Legion of Super-Heroes
The Legion of Super-Heroes is a fictional superhero team appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. Created by writer Otto Binder and artist Al Plastino, the Legion is a group of superpowered beings living in the 30th and 31st centuries of the DC Comics Universe, first appears in Adventure Comics #247; the team was associated with the original Superboy character, was portrayed as a group of time travelers. The Legion's origin and back story were fleshed out, the group was given its own monthly comic. Superboy was removed from the team altogether and appeared only as an occasional guest star; the team has undergone two major reboots during its run. The original version was replaced with a new rebooted version following the events of the "Zero Hour" storyline in 1994 and another rebooted team was introduced in 2004. A fourth version of the team, nearly identical to the original version, was introduced in 2007. Superboy was the featured series in Adventure Comics in the 1950s. In Adventure Comics #247 by writer Otto Binder and artist Al Plastino, Superboy was met by three teenagers from the 30th century: Lightning Boy, Saturn Girl, Cosmic Boy, who were members of a "super-hero club" called the Legion of Super-Heroes.
Their club had been formed with Superboy as an inspiration, they had time travelled to recruit Superboy as a member. After a series of tests, Superboy was returned to his own time. Although intended as a one-off story focusing on Superboy, the Legion proved so popular that it returned for an encore in Adventure Comics #267. In this story, Lightning Boy had been renamed Lightning Lad, their costumes were close to those they wore throughout the Silver Age of Comic Books; the Legion's popularity grew, they appeared in further stories in Adventure Comics, Action Comics, other titles edited by Mort Weisinger over the next few years. The ranks of the Legion, only hinted at in those first two stories, was filled with new heroes such as Chameleon Boy, Invisible Kid, Colossal Boy, Star Boy, Brainiac 5, Triplicate Girl, Shrinking Violet, Sun Boy, Bouncing Boy, Phantom Girl, Ultra Boy; the 20th-century cousin to Superman, was recruited as a member. In Adventure Comics #300, the Legion received their own regular feature, cover-billed "Superboy in'Tales of the Legion of Super-Heroes'".
While they would share space with Superboy solo stories for a couple of years, they displaced Superboy from the title as their popularity grew. Lightning Lad was killed in Adventure Comics #304 and revived in issue #312, it was the Adventure Comics run which established environment. A club of teenagers, they operated out of a clubhouse in the shape of an inverted yellow rocket ship which looked as if it had been driven into the ground; the position of Legion leader rotated among the membership. Each Legionnaire had to possess one natural superpower; some issues included comical moments where candidates with bizarre, useless, or dangerous abilities would try out for membership and be rejected. The Legion was based on Earth and protected an organization of humans and aliens called the United Planets alongside the regular police the Science Police; the setting for each story was 1000 years from the date of publication. In Adventure Comics #346, Jim Shooter, 14 years old at the time, wrote his first Legion story.
Soon thereafter, Shooter became the regular writer of the Legion stories, with Curt Swan, Win Mortimer, as artist. Shooter wrote the story in which Ferro Lad died—the first "real" death of a Legionnaire —and introduced many other enduring concepts, including the Fatal Five, Karate Kid, Princess Projectra, Shadow Lass, the Dark Circle and the "Adult Legion", a conjecture regarding what the Legionnaires would be like when they grew up; the Legion's last appearance in Adventure Comics was #380, they were displaced by Supergirl in the next issue. The early 1970s saw the Legion relegated to the status of back-up feature. First, the team's stories were moved to Action Comics for issues #377–392. Following Mort Weisinger's retirement from DC, the Legion was passed to the oversight of editor Murray Boltinoff and began appearing as a backup in Superboy, starting with #172, with writers E. Nelson Bridwell and Cary Bates and artist George Tuska. Dave Cockrum began again increasing the team's popularity.
The first comic book published under the title Legion of Super-Heroes was a four-issue series published in 1973 that reprinted Legion tales from Adventure Comics. In the same year, the Legion returned to cover billing on a book when Superboy became Superboy starring the Legion of Super-Heroes with #197. Crafted by Bates and Cockrum, the feature proved popular and saw such events as the wedding of Bouncing Boy and Duo Damsel in Superboy #200. Issues #202 and #205 of the series were in the 100 Page Super Spectacular format. Cockrum was replaced on art by Mike Grell as of issue #203 which featured the death of Invisible Kid. With #231, the book's title changed to Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes and became a "giant-size" title. At this point, the book was written by longtime fan
DC Comics
DC Comics, Inc. is an American comic book publisher. It is the publishing unit of DC Entertainment, a subsidiary of Warner Bros. since 1967. DC Comics is one of the largest and oldest American comic book companies, produces material featuring numerous culturally iconic heroic characters including: Superman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Green Lantern,Aquaman,Martian Manhunter, Green Arrow, Hawkman and Supergirl. Most of their material takes place in the fictional DC Universe, which features teams such as the Justice League, the Justice Society of America, the Suicide Squad, the Teen Titans, well-known villains such as The Joker, Lex Luthor, Darkseid, Brainiac, Black Adam, Ra's al Ghul and Deathstroke; the company has published non-DC Universe-related material, including Watchmen, V for Vendetta, many titles under their alternative imprint Vertigo. The initials "DC" came from the company's popular series Detective Comics, which featured Batman's debut and subsequently became part of the company's name.
In Manhattan at 432 Fourth Avenue, the DC Comics offices have been located at 480 and 575 Lexington Avenue. DC had its headquarters at 1700 Broadway, Midtown Manhattan, New York City, but it was announced in October 2013 that DC Entertainment would relocate its headquarters from New York to Burbank, California in April 2015. Random House distributes DC Comics' books to the bookstore market, while Diamond Comic Distributors supplies the comics shop specialty market. DC Comics and its longtime major competitor Marvel Comics together shared 70% of the American comic book market in 2017. Entrepreneur Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson founded National Allied Publications in autumn 1934; the company debuted with the tabloid-sized New Fun: The Big Comic Magazine #1 with a cover date of February 1935. The company's second title, New Comics #1, appeared in a size close to what would become comic books' standard during the period fans and historians call the Golden Age of Comic Books, with larger dimensions than today's.
That title evolved into Adventure Comics, which continued through issue #503 in 1983, becoming one of the longest-running comic-book series. In 2009 DC revived Adventure Comics with its original numbering. In 1935, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the future creators of Superman, created Doctor Occult, the earliest DC Comics character to still be in the DC Universe. Wheeler-Nicholson's third and final title, Detective Comics, advertised with a cover illustration dated December 1936 premiered three months late with a March 1937 cover date; the themed anthology series would become a sensation with the introduction of Batman in issue #27. By however, Wheeler-Nicholson had gone. In 1937, in debt to printing-plant owner and magazine distributor Harry Donenfeld—who published pulp magazines and operated as a principal in the magazine distributorship Independent News—Wheeler-Nicholson had to take Donenfeld on as a partner in order to publish Detective Comics #1. Detective Comics, Inc. was formed, with Wheeler-Nicholson and Jack S. Liebowitz, Donenfeld's accountant, listed as owners.
Major Wheeler-Nicholson remained for a year, but cash-flow problems continued, he was forced out. Shortly afterwards, Detective Comics, Inc. purchased the remains of National Allied known as Nicholson Publishing, at a bankruptcy auction. Detective Comics, Inc. soon launched a fourth title, Action Comics, the premiere of which introduced Superman. Action Comics #1, the first comic book to feature the new character archetype—soon known as "superheroes"—proved a sales hit; the company introduced such other popular characters as the Sandman and Batman. On February 22, 2010, a copy of Action Comics #1 sold at an auction from an anonymous seller to an anonymous buyer for $1 million, besting the $317,000 record for a comic book set by a different copy, in lesser condition, the previous year. National Allied Publications soon merged with Detective Comics, Inc. forming National Comics Publications on September 30, 1946. National Comics Publications absorbed an affiliated concern, Max Gaines' and Liebowitz' All-American Publications.
In the same year Gaines let Liebowitz buy him out, kept only Picture Stories from the Bible as the foundation of his own new company, EC Comics. At that point, "Liebowitz promptly orchestrated the merger of All-American and Detective Comics into National Comics... Next he took charge of organizing National Comics, Independent News, their affiliated firms into a single corporate entity, National Periodical Publications". National Periodical Publications became publicly traded on the stock market in 1961. Despite the official names "National Comics" and "National Periodical Publications", the company began branding itself as "Superman-DC" as early as 1940, the company became known colloquially as DC Comics for years before the official adoption of that name in 1977; the company began to move aggressively against what it saw as copyright-violating imitations from other companies, such as Fox Comics' Wonder Man, which Fox started as a copy of Superman. This extended to DC suing Fawcett Comics over Captain Marvel, at the time comics' top-selling character.
Faced with declining sales and the prospect of bankruptcy if it lost, Fawcett capitulated in 1953 and ceased publishing comics. Years Fawcett sold the rights for Captain Marvel to DC—which in 1972 revived Captain Marvel in the new title Shazam
DC Universe
The DC Universe is the fictional shared universe where most stories in American comic book titles published by DC Comics take place. DC superheroes such as Superman and Wonder Woman are from this universe, it contains well known supervillains such as Lex Luthor, the Joker and Darkseid. In context, the term "DC Universe" refers to the main DC continuity; the term "DC Multiverse" refers to the collection of all continuities within DC Comics publications. Within the Multiverse, the main DC Universe has gone by many names, but in recent years has been referred to by "Prime Earth" or "Earth 0"; the main DC Universe, as well as the alternate realities related to it, began as the first shared universe in comic books and were adapted to other media such as film serials or radio dramas. In subsequent decades, the continuity between all of these media became complex with certain storylines and events designed to simplify or streamline the more confusing aspects of characters' histories; the fact that DC Comics characters coexisted in the same world was first established in All Star Comics #3 where several superheroes met each other in a group dubbed the Justice Society of America.
Subsequently, the Justice Society was reintroduced as the Justice League of America, founded with Major League Baseball's National League and American League as inspiration for the name. The comic book that introduced the Justice League was titled The Brave and the Bold However, the majority of National/DC's publications continued to be written with little regard of maintaining continuity with each other for the first few decades. Over the course of its publishing history, DC has introduced different versions of its characters, sometimes presenting them as if the earlier version had never existed, among them the Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, in the late 1950s, with similar powers but different names and personal histories, they had characters such as Batman whose early adventures set in the 1940s could not be reconciled with stories featuring a still-youthful man in the 1970s. To explain this, they introduced the idea of the Multiverse in Flash #123 where the Silver Age Flash met his Golden Age counterpart.
In addition to allowing the conflicting stories to "co-exist", it allowed the differing versions of characters to meet, team up to combat cross-universe threats. The writers gave designations such as "Earth-One", "Earth-Two", so forth, to certain universes, designations which at times were used by the characters themselves. Earth-One was the primary world of this publication era. Over the years, as the number of titles published increased and the volume of past stories accumulated, it became difficult to maintain internal consistency. In the face of diminishing sales, maintaining the status quo of their most popular characters became attractive. Although retcons were used as a way to explain apparent inconsistencies in stories written, editors at DC came to consider the varied continuity of multiple Earths too difficult to keep track of, feared that it was an obstacle to accessibility for new readers. To address this, they published the cross-universe miniseries Crisis on Infinite Earths in 1985, which merged universes and characters, reducing the Multiverse to a single unnamed universe with a single history.
However, not all the books rebooted post-Crisis. For example, the Legion of Superheroes book acted as if the Pre-Crisis Earth-1 history was still their past, a point driven home in the Cosmic Boy miniseries, it removed the mechanism DC had been using to deal with continuity glitches or storylines that a writer wanted to ignore resulting in a convoluted explanation for characters like Hawkman. The Zero Hour limited series gave them an opportunity to revise timelines and rewrite the DC Universe history; however this failed right out of the gate as the writers had Waverider state all alternate histories had been wiped and yet have the Armageddon 2001 saga in the timeline which required multiple timelines to work. As a result once per decade since the 1980s, the DC Universe experiences a major crisis that allows any number of changes from new versions of characters to appear as a whole reboot of the universe, restarting nominally all the characters into a new and modernized version of their lives.
Meanwhile, DC has published occasional stories called Elseworlds, which presented alternate versions of its characters. One told the story of Bruce Wayne as a Green Lantern. In another tale, Superman: Speeding Bullets, the rocket ship that brought the infant Superman to Earth was discovered by the Wayne family of Gotham City rather than the Kents. In 1999, The Kingdom reintroduced a variant of the old Multiverse concept called Hypertime which allows for alternate versions of characters and worlds again; the entire process was inspired by Alan Moore's meta-comic, Supreme: Story of the Year. The Convergence crossover retconned the events of Crisis after heroes in that series went back in time to prevent the collapse of the Multiverse. However, Brainiac states "Each world has evolved but they all still exist", it has been confirmed that all previous worlds and timelines now exist, that there multiple Multiverses now in existence, such as the Pre-Crisis infinite Multiverse, the collapsed Earth, the Pre-New 52 52 worlds Multiverse.
The Infinite Crisis event remade the DC Universe yet again, with new changes. The limited series 52 established that a new multiverse now existed, with Earth-0 as the primary Earth; the 2011 reboo
Darkseid
Darkseid is a fictional supervillain appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. Created by writer-artist Jack Kirby, the character made a cameo appearance in Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen #134 before making his full first appearance in Forever People #1, he is the father of Orion, Kalibak and Grail. As the tyrannical ruler of the planet Apokolips, Darkseid's ultimate goal is to conquer the universe and eliminate all free will and sentient beings. One of the most powerful beings in the DC Universe, the character became a staple Superman villain and is considered the archenemy of the Justice League. Darkseid was ranked number 6 on IGN's top 100 comic book villains of all time and number 23 on Wizard's 100 greatest villains of all time. Darkseid was voiced by Frank Welker in the animated series Super Friends: The Legendary Super Powers Show and The Super Powers Team: Galactic Guardians, which became his first appearance in media other than comic books; the character was subsequently portrayed by Michael Ironside in the DC animated universe, Andre Braugher in Superman/Batman: Apocalypse, Steven Blum in Justice League: War, "Weird Al" Yankovic in an episode of Teen Titans Go!
Jack Kirby returned to DC Comics with Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen #133 and began establishing characters that would lay the foundation for his newly conceived Fourth World epic. The chief antagonist would be the villain Darkseid who had a cameo in Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen #134 with a full first appearance in Forever People #1; the character was designed to be the chief antagonist of the titles Forever People, Mister Miracle and New Gods, but after the cancellation of these titles, he continued to appear as a major villain in many DC Universe comic books, fighting both Superman and Batman. According to writer Mark Evanier, Jack Kirby modelled Darkseid's face on actor Jack Palance; the son of King Yuga Khan and Queen Heggra, Prince Uxas, second in line to the throne of Apokolips, plotted to seize power over the planet. When his brother, attempted to claim the fabled Omega Force, Uxas murdered him, took the power for himself; the power transformed him upon which he took the name Darkseid. At some point in time, he fell in love with an Apokoliptian scientist and sorceress named Suli, with whom he had a son, Kalibak.
Following Suli's death, Darkseid's heart grew colder, he ordered Desaad to poison Heggra, as soon as he did, Darkseid became the supreme monarch of Apokolips. Darkseid had been forced by his mother to marry Tigra, with whom he had a son. After murdering his mother, Darkseid ordered Tigra to eliminate their son, switched with the Highfather's son, Scott Free, so as to keep peace between New Genesis and Apokolips; the destructive war with the rival planet, New Genesis, was stopped only with a diplomatic exchange of the sons of Highfather and Darkseid. Darkseid's second born son was surrendered to Highfather; this turned out to be a setback for Darkseid, with his biological son growing up to value and defend the ideals of New Genesis as a powerful champion in opposition to his father. The prophecy foretold that Darkseid would meet his final defeat at the hands of his son in a cataclysmic battle in the fiery Armaghetto of Apokolips. Darkseid and his training minion, Granny Goodness, were unable to break Scott Free's spirit after years of torturous upbringing and the New God was able to escape Apokolips, taking with him the mightiest of the Female Furies, Big Barda, as his wife and came to Earth to become the master escape artist and superhero foe of Darkseid, Mister Miracle.
Regardless, Darkseid anticipated that Scott would make such a move and used its occurrence as a pretext to declare the treaty with New Genesis abrogated and resume armed conflict. Seeing other deities as a threat, Darkseid invaded the island of Themyscira in order to discover the secret location of the Olympian deities, planning to overthrow the Olympians and steal their power. Refusing to aid Darkseid in his mad quest, the Amazons battled his Parademon troops, causing half of the Amazon population's death. Wonder Woman was able to gain her revenge against Darkseid for killing so many of her sisters by placing a portion of her own soul into Darkseid; this weakened the god's power as he lost a portion of his dark edge. Darkseid's goal was to reshape it into his own image. To this end, he sought to unravel the mysterious Anti-Life Equation, which gives its user complete control over the thoughts and emotions of all living beings in the universe. Darkseid had tried on several other occasions to achieve dominance of the universe through other methods, most notably through his minion Glorious Godfrey, who could control people's minds with his voice.
He had a special interest in Earth, as he believed humans possess collectively within their minds most, if not all, fragments of the Anti-Life Equation. Darkseid intended to probe the minds of every human; this has caused him to clash with many superheroes of the DC Universe, most notably the Kryptonian Superman. Darkseid worked behind the scenes, using superpowered minions in his schemes to overthrow Earth, including working through Intergang, a crime syndicate which employs Apokoliptian technology and morphed into a religious cult that worships Darkseid as the god of evil. One thousand years in the future, Darkseid has been absent for centuries and is completely forgotten, he returns and comes into conflict with that era's champions, the
Apocalypse (comics)
Apocalypse is a fictional supervillain appearing in comic books published by Marvel Comics. He is one of the world's first mutants, was a principal villain for the original X-Factor team and now for the X-Men and related spinoff teams. Created by writer Louise Simonson and artist Jackson Guice, Apocalypse first appeared in X-Factor #5. Since his introduction, the character has appeared in a number of X-Men titles, including spin-offs and several limited series. Apocalypse has been featured in various forms of media. In 2016, Oscar Isaac portrayed the villain in the film X-Men: Apocalypse. In 2009, Apocalypse was ranked as IGN's 24th Greatest Comic Book Villain of All Time. While writing the first five issues of X-Factor, Bob Layton dropped hints of a villain operating behind the scenes and leading the Alliance of Evil. Layton intended to reveal this character to be the Daredevil villain the Owl on the final page of X-Factor #5. However, Layton was replaced by writer Louise Simonson. Editor Bob Harras said that the character arose because of storytelling needs: "All I had communicated to Louise was my desire that an A-level, first class character be introduced.
I wanted a Magneto-level villain who would up the stakes and give the X-Factor team reason to exist."In a 2011 interview with The Philadelphia Inquirer, explained that when the X-Factor series was created, the original five X-Men were pulled out of the purview of Chris Claremont, writing The Uncanny X-Men. However, Simonson felt that the series need an archenemy, or what Simonson called "a big, bad villain", conceived of Apocalypse. Simonson described the character thus: "When X-Factor was created, it caused a split in the "Mutant World" several seminal characters were pulled out of Chris Claremont's X-Men." "Apocalypse is the first mutant – a brilliant shape-shifter, immortal – and sees himself as the father of mutantkind…In his early years, which I covered in the X-Factor Forever miniseries... Apocalypse encountered the Celestials and realized there was a time when humanity might be judged unworthy and destroyed. He's been using Darwinian principles - survival of the fittest - to kill off the weak and force the survivors to grow stronger, to push humanity to get better and more powerful.
He considers himself the Apocalypse of modern man and the father of what humanity will come next - Mutantkind. Where Magneto sees mutants as the next step of evolution and strives to protect all mutants, Apocalypse believes in absolute survival of the fittest - so if the Hulk, for example, is stronger than Colossus...well, in Apocalypse's world he would say,'Bye, comrade.'" Harras commented, "As soon as I saw the sketch by Walter and heard Louise's take on him, I knew we had the character I wanted. Jackson redrew the page, but the genesis was Walt and Weezie's." Guice admitted to difficulty recalling the details behind redrawing the last page of issue #5: "The best I can remember now is putting his look together pretty much right on the pencil page—just adding bits of costuming business which hinted toward his true appearance when we'd see him in full reveal. I don't believe there was a character sketch done for him at that point—I planned on making sense of it all on, but by I was gone and others had that concern."
Apocalypse's silhouette in issue #5 does not match up with his full appearance in issue #6, suggesting the possibility that Guice was using Simonson's sketch as a reference for issue #6 but did not have access to it earlier, necessitating that he come up with his own design for issue #5. Walter Simonson himself has downplayed his role in the character's creation, saying that Guice was responsible for creating the design and that he, Simonson modified it later: "I did not co-create Apocalypse. However, I wish. Louise Simonson and Jackson Guice created him, he appeared in a few panels at the end of one of Jackson’s last X-FACTORs, so I am the first artist to use him extensively in stories. And I kind of juiced up his physique a bit."Bob Harras said on the character of Apocalypse: He looked fantastic. The name is dynamic, it tells. And he came with a clear-cut agenda:'survival of the fittest.' He didn't care if you were a mutant—if you were weak, you would be destroyed. He was merciless, but his philosophy was easy to grasp and it fit in with the harder edge of evolution, part and parcel of the mutant story.
Isn't that what humans fear about mutants? That they are the next step? Now, we had given mutants something new to fear: a character who would judge them on their genetic worthiness. To his own mind he wasn't evil, he was ensuring evolution. To me, he was the perfect next step in the mutant story. Although the character first appeared in 1986, he was retroactively said to have been present during published stories; the unnamed benefactor of the Living Monolith in Marvel Graphic Novel #17 was identified as Apocalypse in disguise. Classic X-Men #25 revealed that years earlier, Apocalypse encountered the terrorist Moses Magnum and granted him superhuman power. During his run on Cable, Robert Weinberg planned a story to reveal that Apocalypse was the third Summers brother, a mysterious sibling to the mutants Cyclops and Havok, but Weinberg left the book before he could go along with his plan and the third Summers brother was revealed to be the mutant Gabriel Sum
Justice League
The Justice League is a team of fictional superheroes appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. The Justice League was conceived by writer Gardner Fox, they first appeared together, as Justice League of America in The Brave and the Bold #28; the Justice League is an assemblage of superheroes. The seven original members were Aquaman, The Flash, Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter and Wonder Woman; the team roster has rotated throughout the years, consisting of various superheroes from the DC Universe, such as The Atom, Big Barda, Black Canary, Green Arrow, Elongated Man, the Flash/Wally West, Green Lantern/John Stewart, Hawkman, Plastic Man, Power Girl, Red Tornado, Captain Marvel/Shazam, Zatanna, among many others. The team received its own comic book title called Justice League of America in November 1960. With the 2011 relaunch, DC Comics released a second volume of Justice League. In July 2016, the DC Rebirth initiative again relaunched the Justice League comic book titles with the third volume of Justice League.
Since its inception, the team has been featured in various films, television programs, video games. Various comic book series featuring the Justice League have remained popular with fans since inception and, in most incarnations, its roster includes DC's most popular characters; the Justice League concept has been adapted into various other entertainment media, including various forms of television from the classic Saturday morning Super Friends animated series, a live action series of specials Legends of the Superheroes, an unproduced Justice League of America live-action series, the acclaimed Justice League animated series, its sequel Justice League Unlimited and Justice League Action. A live-action film was in the works around 2008 before being shelved. On June 6, 2012, Warner Bros. announced a new live action Justice League film was in development with Will Beall hired as screenwriter. However, the project was scrapped again. After the success of the Superman reboot Man of Steel, a film titled Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice was released in March 2016, directed by Zack Snyder.
Batman v Superman script writer Chris Terrio has penned the script for Justice League. In a story told in flashback in Justice League of America #9, the Appelaxians infiltrated Earth. Competing alien warriors were sent to see who could conquer Earth first, to determine who will become the new ruler of their home planet; the aliens' attacks drew the attentions of Aquaman, Flash, Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter and Wonder Woman. While the superheroes individually defeated most of the invaders, the heroes fell prey to a single competitor's attack. For many years, the heroes heralded this adventure as the event that prompted them to agree to pool resources when confronted with similar menaces. In Justice League of America #144, Green Arrow uncovered inconsistencies in the team's records and extracted admissions from his colleagues that the seven founders had formed the League after Martian Manhunter was rescued from Martian forces by the other six founders, along with several other heroes including Robin, Congorilla, Rex the Wonder Dog, Lois Lane.
Green Lantern participated in this first adventure as Hal Jordan, as he had yet to become the costumed hero, the biggest inconsistency Arrow found, as they celebrated the earlier incident's date, while recounting only the one's events. When the group formalized their agreement, they suppressed news of it because of anti-Martian hysteria; because the heroes had not revealed their identities to each other at the time, they did not realize that Jordan and Green Lantern were one and the same when he turned up in costume during the event described in #9. While most subsequent accounts of the League have made little mention of this first adventure, the animated Justice League series adapted this tale as the origin of the Justice League as well. Secret Origins vol. 2, #32 updated Justice League of America #9's origin for post-Crisis continuity. Differences included the inclusion of the Silver Age Black Canary as a founding member and the absence of Batman, Wonder Woman and Superman; the JLA: Year One limited series, by Mark Waid, Brian Augustyn and Barry Kitson, further expanded the Secret Origins depiction.
In Justice League Task Force #16, during Zero Hour, a unknown superhuman named Triumph appeared. Triumph was their leader. On his first mission with the Justice League, Triumph "saved the world" but was teleported into a dimensional limbo that affected the timestream, erasing all memory of him. In Infinite Crisis #7, the formation of "New Earth" restored Wonder Woman as a founding member of the Justice League. In Brad Meltzer's Justice League of America #0, it was revealed that Superman and Batman were again founding members as well. 52 #51 confirmed that the 1989 Secret Origins and JLA: Year One origins were still in continuity at that time, with Superman and Wonder Woman joining the team with founding members' status shortly after the group's formation with Aquaman, Black Canary, Green Lantern and Martian Manhunter. In Justice League of America #12, the founding members of the Justice League were shown to be Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Aquaman, and
Catwoman
Catwoman is a fictional character created by Bill Finger and Bob Kane who appears in American comic books published by DC Comics in association with superhero Batman. The character made her debut as "the Cat" in Batman #1, her real name is Selina Kyle, she is Batman's most enduring love interest and is known for her complex love-hate relationship with him. Catwoman is a Gotham City burglar who wears a tight, one-piece outfit and uses a bullwhip for a weapon, she was characterized as a supervillain and adversary of Batman, but she has been featured in a series since the 1990s which portrays her as an antiheroine doing the wrong things for the right reasons. The character thrived since her earliest appearances, but she took an extended hiatus from September 1954 to November 1966 due to the developing Comics Code Authority in 1954; these issues involved the rules regarding the development and portrayal of female characters that were in violation of the Comics Code, a code, no longer in use. In the comics, Holly Robinson and Eiko Hasigawa have both adopted the Catwoman identity, apart from Selina Kyle.
Catwoman has been featured in many media adaptations related to Batman. Actresses Julie Newmar, Lee Meriwether, Eartha Kitt introduced her to a large audience on the 1960s Batman television series and the 1966 Batman film. Michelle Pfeiffer portrayed the character in 1992's Batman Returns. Halle Berry starred in 2004's Catwoman. Anne Hathaway portrayed Selina Kyle in the 2012 film The Dark Knight Rises, a young version of Kyle is played by Camren Bicondova on the 2014 television series Gotham. Catwoman was ranked 11th on IGN's list of the "Top 100 Comic Book Villains of All Time", 51st on Wizard magazine's "100 Greatest Villains of All Time" list. Conversely, she was ranked 20th on IGN's "Top 100 Comic Book Heroes of All Time" list. Batman co-creator Bob Kane was a great movie fan and his love for film provided the impetus for several Batman characters, among them, Catwoman, she was inspired by 1930s film star Jean Harlow who at Kane's then-early and, "impressionable age... seemed to personify feminine pulchritude at its most sensuous."
Kane and Finger wanted to give their comic book sex appeal, as well as a character who could appeal to female readers. Catwoman was meant to be a love interest and to engage Batman in a chess game, with him trying to reform her. At the same time, this character was meant to be different from other Batman villains like the Joker in that she was never a killer or evil; the character was partially inspired by Kane's cousin, Ruth Steel. As for using cat imagery with the character, Kane stated that he and Finger saw cats as "kind of the antithesis of bats". Catwoman called "the Cat", first appeared in Batman #1 as a mysterious burglar and jewel thief, revealed at the end of the story to be a young, attractive woman, having disguised herself as an old woman during the story and been hired to commit a burglary. Although she does not wear her iconic cat-suit, the story establishes her core personality as a femme fatale who both antagonizes and attracts Batman, it is implied Batman may have deliberately let her get away by blocking Robin as he tried to leap after her.
She next appears in Batman #2 in a story involving the Joker but escapes Batman in the end. In Batman # 3 she again succeeds in escaping Batman. Batman #62 reveals that Catwoman was an amnesiac flight attendant who turned to crime after suffering a prior blow to the head during a plane crash she survived, she reveals this in the Batcave after being hit on the head by a piece of rubble while saving Batman while he was chasing her. However, in issue #197 of The Brave and the Bold, she admits that she made up the amnesia story because she wanted a way out of the past life of crime, she reforms for several years, helping out Batman in Batman #65 and #69, until she decides to return to a life of crime in Detective Comics #203, after a newspaper publishes stories of Batman's past adventures and some crooks mock her about it. However, Catwoman prevents her thugs from murdering Batman once he is found knocked out, but claims she wants him as a hostage. Catwoman appears again as a criminal in Batman #84 and Detective Comics #211 for her final appearance until 1966.
This was due to her possible violation of the developing Comics Code Authority's rules for portrayal of female characters that started in 1954. In the 1970s comics, a series of stories taking place on Earth-Two reveal that on that world, Selina reformed in the 1950s and had married Bruce Wayne; the Brave and the Bold #197 elaborates upon the Golden Age origin of Catwoman given in Batman #62, after Selina reveals that she never suffered from amnesia. It is revealed that Selina Kyle had been in an bad marriage, decided to leave her husband. However, her husband kept her jewelry in his private vault, she had to break into it to retrieve it. Selina enjoyed this experience so much she decided to become a professional costumed cat burglar, thus began a career that leads to her encountering Batman; the Earth-Two/Golden Age Selina Kyle dies in the late 1970s after being blackmailed by a criminal into going into action ag
