superhero spotlight

Superhero Spotlight – Black Canary

Black Canary is the name used by two different women in the DC Universe, a mother & daughter, the partial inspiration for the Silk Spectre in Alan Moore’s Watchmen. She was one of DC Comics’ earliest super-heroines introduced post-World War II. In the New 52 reboot, elements of both mother & daughter were combined into a single version. Black Canary has been part of the Golden Age Justice Society, the Justice League, partnered with Green Arrow and been part of the all-female Birds of Prey. Four different actresses have portrayed her in film & television thus far with some markedly different interpretations. Let’s learn more about Black Canary.

Superhero Spotlight – Plastic Man

Plastic Man has been a character with extreme popularity in the mainstream culture at points but has an extraordinarily muddled and irregular comic book presence. He started as the creation of another company before being bought by DC Comics. In the 1990s, he experienced a spike in appearances in the DC Universe only to disappear when the New 52 reboot happened. He finally returned but only as part of a pastiche of Marvel’s Fantastic Four in a comic that just recently got canceled.

Supervillain Spotlight – The Cheetah

Earlier, I looked at Max Lord, one of the villains in the upcoming Wonder Woman 1984. Today, I’ll breakdown the second villain, The Cheetah. Unlike Lord, The Cheetah has always exclusively been a Wonder Woman enemy, but there have been multiple people that worked under that name. In 1985, DC Comics launched Crisis on Infinite Earths, a company-wide event that rebooted the entire timeline and compressed many parallel Earths into one. Before this, there had been two Cheetahs, neither of whom had superpowers and were mainly knock-offs of Batman’s villain Catwoman. With Crisis, these versions were erased to make way for writer-artist George Perez’s overhaul of Wonder Woman and her continuity. This led to a new Cheetah, one who derived her powers from dark mythic gods.

Supervillain Spotlight – Maxwell Lord

The upcoming Wonder Woman 1984 is set to feature two villains, and I am writing up a spotlight on each. First up is a character who has been both a hero and a villain, and it wasn’t until 2006 that they were even associated with Wonder Woman so directly.

Superhero Spotlight – Captain Atom

In the summer of 2019, I read through almost every major DC Comics crossover event of the 1980s, 1990s, and up to Infinite Crisis/52 in the mid-2000s. A pattern I picked up on was that in almost every occasion, the character Captain Atom was present and often played a critical role. In particular, he was at the center of Invasion! in command of Earth’s forces against the alien alliance and Armageddon 2001, where he was intended to be the face behind the villainous Monarch until editorial changes. But who is Captain Atom? He’s hardly a household name to people outside of comics fandom.