I always had separate lists for live action and animated, so why not leave both here!
Live action:
Animated:
Weird how they’re all Batman movies, huh.
Oh that was just my Batman rankings, my favorite DC movies in general would probably be this.
Live action:
Not weird. I am beloved by billions.
Hi Q (yes, pun intended),
I’ve been looking into the roster of perspective canon-fodder, in the latest Suicide Squad flic, comin’ at us in a few days. Of particular interest was " the Bizarre Polka-Dot Man." The least memorable thing about a most unmemorable 300th issue of Detective Comics. It came and went quietly, like a thief in the night. Not surprisingly really, since neither 100 or 200 celebrated reaching those numbers in any special way. And now, the P.D. Man’s making a real comeback, in his first live action appearance. I wish him well. As I’m sure he’s going to make a “big splash” one way or another.
Another Squad “volunteer” is King Shark. There to provide gruesome humor (if trailers are any indication). Which got me thinking about The Shark. A mutated Tiger shark, who seeks out challenging prey for it’s enhanced powers and abilities. Strangely enough this was Green Lantern on several occasions, and not Aquaman. Poor Arthur, just not worthy enough, I guess. The Sea King made up for that sleight though, when he finally got his crack at a Starro deputy. And like his fellow JLA members before him, defeated the alien starfish in Adventure Comics #451.
None of which has anything to do with my query. Just thought I’d be a little ‘topical’ and pass along some DC trivia in the process. 
Before the SS, Legion of Doom, or other villainous associations came together, who was the first villain to crossover into another title (or feature), to take on a different hero? Not counting JLA or World’s Finest, I’m thinking it was Prof Arnold Hugo. He moved from the Caped Crusader to the Martian Manhunter in Detective Comics #322, back in 1963. Which by the way, sported a Batman cameo at story’s end. A rare first, I believe.
Anywho, take care, stay safe and be well.
I’m not sure it’s the first, but Flash #137 predates that by six months.
Vandal Savage’s first appearance is Green Lantern Quarterly #10 in 1943 vs Alan
His second appearance is Flash #137 in 1963 vs Jay and Barry with a JSA cameo
Hugo Strange and Vandal Savage would continue with their new “dance partners” in their next appearances.
I like your answer about Savage. I’d forgotten about him. Although for the sake of accuracy, his second appearance was in All Star Comics #37. The one that first introduced The Injustice Society of America. I suppose I should have included All Star and Leading Comics as well, in excluding team books.
I’m always having a wonderful day when I’m solving the mysteries of the DC Universe! The first time Superman visited Krypton, and in fact the first time he learns the nature of his own origins, is in 1949’s Superman #61, “Superman Returns to Krypton” - when he encounters an after-image of Krypton’s final days by traveling faster than the speed of light. (This revelation was later reversed in 1957’s World’s Finest Comics #87, which establishes that Superman was able to remember his infancy on Krypton using his Super-Memory. We may assume that the “Golden Age” Superman learned of his origins one way, and the “Silver Age” Superman the other.)
Superman’s next trip to Krypton occurs in 1958’s Superman #123, where Jimmy Olsen uses a wish on a magic totem to allow Superman to see Krypton once more – this time, casting him back in time as a phantom to the meeting of his own parents. (This is the same issue where a “Supergirl” appears for the first time, Jimmy’s first wish.)
Superman’s third visit to Krypton, and his first in physical form, was in 1960’s Superman #141. In this issue, Superman chases after an alien creature fast enough to break through the “Time Barrier,” and ends up on Krypton, the red sun draining him of his powers. On Krypton, the incognito Kal-El finds work as an actor, and a role in a Kryptonian film production gets him in close enough range to a yellow sun to return home.
Superman’s fourth trip came soon after, in 1961’s Superman #146. In this story, Lori Lemaris urges Clark to go back in time to reverse some of history’s greatest tragedies, including the sinking of Atlantis and the doom of his own people. Superman flies through the Time Barrier to do this once more, ushering Krypton’s population onto massive space arks before its destruction, but only finds upon returning home that he had not altered his own timeline at all – he merely created a divergent one, later identified as Earth-146.
In 1962’s Superman #156, it’s Supergirl who travels back in time to Krypton, in order to find a cure for the Krypton-borne disease known as “Virus X.” In the very next issue, Superman #157, Superman goes back to Krypton for the fifth time in order to determine the innocence of Phantom Zone prisoner Quex-Ul, who claimed he was wrongly convicted for poaching rondor horns.
In the 1963 “Imaginary Story” told in Superman #166, Superman’s son Jor-El II uses the Legion of Super-Heroes’ time bubble to visit Krypton himself. In a particularly bizarre story in 1964’s Superman #170, Lex Luthor travels back in time to Krypton with a scheme to romance Lara Lor-Van before she marries Jor-El, so that he can become Superman’s father. 1965’s Adventure Comics #333 is Superman’s sixth trip to Krypton in publication order, but his first in chronological order, visiting ancient Krypton millions of years in the past as Superboy with the Legion of Super-Heroes. Curiously, this story suggests that modern humans may in fact be descendants of early Kryptonian colonists to Earth. That same year, In Superman’s Girl Friend, Lois Lane #59, Lois uses a time machine to travel back to Krypton, this time to romance Jor-El before he can marry Lara. It works about as well as Luthor’s similar plan. Next, in 1967’s Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen #101, Jimmy travels back in time to Krypton in order to save it himself, but his warnings are disregarded by Jor-El until it’s too late.
Superman’s seventh trip back to Krypton occurs in 1969’s Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen #121, when Dr. Hugo Blaine projects Superman’s mind backwards through time so that he can experience the lives of his Kryptonian ancestors. This method of time travel should be familiar to Golden Age Batman fans, as one similar the Dark Knight’s original preferred conveyance through time.
On Superman’s eighth trip, in 1969’s World’s Finest Comics #191, Superman takes Batman along with him through the time barrier, after a temporal anomaly appears to indict Superman’s parents in a Kryptonian organized crime ring. The whole thing turns out to be a big misunderstanding.
The ninth incident doesn’t occur until 1984, in Superman #402. There, in the past before Krypton’s destruction, Jor-El’s mad scientist cousin Kru-El creates a device which swaps the consciousness of Jor-El with that of his son on Earth, decades in the future.
Superman’s first Post-Crisis trip back to Krypton, his tenth overall, and the first to be told in a multi-part storyline, is in 1989’s Adventures of Superman #461. When the Kryptonian Eradicator device begins causing natural disasters across the world, Superman flies through a time vortex it creates in order to perform a rite of passage on Krypton which will allow him to control it. 1994’s Zero Hour event presents a strange case in Superman #93, when time folds in on itself and Krypton exists simultaneously to Superman’s adulthood. But that’s more of a case of Krypton traveling to Superman, as opposed to the other way around. Though also not quite a real time travel trip, 1998’s Superboy #59, Superboy himself uses a VR program to simulate a visit to Krypton, where he first gains his Kryptonian name: Kon-El.
Superman’s eleventh and twelfth trips to Krypton comprised the “Return to Krypton” duology. First, in a five-part crossover which included every Superman title at the time, beginning with 2001’s Superman #166, Superman and Lois use the Phantom Zone and a staff left for Clark by a projection of Jor-El to travel back to Krypton, where they face Faora Hu-Ul and Jor-El’s cousin, Kru-El. A sequel storyline, Return to Krypton II, begins in 2002’s Superman #184, where Superman takes another time trip to interfere with the machinations of Brainiac-13.
Those were the only three stories of this type in the “Post-Crisis”/“Pre-Flashpoint” era. The first and only of its kind to occur during the “New 52” happened at first not to Superman, but to the villain H’El, in 2013’s Forever Evil. This results in Superman’s thirteenth journey to Krypton’s past, “Krypton Returns.” This storyline begins in 2013’s Action Comics Annual #2, where a “time tsunami” allows Superman, Supergirl, and Superboy to travel through eons of Krypton’s history to stop H’El from using Krypton as a planetary superweapon. Later, in Brian Hitch’s 2015 Justice League of America, a Speed Force/wormhole intersection sends Hal Jordan and Barry Allen back in time to ancient Krypton, but Superman stays put in the present.
That takes us to 2017’s Action Comics #992, the “Booster Shot” storyline, and indeed the only time Superman has used the Cosmic Treadmill to go back to Krypton. He gets in a lot of trouble there with Booster Gold, who has to keep Superman from messing up the timeline too badly. It’s also Superman’s latest trip. And considering everything that’s gone down with his father since then, I don’t blame him for not wanting to go back for a while.
So, it’s taken me quite a bit of research to get this number to you, but my final answer is: fourteen!
Fourteen it may be, sir. But far less than the number of times I have, and will continue to sing your praises! Outstanding job, simply outstanding!!!
Thank you! Proud of the work that went into this one, even if it took me nearly a month to deliver.
Meta-question: How do you decide which questions to answer in an official column, and which to answer here in the thread?
(I ask because this last answer above seems like it would’ve been a good one for a column. To me, anyway.)
I like to feature as many new people in the column as possible, so I prioritize first-time writers. The feature is about participation! But I try to give you veterans all the attention you deserve here in the thread.
After that last workout, I figured I owed you a softball question, this time around. Since the site has chosen to spotlight Hawk & Dove (ahead of the Titans season 3 premiere, later this month), it got me to thinking again. As the human avatars of the Lords of Order and Chaos, I’ve often wondered if these are the same mystical powers to whom Dr. Fate is answerable?
Hey, what can I tell ya. My mind just works like this, sometimes. Have fun with this one!
Stay safe, be well.
I notice there’s a bit of fan backlash concerning a trailer and promo at the streaming service using the characters of DC’s most popular rival. Apparently a character who is primarily a shape shifter seems to be more of a magical character at least by inference. Now that got me remembering a conversation i saw a while ago about shape shifters.
The conversation was about what it was that actually shifted. Is it just the surface that appears different or is the shift more substantial? For example; if somebody shifts genders do the internal organs of that shifter also change? Has DC ever explained how the whole process works?
If you can’t answer that how about something you probably can answer. To date how many shape shifters has DC had?
Those are such great questions! Some I’m sure many of us have likewise pondered. I mean (taking Changling for instance), what happens to his human brain when he becomes a bird, fish or a fly? Or his vocal cords for communication? Yeah, a great question! Love to see what HCQ does with it.
DC adopted the Comics Code Authority seal of approval in 1955, placing it on the cover of all comics to meet their standards. Almost every single comic published under DC for the rest of the 1950s bore the organization’s seal, and most would do so for decades to come. The first series to go without it was 1959-1960’s Pat Boone #1-5, a licensed anthology comic featuring the fictionalized adventures of the singer and actor. This is likely due to the fact that Pat Boone was formatted as a sort of hybrid of a periodical magazine and a traditional comic anthology, meaning it could get around the CCA in the same manner that MAD Magazine was able to at the time.
In January of 2011, DC announced that they would officially be discontinuing their Comics Code participation. Co-publishers Jim Lee and Dan DiDio announced a new self-governed letter rating system would take its place, of E, T, T+, and M. The last three titles to bear the Comics Code Authority mark by then were its two longest running legacy titles, and the last of their “Johnny DC” imprint books, all of which were still being submitted to the CCA until that time. Each of those issues, all released on December 29th, 2010, were:
Thanks for the answer, Q!
Ya know Q, since you’re going to be looking into the inquiry from @a2.ton.51072 anyway, I hope neither of you will mind a couple of spin-offs on the same subject. The more I thought about shape-shifters, the more involved it got. So, just consider this part B (or C, if you will).
The Martian Manhunter, Changling and Chameleon Boy all share strange morphing abilities. J’onn J’onzz and Reep Daggle are other worldly aliens, born with said powers. Gar Logan, an Earth born human, gained his through a life saving procedure, that went awry. Since the Martian and Durlan acquired their native born powers on different worlds and under different planetary conditions, something must be different about them. And how do they differ from those of our pea green, home grown, young Titan and former Doom Patroler? Like I said, funny mind, funny thoughts.
Stay safe, be well.
In the Batman Incorporated comics from 2010-2011, they spell Batwing’s name as David Zavimbi, but in the Batwing comics, they spell Batwing’s name as David Zavimbe. Are David Zavimbi and David Zavimbe the same person or two different people?
It’s meant to be the same guy. Zavimbe is referred to as part of Batman Incorporated in his Post-Flashpoint appearances, and shares the same background as Batwing as we know him on those early Batman, Inc. appearances. Why his name was changed, who can say? But minor spelling changes occur all the time as characters develop. For instance, there was a while that Mr. Mxyzptlk was Mr. Mxyztplk, and Two-Face was named Harvey Kent. These details are often fluid in the first issues of a character’s appearance, only getting cemented as they develop a name for themselves.