Hi all. This month’s theme for the Characters of DC Club is “Unsung Heroes” or in other words those characters that support our heroes and villains in their endeavors. This month we present to you three such characters plus one very special team from a rather long list of existing ones that work in the background of the DCU. Hope you all enjoy this month’s selections and that they inspire you to seek out other tales that these characters appear in.
For This Month
Week One [8/1-8/7]
Harvey Bullock: Mayor Hill’s Stooge to Stalwart Friend.
This month I will be posting a little bit about each of our Unsung Heroes at the beginning of each week plus a discussion topic and a link to their first appearances. Also feel free to explore issues that are listed in the chronology links I’ve supplied above or to start a discussion outside of the posted topic of the week.
About ten years later he started appearing more regularly starting with Batman # 361.
He was initially an antagonist who was in the pocket of Gotham City’s mayor Hamilton Hill. He was as corrupt as they come and his job was to insure that Jim Gordon was replaced as Commissioner. He later had a change of heart and became a staunch supporter of both Gordon and Batman going so far as to partner with Robin (Jason Todd) on a few cases.
His character arc is what drew me to his character so this week I would like to discuss his character arc and how he developed over time.
To help you get a feel for his character arc I’m going to link a couple of discussion from the then Jason Todd Book Club (now called Renegade Robins) because they cover the issues that begin his transformation from mayor’s stooge to the supporter of Gordon and the Bats he later becomes.
This week our Unsung Heroes pick is actually a very special team…The Legion of Super Pets. Lets see what we can learn about this team.
Team Members
Original:
Member(s)
Beppo
Comet the Super-Horse
Krypto
Proty
Streaky the Supercat
Other members:
Titus
Bat-Cow
Flexi the Plastic Bird
Clay Critter
First appearance
Adventure comics #293.
This issue is not available on DCU. It can, however, be found in the Legion of Superheroes: The Silver Age Volume One which is available on Comixology for purchase and also on Hoopla (a free digital library service offered through many library systems across the US) for those that may be interested in reading the story.
I do love Silver Age stories. There is just something about them that really resonates with me. Must be the fact that I read a ton of them growing up and they just stuck with me.
I do wish some of the ones I listed above were digitized. I would have liked to read them digitally.
This week’s Unsung Hero is Commissioner James Gordon. Commissioner Gordon is the very first of Batman’s supporting characters and his very first ally. He’s been a part of the Bat mythos from the very beginning.
It’s very easy for me to vote Batman the animated series Jim Gordon, I think he’s my favorite. As for live action, Neil Hamilton, Pat Hingle and Gary Oldman all did great in their own way, Gary Oldman has to be my favorite in live action, cause he really had alot more to do then other actors did. Sure Neil Hamilton’s Gordon was seen alot, but mostly on a sideline. Pat Hingle’s Gordon was seen here and there, not much.
That’s one of the reason I enjoy The Dark Knight trilogy, cause Gordon was use alot more.
I’ve got to go with the Dark Night trilogy Gordon as my favorite overall. Second place is a tie between the Gotham series and Gordon’s role in No Man’s Land. Shout out to the Telltale series and the Harley Quinn cartoon for honorable mentions too.
I think that Pat Hingle’s Gordon was used correctly in the first film, but he really needed to become a more central character in the sequels. Batman and Gordon build their professional relationship between sequels, which means that we just have to take his word when Gordon says that he trusts the weird vigilante in a rubber bat suit.
I think Gordon was use alot more in Joel Schumacher films which was great to see. In Batman & Robin it was nice to see him a few times not hanging around the Bat signal, I think Pat Hingle did a great job playing Gordon even if it wasn’t a big role in each film.
He was a great actor, he was good in The Fugitive TV series playing both goodguy and the badguy. I also like ‘Truman’ where he give young Harry S. Truman a job in congress and Senate.
I’ve always found The Killing Joke fascinating. I even studied it in one of my Superhero classes in college (yes studying superheroes was part of my degree, it was awesome). I’ve always been in awe of how Gordon handled the situation with being kidnaped. He is stripped down to nothing, humiliating in itself. But then is forced to see pictures of his daughter, naked, hurt, possibly bleeding to death, and yet he still wants Joker legally brought in. I really admire him in that moment, because honestly, if I was Gordon, I’d probably just kill Joker and permanently get rid of him. Guess I’m not as good of a person as Jim Gordon.
That was the only thing about that particular story I liked. It really did showcase how morally strong Jim is. That he could still want Joker brought in by the book afterward is something that is worthy of admiration in my opinion. I’m not sure I could have done the same.
I think I find it more interesting because the first time I read it was for class and then we got to pull the whole thing apart in order to study the story telling aspect.
Yeah, I might feel differently if I had done that. I wish there had been a class at my college dealing with superheroes or even just the study of comics themselves. As a former lit major though I have been known to read and analyze various aspects of whatever it is I’m reading be it novels, classics, short stories and even comics. Sometimes I can’t turn it off and it sometimes drives me crazy.
I get that! I do the same thing. I have a creative writing degree and I got to specialize it to Sci-Fi/Fantasy and Superheroes. I went to a small school and they did some unique classes. One of my all time favorites was Politics and the Superhero. My professor actually wrote a book on the subject (same name as the class). It explores how society has effected superhero culture and visa versa. I do recommend it for a deeper superhero study.
Cool. I’ll have to look that book up while I’m at work and see if anyone in our library system has it. I like a good read.
I went to a big school myself. About the only unique classes we had were some of the theater related ones and that was because the theater dept. was just getting started when I entered college.
I was also a theater geek so I was very involved with that department without being a theater major. I mainly ran tech and stage crew for their plays and I took a lot of theater classes too. My favorite was Production Aesthetics. The professor had worked on Broadway and it was fun seeing all the behind the scenes stuff that goes into theater productions. Our final project was to design sets and costumes for a play of our choice.
I’m actually mentioned in it (under my actual name of course). Lol!
That sounds like fun! I love theater. I did acting my whole childhood and even wrote and directed a One Act when I was 17. But once I got to college I ended up focusing on my writing. But my school was a liberal arts college so I did have to take one theater class. It was fun. I rewrote Macbeth as a modern day play. Lol!
