Slightly Misplaced Comic Book Heroes Case File #41: Rocket Red

 

When the Justice League was funny, it was supposed to be tied to the United Nations.  That meant it actually had to have some foreign members instead of the usual collection of Americans.  Oh yeah, some of those Americans were aliens, and Aquaman probably had duel citizenship with Atlantis at the time, but when the closest you can come to a foreign member is Wonder Woman from Paradise Island, then you need to try a little harder and maybe pull out a good guy from a real country instead of a fictional one.

So, yeah, we got ourselves a Russian hero in Rocket Red.

Slightly Misplaced Comic Book Heroes Case File #39: The Beefeater

The Justice League was originally DC’s premier super team, the big guns team you called in when really serious problems that even Superman (theoretically) could not stop alone came a’ callin’.  Then, Post-Crisis, the League was actually turned into a book that was largely played for laughs.  That run was actually hugely popular.  Heck, Watson likes it, and he largely dislikes comics these days.  Considering the run occurred about the same time as Frank Miller and Alan Moore had (inadvertently in Moore’s case) made superheroes a lot less fun and funny, that means a whole lot more.

And hey, we got the Beefeater from that period, too.

The Really Messed Up History Of The Blue Beetle

Yeah, all these guys were the Blue Beetle.

A number of superhero names have complicated backstories.  The Green Lantern, for example, was originally Alan Scott, and his ring worked against anything except for wood.  Later the ring would pass to Hal Jordan, and be less magical but more science fiction, and work against anything except the color yellow.  That weakness would be eliminated later on, but to start, you could stop the Green Lantern with either a stick or a primary color depending on which one it was.

That’s nothing compared to the Blue Beetle.