Superhero comics have many well-worn motifs which have been popularized, subverted, and scoffed at over the decades, like secret identities, reporter girlfriends, and radioactive everything. In Tropes in Capes, I’ll look at the history of these elements, including how they got started, when and if they fell out of favor, and where they are now. Today: evil clowns!

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Surely there can’t be that many clown-themed villains in comics, right? Just the Joker, Harley Quinn, and maybe some knockoffs?

Alas, I am sorry to tell you that I was able to come up with a list of over two dozen evil clowns or clown-adjacent villains, and I suspect I haven’t gotten them all, given the obscurity of some of these bozos. (Get it?) This trope has legs. And really big shoes on the ends of them.

The Joker is, in fact, the earliest recurring clown villain superhero comics, debuting in April of 1940, and created by some combination of Bob Kane, Bill Finger, and Jerry Robinson. (As is so often the case with early Batman characters, accounts from the three men varied as to who contributed what.) Inspired by a deck of playing cards, the Joker was originally the sadistic murderer we know him as today, but was softened into a zany but essentially harmless adversary during the kid-friendly Silver Age, only to reemerge as a genuine threat as comics grew darker during the Bronze Age; that progression has only continued over the past few decades. Though there have been times when the Joker has vanished for a handful of years, his mostly steady presence over the past eight decades shows how flexible this trope is, which may account for its popularity. A clown villain can be a lighthearted nuisance or deeply disturbing, Cesar Romero or Heath Ledger.

Clown villains certainly leaned towards the lighter side of the spectrum in Superman’s early days. Once the Man of Steel graduated from thwarting nameless gangsters, he was quickly given a roster of recurring villains best collectively described as “impish.” The Prankster (debuted 1942) and Toyman (1943) aren’t exactly clowns, per se, but they’re similar, and their illegal — but rarely seriously dangerous — antics were a fun way to keep Superman busy. Even the Superboy comics, featuring a younger version of Clark, were frequently bedeviled by “Humpty Dumpty, the Hobby Robber” (debuted 1950), whose gimmick was stealing valuable collectibles, but who dressed like a clown for…reasons. And was named Humpty Dumpty. Look, they can’t all be winners.

Meanwhile, one of Green Arrow’s vanishingly rare recurring Golden Age villains was Bull’s-Eye (1946), not to be confused with the much later and better-known Daredevil villain. His day job? Leapo the Clown. Leapo! I don’t know why a dumb name like Humpty Dumpty fills me with rage but Leapo fills me with delight, but there you have it.

The interesting thing about the evil clown trope is that unlike previous tropes we’ve covered, Kid Sidekicks and Reporter Girlfriends, it’s not associated with a particular era. Evil clowns and their ilk continued to be just as popular in the Silver Age as the Golden Age, and at multiple publishers: at DC, the Flash fought the Trickster (debuted 1960), while over at Marvel, Daredevil fought the homicidal Jester (debuted 1968) and pretty much everyone fought the Circus of Crime. At Charlton, Captain Atom fought Punch and Jewelee (1967) and Blue Beetle fought the Madmen (1967). (And then all of them were eventually bought by DC anyway.) The Bronze Age kept up the trend, introducing the first distaff counterpart to the Joker with Duela Dent, the Joker’s Daughter (1976) — though of course Harley Quinn (1992) would eventually become the most famous of his female spinoff characters, and has now received a successor herself in the form of Punchline (2020).

As the decades went on and the Joker became more sadistic, so did the newer evil clowns. Marvel gave us Whiteface in 2005, Pagliacci in 2011, and the Clown in 2013, all of whom indulged in a level of gleeful violence the Golden and Silver Age clowns would never have considered. Except those older clowns were being revised to be darker too, either by retconning their personalities to be more murderous or replacing them with edgier versions — there are two Tricksters, three Jesters, and four Toymen. Today, it’s safe to say that an evil clown showing up in a comic means you’re about to encounter zero whoopee cushions and, like, a lot of dismemberment.

Why do evil clowns persist in comics? Is it because they speak to the inherent unsettling thought of something intended as harmless entertainment for children turned into a threat? Or is it just because the Joker is so damn popular, and the other clowns are echoing that? But then why is the Joker so popular? And we’re back to the primeval fear idea. (Alternately, a truly hilarious number of comics essentially imply that bats and clowns are natural enemies. It’s possible comic book writers don’t know anything about bats.)

I’ll be honest: I could do without this trope. I’m sick to death of the Joker and find most of his copycats annoying, from the Jester to Punchline. (I do like the Trickster, I’ll admit.) Every time a comic or movie (ahem) tries to make the Joker seem profound, I start longing for a good old-fashioned gleefully stupid gimmicky bank robber or super smart gorilla instead. Yeah, yeah, we live in a society, enough already.

But I’m not the only reader out there, and evil clowns have been going strong for so long that clearly I’m not in the majority here. So a round of applause for these murderous merrymakers, I guess! I shake your hands in respect.

Except not actually, because that’s how you get shocked to death by an electric joy buzzer. Nice try, evil clowns!

In recent years, mainstream comics publishers like DC and Marvel have made great strides in increasing the LGBTQ+ rep in their universes, though they still have a long way to go. But getting here was a slow and gradual process, with many notable landmarks — and some admitted missteps — along the way. In Queer Superhero History, we’ll look at queer characters in mainstream superhero comics, in (roughly) chronological order, to see how the landscape of LGBTQ+ rep in the genre has changed over time. Today: Maggie Sawyer!

Unlike our first two trailblazers, Extraño and Cloud, Maggie Sawyer is someone fans of queer superhero media are likely to recognize, as she had a significant role in the CW’s Supergirl. Maggie bears the distinction of being the first canonical lesbian in mainstream comics…even if it took a few years for the comics to actually use that word.

Maggie first debuted in Superman #4 (April 1987), and was created by John Byrne. She’s a captain in the Metropolis PD’s Special Crimes Unit (SCU), which deals with superpowered menaces. She becomes a recurring character in the Superman books and eventually, a grudging ally of the Man of Steel’s.

Though some fans might have had their suspicions, it’s not until Superman #15 (March 1988) that Maggie’s sexuality becomes textual, though still referred to obliquely. Maggie turns to Superman for help when her daughter, Jamie, goes missing. When Superman is surprised to hear that Maggie is married, she explains that she’s actually divorced, and that marrying her husband was a youthful mistake. “I was…confused, in those days,” she says. “There were things happening in my head that I’d been denying for a long time. Things a proper Catholic girl didn’t even want to consider.”

During a flashback to her marriage falling apart, one panel shows her making eye contact with another woman in a bar, while her narration box says: “I finally started to come face to face with myself. With reality.” When she and her husband finally divorced, he managed to deny her custody for not being “a fit mother.” Not wanting to put Jamie through the pain of endless legal appeals, she moved across the country to Metropolis — but now Jamie has run away and is probably somewhere in the city. (Don’t worry, Superman finds her.)

It doesn’t take much effort to read between the lines and see what Maggie’s not saying. Clark certainly picks up what she’s putting down; later, as he’s searching for Jamie, he thinks to himself that “It certainly seems ridiculous in this day and age that someone as upright as Maggie Sawyer should have to give up her child just because she’s—” before his thought is cut off by the villain of the week. (Later, he tries, albeit half-heartedly to the modern eye, to convince Jamie’s father to grant Maggie visitation.) And just in case any reader missed the hints, Maggie is also shown with a woman named Toby in her apartment, who calls her “babe” and will eventually be clearly presented as her longtime partner.

Two months later, Action Comics #600 (May 1988) kept up the heavy-handed hinting, when Lex Luthor tries to blackmail Maggie into dropping her investigation of him by alluding to her “secret.” He hammers his point home by trotting out a beautiful female assistant in a low-cut top and short skirt and commenting on his and Maggie’s “similar tastes.” Later, Maggie tells her colleague Dan Turpin (inexplicably called “Ben” here) that Lex tried to blackmail her and he says “You mean…about…” (Maggie rejects Lex’s threat, of course.)

Why the obliqueness? Well, remember, the Comics Code Authority continued to forbid queer characters until 1989. But according an article in the fan zine Amazing Heroes #144 (also discussed in the Extraño profile), that wasn’t actually the issue. John Byrne’s editor Mike Carlin is quoted as saying that Byrne could have used words like “gay” or “lesbian” but chose not to, a choice Carlin agreed with: “I don’t know how smart it would be for John to be so blatant…We do have to stay aware of who’s reading the books and whose parents might get mad if they see something like that.” This is an incredibly illuminating quote, not least because it speaks to how weak the CCA had gotten at this point; any lack of representation at DC and Marvel was clearly due to choices made by DC and Marvel, not external censorship. It’s also the second time a DC editor is quoted in that article as saying, essentially, “Think of the children!” as if queer children (and queer parents, like Maggie herself) don’t exist.

Amazing Heroes #144 also debated whether Maggie’s portrayal as relatively butch was a stereotype, with writer Mindy Newell quoted as saying “She’s cigar-chomping, she’s got short hair, she’s really tough…It might have been more effective if John had painted her as a ‘normal’ woman,” while Carlin argued “Do stereotyped dykes walk around in mini-skirts?” in Maggie’s defense. Neither argument has aged particularly well, but more to the point, they stem from Maggie being the first; as with Extraño, it’s impossible for a solitary lesbian character to be all things to all readers.

Byrne, for his part, was quoted as saying: “Whatever I say will be misinterpreted anyhow, so I’d rather let my work speak for itself. I created the first gay super-hero, [Northstar], and certainly the first gay character in Superman.” It’s a very defensive quote, and opinion may vary on the effectiveness of his execution of either character, but there’s no denying that Byrne did work hard to include queer characters in comics well before it was in vogue. (I promise we’ll get to Northstar soon!)

Within a few years, the landscape of comics had changed enough that Maggie could star in a miniseries, 1994’s Metropolis S.C.U. Written by Cindy Goff and drawn by Pete Krause, the series is a procedural first and foremost, but is also the first DC comic to star an out lesbian, and showcases Maggie’s struggles in her relationships with her partner Toby, her daughter, and her ex due to her workaholism. This nuanced, three-dimensional portrayal of a gay lead earned the book a 1996 GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Comic.

In the 2000s, Maggie moved to Gotham and joined the cast of a different procedural, Gotham Central. During the New 52 reboot in 2011, she began a relationship with Batwoman, Kate Kane. However, when Kate proposed in 2013, DC infamously forbade the marriage, causing Batwoman’s creative team, J.H. Williams III and W. Haden Blackman, to leave the book. DC insisted that their refusal was not because Kate and Maggie were gay, but because superheroes weren’t allowed to have happy personal lives. To be fair, DC had torpedoed many iconic heterosexual marriages at the time, all the way up to Superman’s. But the optics of forbidding a lesbian wedding in particular — what would have been the first lesbian wedding in comics, and only the third same-sex wedding in superhero comics history (with #2 occurring only the year before, in 2012) — were extremely bad.

As of the 2016 Rebirth reboot, Maggie is back in Metropolis and the Superman books.

But Maggie’s life isn’t just limited to comics. She was a recurring character on Superman: The Animated Series, where she was voiced by Joanna Cassidy and which premiered in 1996, making her one of the very first LGBTQ characters in children’s animation — although they were back to referencing her sexuality obliquely by showing Toby visiting her in the hospital rather than stating it explicitly. She also appeared in live action in Smallville, played by Jill Teed.

However, she’s best known for her appearances in seasons 2 and 3 of Supergirl, where she was played by Floriana Lima (and also portrayed as Latina for the first time, although Lima herself is not Latina). Unlike prior tentative television appearances, Supergirl put Maggie’s sexuality front and center via her relationship with Supergirl’s sister Alex Danvers. Over the course of two seasons, Alex comes to terms with her own sexuality, Maggie confronts her father about his homophobia, and Alex and Maggie get engaged, only to sadly break it off when they realize that they disagree about whether or not they want kids (Alex does, Maggie doesn’t — slightly ironically considering that she was the first queer parent in comics). Maggie was not the first queer character in a DC live action property, but the prominence of her storyline makes it a significant moment in DC’s queer history regardless. (It does, however, make her two for two on storylines where her engagement to another woman falls through.)

Our first two profiles covered extremely obscure characters, but Maggie has been a regular part of Superman’s milieu for 35 years, and there’s no reason not to expect that to continue. She’s also been consistently portrayed as brave, upstanding, stubborn as all get-out, and unafraid to be exactly who she is. Superhero comics have a long and troubling history with copaganda that they are only now beginning (just barely) to engage with, and as with her fellow lesbian cop/Batwoman ex Renee Montoya, it’s not entirely clear yet what that will mean for Maggie’s role in the larger Superman narrative. But hopefully DC can move away from their history of unthinking copaganda while still letting us keep the compelling, important character Maggie has been for over three decades now.

And hopefully the next time she gets proposed to, she can actually make it to the damn altar.

Superhero comic books are a funny animal. Monthly superhero comics are epic sagas that are part of our modern mythology — but they’re also written and drawn not by superstars, but by people who are equally as likely to be your approachable Twitter mutual as they are to write a comic that gets turned into a billion dollar movie. They’re also published on a fast enough schedule that they can respond to reader feedback within just a few issues.

At its best, this can make the community feel tight-knit and welcoming, bound by a shared love of these silly stories. At its worst, it can make the relationship between readers and creators incredibly toxic. And one of the ways the latter manifests is my very least favorite comic book trope. The closest TV Tropes page I could find was This Loser Is You, but I like to call it The Reader Is The Villain, or The Superboy-Prime Effect.

What am I talking about? Well, Superboy-Prime was originally a hero, an alternate version of Clark Kent from Earth-Prime, a universe meant to be similar to our own. That universe was destroyed during 1985’s Crisis on Infinite Earths, leaving Prime as the only survivor.

He then vanished for nearly 20 years, returning as a villain in the 2005–2006 Infinite Crisis crossover event. Furious that his world had perished while the main DC universe had survived, he attacked the heroes, slaughtering a number of C-listers in cartoonishly graphic ways and killing his main universe counterpart Conner Kent before finally being (temporarily) defeated.

I’m less interested in what Prime does, though, than what he says while he does it. He repeatedly accuses the heroes of acting like villains, of not behaving the way heroes should be, rather than “heroes who are polite and brave and honest,” the way they used to be. “You’re ruining everything!” he shrieks histrionically, childishly, constantly.

Let’s put this in context. Superboy-Prime became a villain during a particularly bleak, violent era in the medium’s history. In the post-9/11 years, both DC and Marvel were obsessed with stories about moral compromise, heroes faltering, and pyrrhic ends justifying abhorrent, unforgivable means. Identity Crisis and Civil War are the best-known examples of this, but by no means the only ones. In the second half of the 2000s, beloved heroes killed, maimed, tortured, and lobotomized their enemies, and deceived, manipulated, mindwiped, cloned, and sometimes even killed their friends.

Superboy-Prime is the entitled fanboy who is furious that comics aren’t the feel-good tales of heroism he remembers from his youth. It’s not a subtle metaphor, but it’s made extra clear in one story where he manages to return to Earth-Prime, where he moves into his parents’ basement and spends his days reading comics and trolling the DC message boards. Get it? Do you get it? Do you???

Look. I’ve been on Twitter. I know how obnoxious some fans can get. But “If you don’t like my work, you’re a mass-murdering hysterical child who is also a big loser” seems like a pretty immature response to negative feedback.

Superboy-Prime is far from the only example of writers depicting their critics as supervillains, and “longtime reader who is sick of grimdark” is far from the only type of critic writers have targeted. We’ve also seen this dismissive response to readers from both sides of the political spectrum:

In 2016, Marvel writer Nick Spencer wrote a controversial plotline in which Captain America (Steve Rogers) was revealed to have been a Hydra agent all along — a plot line that did not sit well with many readers, particularly those on the left. The following year, in Captain America: Sam Wilson, Spencer introduced a new group of Z-list villains called the Bombshells, a parody of leftist activists. When the new Falcon, Joaquin Torres, faces off against a racist pundit, the Bombshells — all young, none of them white men — attack the pundit with murderous intent, forcing Falcon to fight them as well. Throughout, they shout nonsensical “woke” accusations clearly meant to make them sound young and stupid (and female), like “Your very presence is problematic in the extreme! I can’t even!” At one point, a Black woman throws a grenade while yelling “Consider this your trigger warning!” Yes, really.

On the other end of the spectrum is this year’s Dark Crisis: Young Justice miniseries by Megan Fitzmartin, in which the three original members of the late ’90s team Young Justice — Superboy (Conner Kent), Robin (Tim Drake), and Impulse (Bart Allen) — are mysteriously zapped to an alternate dimension that turns out to be an idyllic recreation of their lives back in their YJ days. They are increasingly troubled by the misogyny and homophobia of this dream world, which turns out to have been created by Mickey Mxyzptlk, son of the Superman villain Mr. Mxyzptlk and YJ’s self-proclaimed biggest fan. He’s giving them a utopia, he says, because they’ve been “replaced” by “people who don’t have any right to be here” — and he conjures up a splash page’s worth of characters who are all queer or BIPOC or both, most (but not all) of whom debuted in the past couple of decades.

In Spencer’s comic, the villains are woke leftists, who claim to be saving the world but are actually attacking the real, reasonable, sensibly centrist heroes with disproportionate anger and empty buzzwords. In Fitzmartin’s, the villain is the entitled fanboy whose nostalgia is rooted in racism, homophobia, and sexism. From a political perspective, my sympathy is absolutely with Fitzmartin, who, it should be noted, also wrote the comic in which Tim Drake came out as bi and received a vocal and extremely gross backlash from exactly the kind of reader she based Mickey Mxyzptlk on.

But part of the problem with this particular trope is how imprecise it is as a response to criticism. I would never in my life send hate to a comic book creator, but I didn’t like the grimdark edginess of post 9/11 superhero comics, and I said so at the time. That doesn’t mean I appreciate being likened to a murderous crybaby like Superboy-Prime. I loved the original Young Justice comic and missed seeing its cast in comics. That doesn’t mean I don’t like the new characters who have been introduced more recently, or am anything but thrilled about the progress the industry has made in terms of diverse representation. And the Bombshells…yeah, no, I am actually exactly the kind of woke scold Nick Spencer was taking aim at there, but it’s such a childish response to valid criticism that I can’t even work up the energy to be mad about it.

But here’s the thing: even if there’s a reader who doesn’t in any way feel targeted by any of these storylines, what’s the best-case scenario there? They’re reading a comic with the moral of “Hey, you know who sucks? Comic book readers.” That seems like a strange way to address your audience!

Are there fans who behave inappropriately towards creators? Absolutely. Again, I’m on Twitter. I’m aware that every creator’s mentions are a cesspool, and that this is magnified exponentially for marginalized creators. That is unacceptable, and I’ve written before about how publishers need to do more to protect their creators from this sort of harassment.

But I can’t see that the Superboy-Prime Effect is a productive way to address it, either. At its worst, it’s actively harmful, and at its best, it’s still mildly insulting. In a long list of tropes I hate — women in refrigerators, evil clowns, gaslighting your loved ones to protect your secret identity — it’s at the very top. And I hope writers can leave it in the past soon.

A few months back, my fellow Rioter Eileen Gonzalez wrote an article called “Iron Man Is the Worst-Dressed Superhero and I Can Prove It.” I respect Eileen deeply, and so it is with a heavy heart that I am obligated to point out just how very wrong she is. Tony Stark is a wretched dresser, of course. But Nightwing, AKA Dick Grayson, AKA the original Robin, is the worst dresser in comics. And I have the receipts.

Now, like Eileen, I’m only focusing on Dick’s civilian fashion sense, as his early sartorial efforts as Nightwing have already been thoroughly dunked on (including by me). Like Tony, Dick has enough money to afford to dress well. And yet he reaches into his closet every morning and chooses violence.

Dick spent most of the Golden and Silver Age wearing pretty much the same red sweater over a white collared shirt, and I have no complaints there. It’s only when he hit adolescence and started hanging out with his friends that things got…concerning. Like, here’s what the Titans chose to wear when they found out about hippies in Teen Titans #15:

That’s Dick on the left, followed by Kid Flash, Wonder Girl, and Aqualad. Now, these are costumes for blending in undercover (uh…good luck), but it’s still an indication that once freed from the confines of his red sweater, Dick might not quite know what to do with himself.

Sure enough, when Dick needs to wear a suit in New Teen Titans #26, he’s still leaning on those Robin colors for help. Can you imagine seeing a guy in a bright green three-piece suit and red tie and he’s not working at Santa’s kiosk at the mall? And we haven’t even gotten started yet!

Dick’s a little more relaxed when it comes to working out a couple issues later, in that he apparently wears hot pink briefs and little matching slippers. Hey, if you got it, flaunt it. (And he does: Dick spends much of New Teen Titans in a Speedo. Thank you, George Perez.)

But the ’90s was really Dick’s time to shine. And by “shine,” I mean he still apparently hears the words “civilian disguise” and absolutely panics:

Yes, that’s Dick, who wore this particular wig + mustache combo on multiple occasions. Starfire is such a forgiving girlfriend.

Sometimes, though, he went out as himself…and when he did, he wore a hideously patterned blazer two sizes too big and a little rattail. Also, what is going on with that shirt?

Then I guess he got really into grunge? Honestly it’s the dress shoes (I think?) that really make and/or ruin this outfit for me. Business on the toes, party on the clothes.

How many pairs of shorts at a time is too many? Asking for a friend (the friend is Dick).

And then, of course, there is the most infamous Nightwing outfit of all, from his first solo miniseries:

Dick doesn’t want anyone to forget he was raised in the circus, and he’s succeeding at that goal. I’ll give him this: the mullet is, you know, a mullet, but it’s extremely lustrous. However, I think it’s important that you all know that literally like a page later he manages to do this to it:

I know I said I wouldn’t talk about costumes, but hair is fair game! Apparently when it compresses in volume it grows in length? Although sometimes it’s shorter than it’s shown here, so maybe it’s retractable. I don’t want to think about this anymore.

Finally, I’d like to present little feature I like to call “Don’t Invite Dick Grayson to Your Wedding Because He Will Look Ridiculous and Also Either the Wedding or Subsequent Marriage Will Inevitably Go Horribly Awry”:

Here he is giving Donna Troy away at her wedding. It’s a sweet moment, even though Donna’s groom is an awful person who she eventually divorced. But those ruffled cuffs are something.

This is the best tux Dick has ever worn to a wedding but the mullet is at its most unforgivable. (Also like three pages later an evil Raven attacks the wedding and incinerates the minister with hellfire.)

The mullet was “better” and the tux was much worse at Dick’s second wedding…to a woman he was trying to prove had murdered her previous husbands. Shockingly, this marriage didn’t end well, either.

And finally, we get a one-two punch for Dick’s turn as Wally West’s best man: we have both a hideous wedding look and a panicky civilian disguise! Not to mention being four for four with disastrous weddings after an evil wizard makes everyone forget the bride ever existed. (Don’t worry, Wally eventually found her again and he and Linda are still going strong. Love wins! For people other than Dick Grayson, at least!)

I wanted to close out with an example of a recent, widely hated development in Dick’s life: that time he got shot in the head, got amnesia, and started calling himself “Ric Grayson.” Unfortunately (fortunately), he was drawn by Travis Moore for a lot of this time and he looks incredible:

Hm. So when Dick doesn’t remember who he is, he looks great? I never thought I’d say we should bring back Ric Grayson, but it might be the only way we can save Dick from himself. DC, you know what to do.

A few months ago, I took a hard look at some of the so-called “doctors” in comics (Doctor Fate, Doctor Strange…) to see if any of them actually had earned that title. This time, we’re looking at the captains, from America to Ultra. Did any of these comic book captains actually earn the rank? Let’s put them to the test!

Captain America

VERDICT: CLOSE ENOUGH

After the Super Soldier Serum successfully transformed Steve Rogers into the U.S. army’s ultimate weapon, he was given the title “Captain America”…but Steve Rogers was still just a private. Did that make him a private pretending to be a captain, or a captain pretending to be a private? Add on all the times he’s flounced out of the army, been stripped of his rank, worked for other government organizations, and died, and I doubt even Steve knows what rank he technically holds. But everyone treats him like a captain (albeit usually one with zero military responsibilities…), so who am I to gainsay them?

Captain Britain

VERDICT: FAKE CAPTAIN

Marvel hero Brain Braddock was a civilian who was granted his powers by the wizard Merlin, so…no. Although he is pretty posh, so I suppose it’s possible that he’s the captain of, like, a polo team or something. But probably not.

Captain Carrot

VERDICT: FAKE CAPTAIN

In his civilian identity, DC hero Rodney Rabbit is not a captain, but a comic book writer-artist, who gains his powers by eating irradiated “cosmic carrots.” He’s also a talking rabbit. You probably figured that part out already.

Captain Cold

VERDICT: FAKE CAPTAIN

Len Snart is one of the best Flash rogues out there, and certainly the one with the best civilian name, but a captain he is not, in any sense of the word. He’s just a gimmicky bank robber.

Captain Boomerang

VERDICT: FAKE CAPTAIN

Like his fellow Flash rogue Captain Cold, Digger Harkness is just a gimmicky bank robber (90% of Flash villains are gimmicky bank robbers; the rest are Professor Zoom (not a real professor) and a gorilla). His son Owen, who briefly took over the role, is also not a captain.

Captain Atom

VERDICT: REAL CAPTAIN

Finally, DC comes through! Air Force Captain Nathaniel Adam was court martialed for a crime he didn’t commit and, as an alternative to execution, voluntold to participate in a risky experiment involving an alien spaceship. The experiment didn’t kill him, but it did quantum leap him several decades into the future and grant him superpowers. Since Nate had never been pardoned for his (fake) treason, the Air Force then blackmailed him into serving as their pet superhero, Captain Atom. Nate has pretty much never had a good time in his life, but he is a real captain.

Captain Universe

VERDICT: FAKE CAPTAIN, EXCEPT SOMETIMES NOT

This Marvel character isn’t actually one person, but the result of an extra-dimensional force called the Uni-Power possessing an individual, thus temporarily transforming them into Captain Universe. The first human Captain Universe was a real captain, an astronaut named Ray Coffin, but the Uni-Power has also empowered Spider-Man, a Doombot, a toddler, and a dog, so clearly whether or not its host is a captain of any kind isn’t exactly a priority.

Captain Ultra

VERDICT: FAKE CAPTAIN

Captain Ultra was created as a joke villain who, despite a severe fear of fire, auditions for a chance to fight the Fantastic Four. You know, the team that includes a man who can light himself on fire? Ultra isn’t exactly the brightest, is my point here. He is also a plumber, so yeah, fake captain.

Captain Marvel/Shazam (DC)

VERDICT: FAKE CAPTAIN

The DC version of this hero, who now goes by Shazam, is in reality a child named Billy Batson, who turns into an adult superhero by shouting a magic word. I guess technically he could be the captain of, like, his middle school’s softball team or something, but I’m putting this one down on the fake side.

Captain Marvel (Marvel)

VERDICT: IT DEPENDS

Seven different Marvel characters have used the codename “Captain Marvel,” but two of the most important have been real captains. The original, Mar-Vell, was a Kree who held that rank on his home planet. His immediate successor, Monica Rambeau, was a cargo ship captain as part of her role as a lieutenant in the New Orleans harbor patrol. The current Captain Marvel, Carol Danvers, was a colonel before she left the Air Force, so technically she outranks herself. The other four include an ensign, a confused Skrull spy, and two nepotism hires, so it’s sort of a mixed bag here.

How did you do? I for one am disappointed in the integrity of most comic book captains. For shame! It’s like you can’t even trust assorted bank robbers in spandex anymore.

If you want to put your comics know-how to the test a bit more, go back and see how you do on Real Doctor or Fake Doctor!

Kevin Conroy, best known as the voice of Batman in Batman: The Animated Series and numerous other projects, passed away on November 10th after a short battle with cancer. He would have been 67 later this month.

Conroy was born in Westbury, New York in 1955. He studied acting at Julliard alongside fellow iconic DC hero Christopher Reeve, and roomed with Robin Williams. For the next two decades, he worked steadily in theater, film, and television.

His breakout role came in 1992, when he was cast as Batman in the acclaimed Batman: The Animated Series, a show that broke new ground for animation with the sophistication of its writing, animation, score — and of course, acting. Conroy’s performance as Batman continued with BTAS’s many spinoff and sequel series and tie-in films, including Justice League and Justice League Unlimited, Batman Beyond, and Batman: Mask of the Phantasm. Conroy ultimately voiced Batman in nearly 60 productions across animation and video games, and even played a live action Bruce Wayne in the Arrowverse’s “Crisis on Infinite Events” crossover event. His final credit as Batman was this year’s MultiVersus video game, marking a full three decades as the character.

To countless fans, particularly millennials, Kevin Conroy is Batman. Before the Christopher Nolan movies, I remember it being considered a mark of good taste in nerdy circles if your answer to the question “Keaton, Kilmer, or Clooney?” was “Conroy.” Though fans still debate the merits and flaws of Christian Bale and Ben Affleck’s performances — and now, Robert Pattinson — no one argues about Conroy.

Conroy excelled at both sides of his dual role. His Bruce is warm and charming, a bit quizzical, a bit silly. You can see how he would be Gotham’s favorite son, but also how no one would ever suspect he was Batman. Meanwhile, his Batman rumbles with just enough confident gravitas to be imposing without ever veering into growling parody. He’s scary, he’s implacable, he’s inspiring — but he still has enough humanity to comfort the frightened victims he encounters, or unleash an occasional sly wit. Even comic book fans who don’t particularly like Batman (me) love Conroy’s Batman.

One thing Conroy’s performance never was was boring. I still remember the shock that rippled through the fandom when the JLU episode “This Little Piggy” aired, twelve years into Conroy’s tenure in the role, and revealed that on top of everything else, Conroy had a beautiful singing voice. Do me a favor and Google “batman am i blue” and watch the clip you find. You’re welcome.

Earlier this year, we learned that Conroy was also a gifted writer. He contributed an autobiographical story to the DC Pride 2022 anthology, illustrated by J. Bone and lettered by Aditya Bidikar, in which he discussed growing up gay in the ’50s and ’60s in a conservative home, living through the AIDS epidemic as a professional actor in the ’80s, and finally his audition for the role that would come to define his career. It’s by far the standout story of the anthology, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. If you’d like to read it, DC has made DC Pride 2022 free to read in Conroy’s memory.

After the news of Conroy’s death broke, social media overflowed with devastated tributes from his colleagues and fans, including Mark Hamill, Tara Strong, Michael Rosenbaum, Paul Dini, and Andrea Romano, who cast him as Batman in 1992. Over and over again, the tributes said the same thing: “You will always be my Batman.”

As part of this outpouring of grief and admiration, a clip resurfaced of Conroy being interviewed for the 2013 documentary about voice acting, I Know That Voice, in which Conroy talked about volunteering to feed first responders in the days and weeks after 9/11, and the absolute joy the exhausted first responders felt when they realized the guy making their meals was the real Batman. This was the kind of man he was. This was his impact.

But the clip that hit me hardest was the one Conroy recorded for a fan whose grandmother had just passed away, and which the fan kindly shared again in his honor. “The thing to remember is: their spirit lives on,” Conroy said gently, in that wonderful voice. “The people we love are always with us.”

In recent years, mainstream comics publishers like DC and Marvel have made great strides in increasing the LGBTQ+ rep in their universes, though they still have a long way to go. But getting here was a slow and gradual process, with many notable landmarks — and some admitted missteps — along the way. In Queer Superhero History, we’ll look at queer characters in mainstream superhero comics, in (roughly) chronological order, to see how the landscape of LGBTQ+ rep in the genre has changed over time. Today: Cloud!

As I discussed in our first profile on Extraño, it can be hard to put queer characters in comics in any kind of chronological order, since many were introduced long before they were acknowledged as queer. Such is the case with Cloud, who debuted in 1983, but who was not canonically acknowledged as belonging to the LGBTQ community until last year. I chose to start our series with Extraño in 1988 because the creator intent and reader experience were both very clear in that case, but regardless of how Cloud was intended to be perceived in 1983, there’s no denying that sometimes they present as male and sometimes they present as female — and that’s been the case almost since their debut. So let’s take a look at the first trans/nonbinary character in comics!

(In the ’80s, Cloud’s pronouns changed with their presentation, but I’ll be using they/them pronouns as those are the character’s current pronouns. Given that we’re talking about comics from the early ’80s, these issues also include transphobia and homophobia, both external and internalized.)

Cloud debuted in The Defenders #123 (June 1983) and was created by J.M. DeMatteis and Don Perlin, though the bulk of their Defenders appearances were written by Peter B. Gillis. Originally, they took the form of a teenage girl — a completely naked one, made Comics Code-compliant by little wisps of cloud hovering around their chest and pelvis. Sigh.

Cloud was originally presented as a minor antagonist for the Defenders, working for the evil Secret Empire. Eventually they are revealed to be a victim of brainwashing by the Secret Empire, and defect to the Defenders, where they become particularly close with both Moondragon and Iceman (Bobby Drake).

However, Cloud is increasingly tormented by their growing love for Moondragon, which they fear is “wrong.” They solve this problem by abruptly changing into a male body (and still only shrouded in a little bit of pelvis-vapor, so that’s fair, I guess). “I can love you, Moondragon — everything that was wrong is now right!” they declare.

Needless to say, their teammates are surprised by the sudden change, since no one knew Cloud had this ability — Cloud included. (Moondragon in particular is surprised, since she was sending out telepathic subliminal messages to make her male teammates fall in love with her for Reasons, and didn’t expect them to work on Cloud. It’s messy.) Mostly, though, the team takes it in stride, with the exception of Bobby, who is very uncomfortable and pretty much a jerk about it.

Cloud spends a few more issues shifting back and forth between genders, primarily defaulting to female, until finally, in #150, we learn that Cloud isn’t human at all: they are a sentient nebula. Comics, everyone!

Cloud, it seems, was just minding their own business out in space when they noticed the stars around them were disappearing. They fled to Earth in search of help, where the first humans they encountered were a teenage couple driving in a car. Cloud attempted to make contact with the teenagers, but the car crashed — it’s unclear whether this was Cloud’s fault or not — and the intense pain they felt upon attempting to communicate telepathically with the injured teenagers caused them to a) develop amnesia and b) shapeshift into a duplicate of the teenage girl’s body — but eventually, also the teenage boy’s. (Also somewhere in there the Secret Empire showed up. Look, comics aren’t here to make sense.)

Upon realizing the truth, Cloud leads the Defenders in a fight against the threat that was destroying the stars, which isn’t at all relevant to our purposes here so I’ll skip it. Suffice to say that the day is saved, at which point Cloud decides to return to space to eventually evolve into a star.

Let’s talk about the context all of this was published in. As I mentioned in Extraño’s profile, the Comics Code forbade queer characters until 1989, though that rule, like many in the weakening Code, was being tested here and there. Still, it was only in Fantastic Four #251 (February 1983), just a few months before Cloud’s debut, that the word “gay” was first used in mainstream comics, at least in the context of sexuality. Extraño was five years in the future, and anyway he would be published by the Distinguished Competition (aka DC). As far as the state of queer representation at Marvel went…well, that’s a big can of worms, the opening of which is probably best saved for our upcoming Northstar profile. Suffice to say it wasn’t great.

All that said, The Defenders under Gillis’s pen is a deeply, deeply queer book, and Cloud is a huge part of that. Of course, I say that with the benefit of a 2022 perspective, when both of the characters Cloud is romantically linked to — Moondragon and Bobby Drake — are canonically queer. Moondragon’s lack of interest in Cloud’s male form hits different when you know she’s a lesbian, you know? Meanwhile, Bobby displays intense discomfort with Cloud’s male body, which today reads as repressed, self-loathing attraction, further eroticized by the fact that both of them are essentially naked in most of their scenes — Cloud in their fog-wisps, Bobby in his little ice-undies. Even Valkyrie, who stands up for Cloud when Bobby is being a jerk about their shifting gender, would eventually be canonically bi. It is not the most stunningly heterosexual comic imaginable, is my point.

But was it intentionally so? After all, ostensibly the narrative purpose of Cloud’s gender fluidity is to make things less queer. Cloud is attracted to Moondragon, a woman, so they must have a male body in order to pursue her. Bobby is attracted to Cloud, but only if Cloud is a girl, of course!

It’s also worth noting that the idea of changing one’s physical sex due to comic book-y science and/or magic had been around for a long time at this point. The very first comic book supervillain, the male mad scientist Ultra-Humanite, transferred his brain into the body of a female movie star in 1940, after which point the character’s pronouns became basically dealer’s choice. Now, please don’t think I’m declaring the Ultra-Humanite a trans icon or anything like that, especially since he’s been in the body of an albino gorilla since 1981. (Comics!) My point is really the opposite — that science fiction or fantasy changes to biological sex had been present in comics for decades, but not seriously linked to gender identity or sexuality. Gender and sex were largely presented as inextricably linked, and strictly binary.

Cloud is an even more obscure character than Extraño, so I wasn’t able to find any direct quotes from Gillis or anyone else involved with the book at the time about their intentions, though this article says that “Cloud was created to specifically address, from a fantastic angle, actual trans experiences…[Gillis] had a friend who was at the time transitioning.” Sadly, it’s unsourced, so I can’t find any confirmation from Gillis directly. But The Defenders is so queer that I find it hard to believe that it could all be unintentional. Like. Cloud tells Moondragon they love her, on-panel, when as far as the reader knows at that point, Cloud is a cis woman! That alone should have been forbidden by both the CCA and Marvel editorial policy at the time, but somehow snuck through. And though some of the language used to describe Cloud, as well as their own self-loathing, is dated and uncomfortable to read today, the series never wavers from the perspective that Cloud deserves respect and acceptance regardless of their body or gender. That alone makes me lean towards the side of “Gillis knew what he was doing.”

After returning to space in Defenders #150, Cloud pretty much disappeared from comics for over three decades, aside from a single panel cameo in 2011. They finally returned properly in last year’s Defenders series, where their physical form remains deeply fluid — male, female, adronynous, nebula. They also state that their pronouns are they/them — the first time that’s been the case for them in canon.

It’s too early to tell if Cloud will continue to appear in modern comics. I hope they do: they are sweet and likable, with a cool power set, and it’s not like the Marvel universe is overflowing with nonbinary representation without them. Either way, I’m glad they got to return recently and make their pronouns and identity clear in a way that they couldn’t in the ’80s — and I’m glad that even back when it was officially forbidden, some diverse representation, intentional or otherwise, managed to slip in through the cracks.

This month, the DC character Adrianna Tomaz, sometimes known as Isis, makes her cinematic debut in Black Adam, where she’s played by Sarah Shahi. Isis has an unusual history, with a unique path from the small screen to the comics and back to the small screen, and finally to the big screen. On the one hand, she’s a fairly obscure character. On the other, she’s one of the most groundbreaking female characters in superherodom. Why the contradiction? Let’s take a look!

The first version of Isis debuted not in comics, but on television — and in her own show, no less! Specifically, she starred in Isis (renamed The Secrets of Isis for syndication). This was a spinoff of Shazam!, a half hour Saturday morning show starring Captain Marvel that started in 1974. (These days he’s known as Shazam, with no relation to the Marvel character played by Brie Larson. You can read about the tumultuous legal history of Captain Marvel/Shazam here.) Within a year, the show was popular enough that it was expanded into The Shazam!/Isis Hour, with the second half hour dedicated to Isis. Her 1975 debut means she predates both The Bionic Woman and Wonder Woman (both 1976), making her the first live action female superhero to headline her own show. Not too shabby!

Isis, played by Joanna Cameron, is secretly Andrea Thomas, an ordinary high school teacher who finds a mystical amulet on a dig in Egypt. You know, the kind high school teachers go on. Luckily, Andrea just so happens to be a descendant of the pharaoh Hatshepsut, which means that the amulet grants her superpowers when she speaks the magic words “Oh mighty Isis.”

Obviously there is a glaring problem here, which is the usual Hollywood one of a white lady playing someone who is supposed to be Egyptian (albeit several millennia removed…but still). But I still think it’s worth pointing out that there was a TV show starring a female superhero that predates Wonder Woman that…no one talks about? Basically ever?

This version of Isis got her own tie-in comic in 1976, which ran for eight issues over two years; she also appeared in Shazam!, Captain Marvel’s comic. She wasn’t otherwise incorporated into the DC universe, which makes sense. At the time, the Captain Marvel characters were only licensed by DC, and they existed in their own universe, separate from the main DCU. They were folded into the DCU in 1985’s Crisis on Infinite Earths (and DC acquired the full rights to the characters in 1981), but by then Isis’s series was long canceled. Also, Universal Television owns that version of the character, not DC, since she debuted on TV first. (This is why Marvel rushed She-Hulk into comics around the same time, before the Incredible Hulk TV show producers could invent her.)

Isis languished in obscurity until 2006’s 52 maxiseries, when DC introduced a heavily revised version of the character. The updated Isis is an Egyptian woman named Adrianna Tomaz (in a hat tip to the TV version), who is enslaved and given as a gift to Black Adam, who at that time was the ruler of the fictional nation of Kahndaq. Black Adam, who for all his faults is not a fan of slavery, promptly frees Adrianna and kills her enslaver. Then, in a classic romance trope, when he discovers that she’s unafraid to tell him exactly what his failings are as a ruler and man, he promptly falls in love with her. It’s genuinely pretty great.

Adam asks Captain Marvel to bequeath powers on Adrianna, using a version of the Hatshepsut amulet, and Billy agrees. The newly empowered Isis has similar powers to Adam’s, as well as healing and nature powers (flowers bloom when she’s happy, etc.). Black Adam and Isis then rescue Adrianna’s younger brother Amon from slavery and grant him powers as well, turning him into the superhero Osiris. For an all too brief time, the three are happy together, using their powers for the good of Kahndaq and the world.

…But we’re talking comics in the late 2000s, so I’m sorry to tell you it all ends horrifically. Like, I don’t even want to describe it. Let’s just say that cannibalism is the least triggering of the atrocities that ensue and leave it at that, okay?

Isis had a relatively small role in the 2011 New 52 reboot, but a new version of her returned to television in 2017, in Seasons 3-7 of Legends of Tomorrow. Zari Tomaz (played by Tala Ashe) is a Muslim hacktivist from a dystopian near-future, with no connection to the Shazam family; she does have a hereditary magic amulet, but it gives her wind powers and not the other suite of powers her comics counterpart has. She also does not go by “Isis,” because by then the militant organization ISIS was too prominent for anyone to be comfortable with the name; given the different name, powers, history, and lack of codename, I suspect even a lot of comics fans never connected her to the character in the comics. Zari is eventually erased from the timeline and replaced by Zari Tarazi, an alternate version of the character played by the same actress, who is basically a socialite from the future, because Legends was a delightfully bananas show and I miss it every day.

And now we have the cinematic version of the character in Black Adam: Adrianna Tomaz, a university professor and resistance fighter in Kahndaq. Obviously this is different than any version we’ve seen before, although she skews closest to the comics version. At the time of this writing, I haven’t seen the movie, so I can’t say whether Adrianna will fall in love with Adam, or get powers, or [redacted horrible things from circa 2008]. Hopefully not that last part.

No matter what story Adrianna gets in the movie, she’s had an interesting journey to get there. There have certainly been missteps, like the whitewashing in the ’70s, and a whole heap of misogynistic tropes in the late 2000s. But she’s still an important figure in superhero history who rarely gets her due. Hopefully Black Adam treats her well, and hopefully her rising star means we get many more Isis stories to come. I, for one, am eagerly awaiting them.

Superheroes have been around a long time, and most of the characters and genre conventions are pretty well established. But did every character always look and act the way we expect them to today? In this series, I’ll be looking at the first appearances of iconic superheroes to see what’s familiar, what’s fallen by the wayside, and what’s goofy as heck. Today: Black Adam!

Black Adam, like all of the Marvel Family, has a complicated history. I’ve written about it at length here, but the short version is that back in the 1940s, a publisher called Fawcett Comics introduced a character named Billy Batson, who could turn into the grown-up hero Captain Marvel by speaking the magic word “Shazam!” The character was a hit and soon outsold Superman, so of course DC promptly tried to sue Fawcett into the ground. While DC and Fawcett were busy in court (this took decades), Marvel Comics went ahead and grabbed the trademark “Captain Marvel.” So DC eventually emerged with the character of Billy Batson/Captain Marvel, but couldn’t use the name “Captain Marvel” as the title of his comics; Marvel owns the trademark “Captain Marvel” but it refers to different characters; and Fawcett, well, went out of business. DC finally gave up in 2011 and renamed their character Shazam, but he’ll be referred to as Captain Marvel throughout this post. It has nothing to do with Marvel Comics, Carol Danvers, or Brie Larson. Got all that? Good, now explain it to me.

Black Adam, the subject of today’s First Appearance Flashback, will be starring in his very own movie on October 21, where he’ll be played by the Rock. This is technically a spinoff of 2019’s Shazam!, although tonally very different, as Black Adam is by turns a villain and a tormented antihero. The movie’s been in the works in one way or another since about 2006, so I’m very interested to see what they’ve finally come up with. But what did this broody, complex, top-tier DC villain look like when he debuted in a Fawcett comic? Let’s take a look!

Black Adam first appeared in The Marvel Family #1 (1945), and was created by Otto Binder and C. C. Beck. Golden Age Captain Marvel comics are still beloved for Beck’s appealingly cartoony art, and looking at this page it’s not hard to see why. That rock bouncing off of Billy’s head! I’m charmed.

The story is narrated to us by Shazam, the mighty wizard who bequeathed his powers to Captain Marvel. He’s telling us the tale by carving it into the Rock of Eternity, the mystic mountain where he lives, so it’s weird that the story is, like, incredibly rambling. If I were carving words into solid rock, I’d want them to be as succinct as possible, you know?

First, Shazam explains how he first came to grant powers to Billy, a virtuous orphan/wunderkind radio newscaster:

In the present day, Billy has heard about a mysterious object approaching from space, so he decides to discuss it with his friend, newsboy Freddy Freeman, who uses a crutch. This is a great opportunity for Shazam to exposit at length about how Freddy became Captain Marvel, Jr.:

But back to the mysterious object! It’s Black Adam, of course, who arrives in Billy’s city and explains that he has returned to Earth after flying for 5000 years “from the farthest star, where I was banished by old Shazam!” He’s extremely straightforward about his plans:

Black Adam mixes it up with Captain Marvel and Captain Marvel, Jr., but realizing that they are evenly matched, he hides himself in a crowd. He’s savvy enough, however, to spy on the heroes, watch them transform back into relatively helpless boys, and follow them into the abandoned subway tunnel where they go when they need to summon Shazam’s ghost (just go with it).

Finally we get the long-awaited origin of Black Adam, which is that 5000 years ago, Shazam granted powers to a man named Teth-Adam, who he thought was a good dude, but who turned out to be a megalomaniacal jerk. Disappointed, Shazam banished the newly renamed Black Adam to a distant star:

Once the wizard’s ghost vanishes, Black Adam comes out of hiding and promptly gags the boys, preventing them from speaking the magic word that will give them their powers back. Killing them, he figures, will be sufficient revenge against Shazam.

Luckily, at this precise moment, Billy’s twin sister Mary gets a call from his boss, wondering where he is. Mary and loveable comic relief family friend “Uncle Dudley” go looking for Billy (and Freddy) and arrive at the abandoned subway tunnel just in time.

They speak the magic word and transform into: Mary Marvel and Uncle Marvel! Mary can turn into a Marvel just like Billy because that’s how twins work, apparently:

And Dudley…well, Dudley doesn’t have any powers, he just runs around in a Marvel costume. But he’s such a lovable old coot, no one has the heart to argue with him about it. This is actually great and more superhero franchises should have a character like this.

While Mary fights Adam, Dudley frees the boys, and a general free-for-all breaks out:

Meanwhile, Dudley summons Shazam and asks for help. Shazam tells him to get Black Adam to speak his name. Dudley easily tricks Black Adam into doing so, and he transforms into a mortal, who Billy promptly knocks out. Then he withers to a 5000-year-old skeleton and dies right in front of them and no one cares:

What in the heck.

Black Adam would be resurrected 32 years later, after the franchise had been purchased by DC. In the modern era, he has become one of DC’s most popular and complex villains, with a compellingly tragic backstory and motivations that can sometimes seem more reasonable than the supposed heroes’.

Absolutely none of that is on display here, in a story that takes about twice as many pages as necessary, and consists almost entirely of exposition that is being slowly carved into the side of a mountain for some reason. There is nothing in this comic that would make anyone think that this character would have his own feature film 77 years later. It has zero substance.

But friends, that’s art! Every panel is more charming than the last. I would gladly sit through dozens more of Shazam’s pointless meandering mountain-carving stories just to look at C. C. Beck’s delightful work. No wonder DC was threatened!
Black Adam does not look to be appearing in next year’s Shazam!: Fury of the Gods, so it’s anyone’s guess when we’ll see Billy vs. Adam, if ever. Even if it bears no resemblance to this comic, I’m excited for Black Adam, and interested to see where this odd little franchise goes next. Someday you’ll get to bounce a rock off of Billy’s head, Adam! Someday!

Catch previous First Appearance Flashbacks, including Superman, Captain America, Harley Quinn, Archie Andrews, Wonder Woman, Hawkeye, Spider-Man, Batman, Thor, Doctor Strange, and She-Hulk.

October 5th marks the 60th anniversary of the release of the Beatles’ official debut single, “Love Me Do” (in the UK, at least). In honor of this noteworthy date in pop culture, I decided to take a look at some of my favorite Beatles references in another bastion of pop culture that was huge in the ’60s: superhero comics.

Now, this is by no means a comprehensive list of Beatles cameos in comics. For starters, I’ve limited my scope to Marvel and DC — and specifically to their superhero comics, meaning no Stan Lee Presents: The Beatles Story (it’s a real thing), no MAD Magazine appearances, etc. I’m also not interested in the many uses of the Beatles in background shots and collages meant to evoke “Hey! It’s the ’60s!” as a means of setting a scene.

No, we’re looking at ’60s and ’70s Beatles interactions with superheroes specifically, mostly because nothing says “How do you do, fellow kids?” like a bunch of middle aged men trying to capture a moptopped zeitgeist in the pages of Jimmy Olsen of whatever.

The franchise that seems to have encountered the Fab Four the most frequently is, fittingly enough, the Fantastic Four. The earliest reference comes in Fantastic Four #34 (January 1965), when the Thing receives a gag gift from his recurring frenemies, the Yancy Street Gang: a Beatles wig. Though initially irritated, Ben eventually dons the wig, confessing that he’s always wanted to try one. This panel is worth the 12¢ cost of the issue alone:

Just two months later, in Strange Tales #130 (March 1965), the FF actually met the Beatles, in a story called — what else? — “Meet the Beatles!” Well, almost. Alicia Masters and Dorrie Evans, the respective girlfriends of the Thing and the Human Torch, just happen to spot the Beatles wandering around New York City, and are inspired to buy four tickets to that evening’s concert, which is miraculously not sold out. Now, I’ve seen A Hard Day’s Night, which I’m assuming we can take as strict historical fact, and I am highly skeptical that the Beatles would just be meandering around a major city without being mobbed. But maybe teens are more blasé in the Marvel universe?

Anyway, Johnny, A Youth, is pleased about the tickets, while Ben grumbles (though he does bring along his Beatles wig). Tragically, just as they arrive at the venue, some hoodlums rob the box office, and the Human Torch and the Thing must spring into action. After defeating the thieves, they return to the venue to discover that they’ve missed the entire concert. What a revoltin’ development!

Other Fantastic Four Beatles references came later and were much more passing in nature: they visit an alternate universe where John Lennon is still alive in Fantastic Four #47 (1998 series); both foursomes meet properly in Fantastic Four: Life Story, a retelling of the FF’s history. But probably the best known and definitely the most charming is in 1994’s Marvels, when artist Alex Ross snuck the Beatles into the crowd at Reed and Sue’s wedding. Can you spot them all?

Over on the DC side of things, the first characters to actually meet the Beatles that I know of are the Metal Men, of all people/robots, in Metal Men #12 (March 1965), where we learn that the two groups are mutual fans:

You’d think the DC characters most likely to hang out with the Beatles would be the Teen Titans, but as I’ve said before, early Titans comics weren’t exactly plugged into youth culture — even though the Beatles appeared to be fans of the Titans, at least according to Teen Titans #11. Boy, the DCU’s Beatles are kind of a bunch of fanboys, aren’t they?

If you needed proof that DC was less hip than Marvel in the ’60s, note that something as mild as “being liked by the Beatles” has to be balanced out by “also being liked by President Johnson,” lest we think the Titans are juvenile delinquents or something. Also, this issue is from 1967. The Beatles did not look like that in 1967.

DC finally emerged from the ’50s in around 1970, and so they’re a little more with it in Batman #222 (June 1970), when Batman and Robin get caught up in the “Paul is dead” conspiracy theory. I mean, “Saul is dead.” Yes, that’s right, “Saul Cartwright,” a member of the Twists, the most thinly veiled celebrity cameos in the history of comics. Whatever, I’m counting it!

In this delightfully silly story, Dick Grayson’s college buddies convince him, a literal detective, that Paul Saul has died and been secretly replaced by a look-alike, by playing supposed hidden messages on Twist records. Luckily, Dick is the ward of Bruce Wayne, and Bruce Wayne is a major stockholder in the Twists’ record label, a power he’s apparently all too willing to abuse. “As Batman — I don’t want to be party to a hoax,” Bruce thinks, thereby justifying the nonsense he’s about to get up to, before inviting the Twists to Gotham for a concert.

Inexplicably, the band agrees to stay at Wayne Manor, but Saul is moody and cagey, making Bruce and Dick even more suspicious. They make various and increasingly stupid attempts to record Saul’s singing voice so that they can compare it to a pre-death track — at one point, they pretend it’s Alfred’s birthday to get the Twists to sing “Happy Birthday” to him and only realize when they listen to the track that Saul wasn’t singing solo. Are you the world’s greatest detectives or aren’t you???

Our embarrassingly incompetent heroes are convinced that they’re on the right track when they’re violently attacked under the cover of darkness. That is, until Saul reveals the truth:

That’s right: it was the other three members of the band who died and were replaced with look-alikes! This is actually a pretty clever solution, since I suspect DC didn’t want to either call its teenage readers gullible dupes or boldly proclaim that the real Paul McCartney was totally dead. Batman and Robin, apparently forgetting that Lohn Jennon over there tried to kill them, suggest that they come clean and form a new band. I’m choosing to believe that the name of this fake band, Phoenix, inspired the real Paul’s formation of Wings a year later.

(Fun fact! This comic hit stands 11 days after Paul announced his departure from the band. Awkward.)

But even this delicious zaniness pales in comparison to what is probably DC’s most infamous Beatles comic, which doesn’t even have the Beatles in it: Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #79 (September 1964).

This truly sublime story begins with Jimmy dancing alone to the Beatles while wearing a custom-made ginger Beatles wig, like a cool and hip person all teenagers would admire. Suddenly, he’s visited by Kasmir, a criminal from the 30th century, who tricks Jimmy into piloting a stolen time machine 3,000 years into the past. Luckily, Jimmy speaks the local language! For some reason!

Jimmy is rescued from this futuristic desperado by a mysterious, super-strong teen known only as Mighty Youth (yes, really). Inexplicably, Jimmy’s first order of business is not to figure out how to send a message to his time traveling bestie Superman, but to get a job. Capitalism is a poison, kids.

He ends up shearing sheep for a local shepherd, but disappointed by how little it pays, comes up with a side hustle: dying surplus wool black, turning it into Beatles wigs, and selling said wigs to teens of ancient Judea:

He’s playing “I Want to Hold Your Hand” on a ram’s horn. I don’t know why everyone says Superman movies are hard to make when they’ve never even tried to adapt this issue.

Unfortunately for Jimmy, Kasmir is still hanging around, and jealous of Jimmy’s success. He rats him out to the shepherd, who claims the wool for Jimmy’s wigs was stolen from him (which…yeah, it was), and has Jimmy thrown in jail. Jimmy blows on the ram’s horn for help, and Mighty Youth shows up to save him…oh, and Mighty Youth is actually the biblical Samson, because of course he is.

Kasmir attempts to revenge himself upon Team Jimmy by cutting Samson’s hair, but luckily Jimmy saw him coming and plopped his own ginger Beatles wig onto Samson’s head just in time, meaning Kasmir only cut the wig. The Beatles save the day again!

Superman shows up completely at random at this point and handily defeats everyone who still needs defeating, but he and Jimmy stay in ancient Judea for one last farewell concert:

“You seem to be as popular as Ringo, the Beatle drummer!” Who says Superman’s not hip and with it? I should also note that this epic biblical, Beatlelical story is only nine pages long, with two other Jimmy tales in the comic. Say what you will about mid-’60s DC and how cringingly embarrassing their attempts at relevance could be, but you got your money’s worth.

As I said at the start, this is just a glancing look at the many appearances of the Beatles in comics, but these examples all delight me, even if they betray a profoundly hapless lack of cool throughout. Okay, the profoundly hapless lack of cool is probably why they delight me.

If you’re looking for a comic that’s actually about the Beatles, there’s no better place to start than The Fifth Beatle: The Brian Epstein Story by Vivek J. Tiwary, Andrew C. Robinson, and Kyle Baker. Meanwhile, I’ll leave you with my favorite (relatively) modern appearance of the Beatles in a superhero comic, from Tiny Titans #8 (November 2008):