Thread by @Comrade_Bullski

While I was doing my deep dive on Secret Files & Origins the other day I mentioned how charming I find reading handbooks like this and seeing how they encapsulate a specific year or period. So why not look at profiles in these that make you go "Wait, who?"

This isn't a "proper" deep dive or analysis, friends. This is just me having some casual fun with some stuff I love. Come on this journey with me and let me know which of these characters YOU were already familiar with!

What you have to remember is that the general style and look of the DCU was massively changed between 1998 and 2006 and that a huge chunk of the 90s stuff chronicled in the SF&O era was shelved, buried or forgotten.

Some characters survived this gradual extinction event such as Fatality who had the dubious honor of being forcibly turned into a Star Sapphire and tossed together with John Stewart, a man she hated.

Other Kyle villains were less "lucky" such as Effigy, who was set up to be Kyle's Sinestro-tier nemesis, but ended up vanishing and only showed up again to be killed in Final Crisis.

Remember Grayven? Ron Marz tried to make him a big threat for a while, but I'm not sure the DCU has room for many more of Darkseid's children.

If being a legacy hero is a bummer, legacy villains have it even worse. They tend to either get changed to look and act identical to the originals, or just forgotten as the original returns. Kyle's second Sonar only had a few spotlight stories, as far as I know.

Remember this version of the GL Corps? Yeah they really didn't last long either, but they still got promoted as if they were the next big thing. Note, these are entirely separate from the Circle of Fire corps, a story that is at least fairly well remembered

For a while John Stewart lived on earth together with his fellow ex-Darkstar Meravyn Dethalis, who was depowered with the destruction of the Darkstars. She was a supporting character for a while and then just vanished. Probably better because Johns would have slaughtered her

Not a forgotten character per se, but for a while they had Doctor Light as a Kyle villain and gave him a big power boost before Identity Crisis forever retroactively made him a toxic character.

There have been SO MANY attempts to create "anti" Green Lanterns. IIRC this guy turned out to be the spirit of Kilowog or something like that.

Side note, it was through SF&O that we finally got to see a cringy early 2000s webcomic that Kyle drew at the time. I'm sure we could have lived without it, but cheers for nailing the Penny Arcade premise

You could literally fill an entire thread with just terrible Chuck Dixon villains from his runs on Nightwing and Robin. I swear his creation of Bane was some kind of fluke when you see the general quality of bad guy in these series.

Naturally that includes one in a seemingly endless line of "smug little shit Joker fanboy" characters which includes other luminaries such as Gaggy and Kid Carnevil.

A few of these folks have managed to make a slight name for themselves. Like Lady Vic somehow manages to pop up regularly to this day, and I guess the concept of "Lara Croft as a mercenary" isn't terrible.

But then you get to guys like Meathead and the horrible realization dawns that Blüdhaven is just a much less interesting bootleg version of Gotham.

At least Brutale looks kinda cool.

Okay folks I need to change topics as I'm getting torqued off.

Get it?

There are much fewer forgotten Batman villains profiled here than there are Batman-adjacent villains, but this chap seems to never even have made it to a single story, and has no first appearance listed. Alan Grant sadly passed on and so this guy will likely remain a mystery

If you opened Batman Villains SF&O and were like "Wait, who the hell is Ferak?" don't worry, that was my reaction too. You can probably guess exactly what she was just by looking at her so why she got a profile alongside the big guns is a mystery.

I still maintain that the Kelley Jones designed, Lovecraftian-inspired Mister Freeze costume from this era is absolutely amazing and one of the best Freeze looks ever though.

Bless them for getting Aparo to draw a very classic Joker as well.

Nope it's not Nuke, nor is it Batman's existing patriotic clad enemy-ally Joe Q. Public. I don't think this guy had much of a career.

There's only so many ideas for powersets to go around so it's not that strange that there was a DC sound-based villainess called Echo for a while (not a new codename even then) but this version didn't stick around long.

As mentioned, Bat-Family characters other than Bats himself had a lot of villains that are barely remembered today including almost every single one from Jean-Paul Valley's solo ongoing as Azrael. "Nicholas Scratch"? Very creative. Not the only demonic "Scratch" at DC either.

There's even some demonic entity in here that's never been brought back for any of the dozens of demonic/hell plotlines they've done as far as I know.

I feel like the fact that Killer Moth was a horrifying John Carpenter bug-monster for a while is infamous if nothing else. I think they just did it so Flint Henry could draw more gruesome monsters for a while. Like many other 90s characters he died ingloriously in Infinite Crisis

Ther Superman side of DC was one of the most drastically overhauled from the 90s triangle era to the 2000s and many of these side characters are very obscure today such as Scorn who came from not-Kandor.

Kismet was a central character in two storylines: The Return of Superman and JLA/Avengers, but was killed off shortly thereafter and today only exists through brief cameos.

I have a strange affection for Strange Visitor who had a VERY brief career in the Superman titles before being killed off. Fortunately she was actually brought back decades later during the Rebirth era in Supergirl of all places, so yay.

I don't think many people are clamoring for the return of Preus, though. You out there, Preus-boosters?

The identity of Ruin was supposed to be a big mystery and it ended up being pretty dumb overall. The generic "turning a supporting cast member into a villain" schtick that seemed to be super popular in the 2000s.

Many of these profiles were no doubt put in to hype up the character close to or prior to their first appearance and make you have thoughts like "whoa, Blackrock has big boobs and her groin is barely covered". And her powers are bootleg Eclipso too.

Side note: The original bronze age Superman villain Blackrock is the basis for the Supreme character the Televillain but this new version had nothing to do with that at all.

For a hot minute before Jeph Loeb fully took over there was a new General Zod in the super-books who was a Russian general possibly possessed by the ghost of the deceased pocket universe Zod whom Superman executed. Also Ignition who Joe Kelly built up a lot but just vanished.

I give Geoff Johns a lot of crap but retconning out the "serial killer of children" version of Toyman was pretty merciful.

Our Worlds at War was not one of DC's shining moments and Imperiex being basically just Galactus but less interesting is emblematic of this.

The idea of Superman having a fanclub made up of super-powered teens is fun and I wish these guys had been just allowed to fade into obscurity. Instead they were slaughtered on a single page in OMAC Project in the 2000s. Sigh.

There's a couple of characters in here I think would be fun to have back, actually. Encantadora being a not-too-evil but amoral sorceress creating trouble for Supes was a fun dynamic.

Or you could bring back Obsession who was an internet stalker before most people had any idea what that meant was, and a super-fangirl taking things way too far.

There's also Riot who is just a fun low-level threat to lower tier superheroes.

Okay, there's just way too many Superman characters in these that faded into obscurity so let's move on!

(I like the look of these guys, they barely had any stories though)

There's actually not too many "forgotten" characters in Diana's corner of the DCU as most have reappeared to some extent or are at least remembered, like Devastation.

(I'm just talking about characters who were deemed important enough to get PROFILES of course. There's plenty of obscure Wonder Woman villains from the era who never did!)

Of course there's concepts that are long gone like Wonder Woman's refuge for mythical creatures and floating base of operations the Wonderdome...

Flash was in an interesting period of transition between the long-running Waid era and the upcoming Johns era, and I feel a lot of stories here sort of fell into the memory hole like "mysterious replacement Flash number 445235"

Like my dude, at least do something original with your suit like John Fox did.

Perhaps the poster child for forgotten SF&O characters is Replicant who had a whole issue dedicated to getting his powers and becoming the "ULTIMAGE ROGUE" and then uh... yeah. Not a great design either, sadly. Love that Boomer headshot tho.

I wouldn't ever say "Chain Lightning" is an obscure story, but I know that Cobalt Blue isn't exactly the most well-liked addition to Wally's rogues gallery, so I'll chuck him here anyway.

Folded Man absolutely counts, though.

For the remainder of the thread let's just wander around. If you picked up JLA monthly and wondered why Lord of Time never appeared in this design there it was because he only appeared in the JLA/WildCATs crossover comic during this era.

Alongside such characters as Moonmaid and Mystek Faith must be one of the most forgotten of all JLA members despite being a very prominent one during her creation. She's rarely popped up since though she did cameo in Busiek's stint on the title.

Ah yeah the Red King. Not the guy from Sakaar, this guy was the villain of one arc of JLA Classified and then I think he was never heard from again. They built him up with a SF&O issue though.

>Shows up
>Is an unnecessarily edgy villain in a Super-family team-up comic
>Refuses to explain
>Leaves

I already talked a bit about The Silver Age series in the previous thread but it's interesting that a cosmic-tier threat like Agamemno has never become more of a thing. He's a Waid character too.

And then there's Titans villains. Oh boy are there Titans villains.

I am absolutely stunned that people cared about the Hangmen enough to undo their swift death in Final Crisis.

I'm just including Bushido for being one of the first to succumb to the trend of "IN THIS ISSUE... A TITAN DIES!" trope that plagued any team called "Titans" since the early 2000s.

Similarly Dawn just shrugging off that her sister was murdered and not allowed to come back in Brightest Day was another piece of sterling Geoff Johns writing. I think Holly is still dead, right? And forgotten of course.

And yeah Devin Grayson sure did name a villain "Goth". She sure did. IIRC this guy got murdered in Cry For Justice or something similar.

Before I forget about the Fourth World, does anyone else still marvel over the fact that Takion had his own title for five minutes? Does anyone care about Takion ? DC put him in a lot of stuff for a while.

I think Dan Jurgens brought back Dominus recently. He's a weird one, I've barely read anything with him in it. For a while I thought he was like a pre-Crisis Brainiac expy but absolutely not.

I also found out Noble came back in a VERY recent comic and that made me happy. The 90s Aquaman run by Peter David, Erik Larsen, Dan Jurgens and others is a comic I love a lot to this day and it has some spectacular art as well. Just maybe not this profile pic.

Larsen doing deep cuts and bringing back the villains from the first issue of the 60s Aquaman run was fun too.

Side note: The Aquaman SF&O for the Rick Veitch run is almost entirely art by literal industry giants, many of which you don't see draw much superhero stuff. Fantastic issue.

I'm only including Qwsp because Grant Morrison bringing back a 60s Aquaman character for a JLA story is not unexpected, but my dude @mccreaman illustrating the profile is! He looks so deranged, I love it.

D. Curtis Johnson spent a whole SF&O main story building up this guy, presumably to be a Chase villain, and nothing ever came of it. I also don't know what happened to Johnson, he seems to have just vanished from comics.

Johnson also built up this mystical storyline which ALSO never went anywhere and had some new characters that have never been seen since (and barely even in the issue). Also nice... no bra crew cut look Enchantress?

"Forgotten characters from a limited series or graphic novel" could also fill a whole thread. I always forget this one even existed.

The one Wildstorm character to get a profile, and of course it was in a Superman issue.

Joker: Last Laugh introduced a bunch of new supervillains of which I think none became more widely used.

Another great McCrea piece! Steel's series was quite good, especially the Christopher Priest/Denys Cowan issues.

Let's wrap this up with a few fun art pieces. I think this is by @MIKECOLLINS99 ?

The man himself by the brilliant @denyscowanart

Donna by the late but always and forever master George Perez.

Secret by @Oeming ! This one surprised me a lot but I love it.

And I could pick any of a dozen pieces by @Philjimeneznyc because good lord he contributed SO MUCH ART to these issues both story and profile-wise and it's impossible to choose. So let's go with a surprise one that ISN'T some form of amazon!

Alright folks I think that's enough obscure and forgotten characters for one day. Let me know which one of these is your secret favorite that you hope will get a movie in the new DC slate.

Or let me know which terrible Nightwing villain you are!

Today I updated my pinned thread containing links to every Comrade Bullski presentation to date, so pop over to my profile and give it a look! You may find something you missed!

Until next time!

(Dr Fate art by @deanhaspiel !)