Wednesday Comments – After Stephanie and Wally; Who Should Return Next?

Columns, Top Story

For some reason I’ve decided to undertake a pretty challenging endeavor; I’ve decided to go back through all of my old Who’s Who in the DCU columns and add the appropriate tags.

It might not seem like a particularly arduous task, until you remember that I wrote that column weekly, for six years. So I’ve basically got to skim over 300 columns, add the tags and update. It’s not really hard, but it is time consuming.

And I’m basically just doing it so that the site will be easier to navigate. The column ran for six years and there’s a ton of information that’s essentially unsorted. I’m just trying to make it more orderly. You can chart my progress with this tag.

But in my revisiting the old columns I keep seeing characters pop up who aren’t presently being used in the DCU. Because of the nature of the current DCU, there are literally scores of characters that are currently being ignored.

However since we know that both Stephanie Brown and Wally West will be making their New 52 debut this year, it’s certainly given me hope that perhaps we will see some other characters show up in the near future. Here are some of the vaguely familiar faces that I hope to see soon.

One of the first characters that I’d like to see is Snapper Carr. Snapper is your quintessential Silver Age character. He was the teenage mascot of the Justice League of America back when they first began. We’re over two years into the New 52 and we still haven’t seen hide nor hair of Snapper Carr? You’d think that with DC returning to their Silver Age roots (ala the resurrection of both Barry Allen and Hal Jordan) they’d have a little room for Snapper Carr in the mix.

The next character I’m really hoping shows up this year is Orpheus. For those not in the know, Orpheus was the Black hero of Gotham. He patrolled The Hill, a Black neighborhood in Gotham. He met his end during the controversial War Games storyline.

Orpheus’ return would be a good thing on a few fronts. First off, it would make my old column buddy Tim Stevens very happy. He’s a big fan of Orpheus. Secondly, not only is Gotham patrolled nearly exclusively by white people, but the DCU itself isn’t really a bastion of diversity. And it would be relatively easy to incorporate the character and his New 52 origin into Batman Eternal, the upcoming weekly book.

Now the next one is kind of tricky and is probably the least likely to happen, but I’d like to see the young women of Young Justice. I’m talking specifically about Arrowette, Secret and Empress. Empress is the least likely to happen, given that she was co-created by Peter David and he and DC aren’t on the best of terms. Still, given how Darkseid and Apokolips loom over the current titles, her link to the Anti-Life Equation would make her an interesting character.

But Arrowette and Secret should totally be on the table. The “young justice” line of New 52 books is almost at it’s end and now would be a great time to infuse some femininity into the mix. Everyone knows about Superboy, Red Robin, Kid Flash and Wonder Girl, but how about evening up things a bit? You add Arrowette and Secret into the mix and suddenly you’ve got a team that’s a 50/50 split. It’s something DC could use as a pr move, and they could use some good pr.

Lastly, since Wally West is returning, it sort of begs the question about the two remaining former sidekicks/Teen Titans; Donna Troy and Garth. I don’t really know how Donna would fit into the mix that is Wonder Woman’s life (and I wouldn’t want to mess up the magic that Brian Azzarello is creating monthly) so I’m not super forceful about her return. But I will say that the return of Garth would be something that would get me to pick up Aquaman again.

So those are the characters that I’d like to see return to the DCU; Donna Troy, Garth, Arrowette, Secret, Empress, Orpheus and Snapper Carr. Agree? Disagree? Is there anyone you’d like to see return?

And that’s it for this week. It’s Wednesday go out and get some fresh new comics from your local comic shop.