop their slaughter of the Native Americans, they shot him too. He was nursed back to health by a kindly trapper.

As a grown man, eventually joined the the Confederate Army, although he felt conflicted by fighting in a war on the side of slavers (a conflict likely made more palpable to him than many of his fellow soldier on account of the fact that he spent some time as a slave himself). He eventually decided his best course of action would be to simply surrender to the Union, so as not to betray his former comrades, but that didn't go so hot, as when the Union soldiers were able to track Hex back to his former base, he was blamed for betraying them anyway.

After the war, Hex attempted to return to his Apache tribe, where he accused his adopted brother of the long-ago betrayal. The chief decided they should settle it with a good old-fashioned tomahawk fight, but Hex's no-good brother sabotaged his tomahawk. In desperation, Hex pulled a knife in self-defense, and was severly punished for this heinous breach of tomahawk fight protocol. A heated tomahawk was pressed into his face to give him "The Mark of The Demon" (and his signature good looks), after which Hex was banished from the tribe forever.

Hex became a bounty hunter by accident, when killing a man who  happened to have a bounty on him. He had finally found his true calling, and excelled and hunting and killing outlaws, proving all of the hardships, violence and temporary surrogate families of his youth were at least good for something.

On more than one occassion during his successful career, Hex encountered the supernatural, which he proved as adept at vanquishing as any other enemy life had thrown at him, and time-travelling superheroes from the future, which was also took in stride.

Things got infinitely weirder for Hex in 1875, when he disappeared from a saloon and reappeared in the post-apocalyptic future of 21st century Seattle, Washington. He was abducted from his home time period by one Reinhold Borsten, who wanted to press-gang the famed Old West gunfighter into serving him as muscle, but Hex wasn't interested and escaped, falling in with a woman named Stilleta and her biker gang The Road Reapers.

After a series of weird-ass adventures in the irradiated, Mad Max-like future America–say, with a new Mad Max movie on the horizon, maybe it's time for a Hex revival?–Hex discovered his own stuffed corpse in a sideshow, which heartened him, as he took it to mean he would eventually return to his own time period.

POWERS & ABILITIES
Hex is remarkably skilled with most killing implements of his era, particularly late 19th century firearms, the tomahawk and the knife. Hex is an expert marksman and has one of the quickest draws in the West. He is also a skilled tracker and, given his compsoure during what have to be some of the strangest adventures had by any of his gun-fighting and bounty-hunting peers, he's apparently unflappable and unphaseable.

For further reading: Hex, the 18-issue, 1985-1987 series that the version appearing in Convergence: Infinity Inc was taken from, has never been collected in trade. But if you read pretty much any comic with Jonah Hex in it–Showcase Presents: Jonah Hex Vol. 1, any of the Vertigo minis, the Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray-written Jonah Hex or All Star Western–you'll get the general idea of who Hex is and what he's about. The main difference between the Jonah Hex of Jonah Hex comics and the Jonah Hex of Hex is that the former wears a cowboy hat and the latter does not.

Brian Bolland

THE HUNTRESS
Created by Paul Levitz, Joe Staton, Joe Orlando and Bob Layton
Alter Ego: Helena Wayne
Occupation: Heiress; also works for the law firm of Cranston and Grayson
Known relatives: Bruce Wayne/Batman (father), Selina Wayne/Catwoman (mother)
Base of Operations: Gotham City (Pre-Crisis Earth-2)
Popular ship: Power Girl
First appearance: DC SUPER STARS #17 (1977)

HISTORY
Helena Wayne was the daughter of Bruce Wayne and Selina Wayne (nee Kyle), The Batman and Catwoman of Earth-2. She was extremely well educated and trained by her parents, and by the time she grew into a young woman, she was a superb athlete in peak physical condition.

She eventually learned of her parents' costumed pasts, and would soon after create an identity of her own. When Helena was 19-years-old, an old criminal associate of her mother's resurfaced and blackmailed Selina into once again becoming Catwoman. Selena died because of her associates machinations, and Helena created a purple costume vaguely suggesting elements of both of her parents' costumes, taking for herself the name "The Huntress," which was previously used by the villain Paula Brooks.

Helena achieved justice for her mother, but continued to fight crime as The Huntress. After the death of her father, The Huntress joined The Justice Society of America and, briefly, Infinity Inc, a new, upstart super-team consisting of the children of various members of the JSA. Her closest allies of all were probably Dick Grayson/Robin and Superman's cousin Power Girl.

POWERS & ABILITIES
Like her famous parents, Helena Wayne had no super-powers, but was a superb athlete, gymnast and martial artist. She was proficient in several weapons, most notably the crossbow, which would become her signature weapon.

For further reading: HUNTRESS: DARK KNIGHT DAUGHTER (2006)

Val Semeiks

JUSTICE LEGION A
Team created by Grant Morrison, individual members created by Morrison, Mark Waid and others, based on pre-existing characters created by a whole mess of different people
Base of Operations: Jupiter
"Current" Line-Up: John Fox/The Flash, Wonder Woman, Kal Kent/Superman, Aquaman, Batman, The Atom and Owlwoman
"Past" members: Mitch Shelley/Resurrection Man, Farris Knight/Starman, Hourman
First Apperance: As a team JLA #23 (1998); The Flash and Hourman appeared individually previously

HISTORY
The heroic ideals of the Superman, The Justice League and other heroes of the 20th and 21st Century live on in the far-flung future of the 853rd Century. Incredibly powerful super-teams known as Justice Legions, composed of legacy versions of familiar heroes from their distant past, continue to protect the known universe.

The greatest of these is Justice Leagion A, a team of seven indominatable heroes, each of whom is assigned a different planet within our solar system to protect–all of which are now inhabitable and inhabited–and which meets at a round table in a special forcefield base within the eye of the storm that continually rages on Jupiter.

The most familiar version included John Fox, the time-travelling Flash from the 23rd Century, who made a new home for himself in this adopted future, and is based on Mercury; a "smart marble" statue code-named Wonder Woman who is based on Venus; the latest member of the Superman dynasty protects Earth with his incredible array of powers, which dwarf those once boasted by the original Superman; the intelligent machine colony Hourman, with formidable powers over time and space; Starman, who is headquartered in a star-shaped space-station near where the planet Uranus used to orbit and who is charged with oversseeing the solar system's artificial and artificially intelligent second sun; Aquaman, based on the ocean planet Neptune; and Batman, superhero warden of the prison planet Pluto, which he protects with the aid of his robot sidekick Robin, The Toy Wonder.

To celebrate the imminent return of "Superman-Prime," the original Superman Clark Kent who has spent the millennia in a self-imposed exile within the sun itself, the Justice Legion travelled back to the end of the 20th Century in order to invite Superman himself and his Justice League teammates to travel to the future with them and participate in Olympics-style games/power displays.

Things went very wrong very fast, however, as The Living Sun Solaris, a long-time Superman foe that, after its last defeat, was reprogrammed and repurposed to provide sunlight to the planets in the outer orbit of the solar system, had infected Hourman with a techno-organic virus. When Hourman arrived in the 20th century, it was released, wreaking world-wide havoc and making those infected–including the super-powerful Justice Legionnaires–paranoid and violent.

With much of the JLA already sent to the future, it fll to those who stayed behind (like Oracle), their newest recruits (like Steel, The Huntress, Plastic Man and Zauriel) and allies (like The Atom) to fight the century-spanning machinations of Solaris and immortal JLA foe Vandal Savage in a high-stakes war on two-fronts in two time-periods.

Don't worry; the good guys won.

While this team-up with their own founders and inspirations probably constituted their greatest adventure, The Justice Legion had many more adventures before and after, several of which have been recorded in comics published in the late 20th and early 21st century.

For further reading: DC ONE MILLION (1999) or JLA: ONE MILLION (2004) or DC ONE MILLION OMNIBUS (2013), all of which contain the same story, although the latter includes many more of the tie-ins (like a lot of Morrison-written projects, including The Multiversity and Seven Soldiers, this actually reads much better in single issues than a collection, as the stories were written to be read in that format). Most of the other appearances of these characters since–an 80-Page Giant here, a Superman/Batman story arc there–aren't really that great, but kinda sorta spin-off series HOURMAN (1999-2001) is well worth anyone's time.

Art Spiegelman

PLASTIC MAN
Created by Jack Cole
Alter Ego: Patrick "Eel" O'Brian
Occupation: Deputy officer of the Federal Bureau of Investigations and its fictional sister agency, the National Bureau of Investigations
Known associates: Woozy Winks, The Spirit (but only on the covers of Police Comics)
First appearance: POLICE COMICS #1 (1941)

HISTORY
Orphan Patrick O'Brian turned to crime at a young age, and took the name Eel. As he grew, his crimes grew more serious, so that by the time he was an adult he was working with a gang of burglars. One fateful night, when they were attempting a heist at The Crawford Chemical Works, they were surprised by a night watchman and forced to flee.

Eel was shot in the arm and then exposed to a mysterious chemical, but was still able to escape. When he made it to the street, he saw that his gang had left him. He fled on foot, before passing out at the foot of a mountain near town. He awoke up in a strange bed, where the friendly monk who found him had carried him and laid him to heal.

That wasn't as big a surprise as what he discovered when he stretched his arms–they kept stretching, and, when he tugged on his cheeks, he saw his face was just as pliable. Somehow, the mysterious chemical had given his body the properties of rubber–or, perhaps, plastic.

The monk's kindness, his gang's lack of loyalty and concern for him and his newfound powers convinced Eel to give up his life of crime, put on a costume and devote himself to fighting crime as the superhero Plastic Man.

For a long time he maintained his identity as Eel O'Brian, so that he had plenty of exposure to and contacts within the criminal underworld.

Together with is best friend Woozy Winks, another reformed criminal whose "powers" have included the remarkable ability to avoid any form of injury through unlikely circumstance (and, briefly, Plastic Man-like stretchy and bouncy powers), Plastic Man achieved much more working for the side of the angels than he could have hoped to as a criminal. He worked closely with local police, and was eventually recruited to the FBI and/or the NBI.

POWERS & ABILITIES
Plastic Man can stretch his every part of his body–down to a molecular level–which combined with his own wild imagination, has made him the most powerful and versatile of comics' many "stretchy" guys. In addition to stretching, he can shrink, grow and assume pretty much any shape at all, no matter how complicated or how many moving parts it might have. The one give-away of his transformations, which he has endlessly used as a sort of master of disguise, is that whether he turns into a rug, door, dressing table, vase, tank, bicycle, book or whatever, he can't change colors, so the objects will always appear mostly red...with some yellow, black and maybe some pinkish flesh color in them. Fortuitously, few of his marks seem to notice when a common object in their homes, offices or hideouts has suddenly become red.

The true limits of Plastic Man's powers were never really tested–at least not by the point in history that the Plastic Man in Convergence was plucked from–and like those of many old superheroes, tend to vary from story to story and writer to writer. In general, he is immune to most forms of deadly harm, including blunt trauma and even bullets.

He's generally more vulnerable to attacks by pointy objects, like knives (if you can manage to get him with one), fire, extreme cold and electricity or other forms of energy attack.

For further reading: While DC has produced several noteworthy Plastic Man comics in recent years, including Kyle Baker's series and the bulk of JLA and Alex Ross and Paul Dini's various Justice League-related collaborations, this is the Golden Age Plastic Man we're talking about, in which case we should probably limit our further reading to PLASTIC MAN ARCHIVES VOLS. 1-8 (1999-2006) and the mostly prose JACK COLE AND PLASTIC MAN: FORMS STRETCHED TO THEIR LIMIT (2001).

Sheldon Mayer

SCRIBBLY JIBBET
Created by Sheldon Mayer
Occupation: Boy cartoonist
Known relatives: Mortimer "Dinky" Jibbet (younger brother)
Base of Operations: New York City
First appearance: POPULAR COMICS #6 (1936)

HISTORY
All of his young life, Scribbly Jibbet's one over-riding ambition was to be a newspaper cartoonist. He eventually achieved that dream when given a job at The Daily Dispatch. He was relatively close to neighborhood grocer Ma Hunkel, who would eventually don a costume to become t he first costume adventurer to use the name The Red Tornado. Scribbly's younger brother Dinky and Ma's daughter Sisty were also adventurers, who went by the name "The Cyclone Kids."

POWERS & ABILITIES
Scribbly Jibbet has all of the standard powers and abilities of your standard cartoonist. Yes, he's that powerful.

For further reading: Um...hm. I got nothing.

John Bolton

SHINING KNIGHT
Created by Creig Flessell
Alter Ego: Sir Justin
Occupation: Knight in service to King Arthur of Camelot, freelance superhero
Group Affiliations: Knights of the Round Table, The Seven Soldiers of Victory, The All-Star Squadron
Not to be confused with: The Silent Knight
First appearance: ADVENTURE COMICS #66 (1941)

HISTORY
As a young, new recruit to King Arthur's famed and fabled Knights of The Round Table, Sir Justin was just in time to see Sir Fallon killed by the ogre Blunderbore. Fallon was the cousin of Queen Guinevere and, therefore, kind of a big deal. Justin swore a vow and went on a quest to avenge Fallon, as knights were always doing back then, and journeyed to find Blunderbore.

Along the way, he freed the wizard Merlin from the tree he was stuck in, and in thanks Merlin enchanted Justin's armor, sword and shield so not only did they all shine brightly, they were also invulnerable, and Justin's sword could now cut through anything. Merlin also magically gave wings to Justin's steed, Victory (What, you thought Victory was a natural pegasus? Don't be silly; pegasuses aren't real). Victory promptly changed his name to Winged Victory.

Justin and W.V. eventually caught up with Blunderbore and exacted their vengeance, but in the struggle the pair were buried under an icy avalanche, in which they were frozen in a state of suspended animation, and weren't revived until 1941, when a museum curator found them (That's right, Captain America; Shining Knight was getting frozen in suspended animation and revived in modern times years before it was cool).

In the modern world, there was really only one thing a knight with magic super-armor and weapons and a flying horse could do, and so Sir Justin did it: He became a superhero.

He soon met like-minded superheroes and formed the super-team The Seven Soldiers of Victory, which Winged Victory always assumed they named after him, and thus the horse considered himself their leader. Justin would also join the war-time super-team The All-Star Squadron, and while serving with the super-sized super-team he fell in love with Firebrand II and got to work with Sir Winston Churchill, returning to England for a time.

Later, when battling the being known as The Nebula Man, Justin and the other Seven Soldiers were hurled through time, each of them ending up in a different time period, until they were rescued by The Justice League of America.

The original Seven Soldiers line-up consisted of Sir Justin, The Crimson Avenger, The Vigilante, Green Arrow, Speedy, The Star-Spangled Kid and Stripesy. Various time and space warping crises have repeatedly altered the make-up of The Multiverse, however, so that many of Sir Justin's adventures were rather radically altered, with people who fought alongside him in The All-Star Squadron and The Seven Soldiers occasionally being removed and replaced by others.

POWERS & ABILITIES
As an Arthurian Knight of the Round Table, Sir Justin is skilled in the various martial arts of his home time period, including being a particularly skilled swordsman and jouster. He would have been quite familiar with other weaponry of the period as well, including the bow and arrow, the mace and so on.

Sir Justin's enchanted armor and shield are invulnerable to all attack (so aim for his face, criminals!), and his enchanted sword can cut through anything.

Winged Victory can fly, and is also invulnerable to harm.

For further reading: THE SEVEN SOLDIERS OF VICTORY ARCHIVES VOLS. 1-3 (2005-2008), SHOWCASE PRESENTS: ALL-STAR SQUADRON VOL. 1 (2012)

Mike Grell

WARLORD
Created by Mike Grell
Alter Ego: Travis Morgan
Occupation: Warlord
Marital Status: Currently married to Tara, Queen of Shamballah; his first wife died in a car crash
Known Relatives: Jennifer (sorceress daughter), Joshua (son who was cloned by an evil wizard and…actually, let’s not get into it)
Base of Operations: Skartaris
Sometimes mistaken for: Green Arrow Oliver Queen
First appearance: 1ST ISSUE SPECIAL #8 (1975)

HISTORY
United States Airforce pilot Travis Morgan flew through a hole in the Earth’s crust at the north pole, and found himself in the center of the Earth, in the fantastic, night-less world of Skartarsis, which was your basic Edgar Rice Burroughs-inspired sword-and-sorcery world, with scantily-clad ladies, wizards, dinosaurs and all that jazz.

Packing a .44 AutoMag pistol and plenty of manly American can-do spirit, Morgan quickly acclimated to the new world, making friends with the princess of Shamballah, mace-handed king-turned-gladiator Machiste and shape-changing magic cat lady and future Latin crossover pop star Shakira.

He became a slave and a gladiator, he fought dinosaurs, he made archenemies with an evil wizard named Deimos, he lead rebellions and fought off armies and eventually married Tara.

Despite living in the center of the Earth—or a different dimension whose portal coincides with a hole in the arctic, whichever you prefer—Morgan has had plenty of visitors from the rest of the DC Universe, including Aquaman and Mera, Wonder Woman and Trevor Barnes and The Justice League Task Force.

POWERS & ABILITIES
Morgan is an incredibly fit human being, as he would have to be to get away with just wearing a leopard print loincloth with a ton of accessories.

Before he began his career as a hollow earth adventurer and warlord, Morgan was a member of the United States Air Force, and can thus pilot a plane and, um, do other stuff they probably trained him to do. Push-ups, field-stripping firearms, whatever.

He is an expert marksman, and because he possesses the first and only pistol in Skartaris, he instantly became the best shot in the whole world upon his arrival there.

He is also an expert fencer, and is proficient in the use of many other weapons you might find in your average Dungeons & Dragons campaign.

For further reading: The first volume of WARLORD ran for 12 years, producing 133 issues that can often rather readily be found in back-issue bins (although they may smell kinda musty). Your best bet, however, is 2009’s SHOWCASE PRESENTS: WARLORD, which collects the first 28-issues of the series.

Who's Who in the DC Convergence #3

Carmine Infantino and Bart Sears

ELONGATED MAN
Created by John Broome and Gil Kane
Alter Ego: Ralph Dibny
Occupation: Full-time superhero
Marital Status: Married to Sue Dibny (nee Dearbon)
Group Affiliation: The Justice League of America
Often mistaken for: Plastic Man, Stetch Armstrong
First appearance: FLASH #112 (1960)

HISTORY
Since his youth, Ralph Dibny was fascinated with two things: Contortionists and mysteries (and the solving thereof; so I guess that's three things). He used to hang-out at carnival side-shows to watch the contortionists, and eventually realized a commonality among many of them. They all drank Gingold band soda.

Dibny began experimenting with the gingo fruit of the Yucatan, eventually creating a super-concentrated version that not only gave him the increased flexibility of a contortionists, but also allowed him to stretch every part of his body to super-human lengths and engage in low-level shape-changing. With this new juice-fueled super-power, Dibny donned a stretchy purple costume and mask and began solving mysteries and fighting crime in and around Central City.

He soon befriended The Flash Barry Allen and often worked with him; he also befriended, fell in love with, courted and ultimately married wealthy young socialite Sue Dearbon. Elongated Man became one of the very first superheroes to unmask and eschew keeping a secret identity, and one of the first to marry. Both were actions his peers stubbornly refused to do, in many cases hiding their double lives from those closest to them, but the Dibnys proved superheroes didn't have to be creepy liars and/or celibate loners.

Dibny worked closely with The Flash quite often, and would also take frequent trips with Sue, as the couple sought out strange mysteries to solve. The Elongated Man eventually joined the superhero team The Justice League of America, following Green Arrow and Black Canary to be among the team's earliest inductees after its original formation.

After the close of the League's "satellite era," when Aquaman insisted the team roster reflect heroes who were willing and able to commit themselves to it more fully, Elongated Man was one of the relatively few who maintained an active membership, along with Martian Manhunter, Zatanna and, of course, Aquaman himself. Newcomer to the League Vixen and brand-new superheroes Gypsy, Vibe and Steel made up the rest of the new line-up. Based in Detoit, this short-lived iteration of the team allowed for a sort of mentorship program for several young heroes by more experienced veterans. It wouldn't survive an attack by Darkseid, however.

Elongated Man (and Sue Dibny) would continue to serve with the League throughout its "International" period, working most consistently with the Justice League Europe team. They retired to reserve status shortly before the League was re-organized during the Hyperclan's attack on Earth. But all of that, and the dark retcons and future tragedies the Dibnys would face in the poorly-written Identity Crisis, would occur after Crisis On Infinite Earths, and this Elongated Man is plucked from before the events of COIE.

POWERS AND ABILITIES
Elongated Man can stretch any part of his body to unbelievable, sometimes gross, lengths (It's especially gross when it's his eyes and ears; ugh). He can flatten his malleable body out or puff it up, and he has some limited shape-changing abilities, but can't really shrink, grow or transform himself into the complicated shapes that the more versatile and powerful Plastic Man—with whom Ralph would share an Earth after the events of Crisis On Infinite Earths—could accomplish.

Despite his stretching abilities and fighting abilities, honed during years of crime-fighting solo and with the Justice League, The Elongated Man's greatest asset is probably his keen detective mind. He loves nothing more than a mystery—with the possible exception of his wife Sue, of course—and has grown quite adept at solving them, making him one of the superhero set's greatest detectives. Other than you-know-who, of course.

For further reading: SHOWCASE PRESENTS: ELONGATED MAN VOL. 1 (2006), SHOWCASE PRESENTS: JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA VOLS. 5 and 6 (2011; 2013)

Brent Bowman

GEO-FORCE
Created by Mike Barr and Jim Aparo
Alter Ego: Prince Brion Markov
Occupation: Prince of Markovia/superhero/college student
Known relatives: King Markov (father), Tara Markov (half-sister; deceased...probably....depending on when CONERGENCE: BATMAN AND THE OUTSIDERS is set, exactly)
Group Affiliation: The Outsiders
Base of Operations: Gotham City; Markovia
First Apperance:  THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD #200 (1983)

HISTORY
When the subtly-named Baron Bedlam launched a revolt in the tiny, fictional European country of Markovia, state scientist Dr. Helga Jace gave crown prince Brion Markov super-powers in order to defend the kingdom. She may not have needed to bother, however, as a handful of other superheroes came to the country's rescue. Batman, apparently casting about for things to do after quitting the Justice League of America, arrived to lend a blue-gloved hand, along with Metamorpho and Black Lightning, and two new heroes, Katana and Halo.

Joined by Brion, who now had a whole catalog of Earth-based powers and was probably the most powerful of them (although Metamorpho could probably drop him in a fight pretty easy, given his fantastical powers), they saved the country. Having gelled so seamlessly, they decided to stay together and form a new team, which they named after S.E. Hinton's novel.

Brion split his time between his home country and Gotham City, where The Outsiders were based and where he would begin attending college. Among the low-point of his superheroing career was the discovery that his teenage half-sister, sent to America to avoid embarrassing the royal family, had hooked-up with Deathstroke, The Terminator (in both meanings of the phrase "hooked up"), and had infiltrated the Teen Titans in Deathstroke's bid to destroy them. She didn't manage it, but she did accidentally kill herself during the battle.

Because his dumb brown-on-brown uniform reminded him of his sister, he adopted a new, even dumber green and yellow costume with the a big, dumb "GF" on the chest. The colors were those of the Markovian flag as well as The Green Bay Packers, so it probably made some sort of sense in Geo-Force's head, but he would long bear the distinction of having the WORST costume in the DC Universe, no matter what Tony Goins says about it.

Of course, then there was the New 52 reboot, and suddenly Geo-Force had lots of competition for worst-dressed superhero in the DC Universe.

POWERS & ABILITIES
Geo-Force's powers come from the Earth itself, and he gained access to them thanks to his royal bloodline and Jace's scientific meddling. He can increase and decrese gravity on himself and others, giving him the ability to float and fly and increasing his already impressinve strength.

He has super-strength and a high-degree of invulnerability, he can fire lava-like energy blasts from his hand, and his the ability to manipulate and control the earth itself, causing earthquakes, not unlike his half-sister Tara.

He also seems to have a healing factor of sorts thanks to his connection to the Earth, but it, like all of his powers, are at their strongest when he is in direct contact with the Earth, and the farther away he gets from Earth and the longer he spends away from it, the weaker he becomes.

For further reading: SHOWCASE PRESENTS: BATMAN AND THE OUTSIDERS VOL. 1 (2007); issues of BATMAN AND THE OUTSIDERS and THE ADVENTURES OF THE OUTSIDERS tend to be common in back-issue bins, at least in my experience.

Howard Chaykin

GREEN LANTERN

Guy Gardner created by John Broome and Gil Kane
Alter Ego: Guy Gardner
Occupation: Social worker and teacher
Marital status: Funny story; remind Guy to tell you about it next time Hal Jordan's around
Known relatives: Peggy Gardner (mother), Roland Gardner (abusive father), Mace Gardner (older brother)
Group Affiliation: The Green Lantern Corps
Haircut: Unfortunate
First appearance: GREEN LANTERN #59 (1968)

HISTORY
Guy Gardner had a particularly rough childhood, even for a superhero. He was abused verbally and physically by his alcoholic father. He turned to delinquency as a teenager, but was eventually put back on the right path by his older brother—and his dad's favorite son—Mace Gardner, a police officer.

Guy graduated from the University of Michigan, where he successfully played football...until a injury ended his hopes for going pro. After school, he became a social worker, working first with prison inmates and, later, teaching children with disabilities.

When the dying Abin Sur, the Green Lantern of Space Sector 2814, crash-landed on Earth and prepared to choose a successor from the native population, his ring found two candidates: Hal Jordan and Guy Gardner. Jordan got the ring, being closer to Sur at the time, and that was probably for the best, as Guardians of The Universe super-computers predicted an early death for Gardner were he chosen over Jordan. Instead, Gardner became Jordan's back-up.

Gardner struck up a friendship with Jordan, and trained under veteran Lantern Kilowog.

Gardner lost his status as Jordan's official back-up when he was severely injured in an accident: Attempting to rescue one of his students during an earthquake, he was hit by a bus. It was during this time that The Guardians recruited John Stewart as Jordan's new back-up Lantern.

Things got much worse for Gardner after that. When attempting to perform his duties as a Green Lantern using Jordan's power battery, he set off a booby trap meant for Jordan, and it exploded in his face. Gardner was plunged into The Phantom Zone, where he was tortured by General Zod and th other Kryptonian criminals imprisoned there.

Meanwhile, Jordan and Gardner's girlfriend Kari Limbo, both of whom believed that Gardner was dead, struck up a romance, and were very nearly married...all of which Gardner was able to watch from the Phantom Zone. It was only when Gardner telepathically reached Limbo that the wedding was stopped.

Gardner escaped from the Zone only to fall into the hands of fallen Green Lantern, Sinestro, who further abused him. By the time Jordan and Superman were able to return Gardner to Earth all of the trauma had taken its toll on him. He was diagnosed with brain damage, and fell into a coma. He wouldn't awaken from it until the Anti-Monitor threatened The Multiverse, when a faction of Guardians awoke Guy to serve their purposes. His personality had greatly changed, although whether that was due to brain damage or his experiences would be left up to debate.

POWERS & ABILITIES
Gardner's Green Lantern power ring grants him the abilities of all Green Lanterns. It can create energy and matter until its charge runs out, which the ring's wielder can manipulate in various ways, from building elaborate, solid constructs to firing beams of energy as a form of offensive attack. Additionally the ring has a built-in forcefield that protects its wearer from harm, and allows the wearer to fly.

The ring's capabilities are really only limited by the willpower and imagination of the person wielding it. Gardner's ring, at least at this point in his career, suffered the same weaknesses as all Green Lantern power rings: It couldn't effect the color yellow, and it needed to be regularly recharged by a hand-held power battery shaped like an actual lantern.

For further reading: GREEN LANTERN: SECTOR 2814 VOLS. 2-3 (2013-2014)

Neal Adams

GREEN LANTERN
John Stewart created by Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams
Alter Ego: John Stewart
Occupation: Architect
Marital Status: Married to Katma Tui of Korugar forever and ever...unless she gets murdered or something like that
Base of Operations: Detroit, Michigan; Oa
Group Affiliations: The Green Lantern Corps, Justice League of America
First appearance: GREEN LANTERN #87 (1971)

HISTORY
John Stewart was chosen as Green Lantern Hal Jordan's official substitute by The Guardians of the Universe after Jordan's first substitute, Guy Gardner, was badly injured during a bus accident.

Jordan wasn't crazy about Stewart at first, something The Guardians thought might have had to do with Jordan's reflexively conservative positions about race (After all, Hal Jordan helped out the orange skins...and he did considerable for the purple skins, only there's skins he never bothered with...the black skins). Jordan's main problem with Stewart wasn't the color of his skin as much as his anti-authoritarian attitude and deep-seated need to prove himself, however.

After a rocky first mission, which involved protecting a racist politician from assassination, the pair started to get along better. In addition to his early work with Jordan, Stewart was trained by Green Lantern Katma Tui, who hailed from the planet Korugar, one-time home of fallen Green Lantern Sinestro (the pair would eventually fall in love and marry...John and Katma, not John and Sinestro. That sentence could probably have been more clear).

As Jordan's back-up, Stewart was called into duty whenever Sector 2814's primary Lantern was unavailable; this included working with The Justice League of America on several occasions. When Jordan decided to quit the Green Lantern Corps, Stewart took up the ring, and became Earth's official Green Lantern...a position he held onto during The Anti-Monitor's invasion of Earth, and the reality-warping events that accompanied that crisis.

POWERS & ABILITIES
John Stewart's Green Lantern power ring grants him the abilities of all Green Lanterns. It can create energy and matter until its charge runs out, which the ring's wielder can manipulate in various ways, from building elaborate, solid constructs to firing beams of energy as a form of offensive attack. additionally the ring has a built-in forcefield that protects its wearer from harm, and allows the wearer to fly.

The ring's capabilities are really only limited by the willpower and imagination of the person wielding it. Stewart's ring, at least at this point in his career, suffered the same weaknesses as all Green Lantern power rings: It couldn't effect the color yellow, and it needed to be regularly recharged by a hand-held power battery shaped like an actual lantern.

For further reading: GREEN LANTERN: SECTOR 2814 VOLS. 1-3 (2012-2014)

Jose Luis Garzia-Lopez

KOLE
Created by Marv Wolfman and George Perez
Alter Ego: Kole Weathers
Known relatives: Abel Weathers (father), Marilyn Weathers (mother)
Group Affiliation: Teen Titans
Lameness of superhero codename: High
First appearance: NEW TEEN TITANS #9 (1985)

HISTORY
Mad-ish scientist Abel Weathers had devoted himself to devising a way for humanity to survive the nuclear war that he was sure would be coming any minute (To be fair, this was the eighties). He believed he could alter human evolution so that people could live on in a radioactive wasteland, and one of his experiments involved taking his own 16-year-old daughter Kole, grafting a crystal and promethium to her (Earth-1 promethium, the kind in Cyborg, not Earth-33 promethium, the kind that really exists). Whether this would have allowed her to survive World War III or not was never put to the test, but it did give her superpowers—specifically the ability to create silicon crystal (So she was basically Iceman, but with cystal powers instead of ice).

Kole was then captured by Thia, Titan of Myth, and spent two years building crystal prisons for her until the Teen Titans defeated Kole's mythological patron/captor. Back on Earth, Kole and the Titans found her father had moved on from crystal to insect-human-hybrids, which his lab was now filled with. The Titans defeated him too, but in the resulting lab explosion, Kole's parents were both turned into hideous bug-creatures.

She moved in with Adeline Wilson and her son Joseph Wilson, aka the Titan known as Jericho. Kole fell in love with Jericho, apparently being able to look past his dumb hair and stupid vest, but she died shortly after falling in with the Titans, during the Anti-Monitor's invasion of their Earth.

POWERS & ABILITIES
Kole can create large and sometimes elaborate structures of siliconecrystal, apparently out of thin air, which she uses to transport herself and as offense and defense in a fight. She can also turn hre entire body into the substance, giving her a high degree of invulnerability.

For further reading: NEW TEEN TITANS OMNIBUS VOL. 3 (2013)

Jim Aparo

METAMORPHO, THE ELEMENT MAN
Created by Bob Haney and Ramona Fradon
Alter Ego: Rex Mason
Marital Status: Dating his boss' daughter
Occupation: Stagg Enterprises factotum/superhero
Group Affiliation: The Outsiders
Lingo: Pure Haney
First appearance: The Brave and The Bold #57 (1965)

HISTORY
Very handsome freelance adventurer and soldier of fortune Rex Mason was hired by Simon Stagg, the slightly evil industrialist CEO of Stagg Enterprises (with a totally awesome hairstyle), to tomb-raid the ancient Egyptian artifact known as The Orb of Ra for him. Mason's relationship with Stagg wasn't strictly business; Mason was also dating Stagg's daughter, Stapphire.

When Stagg learns of this, he conspires with his revived caveman bodyguard and manservant Java (hey, it was the sixties) to have Mason killed during the mission...it doesn't work out as planned. Left for dead, Mason had prolonged exposure to the mysterious meteorite that The Orb was originally crafted from, causing a startling transformation in Mason. He loses his good looks and becomes  bald-headed, multi-colored freak. But, this being the early 1960s (a fact I can't stress enough), he was a fabulous freak, and now had the power to transform into any element or combination of elements found in the human body. He could also change shape to a fairly high-degree, but he cannot regain his original human shape.

Despite Mason's anger with Stagg and Java, he and Sapphire form a sort of awkward family unit with them. Stagg is able to protect himself from Mason using The Orb, and, of course, the fact that he's the father of the love of Mason's life. Sapphire stays with Rex despite his startling transformation, but despite her love, Mason is filled with self-loathing at his appearance and hopes to one day find a cure to his condition. Mason, who takes the name Metamorpho, The Element Man, continues to work with Stagg, who has plenty of uses for a nigh indestructible man with Metamorpho's powers.

Metamorpho was one of the earliest superheroes to be offered membership in The Justice League of America after it was initially formed with its seven-member roster—and the second to decline the invitation, following Adam Strange (Metamorpho would eventually join the League many years later, first joining Justice League Europe during the team's "International" years and later the Justice League of America...until his apparent and brief death at the hands of The Hyperclan).

The team Metamorpho did decide to join was the one Batman assembled after the Dark Knight quit the League: The Outsiders. He joined Batman, Black Lightning and the others in saving the small European country of Markovia, and, when the heroes formalized into a team called The Outsiders, he stuck around.

POWERS & ABILITIES
Metamorpho's fantastic powers can be hard to catalog, and have proven fluid over the decades. He could not only change shape, but also phase or state, so that he could become a cloud of glass or pool of liquid in addition to solids. Originally he could "only" alter his chemical makeup to elements or combination of elements found in the human body, but this would eventually change–depending on the writer, more than anything else–so that he could form any element found in nature.

Additionally, Metamorpho is essentially indestructible and immortal, and while he's been temporarily killed several times, no one has ever figured out a way to kill him off permanently. His only real weakness is exposure to The Orb of Ra, as it is fashioned from the same material that originally transformed him.

For further reading: SHOWCASE PRESENTS: METAMORPHO VOL. 1 (2005), SHOWCASE PRESENTS: BATMAN AND THE OUTSIDERS VOL. 1 (2007)

Tony S. Daniel

NIGHTWING AND FLAMEBIRD
Nightwing and Flamebird created by Edmond Hamilton and Curt Swan; Van-Zee created by Hamilton and Mort Weisinger; Ak-Var created by Hamilton, Swan and George Klein
Alter Egos: Van Zee and Ak-Var
Occupations: Scientists and masked crimefighters
Base of Operations: The Bottle City of Kandor
First appearance: SUPERMAN #158 (1963)

HISTORY
While Superman and his cousin Supergirl were the last surviving, full-sized people of Krypton, the entire city of Kandor also survived the planet's destruction in a pretty round-about way. The city and its population were shrunken and bottled by Brainiac, and eventually rescued by Superman. Lacking the means to restore the city to full-size, Superman kept the Bottle City of Kandor in his Fortress of Solitude while occasionally half-heartedly seraching for the means to restore it to full-size. He would occasionally visit by means of narratively convenient Silver Age science, although he would lack his super-powers when doing so.

On one such occassion, he and his pal Jimmy Olsen visited, and needed to disguise themselves as superheroes while there. Inspired by Batman and Robin, they chose the names Nightwing and Flamebird. Two Kandorian scientists would later take up those mantles, Superman's identical cousin Van-Zee and Ak-Var.

It was much, much later revealed that Flamebird and Nightwing were Kryptonian mythological figures or some such nonsense, and there would be a healthy number of legacy versions of the characters over the decades following the reality-warping Anti-Monitor/Monitor war.

When Superman's long-time ally Dick Grayson sought to escape his mentor Batman's shadow by trading in his Robin identity for a new one, he received Superman's blessing to use the name Nightwing.

POWERS & ABILITIES
None of the Nightwings and Flamebirds of Kandor have actual super-powers, at least not while in Kandor. The Kryptonian Nightwings and Flamebirds, however, would and could develop the same battery of super-powers that Superman possesses when exposed to yellow sunlight for a suffience amount of time.

Within the Bottle City, they use rocket belts to fly and other crime-fighting gadgets, similar to those employed by Batman and Robin.

For further reading: For the first appearance of the Nightwing and Flamebird identities, see SHOWCASE PRESENTS: SUPERMAN VOL. 4 (2008); for the first appearance of Van-Zee, check out  SHOWCASE PRESENTS: SUPERMAN FAMILY VOL. 3 (2009). Beyond that, you're on your own.

Perez

STARFIRE
Created by Marv Wolfman and George Perez
Alter Egos: Koriand'r (which is Tamaranean for "Coriander"), Kory Anders
Occupation: Superhero/supermodel
Known Relatives: King Myand'r (father), Queen Luand'r (mother), Ryand'r/Darkfire (brother), Komand'r/Blackfire (evil sister)
Group Affiliation: The Teen Titans
First appearance: DC COMICS PRESENTS #26 (1980)

HISTORY
Princess Koriand'r was in line for the throne of Tamaran, her home planet in The Vegan System, from which ancient astronauts travelled to Earth from to our distant ancestors on the benefits of diet devoid of animal products. Koriand'r's older sister Komand'r would have been ahead of Koriand'r in line for the throne, save for the fact that she suffered a disease that had blocked her natural Tamaranean abilitiy to harness solar energy and fly, a prequisite to effective leadership on Tamaran.

The pair trained together in the warrior arts under the Warlords of Okra Okaara, but when Komand'r attempted to kill Koriand'r, she was banished. She gained her revenge by betraying her planet to The Citadel who, with detailed information on their defenses provided by Komand'r, were easily able to conqure Tamaran. Koriand'r was banished and enslaved as part of the treaty between The Citdael and conquered Tamaran; she spent a good six years as her sister's slave, who wasn't shy about abusing her abysmally. Things just kept getting worse and worse for poor Koriand'r, who was kidnapped—along with her sister–by evil alien scientists The Psions. Koriand'r's latest captors subjected she and her sister to cruel experiments,  experiments which gave them the power to fire "starbolts" of offensive energy.

When they eventually escaped this captivity, Starfire stole a ship and fled to the nearest planet—Earth. There she met several other teenage warriors—including Robin Dick Grayson, Kid Flash Wally West, Wonder Girl Donna Troy, Former Doom Patrol-er  Garfield Logan (who changed his codename from "Beast Boy" to "Changeling") and new character Victor Stone, aka Cyborg—who were all being recuited by new hero Raven to help her combat her demonic father, Trigon the Terrible.

Starfire stayed with this iteration of the team as others came and gone, forming particular close relationship with Grasyon (who was her long-time boyfriend) and Troy.

POWERS & ABILITIES
Like all Tamaraneans, Starfire has the inherent ability to absorb solar energy though her skin (which accounts for  her usually skimpy garments) and convert it into the ability to fly. She can do this as fast as super-sonic speeds, and even in the vaccum of space. The energy also gives her limited super-strength and increased invulnrability (like the ability to survive the vaccum of space) and stamina. After the experiments of The Psions, she was able to harness and release her solar radition in the form of energy blasts.

Additionally, Starfire received years of advanced warrior training, and is thus really good and beating th living hell out of most people.

For further reading: DC ARCHIVES: THE NEW TEEN TITANS VOLS. 1-4 (1999-2008) or NEW TEEN TITANS OMNIBUS VOLS. 1-3 (2011-2013)