52 Shake-Up: Artemis

"52 Shake-Up" is a series focusing on DC's New 52. Posts get a 52 Shake-Up tag if it's an already existing canon immigrant who now exists in the New 52 as well, or if it's a previously existing character who was changed so drastically by the New 52 to fit a version of themselves in another medium that they could be mistaken for being a canon immigrant.


You'd be forgiven for thinking that the archer named Artemis first appeared in Young Justice (2010), but she didn't. She actually first appeared all the way back in Infinity Inc #34 (December 1986) as a villain who was the daughter of Golden Age villains Tigress and Sportsmaster, just like Infinity Inc were the children and proteges of Golden Age heroes. In Young Justice she's likewise the daughter of Sportsmaster but trying to be a hero (or is a mole pretending to be a hero; it's been a while since I've seen the show)...at least until she becomes Tigress in season 2.

In the New 52, she makes two brief appearances. The first is in Teen Titans #8 (April 2012), where she's seen wearing a rugged version of her Young Justice outfit. She also has the blonde hair and long ponytail of her animated counterpart. She dies during "The Culling" crossover, but is later revealed to have been revived along with the rest of the teens "killed" during the Culling.

Appearance Spotlight: Vixen

Vixen is a DC Comics character who's mainly known for being a part of the much-maligned Justice League Detroit era. She actually first appeared in Action Comics #521, where she looked like this:

But by the time she joined the Justice League, she looked like this...for some reason.

After she dropped out of the spotlight her appearance changed a couple times, and by October 2004 she had this very generic look:

But right after that (December 2004), she appeared in the Justice League Unlimited episode "Wake the Dead", where she more closely resembled her classic appearance, but with a more modern haircut.

Vixen went on to have several guest spots on the show, with the last one being the episode "Grudge Match" (March 2006). Just a few months later, she joined the Justice League again in Justice League of America #0 (August 2006) with a very similar look:

 She later appeared in the New 52 with a similar but not quite the same design, although with her having a completely different costume in her upcoming animated series, I'm curious to see whether her comics self will once again follow suit (no pun intended).

Appearance Spotlight: Static

I've mentioned Static before on this site in the DCAU Super Post, but I recently found out some new information about him, so I'm removing him from that post and giving him his own.

Static, aka Virgil Hawkins, first appeared in Static #1 (1993), published by Milestone Media. Like most superpowered people in Dakota, he got his powers in an event called the Big Bang, but whereas the others were generally gang members and criminals, he was a smart kid who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

In 2000, Milestone Media adapted Static into a show on the Kids' WB called Static Shock. As it was a Saturday morning cartoon, they made it more kid-friendly and a little brighter, which included a more standard superhero costume for Static:

In 2001, Milestone and DC published a miniseries called Static Shock: Rebirth of the Cool. Although a sequel to the original Static series, this time he wore his animated outfit. The costume actually first appeared in printed form on the cover of Static Shock: Trial by Fire, which was published in anticipation of the animated series, it does not appear in the book itself.

Static Shock season 3 (2003) saw a number of changes to the show, including Static's outfit, as seen below:

In December 2008, Static made his first appearance in DC Comics proper, in Terror Titans #3, wearing his season 3 (and 4) outfit. This signaled the merging of the Milestone and DC universes, a move which had already happened in the DC Animated Universe during Static Shock season 2. 

The DC/Milestone merger survived the New 52 and Static was one of the first 52 series launched, but it only lasted eight issues. Milestone Media has since announced plans to relaunch, and what that means for their characters appearing in the DC universe remains to be seen.

Spider-Verse: Spider-Carnage

Spider-Verse is a currently running event in the Spider-Man comics that will involve every* Spider-Man we've ever met, including several Spider-Women and Spider-Girls (not to mention Scarlet Spiders and Spider-Hams and whatnot), and several brand-new versions. The premise is simple: there's a group of people trying to wipe out every Spider character across the multiverse, so all the Spider characters will team up to stop them. This is, of course, a massive event - multimedia even, since it will also feature in the Spider-Man Unlimited video game and the animated series Ultimate Spider-Man - and given the premise, it's only natural that it will add a few entries to this catalog.

*I say "every" because Marvel says "every", but there are a few that won't be showing up, such as Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield. (Although see here for more information on that.)

Today's entry is Spider-Carnage.

This version of Carnage first appeared in the Ultimate Spider-Man episode "Carnage" (2.08, March 2013). In the episode, Carnage begins as an "improved" version of the Venom symbiote, which Harry Osborn forcefully bonds to Peter Parker. Perhaps a coincidence or perhaps because Peter is Spider-Man, the symbiote takes on the spider-esque appearance you see above.

This Carnage appears in a cameo in Amazing Spider-Man #9 (October 2014), as seen below.

To read about the normal version of Ultimate Spider-Man appearing in Spider-Verse, visit this page.

Starfire's New Look! (Plus Some Info About Her Old Looks)

In June, DC Comics is going to re-organize their line, cancelling all but 24 books and launching 20 new books (plus four miniseries). The goal is diversity in genre, tone, style, character, and creator, and unlike The New 52, which also seemed to strive for diversity, I think they'll actually succeed this time.

One of the new series being released is Starfire, and they also released some promotional art for it:

From the looks of this art, I think it's a safe guess that this book will be targeting teen girls, who happened to grow up on the Teen Titans animated series, which premiered July 2003. In the show, Starfire looked like this:

It's not a 1:1 match, but the overall look is the same. They got rid of the collar, added sleeves, and changed the skirt to shorts, but it still has the silver accents and gauntlets (which are even the same shape), the thigh-high boots, the crop top, the straight hair, and perhaps most tellingly, the pupils in her eyes. 

For comparison, I've added her previous looks below. These first two are from The New Teen Titans (1980) and Titans (1999). They don't really look anything like the above photos except being purple:

These next two are from Teen Titans (August 2003) and Red Hood and the Outlaws (2011). As you can see, and as I've mentioned before on the Teen Titans Super Post*, Teen Titans took her back to her original costume but added her thigh-highs from the show and sort-of straightened her hair, and the New 52 version on the right is just a mess, but kept the thigh-highs and added the silver accents from the show.

*as I've repeated the entry with more complete information here, I'll be removing it from that page

Multiversity: Earth-12 and Earth-50

I am so glad for Multiversity.

Multiverses are one of the greatest elements of literature, but so often they're poorly used. DC, in particular, seems to have a love/hate relationship with them. Depending on the era, they either love to have them but hate to use them, or love to use them but not want them around. So it's nice to see Grant Morrison using the crap out of them in Final Crisis, Action Comics, and especially Multiversity. And now with the Multiversity Guidebook that was released this month (January 2015), it's nice to finally see a complete map of all the worlds - minus seven - that is fleshed out enough that each could have its own line of comics if DC wanted. But it's two worlds in particular we're here for today, and the first one actually DOES have its own line of comics!

Earth-12 is home to the Batman Beyond 2.0 and Justice League Beyond 2.0 specifically, and more generally the DC Animated Universe. I've written about this world pretty extensively. This universe first appeared in Countdown #21 (December 2007) and then more fully in Batman Beyond 2.0 #1 (August 2013). It also made an appearance in Countdown: Arena, but the less said about that, the better.

The next Earth, however, is one I didn't expect to see:

This Earth is based on an alternate reality from the DC Animated Universe in which the Justice League has become a totalitarian police force. It was first seen in the Justice League episode "A Better World" (2003) and later mentioned in the comics, which you can read about here. Because these Justice Lords are based on the present-day Justice League and the Justice Lords we see at that link are based on the Beyond-era Justice League Unlimited, I'm pretty sure this is the first appearance of these characters outside of Lord Superman (although they could've appeared in flashback, I'm not sure).

And this is a good example of not being sure how close the New 52 multiverse would be to the 52 multiverse, because Earth-50 was originally home to WildStorm characters (which are now on Earth-0).

Character Spotlight: Simon Trent

God bless Gotham Academy. It's starting to look like I'll be able to make new entries as long as it's being published, so I hope it never gets cancelled.

The newest member of staff they've introduced is Simon Trent, the school's resident drama teacher. He was first mentioned several times in issue #1 (October 2014) in dialogue, on a sign, and on a poster for a movie called "House of Secrets" (which he starred in with Basil Karlo, aka Clayface), but his first actual appearance was in issue #4 (January 2015). He even says he has "experience playing a ghost"!

Simon Trent, as I'm sure you know, was featured in an episode of Batman: The Animated Series called "Beware The Gray Ghost" (1992). In the episode, Simon Trent is an actor who played a superhero called The Gray Ghost in an old tv show Bruce Wayne watched when he was a kid. The Gray Ghost was part of what inspired Bruce to be Batman, but over the years the show faded into obscurity. In an ironic but terrible - and all too real - situation, the show is too obscure for Trent to live on the royalties or props sales anymore, yet still well known enough to have Trent still associated with the role, and therefore not being able to get any others. Nevertheless, Trent teams up with Batman to track down a bomber who's basing his crimes on an old Gray Ghost episode, which leads to a surge in the show's popularity and things turn out ok for Trent in the end.

Although this is Simon Trent's first appearance, the "Gray Ghost" persona - and the Mad Bomber - has appeared as well, which I talk about in the Batman The Animated Series Super Post.