Who’s the Gambler?

So more Who’s This? A whole week’s worth on the Forgotten Villains (yes, even Faceless Hunter, but it’s worth it to read his origin story).

Atom-Master
Faceless Hunter
Kraklow
Mr. Poseidon
and Ultivac

Because I hate coding links into comments sections, I’ll just give you the link for Who’s This? and you can just scroll down until you find what you’re looking for.

The Fearsome Five’s finest hour was in Tiny Titans as far as I am concerned. In that book, everyone called Psimon “Brainiac” much to his chagrin. When all of the incarnations of Brainiac showed up, he hung out with them, and that didn’t help his argument.

I like the Female Furies from their appearances on Superman: The Animated Series. Of course now I want to see Mad Harriet played by Phyliss Dyler. Also, Bernadeth has a great name, she sounds like she should be the front woman of a metal band.

Firehair is a good character who is a part of the cavalcade of DC Western Comics characters who are not Jonah Hex, which is pretty much how the DC Western characters are divided. You’re either Jonah, or you’re Everyone Else. He’s always a good character to show up in a posse of Western characters or something like that.

The Fisherman should team up with the Angle Man just for the pun. Fishing, Angling, huh? Huh? Huh?

Golden Age Flash will always be a favorite of mine. Just a classic in all regards. I like the image quite a bit for Jay. As far as the Flash and the Fiddler, how many ways can you really show this? Silver Age Flash, well, what else can you say? Flash really deserves two pages; not saying that Batman didn’t deserve two pages, but you cannot argue with a character like Barry Allen having a double page deal. And Infantino? That’s a no brainer! Great layout and imagery. Unfotunately, Trial Of The Flash ran for so long relatively close to when Who’s Who was published that it had to be saddled in there.

As for Forager, I think that was part of his deal, that he was a member of the Bug commune on New Genesis, but he himself was a humanoid New God who wore his full body outfit to blend in. The Bugs ran raids on Apokalips in order to steal supplies and food, and he was one of their leaders for a while. Then they turned on him, or something. It’s been a while since I read New Gods but sounds right to me as I type this.

I LOVE the Force of July. As an Outsiders fanboy, I always dug Mike W. Barr’s evil teams of 5 who all matched up with the Outsiders, and these guys are my favorite of the bunch. They were the perfect foil for the Outsiders and matched up with Barr’s politics really well. The Outsiders were the weirdos and cast offs, while the Force was the “fire spunk pizzazz white-kneed babyface” crew whom when taken at face value, one would assume would be the heroes. But they were servants of their totaltarian masters. The cover copy on the Annual says it all — “It’s 1984: do you know where your freedoms are?”

I’m the only Forever People fan I know. Check my link: http://ljaconesbunker.blogspot.com/2008/01/characters-i-like-forever-people.html

Also, Vykin predates Black Lightning and Black Racer. He was the first superheroic Black character at DC.

Thanks for the show guys! Keep up the good work with the WHO’S WHO!

I absolutely agree that Ambush Bug #3 was a classic. It is my favorite single issue comic ever. I think that as a companion to the Who’s Who podcasts, we ought to make Rob and Shag review AB#3 as well. What do you say?

T. Forager is Roach-Man, and all his people are relative humanoids living in the slums of Supertown. They were created by Darkseid as a plague on the food sources of New Genesis, and by Kirby as a hammy analogy for growing up as a poor immigrant in New York. Orion and company used to have to kick their asses, but Forager proved himself “one of the good ones” before dying in Cosmic Odyssey. Swell costume.

U. Jerome K. Moore was SO much better than the Force of July deserved. He was the American Brian Bolland, for cripes sake! You look at this image and think the Force of July matter, and then they turn out to be Outsiders villains, thus inherently worthless. I like how the color hold of the American flag is all blue, giving the impression that the group only represents a portion of their nation’s people, rather than the full spectrum. Rob, there’s a few pages from the aborted follow-up to the 1986 Aquaman mini-series at his deviantART account.

V. How dare you speak ill of the grandeur that is Jack Kirby’s most socially conscious work, Flower Children of Voltron in the Battle of the Planets! Ugh– ick– no.

W. The Forgotten Heroes/Villains are cute. I can’t believe we’ve made it through two volumes of Animal Man and PAD on Aquaman without a properly nostalgic reunion of these guys. Immortal Man was a red herring for the secret identity of Resurrection Man until they teamed up with… oh yeah… other forgotten heroes to battle Vandal Savage at the end of that series. The Faceless Hunter from Saturn is not forgotten, as he turned up in Johns/Reis Green Lantern, and had a very memorably badass appearance on an episode of Batman: The Brave and the Bold.

X. I honestly did not plan for the Freedom Fighters to land on comment-X. How cool is that? Cooler than this lamoid entry. Alex Saviuk could turn me off of a book like nobody’s business, and he embodies what Gerry Jones called DC’s Frigidaire style of tepid, functional art. Why didn’t they involve Murphy Anderson in this? Anyway, I think the Quality heroes are a lot of fun individually, but the Freedom Fighters team has always been DC’s opportunity to dump them all in one book until it gets cancelled to shut up fans asking after them. Plastic Man could have helped there, you guys. Better yet, reinvigorate the concept by getting the Fawcett acquisitions in there too, but noooo…..

Y. I understand that Jack Kirby was treated poorly by Marvel, but low blows like Funky Flashman and my mental image of the guy as a little snarling ball of unexpressed resentment toward all of his collaborators make me something less than sympathetic. It’s hard to see “The Man” in there since we’re so far removed from his brief bearded phase. John Byrne also ribbed Stan Lee’s baldness by making him a pornographer in an issue of Fantastic Four. I thought the Thomas parody was named “Royboy.” Regardless, so tacky.

Z. “Staring” at the Fury’s “costume” Shag? Really? We all know you were staring at her breasts and thankful they came in a pair. How could the Fury be half-Amazon if Amazons by definition are all female? Given Wonder Woman’s origins, I’d be more concerned with Fury’s genetic predisposition toward ceramics. For all this and more, like most of Infinity Incorporated, the Fury took a decent starting point and circled it as though it were a drain. That book lived and died on the Ordster (and Michael Bair, but not Todd McFarlane.) Not that DC was paradise under Paul Leavitz, but the company strikes me as especially scummy and desperate now that he’s gone. I’d be alright with Kirby doing rude drawings of Dan Didio. Hell, the man already looks like a rude Mort Drucker drawing.

Aa. The Galactic Golem strikes me as a ready-made DC Comics Presents villain. They were all essentially Darkseid, the good ones anyway.

Bb. There’s some funky anatomy on the Gambler, and his clothes drape improperly. What’s with the fat baby fingers?

Cc. Garguax is one of the few Doom Patrol foes anyone can name that was not a proper member of the Brotherhood of Evil. This does the Doom Patrol no favors.

Dd. Only Florida Man, the world’s worst superhero, would suggest my coming all the way from Texas to moderate his comments when all I need is his password and credit card information to get things done right here.

Ee. Excuse me please, but an Aquaman and a Firestorm fan did not just criticize the Wonder Woman rogues gallery. Why yes, my head is twirling around on my neck and my long press-on nails are wagging in each of your faces. Half of Aquaman’s recognizable foes made it into the Legion of Doom, by which I mean Black Manta, and I’d be happy to hear Shag tell me all about why no team has ever accepted a Firestorm rogue that didn’t have “suicide” in their name.