DC Comics is home to some of the most iconic superheroes of all time. They created the superhero with Superman and perfected the costumed vigilante right away with Batman. They made female superheroes into a thing with characters like Wonder Woman and Black Canary. They created brilliant supporting cast members like Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, Commissioner Gordon, and Alfred. They created mantles that would help define superheroes with Green Lantern and the Flash. They made the first superteam in the Justice Society and from there created iconic characters in basically every genre you can imagine. They’ve been an icon factory, but not every character was a superstar from the beginning. Luckily, DC has also done an amazing job of building characters into something special.
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Right now, there are characters who we think of as quintessentially DC who at one point weren’t anywhere near as popular as they are now. They were characters who were able to weather obscurity and/or damage, hitting a level of popularity that once seemed impossible for them. These five DC characters were all overlooked before becoming fan favorites, and the DCU should pay attention.
5) Aquaman
Image Courtesy of DC Comics
Aquaman is a big deal again, but there was a time when that seemed impossible. He’s been around since the Golden Age, but he was never massively popular. He had name recognition, but he also rarely had a solo book, mostly appearing in back-up features and team books like Justice League of America. This led him to becoming a member of the cast of SuperFriends, which ruined the character for decades. He became known as the most useless member of the team, especially out of water, where 99% adventures take place. That started to bleed over to the comics as well; fans stopped liking the character. Look at the ’80s; just about every DC character you can name had a character-defining story back then… except Aquaman. It wouldn’t be until the ’90s run from Peter David that fans would start to realize that he was more than the guy who talked to fish again; he was the guy who fought Lovecraftian monsters and savage sea gods, as well as dealing with all kinds of threats to the throne of Atlantis. He was able to get back up to the lower B-list, slowly building himself back up to the level he is today. He’s an icon again, with everyone realizing just how tough he really is. Hint, hint, DCU.
4) The Justice Society
Image Courtesy of DC Comics
The Justice Society of America were the first superteam as we recognize them today, and they’ve almost gone the way of the dodo several times. After World War II, superheroes slowly faded away and the Justice Society was gone by the mid ’50s. However, they would return in the ’60s, shunted over to Earth-Two and showing up in Justice League of America. The ’70s would see various appearances across numerous anthology books, as well as All-Star Comics, relaunched for the Bronze Age of Comics. The early ’80s were pretty good for them, with Infinity Inc. giving them their own Teen Titans. Then Crisis on Infinite Earths happened and no one knew what to do with the Justice Society in the new very ’80s DC Universe. There was an attempted relaunch in the early ’90s that fell flat and Zero Hour: A Crisis in Time would kill most of the founders. However, the Elseworlds classic The Golden Age would hook readers and Starman (Vol. 2) and Sandman Mystery Theatre would bring the Golden Age into the ’90s in the best possible ways. The team itself would return in JLA‘s “Crisis Times Five” and have their own book again with 1999’s JSA (Vol. 1). It became the best team book of the ’00s (I will go to my grave screaming this; fight me in the comments if you think otherwise) and since then the team has become one of the most beloved in comics.
3) Dream of the Endless
Image Courtesy of DC Comics/Vertigo
The Sandman is one of the most important comics ever, despite the allegations against writer Neil Gaiman. The book doesn’t really get talked about much nowadays, for good reason, but one of the more interesting parts of the book’s history was the fact that it could have never happened the way it did. The Sandman was on the chopping block often in the beginning; nowadays, we look back on that time and think that it was a massive hit right from the start, but it wasn’t. Fans didn’t really like Dream very much, especially after his actions in “The Doll’s House”, where we got to see just how bad he could be. What we think of the third volume of The Sandman, “Dream Country”, were all single issue stories because no one was sure if the book was going to get renewed, so Gaiman and editor Karen Berger were burning off stories, waiting to find out whether the book was getting cancelled. It wasn’t and this led to “Season of Mists”, a story that would become the blockbuster the book needed to grab attention. DC started publishing the first few stories as trade paperbacks and the rest is history. Dream of the Endless is an icon and The Sandman created an entire generation of comic readers, defining the Vertigo line of comics throughout the ’90s.
2) Rorschach
Image Courtesy of DC Comics
Watchmen is considered the greatest comic of all time and its most popular character is usually Rorschach. However, there was a time when the character wasn’t exactly the biggest icon of the most important comic book of the 1980s. He had his fans from the beginning, but they weren’t the majority of the book’s fandom; most people understood what Alan Moore was saying with Rorshach. However, when word of mouth led Watchmen to becoming one of the most well-read comics ever, a lot of fans who didn’t understand the rather blatant subtext of the book thought that Rorschach was the actual hero of the story, since he was the one who never compromised. Suddenly, he became the icon of the book, something that went even further after the movie adaptation (granted, Jackie Earl Harley did an amazing job with the character). Nowadays, he’s one of those characters who everyone knows at least something about. While an argument can be made that giving him more attention could be a problem, a DCU adaptation of 2020’s Rorschachcould do numbers.
1) Black Adam
Image Courtesy of DC Comics
Black Adam was the next big thing in the early ’20s, but the failure of his movie ended that. It was a long road getting to that level, though. Black Adam was first introduced in 1945’s The Marvel Family #1, one of several villains who said a magic word and got powers who fought the original Captain Marvel. However, we would learn that he was once the champion of the Shazam in the past, becoming evil, giving him a unique twist. When DC purchased Fawcett, he came over as a villain and when Earth-S was folded into the DC Universe after Crisis on Infinite Earths, he was given a new origin and would eventually become a member of the Injustice Society at the end of the ’90s. This would lead him to the cast of JSA, becoming one of the most popular anti-heroes of the early ’00s. He’d play a big role in things up until the New 52, when he was reintroduced yet again, which led to his failures in 2021 and 2022. However, even with those failures, his success has been very impressive.
Who’s your favorite DC character who went from overlooked to icon? Leave a comment in the comment section below and join the conversation on the ComicBook Forums!
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