Character worth saving from oblivion: Tyrannus

According to Wikipedia:

In the Roman Empire, Tyrannus claims to be a "sorcerer", but is actually a scientist far ahead of his time. He was exiled by Merlin to Subterranea, a network of caves and tunnels miles beneath the Earth's surface. There Tyrannus discovers a race of orange-skinned semi-humanoid Subterraneans who are eager to find in him a new master to serve. He also discovers a pool of liquid which he drinks to maintain his youth through the centuries. The Subterraneans acquaint Tyrannus with examples and records of technology designed by the Deviants who were their original masters. Tyrannus' scientific genius enables him to master and improve upon the Deviants' scientific wonders over the centuries. Tyrannus becomes Emperor of the Tyrannoid Subterraneans, and an aspiring conqueror.

In the modern era, Tyrannus is finally ready to use this technology and the Subterraneans in conquering the surface world. Tyrannus makes several attempts at conquering the surface world as well as fighting wars against the forces of a new arrival in Subterranea, the Mole Man.

Here's a character who's lived for thousands of years, belonged to shadowy conspiracies (which existed long before The Illuminati and The Cabal) that manipulated events behind the scenes, and controlled an army of little dudes that look like The Greys.

Truly, if there was ever a character with untapped possibilities for some nice conspiracy stories, here he is. Take him out of his quaint Roman uniform, add a touch of The Count of St. Germain, add some UFO conspiracies, and take him as seriously as the X-Men creators (Chris Claremont, Dave Cockrum and John Byrne) took Magneto seriously, and you've got a character who could be as cool as Ra's al Ghul. It's not like it would take much to give him a makeover, just a reassessment of and commitment to what's already there.

Save them from Oblivion: The Royal Flush Gang

This one's a weird one so bear with me...

The Royal Flush Gang was created during Julie Schwartz's editorship of the Justice League. As such, when fans like Len Wein and Gerry Conway started writing for the JLA, the characters seemed stuck in a strange nostalgic mode that seemed to revere the characters but didn't know exactly what to do with them. As such, they would appear in one issue to bedevil the JLA before being sent back to jail in that same issue.

No real challenge. Bizarre in appearance, with costumes George Perez was born to draw, they seemed more like a distraction than a real threat.

At least until they started appearing in Batman Beyond and other DC Animated shows.



Maybe with their bizarre appearance and modus operandi, they're tailor made for television. Maybe the current DCU is too grim to marvel at people dressed up like card characters with fantastic gadgets. I dunno.

Personally, I hope the Royal Flush Gang show up in the DCUO MMO.

Characters worth saving: A clarification

WARNING!! OLD-TIMER ABOUT TO START RANTING!!

I'm a long-time comics reader, so I remember reading the X-Men first time around. One of the things that used to amaze me was how Chris Clarement would "borrow" a character from another comic's run (say, Belasco from "Kazar the Savage"), do a little hocus-pocus, and boom!, a new character is interacting with the X-Men. This was the way crossovers and such used to be done. I remember this happening most often in the team-up books like Marvel Two-In-One and Marvel Team-Up (which, incidentally, Claremont used to work on, including a memorable run with John Byrne).

Anyway, one thing he'd usually do (but not always, as Rachel van Helsing can attest) is that he'd leave the character in a state where the original character was left intact and could be picked up by another creative team and used in their stories. Thus Dracula would harass the X-Men or the X-Men would travel to Asgard and met Loki and when the story was done, Dracula was still undead and loving it, and Asgard was still intact.

Nowadays, the Avengers travel to Canada and meet Alpha Flight to fight some menace, and Alpha Flight is wiped out by said menace! What the...?!!?

Now the next creative team who wants to use Alpha Flight has to jump through hoops to explain how they've returned? That's just ridiculous...

One thing an old time editor (I think it was Julie Schwartz, but don't hold me to it) used to tell his writers was: "If you're going to wipe out an old character, you've got to create a new character to replace him." There's none of that going on, especially it seems at Marvel. Old characters are removed and then resurrected, with no new ones being created. Characters like the Owl and Alpha Flight are going through their 3rd or 4th re-conceptualization. New characters don't last long enough to make an impression before they're wiped out.

Sigh...

Anyway, this rant is long-winded way of describing "Characters Worth Saving from Oblivion". Some of these characters been done wrong. They need to have their Reset button pressed so they can start over and get back to basics.

Characters worth saving from oblivion: Nebiros

Full bio in the Rogues Section at Justin's Honest to Goodness Blue Devil Page.

My brother was so moved by Nebiros and Blue Devil that he developed sprites for a Blue Devil video game. A project he never finished. I still remind him of that once in a while.

Characters worth saving from oblivion: Equinox

Another Len Wein/Gil Kane creation. I swear...

Another visually interesting character with a cool powerset. What could be cooler?

Some dynamic John Byrne scans can be seen here. Wikipedia article here and a rather stiff non-dynamic image here. comicbook db also has a nice appearance list; I've gotta check them out more and provide them here for fun.

Characters worth saving from oblivion: The Basilisk

Both the Marvel Database Wikia and the official Marvel Wiki agree that the Basilisk was killed by Scourge, but Wikipedia says that he was resurrected by the Hood to be sent after the Punisher.

Whatever. I just liked him when he first appeared in Marvel Team-Up #16 and went up against Spider-Man and Captain Mar-vell. Maybe it was the awesome Gil Kane art. Maybe it was that I appreciated a time (now long forgotten) when creators gleefully created new opponents all the time rather than going through the old vaults to see what characters could be revamped or revisited. Anyway, Basilisk deserved better than he got.

UPDATE:
comicbook db has an appearance listing.

Characters worth saving from oblivion: Ringmaster

Yes, the Ringmaster. Not to be confused with the Ringer, even though their gadgets seem similar.

Character worth saving from oblivion: Major Disaster

I'm not sure about the "new reformed Major Disaster". I liked the old classic bad guy who could cause earthquakes, shoot lightning from his hands, and stuff like that. That's the one I'd like to see.

UPDATE:
I thought about Major Disaster overnight and I realized that what Major Disaster's major flaw was that he was a Marvel character in a DC universe.

Lemme 'splain.

With his powersets of earthquake generation and lightning control (and possibly other powers like storm control and fireball generation, the Wiki entries seem to be a bit vague on the subject and only discuss his current incarnation), he sounds like someone who (with proper training) could go toe-to-toe in a proper slobberknocker with someone like Thor or Iron Man. Yet he was created in the DC universe where Julie Schwartz and his writers probably didn't watch too much wrestling and so involved him in clever puzzlers with the Flash and Green Lantern. Going up against Flash and Green Lantern (two of the cleverest super-heroes around, especially as handled by Julie Schwartz, Gardner Fox and John Broome) would make any villain look like a putz. Thus his mortyrdom in later years to be regarded as a candidate for the the Giffen/DeMatteis Justice League stories.

What he needed was some serious Stan Lee monologues, declaring how great and powerful he was and how he could completely destroy Green Lantern and the Flash and whoever stepped in his way, blah blah blah. Add some potent displays of power and he could've been an Amazo-level villain capable of taking on the entire Justice League (in a non-Giffen/DeMatteis manner).

Turning him into a megalomaniacal Marvel character might've made more sense than turning, say, Despero into one (truly, a brainy villain if there was one, dumbed down in later years to be an evil smart Hulk) or even Starro, especially in his recently-previewed new incarnation.

Character worth saving from oblivion

Amethyst.

From Cliff Chiang's sketchbook.