Worst superheroes ever?

Good question. Also, a perennial one -- back in the early '60s, the long-defunct Alley Awards (named after what they claimed was chronically, at least, the first superhero) had a category for "Most In Need Of Improvement" (figuring "Worst" was too negative). I know Wonder Woman (then by Kanigher, Andru and Esposito) "won" it at least once, possibly both times, tho now, I look back on Wondy of that period as having had a sort of charm, albeit an extremely quirky one.

I can't honestly say I've ever heard of some of those, such as The Mess and Doop. El Guapo is, of course, condemned by the name alone -- I assume he's of Italian extraction, otherwise why call him "The Wop"?, and that isn't done anymore. Similarly, I've heard of Extrano (I'm too lazy to look up the code for a tilde), but only in the context of condemning the whole group. Supposedly the first homosexual superhero, but why the halfway measures? They should've come right out and called him "The Queer".

Of the ones I've heard of, I doubt "Blogzarro" has enough data to put Cosmo, Master of Disguise on such a list. There may have been a couple of reprints, and maybe he has an impressive collection of late '40s Detective Comics, but personally, I can't see a short-lived, back pages guy like him generating enough interest to make a list of any sort. (Then again, look at some of the entries on my own Contents.)

Similarly, I can't see Aqualad generating enough interest. AquaGIRL, tho, is another matter. (There was one, wasn't there?)

The Red Bee, of course, deserves to be a laughingstock. Trained bees? That he keeps in his belt? I've been thinking of writing him up just so I can make fun of him. Of all the colored bug heroes (cf., Blue Beetle, Green Hornet), he's got to be the lamest. Even The Silver Sowbug, whom I made up for a Mickey Mouse story that needed a throw-away superhero, wasn't that bad.

The Immortal Man was pretty poorly thought out, but I only have a few to go before I've done all the series that were ever in Strange Adventures and Mystery in Space (next up: Interplanetary Insurance Inc.), so I may actually write him up. (Was The Faceless Creature from Saturn a series?)

Matter Eater Lad, even more than Bouncing Boy, demonstrated the depths to which DC would go to dream up new members of The Legion of Super Heroes. Still, they didn't go so far as to accept the application of Infectious Lass. (Explaining her super power later, she said "I make people sick." To which Ambush Bug replied, "I'll just bet you do, Sweetheart.")

But I take exception to including U.S.1 in a "lame superheroes" list. Only if you allow for the fact that being lame was part of the point. He was a trucker superhero, so loading him up with trucker tropes was exactly the thing to do. Like giving him the meanest rig on the highway, the Millennium Falcon of delivery vehicles, and fixing it so the truck would come when he called. And making one of his super powers the ability to receive CB broadcasts in his head. Man, that was a neat-o superhero! I loved every issue.

But I suspect this is like the "Worst-Dressed" list. The worst-dressed people aren't those you ever heard of. You find them hanging around bus stations and sleeping in doorways. I doubt anyone here has ever heard of the lamest superheroes, either.

For example, one of my daughter's high school friends did a daily Web comic called Sporkman, who looked just like one of those plastic eating utensils you find at junk food joints. Funny, perhaps, at least in concept, but very, very lame.

Quack, Don

The Red Bee wasn't the only one, the GA Yellowjacket also used bees, while the Black Spider wasn't above frightening crooks with his pet tarantula. Considering how I tend to react when threatened by bees, it doesn't strike me as that bad of a concept, especially for the time period. Music Master, Rainbow Boy, Hydroman and the Puppeteer always struck me as being some of the lamer characters of the time whereas Air Male and Stampy had about the most likely to induce laughter names for a superhero duo. Actually, there are quite a few Centaur characters that when reading left me scratching my head: the Ferret who can fly, Vapo-Man, Speed Centaur to name a couple.

As Aqualad and Aquagirl were more or less sidekicks, I don't really have a problem with them any more than I have with Batgirl or Batwoman, Superboy, Supergirl, etc. Better than Batmite, in my opinion.

I think the Legion had a couple that stretched credibility such as Matter-Eater Lad and Bouncing Boy and I can see why they were sidelined for years. And, Stone Boy, a character introduced during the drug crazed 60's?

Just as Extrano of The New Guardians didn't really bother me as a name. Is the name any stranger than a host of others over the years: Phantasmo, Chemo, Cosmo, Mastermind Excello, Flexo, Flex Mentallo, Mystico, Marvello, etc? It was his and, frankly, the rest of the team's portrayal that made them all lame and laughingstocks.

Neal Adams' Skateman always struck me as one of the worst conceived characters ever.

Yeah, but Yellowjacket ordered his six-legged pals around by the sheer power of his mind, just like The Fly, or like B'Wana Beast did, well, beasts. The Red Bee ->mmph<- (sorry -- couldn't help laughing) trained them. Any idea how to go about training bees? Or how to deliver the complex commands they've been trained to obey?

Again, I can't honestly say I've ever heard of some of the others you cite, but I did manage to look up most in Jess Nevins's excellent Golden Age Superhero Directory, and they're pretty lame, all right. (If the forum software isn't up to the task of making the link correctly, go to "ratmmjess.tripod.com" and from there, "gold/page.html".

Like RB, I've been thinking of writing up Hydroman, whose super power was to turn into a puddle of water, just so I can make fun of him. Vapo-Man, who could turn into a cloud of smoke, same thing. In fact, I'll probably include them in my book on silly superheroes of the '40s, if I ever succeed in getting somebody interested in publishing it. Except for being outside the time frame, Stone Boy, who could turn into a rock, is in the same category.

Aside from Aqualad and Aquagirl (if any), one other mere sidekick has been mentioned here. Can't you just see it? [url-mrscarlt.htm]Mr. Scarlet[/url] has just thrashed a villain, and his sidekick says "Tremble at my name, evildoer! For I am … Pinky!"

Skateman is another I'm thinking of writing up just so I can make fun of him. But Phantasmo, at least is a perfectly good '40s superhero except, of course, for being a '40s superhero. I'm thinking of writing him up just because I have a good picture of him socked away. (Oh, is there no end to the no-account 1940s superheroes?) (Answer: Yes, there is no end to them)

Quack, Don

Yeah, Pinky was a pretty bad name for a sidekick. Especially for a male one. Other than that, I love the golden-age Mr. Scarlet and Pinky stories.

I'll take this op to plug my own site. Jess stopped updating his site some years ago, there are quite a few heroes still missing and then some with inaccurate data. So, I recently started a branch on mine for the GA heroes. Fawcett & MLJ characters can be found on their own branches, the rest not making up current DC & Marvel are at the link.

Hydroman managed to be better in execution than he was in concept. Enough so, that he made the cut for appearing in Ross and Krueger's Superpowers book beyond just a cameo. But, when you just think about the basic concept of the character... not one of Everett's better attempts.

Vapo-man on the other hand was lame from the get go: generic gaseous powers that Centaur seemed enamored with (Amazing Man, Fire Man, Blue Lady all overlapped with this to varying degrees), horrible costume, horrible name, and in his origin story he comes across not as the sharpest knife in the drawer despite being a talented scientist. At least Zippo was competent and effective.

Extrano was indeed lame.

The New Guardians did have The Floronic Man as one of its members, as well as Thomas Kalmaku & Harbinger of COIE, but Extrano & all of the other new guys created for the team tend to be the most ridiculous depictions of nationalities in comic history: Betty Clawman (Australian aborigine) was a disembodied cosmic force with ill-defined abilities (mainly cosmic awareness) & was usually shown as a giant head. Gloss (Chinese) channels the mystic Dragon Lines of the Earth, giving her superhuman strength & elemental control, plus immortality, but she looked like an Asian fanservice character. Jet (Jamaica) had electromagnetic abilities, but her characterization was as embarrasing as Extrano's, always referring to 'the' as 'de' & ending every sentence with the 'mon'! She also grooves all day long! She got HIV & died in 'Invasion'! Ram (Japanese) has a body made of crystalline electronics, making him invulnerable to most physical attacks. He can access satellites & wireless networks, & send information through them. A vague reference to Japanese computer geeks!

What a weird group!

J.A.P.

I'm surprised noone mentioned the Atlas Seaboard comics of the 70s. With characters like Ironjaw, Tigerman,The Destructor, etc., Im surprised no one had brought them up!
(Tho in fairness, I hear Grim Ghost was kinda cool)

Thanks for the link, Ed. Definitely worth having. I was particularly interested in the fact that Jaguar Man "only prowled once" -- now I can write him up (when I get around to it, which could take years) (I have a weakness for guys with almost the same name as '60s heroes), since I now know nothing unexpected about him is likely to turn up.

Hydroman would just about have to be better in execution than he was in concept. Not just because he was by Bill Everett, but also because it's hard to top the ability to make villains' feet wet. I'm also not surprised to hear Vapo-Man was as bad as he sounded. The few examples I've seen sure met expectations.

I didn't notice how many Centaur characters were partly vapor-based, but I'd argue Fire Man's powers were more energy-based, and The Blue Lady was vapor-based only because she got powered up by breathing fumes. In the case of Amazing-Man, being able to turn into mist was only one of his super powers. It was also one of the less useful super powers of Dracula.

The Atlas/Seaboard characters came and went so quickly that they didn't make much of an impression. Also, their tendency to get suddenly shifted in the second or third issue to present-day costumed characters as if the company was gearing up to get them into a JLA/Avengers style group (or is Mighty Crusaders a better analogy) made them less memorable yet. Maybe that's why I haven't gotten around to writing any of them up yet. Gotta fix that.

As I recall, tho, some of them were reasonably respectable heroes. Just failures.

I'm slowly coming around to the point of view that The New Guardians is dorky enough to be worth writing up.

Quack, Don

I'll warn you. I think that bit of info on Jaguar Man is mainly from Jeff Rovin's Encyclopedia and possibly backed by what can be gleaned from the GCD. I obviously currently don't have access to even the one story to create a more complete profile or to even verify that Copper's micro is correct (some are curiously different from the sources I have, which only means that he has possibly some different sources where the character had a much different costume as frequently happened).

Yeah, mist powers were only one set of powers that Amazing Man and the Blue Lady possessed. It strikes me odd that they would both have close to identical powersets including the mist angle that really doesn't play into their other abilties.  And then having two other heroes that were written as being made of gas, it's an odd recurring theme. Fire Man's origin said he was converted into a being of "solid gas" making him sound not too dis-similar to what Vapo-Man had become though the two gas men manifested different powers (different chemical makeups perhaps?)

Gets me to thinking, is there something more primal about stories of reconstituted men, our very being broken down and put back together? It figures into Fire Man and Vapo-Man's chemical origins. Into the atomic age and we get Nukla, Captain Atom, Firestorm, and Dr. Manhattan. The novel ROGUE MOON deals with teleporting being basically disintergrating you and creating a clone complete with all your memories elsewhere (sorta like sending a fax via a machine that eats the original copy). And, of course has served as story fodder for various Star Treks.  Just free associating there.

I thought Atlas/Seaboard had some interesting characters. I liked the Phoenix before he bacame the Protector and I enjoyed both versions of the Scorpion, though the latter is a more generic superhero. He's still a bit of fun going up against an old Nazi villain and the Golem.

Thanks for the heads-up. It makes me trust your site less, , tho, knowing you make positive statements where you're not really sure.

I guess The Blue Lady is where I show how observant I am. I went over all three of her stories preparing my my article, and didn't notice mist powers -- just mist in the (overly complicated, if you ask me) origin story. Same with Fire Man's origin -- I only vaguely recall that part of it.

Teleportation has been a sci-fi staple since time immemorial, but this sure is a scary way of looking at it. I can see a weary traveler sitting in a teleportation booth, when a recorded voice pipes up:

"We are pleased to report you have arrived at your destination. We will now dispose of the redundant copy. This will be painless by definition, as reduntant copies are legally incable of feeling. We regret any inconvenience."

Quack, Don

The new characters debuted in The New Guardians are among the saddest of the post-series-cancellation DC victims: Ram was killed in a JSA story, Betty Clawman made a few cameos, & Extrano was heard from again. The most notable examples are Jet (who was supposedly killed in Invasion! Remember?) & Gloss. Jet was revealed to be alive & well, leading a recent revival of The Global Guardians (Why is she the leader of this GG team is an unsolved mystery. Tasmanian Devil is the one link to the older GG squads, but he is pretty goofy at best. A new Crimcson Fox is a GG, but she lacked the charm of the older versions! Manticore & Sandstorm are also non-entities. The only new Global Guardian with 'legs' was Freedom Beast, formerly the second B'Wana Beast!). Gloss is also part of the current Clobal Guardians team!

There are FOUR Aquagirls: The first two were one-shot characters (The first of whom, Lisa Morel, was sort of like the 'Supergirl' to Aquaman's 'Superman'!)
The third Aquagirl, Tula, was the one most remembered. She was killed in COIE. The fourtn Aquagirl,Lorena Marquez (Introduced in 2004) is the current Aquagirl!

J.A.P.