Flashback Friday: Cinderblock

Each Friday, I take one of the entries from my old Super Posts and expand it into its own featured article.

This week: Cinderblock!

Sometimes, like last week, canon immigrants go on to become major comics characters. Other times they're used exactly once and then never again. Cinderblock is an example of the latter.

Cinderblock is a villain that first appeared in the first episode of Teen Titans (July 2003).  He's your standard strong-but-stupid villain, a good physical threat to establish the Titans' powers and personalities right away.

Although he appeared in the tie-in comic pretty soon after that, in Teen Titans Go! #3 (January 2004)...

...he didn't make his canonical comics debut until Titans #17 in September 2009. And to date, that has been his only appearance.

Character Spotlight: Gordon Tracy

A character who's been around as long as Dick Tracy is bound to have some canon immigrants, so I don't know why it took me this long to learn about them. But I found a few that we'll talk about over the next several weeks.

This week: Gordon Tracy!

Gordon Tracy first appeared in the original Dick Tracy Republic serial (1937), where he was Dick's brother and a lawyer. Gordon hired Dick to investigate a murder, but during the course of the serial, Gordon was captured and brainwashed by the bad guy - who has like three different names, it's not important - to do his bidding. During a fight with Dick, he runs off the road and gets injured, recognizing his brother right before he died.

Gordon has been mentioned exactly once in the comic strip, on November 10, 2013. Dick is being interviewed on tv and runs through his family members. Gordon is mentioned as being deceased, so it's possible the serial - or some version of it - is canon to the show. Or based on the verbage, it's possible Gordon became evil but never died. PS. Every other name is the family of Chester Gould, Dick Tracy's creator. A fitting tribute!

We're not even halfway through the Dick Tracy characters, so come back next Wednesday for more!

Flashback Friday: X-23

Each Friday, I take one of the entries from my old Super Posts and expand it into its own featured article.

This week: X-23!

Marvel doesn't have the culture of canon immigrants that DC does. If I had to speculate why, I'd guess it's because Marvel has had fewer adaptations and the adaptations they have had are generally made by them, so they're more likely to use characters from the comics (especially after Toy Biz bought them, so they could make toys out of as many comic book characters as possible).

X-23 was perhaps the first Marvel canon foreigner I knew of. She debuted in an episode of X-Men: Evolution called "X-23" (August 2003). As X-Men : Evolution re-interpreted the X-Men as high school students, but kept some of them like Wolverine and Storm adults to be teachers at Xavier's school, the creators wanted to have a version of Wolverine that could connect more to the teens. But they also wanted to keep her interesting by making her the complete opposite of Wolverine - instead of an old man with no memories, she was a teenage girl who remembers all too well the things she's done and she's trying to escape them.

She made the jump to comics VERY quickly, appearing in NYX #3 (December 2003). Maybe they should've waited a little bit. In the early 2000s, the X-Men franchise greatly expanded to explore different facets of mutant culture. NYX was part of that effort and told stories about teenage mutants trying to get by on the streets. Not a bad idea for a book, and arguably not even a bad place to introduce X-23. Making her a prostitute, on the other hand, and one who specializes in cutting her clients...maybe not such the best idea (keep in mind she's also a minor, so there's that too).

She joined the cast of Uncanny X-Men the next year in #450 (October 2004) that unfortunately continued - though downplayed - her plot from NYX. Luckily, she received a miniseries beginning in January 2005 that put her more in line with her X-Men: Evolution self. Notably, the miniseries was written by Craig Kyle, who created the character.

And from there, she's taken off like a rocket. She's been a member of both the X-Men and X-Force, has had several ongoing series - under both her original name and as the All-New Wolverine - and has even gotten her own sidekick/clone, who goes by the name Honey Badger.

And she was faithfully adapted in Logan (2017), as well as having cameos in numerous other projects, including Wolverine and the X-Men (2009) and many video games such as Marvel vs. Capcom 3 (2011).

I would say she's Marvel's most successful canon immigrant, no question (Who would even be her competition? I mean, have you seen Firestar in a movie lately?).

Character Spotlight: Cueball

A character who's been around as long as Dick Tracy is bound to have some canon immigrants, so I don't know why it took me this long to learn about them. But I found a few that we'll talk about over the next several weeks.

This week: Cueball!

Cueball is a criminal that first appeared as the eponymous villain in the movie Dick Tracy vs. Cueball (1946), portrayed by Dick Wessel. He was a diamond thief who killed people by strangling them with a leather hatband.

He didn't appear in the comic strip until all the way in July (10th) 2011, as seen below. The comic gave him a brother named Screwball.

He continued to appear until his death in January 2012. I don't know how Dick Tracy handles death, so maybe he'll be back? Either way, you should be back next Wednesday, because the Dick Tracy bonanza is just getting started!

Flashback Friday: Isis

Each Friday, I take one of the entries from my old Super Posts and expand it into its own featured article.

This week: Isis!

Isis is a strange one because I'm not entirely sure how she's possible. But I suppose I should explain who she is first. See, Isis first appeared in the 1975 Filmation tv series, The Secrets of Isis, which was the second half of The Shazam!/Isis Hour.

The show was about a schoolteacher named Andrea Thomas, who discovered an amulet that she can use to harness the powers of the Egyptian goddess, Isis. As part of the Shazam!/Isis Hour, and probably because they have similar power origins, although I'm not sure whether that was a coincidence, the two characters crossed over frequently, with Isis appearing on three episodes of Shazam! and Captain Marvel appearing on three episodes of The Secrets of Isis.

An animated version of her later appeared in a very short-lived show called The Freedom Force (1978), which teamed up Isis with Hercules - from the Filmation animated series The Space Sentinels - to put together an international team of heroes. In addition to them, the team featured Merlin, Sinbad, and a character named Super Samurai. The whole thing lasted five episodes. The internet also claims she appeared in an episode of the animated series Hero High (the second half of The Shazam! Superpower Hour), but I can't find proof of that.

Isis's first comics appearance was, fittingly, Shazam! #25 (July 1976), but here's where the first bit of strangeness comes in: it's marked as a DC TV comic. DC TV comics were bizarre comics in the 70s of dubious canonicity. They were clearly marked tie-ins to tv shows, but written in a way that doesn't contradict the comic book universe. As an example of how strange they could be, Shazam! was an ongoing comic book series with no relation to the show. This DC TV comic issue was just dropped in the middle of the run, and afterward it's marketed as a DC TV for the rest of its run, but still isn't connected to either Shazam! show at all. All of that is to say that Isis is kind of an Earth-S character and kind of not. (See the Wonder Twins and the Global Guardians for more examples of this oddity.)

Isis then received her own series, The Mighty Isis, that began in September 1976 and ran for eight issues. All eight of them were marked as DC TV comics, so is this the same Isis that appeared in Shazam! #25, or a completely different one? As far as I know, there are no Captain Marvel appearances in the series, and no DC references at all...though the letters page does suggest - but doesn't state outright - that Isis's amulet was created by the wizard Shazam.

In 52 #3 (May 2006), DC introduced a character named Adrianna Tomaz, an Egyptian refugee who was brought to Black Adam as a slave. He killed her captors and freed her, and she helped convince him that he could be doing more good in the world. In return, he retrieved the Amulet of Isis, and in #12 (July 2006), he asked the wizard Shazam to confer the amulet's powers onto Adrianna, giving her the ability to transform into Isis. Adrianna Tomaz is obviously named after Andrea Thomas, and the series established that the Amulet's original owner, Hatshepsut, was one of Shazam's previous champions.

Here's where the strangeness really kicks in: DC DOESN'T OWN ISIS. Isis is a Filmation character. DC doesn't own Filmation. Warner Bros. doesn't own Filmation. How can they use her? Are they just skirting trademarks by the fact that Isis and Hatshepsut are historical characters in the public domain? Is the white dress generic enough that it's not actionable? Can they get by the transformation by the fact that Captain Marvel did it first?

I can't prove it, but I think DC got in trouble over it, and here's why. Less than a year after she was introduced, she was killed off, basically for good. Adrianna Tomaz later appeared in the New 52, in Justice League of America #7.4: Black Adam (September 2013), but she wasn't Isis and she hasn't been seen since.

She's appeared in adaptations, but those are peculiar too. The first one was in the Smallville episode, "Isis" (October 2010). In it, Lois Lane finds the amulet of Isis and transforms into a superhero very similar to the Isis we know. Notably, a character named Adrianna also appears in the episode, but has little to do with Isis - she's in charge of the exhibit that includes the amulet, but that's about it.

The character also appears in Legends of Tomorrow (first appearing in the episode "Zari", October 2017), but you'd be forgiven for not realizing it. Although she has the amulet, her name in this continuity is Zari Tomaz (though Adrianna is given as a middle name) and she doesn't transform or use the name Isis...but she does wear a much more modest version of the Isis costume as a Halloween costume in the episode "Phone Home" (October 2017).

So yeah, it seems like DC has to be very careful about how they use her, but they were still able to get into the comics universe, even for a brief time!

Character Spotlight: Gruesome

A character who's been around as long as Dick Tracy is bound to have some canon immigrants, so I don't know why it took me this long to learn about them. But I found a few that we'll talk about over the next several weeks.

This week: Gruesome!

Gruesome originated as the villain in Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome (1947), the last picture in the RKO Dick Tracy film series. As played by Boris Karloff, Gruesome is essentially Tim Burton's version of the Joker: a professional criminal who gets a distinctive face because of a botched plastic surgery job.

In October 2014, Gruesome made his debut in the Dick Tracy comic strip, complete with a reference to the actor that played him - a double reference, in fact, since the line quotes a character in Arsenic and Old Lace that was originally played by Boris Karloff.

He has since appeared many times, and he's far from the only character from this movie to do so. Come back next Wednesday for another example!

Flashback Friday: Black Kryptonite

Each Friday, I take one of the entries from my old Super Posts and expand it into its own featured article.

This week: Black Kryptonite!

Before we get into black Kryptonite proper, I'm not sure the conversation would be complete without mentioning synthetic kryptonite. In Superman III (1983), Gus Gorman tries to recreate Kryptonite in a lab. But since some of the chemical makeup was unknown, his concoction used tar to make up the difference, and that resulted in a new kind of Kryptonite that turned Superman "evil". Being Christopher Reeve's Superman, his "evilness" mostly resulted in growing stubble, drinking, and pulling pranks.

Black Kryptonite appears for the first time in the Smallville season 4 premiere, "Crusade" (2004). In the episode, black Kryptonite splits Clark into a good version and evil version of himself. It would go on to be used several times throughout the show, always with the same result, though often with different intentions.

Black-K made its comics debut in Supergirl #2 (August 2005), as part of a Kryptonite collection owned by Lex Luthor. It had the same effect as in Smallville, splitting Supergirl into good and evil versions. The substance was never very popular (as its use is fairly limited storytelling-wise), but it did made a few more appearances in Superman/Batman and All-Star Superman.

Despite its lack of popularity, however, it did survive the New 52. A version of it appeared on Earth -22 in Dark Knights: Metal - The Batman Who Laughs #1 (November 2017), but this version just turns the infected evil and then they die shortly afterwards. I don't know whether the difference is because of the New 52 or because it's a Dark Multiverse version or both.

But Black Kryptonite seems to be catching on in popularity because it also appeared on Supergirl last year (May 2018). Strangely, it debuted as a substance called Harun-El that was used to make the Worldkillers - the villains of that season. The Worldkillers were living as humans on Earth and their Worldkiller identities had to be awakened, after which time they worked like split personalities, so the Harun-El was eventually used to split one of the Worldkillers, Reign, from her regular persona, Samantha Arias. Later, it created a duplicate of Supergirl known as the Red Daughter, who is one of the villains of season four.

Character Spotlight: Kyodai Ken

Batman: The Animated Series was made at a time when adaptations, for whatever reason, mainly used original characters. It was only around the turn of the millennium that shows started to dive deep into continuity and use minor characters that would fit their stories. Before that, for the most part, if you weren't A-List, you didn't make it into an adaptation. Batman was better about this than others, but even then, the majority of its characters were original to the show. And yet, relatively few of those characters have made it back to the comics. Sure, you have your Harley Quinns and your Nora Frieses, but for each one of those, you have five Red Claws or Baby Dolls.

So I'm excited to announce another one making the list: Kyodai Ken!

Kyodai Ken first appeared in the episode "Night of the Ninja" (October 1992), the first - and one of the only - episodes of the show to delve into ow Bruce Wayne trained to become Batman.

In the episode, a group of ninjas starts targeting Wayne properties for thefts. It's originally revealed that the leader, Kyodai Ken, trained with Bruce under the tutelage of a ninja master in Japan named Yoru. Kyodai Ken was the only person able to beat Bruce, but he was expelled from the dojo when Bruce caught him trying to steal a sword. Kyodai Ken wants revenge, but Batman is able to finally defeat him in the present, and that seems to be that until Kyodai Ken shows up again a few months later in the sequel, "Day of the Samurai" (February 1993).

Over TWENTY-FIVE years later, Kyodai Ken finally appears in Detective Comics #996 (January 2019). In the lead-up to Detective Comics #1000, Batman realizes that someone is attacking all the people that made him the man he is today. Once he figures that out, he heads to Korea to make sure his old master, Kirigi (not Yoru, for some reason), is safe. And when he gets there, he's met by Kyodai Ken, Kirigi's lone remaining student.

He and Bruce don't seem to have any history, and it's hard to say if we'll ever see him again. But you never know with comics!