Superman's earliest and most iconic love interest^note In fact his earliest supporting character period - she made her debut in Action Comics #1, the very same issue Superman made his own debut in, Lois Lane is a skilled and determined reporter for the Daily Planet. Her typical subject of writing is Superman: she reports on his exploits and occasionally tries to puzzle out his real identity, but she's always foiled. She has a hidden crush on Superman, and less so on Clark Kent, creating a Love Triangle out of two people, though she sometimes suspects that they're one and the same...

You can find out more about her in her own article.

James Bartholomew "Jimmy" Olsen

Species: Human

First appearance: Action Comics #6 (November 1938) ^note Anonymously; The Adventures of Superman radio serial (April 15th, 1940) ^note as Jimmy Olsen

Jimmy Olsen is "Superman's best friend" and one of the best known characters from the hero's supporting cast. He was created for the Superman radio show in 1940, mainly as someone for Superman to talk with (besides Lois Lane, who was both a woman/love interest and sometimes rather contrary) so he could explain things to the audience indirectly. Jimmy was later introduced in the comics themselves.

An anonymous character who looked like Jimmy turned up as early as "Action Comics" #6 (November, 1938). But the first actual comic book appearance for Mr. Olsen was "Superman" #13 (November-December, 1941). Presumably, he was also created as an Audience Surrogate for the show's fans, who were mostly young boys. Jimmy also has some resemblance to Archie (who was also very popular at the time) in that both were impulsive but well-meaning red-haired, freckled teenagers. They even dressed alike, including wearing bowties!

Jimmy works as a photographer for the Daily Planet, which is an excuse for him to accompany the intrepid reporters Lois and Clark in their adventures without being one himself. However, he has absolutely no problem getting into far more trouble and sent on far more bizarre adventures than he seeks out, and his unique status, which since Crisis on Infinite Earths has almost taken the form of a Running Gag, is the fact that he is possibly the single most powerful Weirdness Magnet in the entire DC Universe (and in this respect is often compared to The Avengers' ally Rick Jones from Marvel).

Jimmy became so popular he actually starred in his own comic book series, the humorous Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen, which lasted for 163 issues, from September 1954 to March 1974. This series is better remembered today for the amount of bizarre transformations Jimmy underwent in many of its stories. However those were only part of the wackiness featured in the series, which ranged from romantic problems with his girlfriend Lucy Lane (Lois' sister) to temporarily adopting his own superhero identity (several different ones in fact). It was also notable for Jack Kirby's brief but memorable tenure on the title which he used to inaugurate his Fourth World stories in the DCU, including the first appearance of Darkseid.

After Kirby's departure, Jimmy's title was combined with Lois' and Supergirl's to create Superman Family, in which Jimmy's stories became more realistic urban crime adventures. In them, the crooks are usually Genre Savvy enough to remove his signal-watch, forcing him to rely more on his own wits. Fortunately, Jimmy is more than up to the task as a two-fisted Intrepid Reporter.

Jimmy's role has since waned over the decades; his role as best friend was effectively taken over by Lois in the post-Crisis era, as she was not only more agreeable, but also married to Superman. Besides, most writers seem to recall Jimmy more for his silly adventures than for his serious ones. His last major story arc (which took place in the much-maligned Countdown to Final Crisis series) had him apparently gaining all the powers he had during his Silver Age series, but out of his control; it was eventually revealed that the reason was because Darkseid had chosen him as the vessel of the energy for the dying New Gods... for some reason.

However, Jimmy later got his own mini-series, starting as a co-feature in Action Comics, before getting canceled, and later reprinted with the storyline complete. In fact, it was praised as one of the best series of the year, and deeper delving into Jimmy's character, particularly his Genre Savviness about his cosmic plaything status, has yielded surprisingly solid results. Imagine Jimmy as the non-time traveling Doctor of the DCU. This storyline also finally introduced the popular Smallville character Chloe Sullivan into official DC Comics continuity, and paired the two fellow Canon Immigrants (Chloe from Smallville, Jimmy from the radio serials) together.

In the New 52 era, Jimmy's role waned again; this incarnation was established as being from a rich family, and was Clark Kent's roommate for a while, but gradually faded into the background, as the nature of Clark's relationship with the Planet got increasingly obscure. In the DC Rebirth era, he returned to prominence, including a 12 issue maxi-series that, like the previous mini, embraced the character's traditional Weirdness Magnet status.

The continued interest in the character just goes to show Jimmy is likely to remain a part of the Superman Mythos forever.

• Abandoned Catchphrase: In the early days of his comic, Jimmy Olsen would think "Super duper!" to himself when something went off well. It didn't last and has long since fallen into obscurity.
• Act of True Love: In All-Star Superman, Jimmy turns himself into Doomsday to stop a black Kryptonite infected Superman without sending him to the Phantom Zone. The head of P.R.O.J.E.C.T warns him that Doomsday's DNA could very well destroy his mind, but Jimmy considers the risk to his life and sanity quite worth it to save his best friend.
• Action Hero: During the Bronze Age, Jimmy turned into more of a scrapper and had a number of adventures himself. He was even dubbed "Mr. Action" by the Daily Planet.
• Acquired Situational Narcissism: In the mid-nineties, Jimmy quit the Planet because he didn't feel he was taken seriously there, became a TV reporter for GBS, and instantly became an arrogant jerk. How much of a jerk he was waxed and waned, but the arrogance lasted until GBS sacked him when he suddenly realised, live on air, that maybe exposing Superman's secret identity (which he was wrong about anyway) wasn't something a pal would do.
• Adaptation Dye-Job: Despite being one of the most iconic redheads in comics, he's never been one in live-action.
• Adaptive Armor: His powers during "Countdown" were triggered only when he was in actual danger.
• Adult Adoptee: Several stories have Superman adopt him as his son.
• Affectionate Nickname: Superman's preferred name for Jimmy varies by what era of comic books one is reading. Silver Age Superman referred to Jimmy as his "pal" and variants thereon. More recently, his preferred nickname (as Superman and Clark) is "Jim", with Jimmy claiming that only Superman and Clark use that name when he reveals in 2020 that he's actually known Clark's secret for some time.
• Aliens Speaking English: One Silver Age story had Jimmy stranded on an alien world where everyone spoke English. The explanation? They had studied the universe's languages and adopted English as the most efficient! Never mind that English—with its various loanwords, silent letters, and how every rule has an exception—is far from the most efficient language on this planet.
• Ambiguously Bi: All of his official love interests were women, but a few times it's been implied that he might be attracted to Superman, which was hilariously played up in All-Star Superman.
• Apologetic Attacker: In one story, Jimmy realizes that Superman is infected with the virus that is wreaking havoc through Kandor. He mentally says "Sorry for what I'm about to do, pal" before knocking him out.
• Arch-Enemy: He gets his own arch-enemy in the Action Comics backup strip: a young Lexcorp executive called Sebastian Mallory. He acknowledges that "Superman's Pal vs Lex Luthor's protege" might seem a bit obvious, but they really do hate each other.
• The Artifact: As noted in his description, Jimmy never quite fell out of the comics, but the Post-Crisis era seemed to not really know what to do with him. He's Superman's friend, but now he was competing in that role with Lois Lane after most of her more irritable qualities were sanded off and she had become fully aware of Superman's identity (something Jimmy wasn't), not to mention other superheroes like Batman. Additionally, in the 90s, the Superman comics were incredibly reluctant to invoke anything Silver Age unless it was run through a few filters, and as that was the place where most of Jimmy's defining characteristics were laid down, that didn't leave him with a lot besides "guy who works at the Daily Planet." Once the writers became comfortable invoking that imagery, though, Jimmy managed to find a purpose as a standardbearer of oddness and an adventurer in his own right despite remaining a normal guy, a take that has more or less stuck.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Jimmy Olsen's transformation into Turtle-Man is perhaps the most ridiculous example.
• Attractive Bent-Gender: Jimmy looks pretty darn fetching as a woman, and in one story, a mobster falls for the disguised Jimmy.
• Badass Normal:
  • Pre-Crisis, Jimmy did some pretty heroic things, mostly to avoid the inevitable debris of hanging around the planet's most powerful being, on top of providing exposés of crime rings for public viewing. Technically, this is mostly a case of Depending on the Writer; the Jimmy Olsen from Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen #1 is very different from the one that starred in Superman Family #222. Sadly, post-Crisis Jimmy stayed a complete and total putz until the 2000s.
  • Nick Spencer's Action Comics story "Jimmy Olsen's Big Week" basically runs with this. Sure, Jimmy's a Cosmic Plaything, but he's genre savvy and clever enough to deal with everything from genies to evil mid-level LexCorp employees. He's the DCU's Doctor.
• Best Friends-in-Law:
  • In Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen #57, Jimmy got married to Supergirl, Superman's cousin. (He didn't originally know that she was Superman's cousin, having married her Secret Identity, Linda Lee Danvers, but presumably he considered it another plus once he found out.)
  • In Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen #56, Superman marries Lois Lane and Jimmy marries Lucy, Lois' younger sister. Their children also form a relationship in the same issue, though there's less concern about the fact that they're cousins and more about the fact that Superman's daughter being a hero herself could potentially put Jimmy Jr.'s life in danger.
• Boss's Unfavorite Employee: While Perry White is short-tempered and demanding in general, Jimmy especially attracts his wrath on the regular. Sometimes this is justified by Jimmy suffering from Acquired Situational Narcissism and needing someone to take him down a peg, but other aspects for which Perry yells at him (such as his habit of calling Perry "Chief") seem less legitimate.
• Butt-Monkey: Poor Jimmy constantly suffers from bad luck. In particular, he has trouble getting a girlfriend (and his Pre-Crisis love interest, Lucy Lane, would often take him for granted), and he would always find himself in bizarre situations, such as getting turned into a wolfman (twice!), getting tricked into drinking a vitamin formula that turns him into a 300-pound fat man, finding a lamp with an evil genie and accidentally switching places with him so the genie is the human master and Jimmy is his genie slave, and more crazy problems. In the story, The Human Porcupine, from Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen #65, the narrator even lampshades Jimmy’s status as an unlucky Weirdness Magnet with a habit of going through strange transformations.
  Narrator: Poor Jimmy! Everything, it seems, happens to the impulse Daily Planet news hawk - and usually, it’s unpleasant! On separate occasions, he’s been transformed into a wolf-man, a giant turtle man, a space alien, and a merman!
• Camera Fiend: Some versions of Jimmy are photographers.
• Canon Immigrant: Introduced in the radio show, though some claim an (unnamed) copy boy in an earlier Superman comic was supposed to be Jimmy.
• Captain Ersatz: Superman and Jimmy Olsen become Batman and Robin Expies Nightwing and Flamebird in the bottled city of Kandor, allowing Jimmy to fight crime alongside a depowered Superman (since Kandor is under a red sun).
• Clueless Chick-Magnet: A running gag most frequently seen in his Silver Age incarnation, Jimmy has tremendous success attracting the attention of many attractive young ladies, even though it's never really clear what exactly is attractive about him. He's even gotten the attention of non-human paramours.
• Conveniently an Orphan: Like Superman, Jimmy is sometimes written as parentless, presumably to explain why his mother and father aren't freaking out about all the trouble he gets into on a daily basis. This also allows the authors to add shades of Parental Substitute to his relationships with his older friends.
• Cosmic Plaything: Jimmy didn't need to know Superman or even do anything extraordinary for things to just happen to him. Then again, that may be why he's Superman's best friend.
• Covert Emergency Call: Jimmy has a signal watch that operates on a frequency that humans can't hear, which he uses to call Superman for help. On a few occasions, the villains take advantage of this by using Jimmy and his watch to lure Superman into a trap. This would sometimes fail because Jimmy is thoroughly aware of this and spoils the scheme if possible.
• Crazy-Prepared: In Superman: Secret Origin, Jimmy apparently carries more than one camera.
  Soldier: I thought we confiscated his camera!
  Jimmy Olsen: A good reporter is always prepared! I have a dozen spares! (blinds the soldiers with the camera's flash and escapes)
• Demoted to Extra: Ever since the birth of Jon, he has been the character suffered the most in term of prominence and appearance in Superman's storylines.
• Depending on the Artist: Jimmy Olsen is apparently supposed to be blue eyed, but has just as often been given green eyes.
• Deus Exit Machina: Quite a lot of stories had Superman doing something in space, or Jimmy's watch would be broken, or tampered with, or something would have happened to it.
• Disguised in Drag: Jimmy does this pretty darned often, to the point he may just be a Wholesome Crossdresser.
• Early Installment Character-Design Difference: The very first story where Jimmy became Elastic Lad, which was featured in issue 31 of Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen, depicted Jimmy with a green costume that had writing on his chest reading "The Elastic Lad". By the second Elastic Lad story that came six issues later, the costume was redesigned to its more familiar form where it is colored magenta and the writing left out the definitive article, reading just "Elastic Lad".
• Friend in the Press: Less often than Lois, however, if anything Jimmy uncovers in his official work as a photographer Superman is always the first person he lets know, even if he only suspects it could be important.
• Henpecked Husband: A victim of the "henpecked boyfriend" variant during the Silver Age; Lucy was as shrewish to Jimmy as Lois was to Superman (some would argue even more so). She would exploit Jimmy's desire to woo her whenever it suited her needs and then dump him as soon as she found a better prospect.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners:
  • Jimmy and Superman/Clark are (at least in some continuities) very close friends.
    • During the Silver Age, the two had no shame about expressing affection for each other either with words or with a hug, the newspapers ran stories on the friendship similar to a celebrity romance (though Lois received a similar amount of fame for being Superman's girlfriend) and Jimmy even spent the night in the Fortress of Solitude once after visiting the place for a story. However, both of them had romances with a number of women (most prominently Lois and her sister). In the new 52, they are roughly the same age and share an apartment.
    • Superman's Pal: Jimmy Olsen (2019): The two hang out together, their relationship is public knowledge, and the captions refer to Jimmy as Superman's non-biological brother and to Superman as Jimmy's "platonic plus-one" (not to mention Superman being Happily Married to Lois Lane by this point).
    • All-Star Superman: Jimmy shows just how far he'll go to help out his best bud when he unhesitatingly takes a formula that would turn him into Doomsday and could destroy his mind, all to help Superman, who had been afflicted with Black Kryptonite. However, their only romantic scenes are with Lois and Lucy.
  • Jimmy and Robin (specifically Dick Grayson) were often portrayed as friends during the Silver Age. They were never as close to each other as to Superman and Batman, but being Kid Sidekicks together meant they had something in common. They even temporarily had a team of their own, and both in- and out-of-universe evidence indicates that Jimmy considers Robin his best friend besides Supes.
• Heroic Bystander:
  • Jimmy rushed to Superman's aid when the hero was overcome by kryptonite fire on his suit. A few burns were nothing when it came to saving his pal.
  • In the early story "The Hunted Messenger", Jimmy rescues a deliveryman from two muggers.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Jimmy attempted this in Superman Family #173. In order to counteract a virus affecting all of Kandor, he planned to blow up the bottle—and himself with it—thus giving the Kandorians the powers necessary to be cured. He was only saved by the super-tough Kandorian fabric he was wearing.
• Iconic Outfit: Until the Bronze Age, Jimmy always wore a blazer and a bow-tie. It wasn't quite a Limited Wardrobe, as the blazer sometimes changed colour (although green was most common). The outfit has occasionally returned since, and in the 2019 maxi-series, he seems to see it as a trademark. (When he realises that in the retro city of Opal everyone's wearing a bow-tie, he refuses to stay there.)
• I Have Your Wife: Jimmy was frequently taken hostage to get to Superman, to the degree where he tried to deal with it himself once or twice.
• I Never Said It Was Poison: In one early story, Jimmy is being held captive and forced to give crooks trying to win a million-dollar game show answers about Superman. While explaining a headline about him saving the Man of Steel, Jimmy includes a detail about the rescue not included in the news story and hence something only he and Superman knew. Superman can see that the contestant isn't Jimmy and has in fact recognized him as a criminal. All this tells him his friend is in trouble, and he flies to the rescue.
• Innocent Blue Eyes: Jimmy is a (sometimes) naive Nice Guy who, according to the DC sites, is blue-eyed (though comics rarely show it). While the naivete sometimes gets written out, most incarnations are still as kind and good-natured as one would expect from Superman's Muggle Best Friend.
• Instant Fan Club: Jimmy had one, in some Silver Age comics. The Jimmy Olsen Fan Club all wear identical green jackets and bowties to him.
• Intergenerational Friendship: Modern stories tend to emphasize his tagline of "Superman's Pal!" with this, making Jimmy and Clark (rather than Superman, necessarily) close friends despite their age difference^note  Which tends to be a smaller age difference than the Silver Age anyway.
• Interspecies Friendship: Superman is Kryptonian; Jimmy is a human. But that doesn't keep them from being fairly close.
• Interspecies Romance:
  • Jimmy had one with Forager (technically Forager III) in Countdown to Final Crisis. Jimmy is a human; Forager is one of the "Bugs" from New Genesis... in other words, a humanoid insect. However, she breaks up with him at the end of the serial and goes on to form a team with Donna Troy, Kyle Rayner and Ray Palmer with the intention of serving as "multiversial border guards".
  • In one "imaginary" story, Jimmy got married to Supergirl — or rather, to her Secret Identity, Linda Lee Danvers. Finding out that his new wife was the alien superheroine who had been flirting with him was a shock, but he ultimately took it rather well.
  • Jimmy and the city of Metropolis itself once fell in love, after Brainiac's nanites accidentally made the city itself sentient. (It didn't affect the people, thankfully!)
  • As of Superman (2023), he's also managed to charm Siobhan MacDougal, aka Silver Banshee, who is no longer human as a result of the events that gave her superpowers.
• Intrepid Reporter: The degree to which he needs help to get out of danger varies, but Jimmy has never been shy about getting into peril in pursuit of a story. One of his earliest stories shows him hiding in Lois' trunk to investigate her latest scoop after Perry White turned him down for a position and getting Perry's approval after he helps her escape the Villain of the Week.
• Kaiju: Jimmy's Giant Turtle Boy incarnation.
• Kneel, Push, Trip: A potential variation in an old comic — a Planet employee called Jimbo Jones pretends to fall in front of a crook to trip him, whereupon Jimmy Olsen hits him, finishing the job.
• The Load: In the silver age; modern comics have managed to avert this to an extent, by making him a closer friend of Clark Kent's than Superman's. And probably his most competent incarnation was during Jack Kirby's Bronze Age run on the title, when he became an adventurer in his own right, with his own team of sidekicks.
• Master of Disguise: In the earlier stories, Jimmy could disguise himself so well that Perry, Lois, and even Superman had trouble recognizing him.
• Mind Hive: Jimmy was once made host to all of the New God souls except for Darkseid's. This wasn't the same as having all of the perks that would have come with their physical bodies, but because this is Jimmy Olsen, he still got superpowers.
• Mistaken Age: The Geoff Johns story "The Terrible Toyman" has Jimmy get kidnapped by Toyman, who rants on how he cares about children, doesn't trust adults because of their tendency to cause children harm and tells Jimmy that he trusts him because he's 17. Jimmy indignantly corrects Toyman that he's actually 22.
• Mistaken for Cheating: Jimmy Olsen has been known to be Disguised in Drag on more than one occasion. After one such example, though, Jimmy got read the riot act by Lucy Lane. Turns out Lucy found in his apartment the purse, perfume and jewelry that were part of the masquerade lying around his apartment, but she thought he was dating someone else behind her back.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Most of Jimmy's nutty Silver Age transformations had, of course, been retconned away by the Crisis on Infinite Earths, but one Post-Crisis story shows him getting kidnapped by Darkseid's two nutty biologists, Simyan and Mokkari, who gleefully chatter away about how much they always enjoy inflicting ridiculous transformations on Jimmy, implying this has happened many times before, just because they're jerks.
  • In the mid-nineties, when Jimmy Olsen quit the Planet and became a TV presenter on GBS, the "Mr Action" nickname briefly returned. However, in this case it was a self-adopted name that indicated his new role was turning him into an egotistical jerk.
• Never Be a Hero: Because his role was always to be Superman's little buddy. However, unlike Lois, Jimmy did get to replay some of his superhero identities: in particular, he was Elastic Lad and Flamebird (sidekick to Superman under the identity of Nightwing, playing expies of Batman and Robin).
• Nice Guy: Most of Jimmy's incarnations are kind and friendly. He is also arguably Superman's most loyal supporter, cemented by multiple storylines, including Truth.
• Now, Let Me Carry You: Jimmy sometimes (usually when there was Kryptonite around) got the chance to repay Superman for saving his life.
• Parental Abandonment: In the New 52, Jimmy's parents are adventurers themselves, and simply never came back from their last expedition.
• Parental Substitute: Jimmy's father either died or disappeared (depending on the incarnation) sometime before they could really have a relationship. His bond with Superman is therefore partially this. It was more played up in the Silver Age, however (just check out the Superdickery page image!), while modern stories tend to emphasize his and Clark's Intergenerational Friendship more.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: In the earlier stories of his series. Jimmy was 5' 10" but could take on taller and brawnier crooks, sometimes more than one at a time. In "Superman's Ex-Pal", he gets into a scrap with a criminal posing as Superman. The bad guy never lands a hit on Jimmy, who pummels him sufficiently to keep him from getting away. Various scenes also indicate that he's strong enough to move Supes when the Man of Tomorrow (who's significantly bigger and heavier than he is) is weakened by Kryptonite and barely capable of helping him.
• Prophetic Fallacy: In "The Amazing Spectacles of Dr. X", Jimmy winds up with a pair of spectacles that can see the future and sees a vision of himself drowning in a fishing accident soon afterwards. When the day actually arrives, though, it turns out that the spectacles were showing him a public service announcement he had agreed to take part in about how an iron lung can save a person's life in a case like this.
• Red Is Heroic: In many of his incarnations, Jimmy is both a good guy and a redhead.
• Revealing Cover-Up: A group of crooks were running a scam with one pretending to be the Man of Steel and asking for money to guard various valuables. This attracts Jimmy Olsen's attention, as not only did the fake Supes fail to recognize him, but also he was aware that Superman would never ask for money for his services. The scam attracts further suspicion when Jimmy attacks and is easily able to give the fake Superman trouble, causing the crook to yell for his partners to shoot him "before he ruins everything!" A little late for that...
• Rod-and-Reel Repurposed: Jimmy unravels a mystery involving some thieves partially by finding a fishing hook too big to be for any fish in the area. Therefore, he deduced that the crooks were hiding their loot underwater and went fishing for it. (Superman quickly slipped it on the hook to prevent it from taking as long as it might otherwise.)
• Secret Secret-Keeper:
  • Being Clark's best friend, Jimmy in some versions is aware of his coworker's superhero work, even if he doesn't tell Clark about it. When Superman reveals himself as Clark Kent in 2020, Jimmy claims he'd known for some time.
    Jimmy: I used to think there were only two people in the world who called me "Jim." Then I realized it was only one.
  • In All-Star Superman, the in-comic situation leaves it ambiguous whether Jimmy knows, but Grant Morrison said in an article on the topic that he does and just keeps it quiet because he trusts that Superman has a good reason for wanting it secret. The comic also flips the usual dynamic in that Lois does not know, and in fact assumes that Superman is putting her on when he attempts to tell her.
  • In DCeased, Jimmy stumbles on Superman and Lois kissing and asks, horrified, what Clark is going to think. After letting Supes spend a few seconds in consternation about how to handle this, he laughs and reveals that he's known for years, because, among other things, every photographer draws on his work when he gets bored. He just said nothing because he figured Supes had enough on his plate.
• Self-Deprecation: For all of his ego, Jimmy Olsen openly admits to his audience that he's been given wedgies by Steve Lombard and once turned into a giant turtle monster.
• Shameless Self-Promoter: In Wonder Woman volume 6 #16, Jimmy spends half of his allotted time giving the breaking news on The Sovereign reminding everyone of the star reporters that Jimmy is personal friends with and plugging his podcast with Steve Lombard.
• Staring Down Cthulhu: During the story that introduces Bloodsport, the title character can pull any weaponry he can think of out of thin air and has just shot Superman with a Kryptonite bullet. He fails to get the kill, however, because Jimmy stands over Superman and stares down Bloodsport while threatening to use one of his own weapons on him. Despite his greater height, musculature, and arsenal, Bloodsport backs off.
• Superdickery: The original Superdickery website even has its own Drinking Game for him! For anyone interested, there's only one rule; if Jimmy gets a superpower, take a shot. Warning: You'll get plastered in no time flat. One cover is worth four shots alone. Being reminded you're still playing the game constitutes a penalty shot. Then there is the cover for the Planet of the Thousand Jimmies...
• Superpower Silly Putty: The patron saint of this trope. Jimmy has had (and lost) so many superpowers that there is an entire collection called The Many Transformations of Jimmy Olsen.
• Terrible Artist: In Wonder Woman volume 6 he draws a picture of The Sovereign using the lasso of lies on John Adams, for the benefit of the audience, before assuring the viewers it will not be a regular thing and that Jimmy will be sticking to photography.
• This Banana is Armed: In one story from the 70s, Jimmy fought a demented cartoonist whose arsenal included cream pies filled with acid, and a rubber chicken loaded with lead weights.
• Took a Level in Badass: In his Superman Family stories, Jimmy got much tougher as an Intrepid Reporter, ready to punch out the bad guys without Superman's help. His Action Comics story runs with this, and the idea that Jimmy is essentially The Doctor of the DC universe. He's resourceful, a talented journalist, fit, and genre savvy enough to stop Sebastian's schemes.
• Transformation Comic: Most of the superpowers Jimmy gained in his solo series involved physical transformations, often of the involuntary nature.
• Trauma Button Ending: In one comic, Jimmy nearly gets drained of his life force by a vampiric alien posing as a pet. At the end of the story, he runs away from a young woman who tries to ask him to hold her dog's leash.
• Understanding Boyfriend: In one imaginary story, Jimmy got married to Supergirl when (thanks to Red Kryptonite amnesia) neither of them knew who she was. When his new wife remembered her secret and revealed that she was a superpowered alien, Jimmy thought it was "terrific."
• Undying Loyalty: Extreme loyalty (to Superman) was always intended to be Jimmy's foremost quality.
  • While the Silver Age is mostly known for Superdickery, multiple stories still exist proving Jimmy's status as "Superman's pal." From sacrificing multiple opportunities to learn his Secret Identity, to helping him with murderous criminals armed with Kryptonite, to standing up to a fully-powered-up Kryptonian to ensure the currently-powerless Superman was protected^note The Tyrant Superman (Superman #172), Jimmy's loyalty to Supes trumps any sacrifice or risk it might involve.
  • In the New 52 storyline, Superman: Truth, Jimmy stands by Superman's side after Lois Lane blows his secret identity to the entire world (it probably helps that Supes revealed his identity to him just prior to the shit hitting the fan). Jimmy also shows that there's an entire neighborhood who is happy to have Superman around and renamed their area as "Kentville".
• Unluckily Lucky: Even in his more competent iterations he's a world-class Weirdness Magnet with a tendency to get into major trouble as a result. However, except for a few occasions, he always comes out with nary a scratch or even angst.
• Vibrant Orange: He's daring, talkative, playful, boisterous, and he has red (orange) hair
• Weaponized Car: Jack Kirby gave Jimmy and the Newsboy Legion a flying weaponized car called the Whiz Wagon. It occasionally shows up in modern continuity, but tends to be forgotten about for long stretches.
• Weirdness Magnet: Jimmy’s easily one of DC’s most famous examples. Holy crap. Encountering the New Gods is the least strange of his adventures. He’s always finding himself in outlandish misadventures, and as stated in Butt-Monkey he constantly goes through weird transformations, such as becoming a wolfman, an alien, or a giant turtle-man.
• Wholesome Crossdresser:
  • Oh, he also disguised himself as a woman on occasion as part of a mission. Makes you wonder...
  • Played, er, "straight" in All-Star Superman, when asked if he's in disguise for a story, he simply replies, "Nope."
• Wounded Hero, Weaker Helper: Superman has been known to need help from Jimmy (usually when he encounters too much Kryptonite) and Jimmy always obliges.
  • Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen:
    • The Disappearance of Superman": A group of crooks pull a Wounded Gazelle Gambit on Superman and bury him in a mine with a hunk of Kryptonite. Luckily, Jimmy succeeds in tracking him down and digging him up. Jimmy even lampshades how bizarre the situation is as he's pulling rocks out of the way.
    • "The Million-Dollar Question." references one of these incidents in passing. Crooks tied Superman to a Kryptonite boulder and threw him into the ocean. Unfortunately for them, Jimmy arrived on his heels, expecting a news story. The young reporter dived a considerable distance after him and cut him loose.
    • "The 100 Pieces of Kryptonite": Superman uses himself as a battering ram to smash a meteor to manageable pieces before it can fall on Metropolis, only to discover mid-maneuver that it's made of Kryptonite. Although his momentum allows him to complete the plan, he plummets back to earth afterwards and is too badly affected even to move. Jimmy hauls the battered Man of Tomorrow into a building which has a bunch of lead-heavy batteries, allowing him some breathing room while Jimmy tries to gather and get rid of the Kryptonite.
    • "The Double-Edged Sword": Downplayed. A villain shoots Superman with a neutron blaster from Apocalips, leaving him struggling to recover as the shooter prepares to finish him off. Jimmy distracts the villain by pitching a couple of film canisters at him, keeping his attention off the Man of Steel just long enough for Superman to get his wind back and destroy the blaster.
  • Action Comics #600 sees Superman collapse when a cloud of Kryptonite left over from the planet's explosion catches up with Earth. Fortunately, Jimmy is nearby and runs for construction equipment and a mattress to carry the Man of Steel to a lead-heavy cavern outside town.
  • Superman (1987): In issue #4 (the introduction of Bloodsport), the titular supervillain actually manages to bring down Superman by pulling out a gun that shoots Kryptonite shards. As he tosses off a Pre-Mortem One-Liner, Jimmy confronts him, threatening to shoot Bloodsport with one of the previous weapons he discarded if he doesn't back away from Supes. Despite trying some Trash Talk, Bloodsport is intimidated enough to pull a Smoke Out, allowing his victim to get to a hospital for treatment.
• Written Sound Effect: His signal watch's: Zee! Zee! Zee!
• Youthful Freckles: He's always depicted with them, to go along with his red hair.
• Zany Scheme: Jimmy either made crazy schemes, or got involved in them.

Perry Jerome White

Species: Human

First appearance: The Adventures of Superman radio serial (February 14, 1940); Superman (1939) #7 (December 1940)

"Becoming a reporter isn't hard, Kent. Staying a reporter, that's hard... It's the job, Kent. Like any great truth, what we do is very simple. Find out what other people are doing that nobody else knows about. That they don't want the rest of us to know about. Then come back here, square your shoulders and prove it. That's what you have to do now that you're with the Planet, Kent. Unless you want to end up behind glass: shiny, self-important, and like all of yesterday's news — forgotten by tomorrow afternoon."

• Benevolent Boss: Despite his tough-mindedness and grouchy personality, he has always been a kind and fair boss.
• Berserk Button: As every employee of the Daily Planet can tell you (especially Jimmy Olsen), he hates being called "Chief".
• Catchphrase: "Great Caesar's ghost!" and "Don't call me 'chief'!". In the 90's, he also experimented with "Great shades of Elvis!"^note This was a nod towards the concurrent Lois & Clark version of the character who was a big Elvis fan.
• Cigar Chomper: Perry has shown a fondness for cigars over the years.
• Da Editor: His strength and integrity have led him to be one of the world's greatest journalists, and underneath his leadership the Planet hasn't missed a single issue through crisis after crisis.
• Decomposite Character / Early-Installment Weirdness: In the very beginning, Clark's boss at the newspaper (the Daily Star) was named George Taylor. The radio show renamed him Perry White, and the name carried over to the comics. When Earth-Two was introduced in the 60's as the setting of the old Golden Age stories, Earth-Two Clark's boss was declared to be George Taylor, editor of the Daily Star.
• Honorary Uncle: Is one to Clark and Lois' son Jon as of DC Rebirth, with Jon affectionately calling his godfather "Uncle Perry".
• Intrepid Reporter: In his youth.
• Named by the Adaptation: The name "Perry White" was first used in the radio show.
• Out of Focus: Despite being part of Superman's supporting cast for a long time, he rarely gets focus in more recent comics as Superman's exploits shifted away from Metropolis.
• Pointy-Haired Boss: Sometimes he seems to have only reached his position at The Daily Planet due to seniority rather than competence.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: He can be demanding and rude, but he is always kind and respectful to his reporters and seeks the highest levels of journalistic work ethic and integrity, being well-liked by everyone under his employ. He also lets Lois and Clark, his two ace reporters, take up a sabbatical once he realizes that their exposes on corruption worldwide are endangering them and their then-unborn son.
• Secret Secret-Keeper: While never outright stated, it's been implied Perry knows Clark Kent is Superman at least in the Post-Crisis continuity. He's found Clark's civilian garb stuffed in a storage closet right after Superman showed up and seems conscious of Clark stealing away at times. Batman even cites Perry, a former very talented investigative reporter, is too sharp to have not picked up on something. In the New 52, he explicitly didn't know and reacts badly when Superman's identity is revealed.
• Smoking Is Not Cool: While later writers would return him to the habit, during the 1990s, a subplot had Perry forced to give up smoking after contracting lung cancer and undergoing treatment.
• Sympathetic Adulterer: When Perry learned that his wife Alice once had a brief relationship with Lex Luthor that resulted in the conception of the boy they raised as Perry White Junior, AKA 'Jerry', Perry ultimately came to regard Alice's affair as this, particularly since it occurred during a time when Perry was missing and presumed dead (to the extent that Alice and Perry spent years believing that Jerry was their son because she couldn't be sure that Luthor was the father) and Perry acknowledged his own focus on the Planet could have compromised their relationship. While it took time for them to work through these issues after Jerry's paternity was exposed shortly before his death, they were able to reconcile.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: During Superman: Truth, White, normally a Benevolent Boss and Reasonable Authority Figure, who is usually characterized as having great admiration for both Superman and Clark Kent, behaves more like J. Jonah Jameson when Clark's identity is outed. To be fair to Perry, this is right after he was injured when the Planet staff were taken hostage to draw out Clark.
• We Used to Be Friends: In the early Post-Crisis era, he and Lex Luthor grew up together in Suicide Slum and were childhood friends. This was dropped when Luthor was aged back down to be a contemporary of Clark's again.

Species: Human

First appearance: Action Comics #1 (May 1938)

The first and former editor-in-chief of the Daily Star, before the Daily Star was renamed the Daily Planet.

• Decomposite Character / Early-Installment Weirdness: In the very beginning, Clark's boss at the newspaper (the Daily Star) was named George Taylor. The radio show renamed him Perry White, and the name carried over to the comics. When Earth-Two was introduced in the 60's as the setting of the old Golden Age stories, Earth-Two Clark's boss was declared to be George Taylor, editor of the Daily Star.

Catherine "Cat" Grant

Species: Human

First appearance: Adventures of Superman #424 (1987)

Supergirl: Cat Grant? Daily Planet Cat Grant?
Cat: Oh, that naive lilt in your voice. I cut that tone out of my personal repertoire when I was seven.

• All Love Is Unrequited: Cat is instantly attracted to Clark Kent. They become fast friends, and even become romantically involved for a time, but eventually this ends, as Clark really loves Lois Lane, and seems more interested in helping Cat fix up her life than dating her. Jimmy Olsen in turn is attracted to Cat, but she seems to either not notice or not care.
• Broken Bird: Recently divorced from Joe Morgan, a white collar criminal husband who had driven her to drink before and after the divorce, Cat was initially a single mother with a young son named Adam Morgan, trying to get a fresh start and stay sober while suffering pressures of sexual harassment from her bosses and personal dysfunctions. She had a stressful life as a single mother due to her poor parenting skills and exposing her son to various dysfunctional boyfriends before her son was killed during a kidnapping attempt by Toyman. After going through a full Despair Event Horizon, she left for the West Coast to reinvent herself and returned as an excessively flirty Alpha Bitch to hide her personal demons.
• The Bus Came Back:
  • After not being seen since the end of the Luthor administration, she reappears in the Superman: Brainiac arc and becomes again a permanent supporting character.
  • After similarly being a non-entity during the New 52 era, she returned in the post-Rebirth comics.
• Crazy-Prepared: Cat has a secret bunker in her office, on the off-chance Lois one day decides to come after her.
• Driven by Envy: Her hatred towards Supergirl stemmed greatly from jealousy. As Lois Lane bluntly put, "She doesn't like someone half her age flying through Metropolis and turning heads".
• Entitled Bastard: Cat launched a smear campaign against Supergirl with the intention of driving her out of Metropolis. Cat called Supergirl a reckless, out-of-control teenager, accused her of spearheading a Kryptonian Alien Invasion, and complained about her out-of-fashion dress and the length of her skirt. During one year, she said over and over again that the world doesn't need a Supergirl. And then she ran into troubles and blackmailed Kara into helping her because she couldn't find Superman. And as they teamed up, Cat kept insulting her.
  Supergirl: "The hero the world doesn't need," Cat wrote about me. Some days, though, it sure feels like it does. Though, if there weren't three kids missing, I'm not sure I'd help her. You can't say those kinds of things about a person then expect them to just fly up and give you a hand.
• Fake Boobs: She has her breasts surgically augmented. In Action Comics #868, Supergirl meets her and accidentally reveals that her boobs are fake when she naively says out loud that "My X-ray vision is picking up some weird plastics in your —"
• Flanderization: She was introduced as sort of a Good Bad Girl Broken Bird. Someone who had a bit of an immoral past that she was trying to move beyond, and was looking for a good man like Clark Kent to be her anchor. Upon her return in the 2000s she was portrayed as a Lovable Sex Maniac at best and just Really Gets Around at worst. It's been mentioned that this is a facade Cat is using because of the pain of losing her son so many years ago.
• Head-Turning Beauty: The Daily Planet's male employees are obsessed with her… except Clark.
• Hopeless Suitor: She still carries a torch for Clark and thinks she actually has some chance, although Clark is Happily Married to Lois.
• I Have Boobs, You Must Obey!: Once she tries to seduce Clark by shoving her breasts on his face. However Clark's eyes never stray from her face, making her angry.
• Intrepid Reporter: Not exactly to the degree as Lois Lane, but still. In an occasion, Cat goes undercover at Galaxy Broadcasting to help Clark expose Morgan Edge's links to Intergang.
• Likes Clark Kent, Hates Superman: She's a rare case of a woman being attracted to Clark and not Supes.
• Ms. Fanservice: Especially in the '00s where she dresses more provocatively (with looks) and acted more flirtatious than before.
• Plastic Bitch: Getting breast implants. She's shown flaunting her new figure and trying to seduce Clark, who just ignores her. However, she is given some sympathy, as it's suggested the surgery is part of her coping with the loss of her son.
• Ret-Canon: Not Cat herself, but her new job as head of a major media corporation is adapted from the Supergirl TV series.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Okay, her name's not that small post-Rebirth, but she still thinks she's Lois' top rival and lives in fear of Lois-related attacks. Lois couldn't care less.
• Sour Outside, Sad Inside: Cat is pretty unpleasant. Clark and Lois suspect that she is trying to hide her pain - she lost her son - behind a mask.
  Lois: The way she's acting...
  Clark: Cat left the planet after her son died. Everything she's wearing right now, everything she's pretending to be, she's using it to cover up. I don't need X-Ray Vision to tell me when someone's hiding behind a disguise.
• The Tease: During a conversation with Clark, she openly flirts with him and implies that she has had breast implants. However, Clark ignores her advances.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: With Supergirl in Sterling Gates' last story arc. Due to Supergirl's carelessness in a fight with a group of Metahumans, Cat was slightly wounded. Cat runs a slander campaign against the would be super heroine causing a large portion of Metropolis' population to turn against Kara. But her relationship with Supergirl got better when Kara saved Cat from the Dollmaker.

Ronald "Ron" Troupe

Species: Human

First appearance: Adventures of Superman #480 (July, 1991)

"I knew what my story had to be. Now all I had to do was find a way to get it."

• Audience Surrogate: An easy-to-relate-to character who gives a ground-level point of view for some of the craziness of life in Metropolis, and actually takes note of Elephants in the Living Room such as Superman and Lois clearly having some sort of connection even after Lois has married Clark.
• Foil: To Steve Lombard, the Planet's sports writer. Ron is a quiet and introverted liberal, while Steve is a loud and outgoing conservative.
• Friendly Rival: To Jimmy. He gets a job that Jimmy had wanted, and even winds up dating and then marrying Jimmy's ex-girlfriend Lucy, but the two manage to stay friends.
• Intrepid Reporter: Like Clark and Lois. Perhaps most notably, the Cyborg Superman's debut issue takes the form of the article Ron wrote about witnessing the incident firsthand, at considerable personal risk.
• Nerd Glasses: Not that he's really all that nerdy, but he has the signature glasses that make him look like a serious, intellectual person.
• Romance Arc: With Lois's sister Lucy, who had previously been Jimmy's love interest.
  • His sister Lenda briefly dated the Planet's publisher, Franklin Stern.
• Straight Man: He's arguably the most "normal" person on the Daily Planet.

Steven "Steve" Lombard

Species: Human

First appearance: Superman (1939) #264 (June, 1973)

"Clarkie? He's the third door on the left — but what's a cute chick like you want with that clod when you have Steve Lombard to play with?"

• Casanova Wannabe: He makes many unwelcome advances against his female co-workers.
• Fanboy: Of Booster Gold, as Action Comics reveals that his office is plastered from ceiling to floor with Booster Gold paraphernalia. He tries to get Jon to appreciate it, but the boy isn't interested.
• Foil: To Ron Troupe. Ron is a quiet and introverted liberal, while Steve is a loud and outgoing conservative.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: He's well-known as a boorish jerk with a very self-centered attitude, although this is often played for comedy. His many pranks around the office frequently target Kent, although he actually considers Clark one of his closest friends. Even Clark's son Jon, who at least has a working relationship with Damian Wayne, a former assassin who kidnapped him in the past, can't stand being in the same room as Lombard for very long. Still, it counts for something that when Mongul made his debut by kidnapping Superman's friends, Steve was among them, and this fact was not played for irony.
• Jerk Jock: A former one, now a jerk sports columnist.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: Clark's inner monologue talks about what lies beneath his tough guy exterior. Basically it's the exact same thing, only worse.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Recent portrayals have depicted him as having a prickly exterior, but still caring about his co-workers. Superman Reborn showed he enjoyed activities like bowling with Clark and Perry. And heck, the very first thing we see him do when he's first introduced is injure himself saving a child who had fallen out of a window, so that should count for something.
  • For that matter, in Pre-Crisis days, he was obnoxious (mostly manifesting as a compulsive need to pull stupid practical jokes that only he thought were funny; and thanks to Clark's powers, they tended to backfire on him), but not really a bad person. Around the office, he was basically The Friend Nobody Likes.
• Meaningful Name: Steve played football in high school, college, and, briefly, the pros; Vince Lombardi is one of the most famous football coaches of all time.
• Miles Gloriosus: Lombard loves to brag about his skills in a fistfight and frequently shows off his well-built physique, but during The Oz Effect, he tries to take on a terrorist working for Mr. Oz, only to get shot and left whimpering in pain afterwards.
• The Prankster: Much to his coworkers' annoyance.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: Superman (2023) introduces Lisa Lombard, who is the Planet's science reporter, completely uninterested in sports, and thinks her brother is an idiot.
• Straw Conservative: Should be obvious just from the descriptions. Steve is written as though all the research done by the writers for the character's political positions is based on bumper stickers.

Dirk Armstrong

Species: Human

First appearance: Superman The Man Of Tomorrow #6 (September, 1996)

A character that existed for a few years in the late nineties. A conservative columnist that was basically meant to be an Expy of Rush Limbaugh, same political views, same build and general appearance. At first an annoying unsympathetic character.

• Big Eater: Frequently seem chomping down junk food, especially donuts.
• Hidden Depths: He is shown to have a blind daughter and his interactions with her help soften the audience and the other characters to Dirk.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: This character was clearly a Rush Limbaugh expy. This was before other similar pundits reached widespread audiences. Though it's a bit of a dated Expy - Rush has lost a lot of weight since then and audiences today would find Dirk's physique to be an exaggeration bordering on parody.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: A mild version of this seemed to be what they were going for. Dirk is a fat doughnut-chomping conservative loudmouth (less obnoxious and more informed than Steve Lombard) but really cares for his daughter, really believes what he's saying, and generally praises Superman because of the Man of Steel's effectiveness as a crimefighter until Superman's electric powers kick in and Dirk briefly becomes critical as Superman's lack of control of his powers causes come property damage. As far as Dirk is concerned, he's just telling it like it is and while Superman is irritated with him, he acknowledges that Dirk has a point.

Simone D'Niege

Species: Human

First appearance: Adventures of Superman #0 (October, 1994)

A French Journalist who acted as one of Clark's mentors (as well as a girlfriend). She returned years later to work at the Planet, bringing her into conflict with Lois.

• French Jerk: She's a French Journalist who's also a grade A a-hole.
• Inconsistent Spelling: Her surname was spelled "D'Neige" in her first appearance, but when she was reintroduced in Adventures of Superman #543, it was spelled "De Neige" instead. The next issue, it was "De Niege".
• Informed Ability: Addressed in-universe. Apparently, she WAS a serious journalist back in the day, but by the time she and Clark meet again, she's more into sensationalism.
• Jerkass: She's... rather obnoxious. Hell, she even flirts with Clark when she's fully aware that he and Lois Lane are Happily Married.
• The Missus and the Ex: Why she and Lois don't get along. Lois in particular is annoyed by the fact that Simone so blatantly flirts with Clark.
• Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: Has this with Lois, on account of being sensationalist AND flirting with Clark despite KNOWING that's he married.
• Teacher/Student Romance: She was one of Clark's teachers....and had an affair with him when he was out of college.

Franklin Stern

Species: Human

First appearance: Superman: The Man of Steel #27 (November, 1993)

The Daily Planet's publisher for most of the Post-Crisis era, he's a former reporter and an old friend of Perry's. He briefly dated Ron Troupe's sister Lenda. He eventually had to sell the Planet, however — which unfortunately led to it eventually getting picked up by Lex Luthor, but it was then thankfully bought out by Bruce Wayne. He was played by James Earl Jones on Lois & Clark.

William "Bill" Henderson

Species: Human

First appearance: The Adventures of Superman radio serial (1940); Action Comics #440 (October, 1974)

"Superman, you okay? I just heard the report."
"I'm fine thanks, Bill. How's Maddie and the kids?"

• Antagonistic Offspring: In Pre-Crisis days, his son Andy sadly became a member of Tobias Whale's gang, the 100.
• Canon Immigrant: From The Adventures of Superman via the George Reeves TV show.
• Decomposite Character: After Superman: The Animated Series depicted Inspector Henderson as a black man, the comics introduced Mike Henderson.
• Demoted to Extra: Since John Byrne's 1986 Man of Steel miniseries, his role has been reduced somewhat in favor of newer characters like Dan Turpin and Maggie Sawyer.
• Friend on the Force: A high-ranking member of the Metropolis police that Superman gets along with well.
• Inspector Javert: Bill is initially this to Black Lightning, mistakenly believing the new vigilante to be a criminal, but he eventually realizes his mistake and they become allies.
  "I figured I owed you one, Lightning — and probably a few more besides. I really misjudged you."
• Mister Exposition: This was his main role when he was introduced on the Superman radio series, telling Superman (and the audience) about the case of the week. This became less true in his TV and comics appearances.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Bill is an honest and sensible police officer, and he gets along well with Superman.
• Signature Headgear: In Pre-Crisis days, he typically sported a fedora, just as he did on the live action series.

Daniel "Dan/Terrible/Brooklyn" Turpin

Species: Human

First appearance: Detective Comics #64 (June, 1942) ^note retroactively; as "Brooklyn"; New Gods #5 (November, 1971) ^note as Dan Turpin

Cop: No, but it dates you, sarge!! You're just hanging onto old times!!! — When you took the tommy guns away from the gangs!!
Turpin: Well, I've got news for you, junior!! Those old times are back!! They just look a little weirder, that's all!!

• Badass Normal: He takes on Kalibak, son of Darkseid, with a machine gun, getting beaten within an inch of his life, and then gives the signal to channel all the electrical power in Metropolis straight into Kalibak, knocking him out and arresting him!
• Catchphrase: Calling super-powered hooligans "weirdies".
• Cool Old Guy: He's still strong and tough as nails, but Dan is not a young man.
• Demonic Possession: Spent Final Crisis being the host for Darkseid, not remotely by choice.
• Foil: To Harvey Bullock. Both are no-nonsense, gruff, and burly. However, Bullock's been depicted as a Dirty Cop from time to time, and always suspicious of Batman. Turpin's a straight cop, and despite his skepticism of Superman, it's more of a "I don't need him to get the job done" attitude.
• Platonic Life-Partners: Formed this kind of relationship with Maggie Sawyer while working together, even after she turned down his marriage proposal.
• Retcon: Around 2010, a retcon claimed that he is the grown-up version of "Brooklyn" from the Boy Commandos (another Kirby tough guy character with a derby hat and a Brooklyn accent).
• Signature Headgear: His signature brown derby (bowler).

Margaret Ellen "Maggie" Sawyer

Species: Human

First appearance: Superman (1987) #4 (April, 1987)

"I don't like you, Luthor. I never have. You're a user, and users make my skin crawl. So from now on I'm gonna be watching every move you make. Keep a close eye on your butt, big man. Sooner or later I'm gonna hand it to you!"

• Badass Normal: In Metropolis, she joined the Special Crimes Unit, working in situations that would normally require Superman but without the assistance of the Man of Steel.
• Boyish Short Hair: She’s often portrayed as having her hair cut like this.
• Butch Lesbian: She often shifts back and forth between this and Bifauxnen Depending on the Artist.
• Incompatible Orientation: She was married to a man for a brief time, but pretty quickly realized that she was lesbian and that it just wasn't going to work out. Dan Turpin later proposed to her without knowing about her sexual orientation, but although he attempted to resign out of embarrassment afterwards, Maggie made it clear she wouldn't accept his resignation and they maintained a good working relationship.
• Lesbian Jock: Which was rather impressive for a character to be when it was revealed in 1988.
• Platonic Life-Partners: With Dan Turpin; even after he proposed to her and she turned him down, she refused to accept his resignation.
• Rank Up: Following Superman's death at Doomsday's hands, Maggie received a promotion to Inspector.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: A good example of this was the time Superman's power's were increasing beyond his control leading to a series of accidents. When she arrived just as Superman was about to turn himself in, she cut him off and apologized "for arriving to late to help catch the bad guy" saying that she was "distracted because her friend was sick and needed help." Superman promised her friend would get that help.
• Straight Gay: She’s a lesbian and doesn’t show many stereotypically gay traits.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: She was already an existing character in her own right, but many fans noted that she was slotted into Batwoman's story after Renee Montoya, Kate's previous badass lesbian cop girlfriend, was Put on a Bus.
• Tacky Tuxedo: A downplayed variation. At the GCPD Gala in Batwoman: Elegy, Maggie wears what is on first glance a sharp-looking white tie ensemble. However, she's both overdressed for the occasion (based on what everyone else is wearing, the event is black tie optional), and dressed inappropriately for the standards of white tie (such as wearing a red tie and cummerbund, and having trousers with the wrong number of stripes).
• Team Mom: Sometimes takes this role for the GCPD.
• Transplant: Used to be a Superman supporting character, but became a firmly Batman character for a long time, particularly because of her high-profile (out of universe) association with Batwoman. As of DC Rebirth, she went back to Metropolis and appears in the Superman books once again.

"Bibbo" Bibbowski

Species: Human

First appearance: Adventures of Superman #428 (1987)

"Sooperman was a pal o' mine. An' none o' these fancy-pants is Sooperman in my book!"

• Badass Bystander: While he may not see himself as a superhero, he's definitely this.
• The Bus Came Back: After being absent for the entirety of the New 52 era, he returned in issue four of Superman (2016).
• Demoted to Extra: Following the nineties, he largely disappeared from Superman's core cast, though he continuted to show up from time to time.
• Good Old Fisticuffs: The dude actually managed to land a punch on Superman's jaw, and made him stagger a bit. Not to mention that time he roughed up the Joker.
• Heroic BSoD: Superman's death hit him hard. After the funeral, he was tearfully asking God why some old roughneck like himself was allowed to go on living when someone like Superman was dead.
• Hidden Depths: After Superman's death, he was willing to put himself at risk in a attempt to restart the big guy's heart.
• I Fight for the Strongest Side!: When Lobo had the upper hand in a fight against Superman, Bibbo cheered for him. He went back to cheering for Superman when he won.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He may be a little rough on the edges, but he's got a big heart.
• Shallow Fan: Bibbo was like this in his early appearances, calling Superman his "fav'rit" just because he was tough. Character Development resulted in him admiring Superman more for his determination to help others, and trying to live up to that example himself.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: His brother is a soft-spoken chemist over in Captain Marvel's home town of Fawcett City (although he's still a big muscle-bound guy, just like Bibbo).

Lucille "Lucy" Lane-Troupe

Species: Human

First appearance: Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen #36 (April, 1959)

Lois: Lucy... this isn't easy for me, and it's going to take a while for us to be comfortable with each other again... but I want us to be friends.
Lucy: We'll always be sisters, Lois.

• Alliterative Name: Lucy Lane.
• Face–Heel Turn: She's gone bad a couple of times. In Pre-Crisis days, she briefly joined the 100, the crime syndicate that Black Lightning fights; she left them again and reformed, but the story of how is quite complicated. ^note After Lucy had faded into obscurity at the end of the Silver Age, Jimmy repeatedly encounters an old woman named Lena Lawrence, who eventually turns out to be Lucy, whom no one has heard from in years and was presumed dead. It turns out she had foolishly gotten involved with the criminal gang the 100, and had been mortally injured while trying to escape them in South America. Her life was saved by a native shaman, but the magic he used aged her. She adopted a new name and tried to leave her past behind her. Her youth is eventually restored, but Lois is understandably angry and hurt that Lucy had turned criminal and then let Lois believe she was dead. The sisters reconcile shortly before the Crisis reboot retcons all this away. Post-Crisis, she got mixed up with her alien-hating father and was driven mad after gaining super powers.
• Jerkass: Silver Age Lucy was not exactly an easy gal to get on with, often exploding at Jimmy over nothing or the weird circumstances that followed him everywhere. Post-Crisis Lucy was worse. Way worse.
• Nervous Wreck: Post-Crisis, she's pretty neurotic.
• Parental Issues: Understandable; her father General Sam Lane is listed on the villains page, after all.
• Relationship Upgrade: She marries Ron Troupe, and they have a baby. Later stories imply they may have gotten divorced, but it isn't clear.
• Sexy Stewardess: A stewardess in the Silver Age and an air traffic controller, Post-Crisis.
• Status Quo Is God: A Silver Age story had Jimmy and Lucy actually get married, and this was intended to be a permanent change, but editor Mort Weisinger nixed it and had the ending rewritten at the last minute.
• Superpowers for a Day: Became Superwoman for a while. It ended poorly.
• Temporary Blindness: When she debuted Post-Crisis, she had lost her sight, and with it her job as an air traffic controller, leaving her suicidal. The first Post-Crisis Bizarro sacrificed his life to restore her sight.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Believes her father always favored Lois, and eventually enters the military because she believes it's what he would have wanted.

Morgan Edge (born Morris Edelstein)

Species: Human

First appearance: Superman (1939) #244 (November, 1971)

"You're my employee — and you'll do well to remember it! If I say you're working for my television station, you are! Clear?"

• Always a Bigger Fish: In the first crossover with Spider-Man, J. Jonah Jameson, for all his wealth and prestige, seems a little intimidated by Edge, who is even richer and more powerful.
• Alternate Company Equivalent: Can be seen as this to Spider-Man's J. Jonah Jameson as Clark's overbearing boss who isn't Superman's strongest supporter.
• Benevolent Boss: More or less, once he and Clark came to an understanding. Clark actually broke his "mild-mannered" persona to shout the overbearing Edge down a couple of times, and this actually seems to have earned Edge's respect.
• Character Development: In his early days, Edge was pretty solidly a Jerkass most of the time, but he mellowed a bit over the fifteen years between his introduction and the Crisis reboot. One notable Pet the Dog moment was when he refused to cross some strikers' picket line, mentioning that his father had been a union man, startling everyone present.
• Depending on the Writer: He was created by Jack Kirby, who clearly intended him to be revealed as a minion of Darkseid, but by the time this came out, the other writers had been portraying him as obnoxious but clearly not actually evil. The inconsistency was explained by Edge having been temporarily replaced by an evil clone, created by Darkseid. The real Edge was rescued, and he remained as Clark's boss for the next fifteen years in real world time. Post-Crisis, Edge was reintroduced as a true villain.
• Evil Twin: Shortly after his introduction, an evil clone framed Edge as a minion of Darkseid, but the real Edge was proven innocent.
• Rich Bastard: Edge is very proud of his position and wealth.
• Sour Supporter: When all Kryptonite on Earth was rendered harmless, Edge was the first to play devil's advocate and ask the Planet staff if they could still trust Superman if he was now truly indestructible. That said, he felt considerably more favorable toward Superman after Supes rescued him from Darkseid.

The Newsboy Legion

Species: Human

First appearance: Star Spangled Comics #7 (April, 1942)

Scrapper Jr.: The Newsboy Legion is a foist rate outfit — just as it was durin' da forties!... We're just carryin' on for our Dads!

• Baker Street Regular: Probably the most prominent exemplars of the trope in comics.
• The Big Guy: Scrapper fills this role, despite actually being fairly short.
• Generation Xerox: In the Bronze Age, they were the natural children of the original Golden Age team.
• Kid Hero: A team of them.
• Legacy Character: Carrying on the legacy of the Golden Age team.
• Secret Chaser: The original Golden Age team were pretty danged sure their surrogate dad Jim Harper was the Guardian, but they could never actually prove it.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Big Words talks like this, hence his nickname.
• The Smart Guy: Big Words.
• Standardized Leader: Tommy, in the Golden Age. With Jimmy Olsen filling the leader role in the Bronze Age incarnation of the team, Tommy Jr. was pretty well Demoted to Extra.
• We Help the Helpless: In the Golden Age, they were general purpose do-gooders in a poor and crime-ridden neighborhood. The Guardian could step in to save them whenever they got in over their heads.
• Wrong Side of the Tracks: Suicide Slum.

Joshua Coyle

Species: Human

First appearance: Superman (1939) #258 (November, 1972)

"You believe Kent is here, J.C. And I believe Kent is here. It's my stomach that's skeptical!"

• Benevolent Boss: While he's certainly not above yelling at Clark (with reason!), he knows Clark always does a reliably excellent job despite everything, which is why he puts up with it. Still, Clark never developed the kind of casual rapport with him that he'd had with Perry.
• Running Gag: Taking antacids for his ulcer.

Species: Kryptonian

First appearance: Action Comics #1 (June, 1938)

"It is a strange story that begins many years ago, and far away from Earth... where in trackless outer space there once existed Krypton, a planet of giant size, revolving around a red sun! Possessed of high intelligence, its people had built a super-scientific civilization far beyond that of Earth... but one fateful day, ominous tremors shook the ground..."

• Aliens Are Bastards: Not most of them usually, but some such as Zod look down on those who are not from Krypton so they naturally do not care about non-Kryptonian life.
• Crapsaccharine World: In some interpretations, Krypton is portrayed as a beautiful world, basically unrivaled in technology and evolutionary development, and with basically no crime or suffering of any kind, but emotionally sterile, with a populace both completely lacking in free will, and so arrogant and xenophobic that they gave up exploring outside their world, sealing their own doom in the process.
• Darker and Edgier: During the Silver Age, Kryptonian society was a thriving, colorful utopia. Starting with the 1978 movie, and later made canon Post-Crisis, Krypton was portrayed in an increasingly dystopian light, being emotionally dead, and already on the decline due to the arrogance of its rulers and the Kryptonians' severe xenophobia.
• Designer Babies: Post-80s interpretations have gone with the idea that Kryptonians stopped reproducing sexually, instead opting for genetically engineering their young using a "matching" system. The reason why depends; sometimes, it's because Kryptonian society has become so detached and sterile that the act of sexual intercourse is considered obscene, in others, they engineer people based on their pre-selected occupation.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: During the Golden Age, before the idea of the yellow sun powering Superman existed, it was said that Kryptonians were "supermen", with all their powers on Krypton as well.
  • During that time, it was also said that the reason for their powers was their planet's heavier gravity, and that they had simply evolved for far longer than humans. Granted, during the first Superman comics, his only powers were increased strength, speed and durability, which actually makes scientific sense, and is the case for real-life humans in low-gravity environments.
• Human Aliens: They look like the humans from Earth but they do have a different biology, as their bodies gains powers and abilities from the yellow sun that surrounds Earth. There are some stories that imply that humans and Kryptonians have a shared ancestry, but normally they're wholly separate.
• Innocent Aliens: Most of them live peaceful lives and they are caring, compassionate, good-hearted and kind people to those who are not Kryptonians with the House of El being the most prominent about it with two of its members Kal-El and his cousin Kara Zor-El being Earth's protectors and superheroes as well.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Because the Kryptonian Science Council were arguably responsible to one degree or another for letting Krypton’s destruction proceed because of their complacency and refusal to listen to Jor-El, you could say they ended up getting what they deserved.
• Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: All of them live under a red sun which makes them like the humans on Earth, living with no powers or abilities until they go to Earth where the yellow sun gives them powers and abilities.
• Space Clothes: One of the trope codifiers. Up till the 80's, Kryptonian dress was deeply Raygun Gothic, typically designed to mimic the style of Superman's uniform (form-fitting, often with capes and chest insignias); and all male citizens wore headbands. The movies went a Crystal Spires and Togas route, with white robes predominating. Post-Crisis, John Byrne mostly just tried to make their outfits look strange and alien, with cowled black robes with fluffy piping on the sleeves for men and flared golden headdresses for women. Modern depictions generally try to split the difference between these three versions, incorporating bits from each.
• Sufficiently Advanced Alien: They were one of the most advanced technology races in the universe until their home planet ends up exploding, but remnants of it end up surviving as the rockets survived the planet's destruction along with their passengers.

Jor-El and Lara Lor-Van

Species: Kryptonian

First appearance: Action Comics #1 (June, 1938) ^note unnamed; Superman (January 16, 1939) ^note as Jor-L and Lora; Superman (1939) #53 (August, 1948) ^note as Jor-L and Lara; More Fun Comics #101 (January, 1945) ^note as Jor-El and Lara Lor-Van

Jor-El: I implore you — Build thousands of great space ships like my model! If the lives of all Kryptonians are to be saved, they must travel to the planet Earth — for Krypton is doomed — doomed!

• Adaptational Villainy: In the Elseworld Superman: The Dark Side, Jor-El intends Kal-El to conquer the universe in Krypton's name using the Anti-Life Equation.
• Adaptational Wimp: In John Byrne's The Man of Steel and World of Krypton, Lara is portrayed as a librarian and historian who has little to do with Jor-El and sending Kal-El to Earth, with her final moments involving her freaking out while Jor-El saves their son and calms her down. However, Pre-Crisis Lara was a trained astronaut who survived several dangerous situations with her husband, and when given the chance to survive with her son she chose to die with Jor-El since she loved him and knew her extra weight could cause the ship to fail. Jor-El also suffers this to a lesser extent, as he is a far cry from the Badass Bookworm from the Pre-Crisis continuity.
• Adaptation Name Change: They were named Jor-L and Lora in the Golden Age.
• Aerith and Bob: Lara is a human name, Jor-El isn't. Lara's original Golden Age name however, while more human sounding than her husband's, isn't.
• Age Lift: Originally, both were young, about the same age as Clark. The movies cast middle-aged actors due to Rule of Perception (even if they both died as Kal-El was a baby, makes sense them being older than him in the present), and the comics follow suit at the times◊.
• Arranged Marriage: In some versions, their marriage appear to be this. In the post-Crisis/pre-Superman: Birthright continuity, Jor-El's father Seyg-El and Lara's grandmother Lady Nara set up their union, for the sole purpose of giving birth to a child who would have taken the place of a recently-deceased Kryptonian.
• Back from the Dead: DC Rebirth established that Jor-El was saved from Krypton's destruction by Dr Manhattan and has been on Earth, though still apart from Clark.
• Broken Pedestal: The New 52 has Jor-El pulled from the moment of Krypton's destruction and dropped on Earth. There he receives the worst view on humanity and decides its beyond saving, believing the best thing for his son is to make him see that and convince him to take his family and leave for greener pastures by deliberately stoking people's worst actions and torturing Clark when he refuses. It then comes out that back on Krypton he was a member of a shadow government for the galaxy, after he took Jon on a galactic roadtrip which through a mishap aged him into near-adulthood. At the end, Clark is left utterly appalled at the self-justifying manipulator his father is and will eternally resent him for stealing his son's childhood from him, while Jon sees him as someone gripped with insanity from existential despair.
• Cain and Abel: Some more recent incarnations of Jor-El has him have this dynamic with his brother Zor-El, who has been increasingly portrayed as either villainous, or at the very least morally grey.
  • Some versions of Jor-El also has this with General Zod, with them having been as close as brothers in their youth, before becoming bitter enemies.
• Cassandra Truth: In nearly every version of Superman's origin. The classic story is that he tells the Kryptonian High Council (or something like that) that Krypton is doomed and they must evacuate, but nobody believes him, so he's forced to send his infant son to Earth in a small rocket.
• Comic-Book Fantasy Casting: Gary Frank draws Jor-El looking like Marlon Brando with a beard.
• Cultural Rebel: Jor-El was this in the post-Crisis/pre-Birthright continuity, as he favored Krypton's less-sterile, more emotional time period. He was considered a "throwback" as a result. This inspired Brainiac 13's plan of creating a fake Krypton in the Phantom Zone specifically based on Jor-El's favorite period, which also resembles the Silver Age Krypton.
• Depending on the Writer: Whether Jor-El is a beloved figure in Kryptonian society or considered some kind of crazy radical for his views on Kryptonian life and the planet's impending destruction is up to the specific era and writer the comic comes from.
• Death by Childbirth: An early draft of John Byrne's Man of Steel would have had a pregnant Lara being sent to Earth but dying in childbirth thanks to a piece of kryptonite embedded in the ship's hull.
• Death by Origin Story: Jor-El and Lara died, of course, when Krypton blew up.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: In the very first comics, they (along with all Kryptonians), had superpowers even when on Krypton. Their names were also spelled differently, as Jor-L and Lora.
• Expansion Pack Past: In the earliest stories, even Superman himself knew little about his parents (though later retcons would establish that his super-memory remembered his toddlerhood quite well). Flashback stories revealed more and more details of the couple's lives, culminating in the limited series (usually held up as the first comic book limited series) World of Krypton, collecting many of these stories into a single definitive biography of Pre-Crisis Jor-El.
• Forbidden Love: In more sterile, dystopian portrayals of Krypton, Jor-El and Lara's genuine romance is considered scandalous, and something they have to hide. The fact that they made Kal-El the old-fashioned way, instead of creating a child through genetic engineering as is the custom on some versions of Krypton is considered outright obscene.
• Fling a Light into the Future: They sent their only son in a rocket to Earth.
• Happily Married: Many version, in particular the Pre-Crisis continuity, made it clear that the two were deeply in love and in versions where Jor-El made enough space on the ship for Lara to survive with Kal-El, she chooses to stay with him instead of living without him.
• Huge Holographic Head: How Jor-El's hologram usually appears but some comics give him a full body.
• Identical Grandson: Pre-Crisis Jor-El - and, depending on what comic you're reading, his Post-Crisis counterpart - looks identical to Superman. Some media shake things up by having Superman be more similar to Lara instead. Superman's Return to Krypton establishes that Jor-El is also a dead ringer for his own father, and The Krypton Chronicles shows that he is identical to his distant ancestor -and founder of of the lineage- Erok-El.
• I Gave My Word: The only reason they didn't leave Krypton is because they promised the Kryptonian council that they wouldn't. They didn't mention their son though.
• Ignored Expert: Jor-El is the former trope namer, in fact.
  • Some versions subvert this by having Zod actually believing him and trying to take over Krypton as to try to save it from its destruction.
  • Pre-Crisis (and in one Supergirl origin), Jor-El's brother Zor-El did believe his predictions, and (depending on continuity) eventually sent his own child Kara to Earth.
• Mr. Exposition: Their holograms in the Fortress of Solitude exist mainly to explain things.
• No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup: They only seem to have one spaceship that can reach Earth, though in early continuities this was a prototype and Jor-El couldn't get the time or the funding to build more rockets.
• Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Pre-Crisis Jor-El seems to have invented half the things on Krypton.
• Posthumous Character: The Pre-Crisis versions of them are usually dead by the time Kal-El ends up on Earth, their appearances typically in either flashbacks during Krypton's past before its destruction or holograms.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Though it seems Jor-El's the only one at the time of Krypton's destruction. Some tellings of the origin story alternately suggest Jor-El's findings aren't conclusive.
• Ret-Canon: Superman (1978) came up with the idea of having him as a hologram in the Fortress of Solitude.
• Robot Buddy: Jor-El has two called Kelex and Kelor.
• Science Hero: Jor-El in the Silver Age, to the point of making citizens arrests on future Phantom Zone criminals.
• Spared by the Adaptation: Some Elseworlds, such as Superman: The Last Family of Krypton and Dark Knights of Steel, have the two of them travel to Earth with their son.
• Straw Conservative: Jor-El became one in For the Man Who Has Everything, Superman's trapped in a Lotus-Eater Machine where Krypton never exploded. Due to being disgraced after being wrong about Krypton's destruction in this reality.
• Trauma Conga Line: The New 52 is not kind to him. He's ripped from his wife in the final moments of Krypton, dropped on an alien planet to be granted the worst view of its people, becomes a global terrorist in a mad attempt to save his son, has the secrets he supported on Krypton come back to tear the galaxy apart and have his son resent him for all his actions, before being sent back in time to die on Krypton. If failing to save Krypton wasn't enough then failing to save anything and having it all blow up in his face in front of his child has to be utterly mortifying.
• Virtual Ghost: Jor-El gets this treatment through recordings, largely inspired by Superman (1978). Lara (and others) get this too sometimes.
• We Used to Be Friends: In some versions, Jor-El and Zod used to be close friends, or at least held a great amount of respect for one another, before it eventually turned into bitter hatred, closely mirroring the relationship his son has with Lex Luthor in some versions.

Species: Kryptonian

First appearance: Action Comics #242 (July, 1958)

"Great stars! That's a city of Krypton, my home world! Brainiac must have imprisoned it inside his bottle years before Krypton met doom!"

• Adaptation Species Change: Briefly in Post-Crisis, the Kandorians were non-Kryptonian aliens, and the city was originally a concentration camp until it was taken by the alien wizard Tolos.
• Innocent Aliens: The Kandorians like the people on Krypton are peaceful and good-hearted so they want to live in peace most of the time except in Post-Crisis as they do not get along with the humans on Earth, which leads them to be killed in the end.
• Last of Their Kind: They along with Superman, Supergirl, those from Argo City, the ones imprisoned in the Phantom Zone and the House of El are the only ones who escaped Krypton's destruction thanks to Brainiac taking them as his collection before the planet exploded.
• Lilliputians: They are shrank to small size so they live in Kandor which is at the same size as them.
• Men of Sherwood: The seemingly rotating Emergency Squad of Kandor is made up of citizens who sometimes fly out of the bottled city to help Superman despite their microscopic size. They tend to be helpful and long-lived, sometimes even capturing villains who have defeated Superman.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Despite their small size they can gain powers while under the yellow sun so like insects such as bees or wasps they will attack anyone who intends to harm them or save Superman or anyone else who are in danger.
• Vanishing Village: Rokyn, the planet they settled after being enlarged in Pre-Crisis continuity, was like this, only existing in our dimension for intermittent periods. They knew this when they requested Superman take them there for re-enlargement, but Superman was caught off-guard by it. From then on, until the Crisis, the Kandorians were Commuting on a Bus, as the planet would re-appear in our universe periodically but was usually inaccessible.

Kelex

Species: Kryptonian Service Robot

First appearance: The Man of Steel #1 (October, 1986)

Art by arunion.

"The young master is... unlike other Kryptonians, Number 3. His... heart is great."

• Bizarre Alien Limbs: His arms have joints in odd places.
• Breakout Character: He was originally a very minor character in flashback scenes to Jor-El and Krypton, but he has such a memorable look that writers and artists kept bringing him back. These days, he's one of the few elements of the John Byrne version of Krypton that's still canon.
• The Faceless: Just blank glass instead of a face.
• Hover Bot: He has no legs, and floats.
• Legacy Character: The original Kelex blew up with the rest of Krypton; the modern Kelex is a new robot built in his image.
• Robot Buddy: A loyal robot assistant.
• Totally Radical: The modern Kelex, in the Fortress, sometimes tries to imitate vernacular, slangy speech. Awkwardly.
  "Your momma."
• Unnecessarily Creepy Robot: He was introduced during John Byrne's run, when Krypton was being portrayed as semi-dystopian, so he was drawn to have a very alien and slightly creepy look. These days he's presented as much more friendly, but his basic look is usually unchanged.

Jonathan David Kent and Martha Kent (née Clark)

Species: Human

First appearance: Action Comics #1 (June, 1938) ^note unnamed; Superman (1939) #1 (June, 1939) ^note as John and Mary Kent; More Fun Comics #101 (January, 1945) ^note as Jonathan and Martha Kent

"Look, Mary! — It's a child!"
"The poor thing! — It's been abandoned!"

• Almighty Mom: Martha's word is law on the Kent farm.
  Jonathan: [while Martha is trying to make Clark's superhero uniform] Your mother went through a lot of trouble for this, Clark. She broke five pairs of scissors, her sewing machine, and my chainsaw. You help her and try it on.
  Clark: But pa...
  Jonathan: You don't want to disappoint your mother, do you?
  Clark: [sighs] That gets me every time, you know?
  Jonathan: [ruffling Clark's hair] I know.
• Ascended Extra: Big time. Action Comics #1 had a "passing motorist" who found the infant Superman, dropped him off at an orphanage, and vanished from the story. Superman #1, expanding on the origin story, named the passing motorist as Mr. Kent and his wife Mary who adopted the infant Superman and were the ones who encouraged him to use his powers to help mankind. While they passed away before the start of Superman's career, they were an important part of the Superboy (1949) stories. The Post-Crisis comics made the decision to keep them around as part of Superman's regular supporting cast.
• Badass Family: The limited series The Kents chronicled the adventures of Jonathan's ancestors back when Kansas was still part of the Wild West. They're also related to one of Hawkman's prior incarnations (Brian Kent, the Silent Knight of 6th century England).
• Badass Normal:
  • Some portrayals of Jonathan will have him as a veteran, and will cross the line into this.
  • Not that Martha is herself a slouch either. During Blackest Night, she's attacked by the Black Lantern Lois Lane of Earth-Two and gets away unharmed.
• Boring, but Practical: The glasses they fashion for Clark go a long way towards helping him control his heat vision even though he disliked how big they were. Martha's decision to create the Superman costume saved them a lot of money on torn up shirts and jeans from Clark's exploits, even though Clark found it embarrassing to wear at first.
  • Superman was not created through trauma or training, but through the simple, unconditional love the Kents showed him. Kal-El's physiology may make him super, but it is Clark's humble upbringing that made him a hero.
• Comic-Book Fantasy Casting: Following the success of Smallville, where they had more of a central role than previous Superman media, artists often drew Ma and Pa Kent as aged-up versions of Annette O'Toole and John Schneider.
• Connected All Along: It turns out Ma and Pa Kent have been in constant communication with Alfred, what with the three of them being the parents of the two greatest heroes of all time, and grandparents to a whole bunch of affiliated junior heroes.
• Death by Adaptation: The 1978 Superman film and Man of Steel both have Jonathan getting killed off. Though as noted, how long-lived Ma and Pa Kent are varies wildly even in the source material.
• Death by Origin Story:
  • Originally they both died shortly after Clark's high school graduation, marking the passage between Superboy and Superman.
  • Averted in post-Crisis Superman, where both of them are alive in the main continuity as supporting characters until Pa Kent's death during an attack by the supervillain Brainiac.
  • Played straight again in the New 52 where both she and her husband are deceased having been killed by a drunk driver. Carried on into DC Rebirth, where it's revealed that they died on Clark's prom night, just as they were discussing how they won't always be there for him, with Martha worrying that someone will finally manage to hurt him. Clark's Super-Hearing meant that he heard every second of it. It's undone post-Doomsday Clock, with Superboy preventing their deaths right before they crash. The two are now alive again in the present, with the additional bonus of undoing Jonathan's death in Superman: Brainiac.
• Eagleland: A rare purely wholesome "America The Beautiful" type. In many continuities, this is why Superman is such an Ideal Hero: Ma and Pa Kent raised their boy Clark with the best of good, old-fashioned middle American values (honesty, humility, politeness, hard work, help out as you're able).
• Fangirl: Martha turns out is a fan of the original Green Lantern in the Post-Crisis continuity.
• Good Parents: The best considering they took an alien orphan, who could have become an Evil Overlord with his sheer physical power and raised him to become the ultimate Cape. Taking in Conner Kent is partially what changed him from an arrogant Hot-Blooded, Casanova Wannabe Smug Super into a much more compassionate, humble and friendly young man.
• Granny Classic: Martha was not a grandmother for most of her history, but she certainly fits the image and personality; loving and supportive, loves to cook, and designed Clark's costume.
• Happily Married: Martha's relationship with her husband is probably the most stable in all of comics.
• Mama Bear/ Papa Wolf: They may be human farmers, but if you threaten their son, they won't hesitate to blast your ass with a shotgun.
• Muggle Foster Parents: No powers of their own, but they did their best to help their superpowered adoptive child live a relatively normal life and use his powers for good, and it shows.
• Nice Guy: They are kind and humble, and they instilled these in their adoptive son so he would become The Cape he is today.
• Parental Substitutes:
  • The Ur-Example in comics. While Kal-El would always have powers by virtue of being Kryptonian by birth, the comics stress repeatedly that it was the Kents' values that made Superman the hero he is. Lampshaded in the "Reign of the Supermen" series with regard to the Jerkass Superboy clone:
    Jonathan Kent: No son of ours would act like that, powers or no!
  • Ironically though they would later become this to Conner as well and they are part of the reason he becomes much a nicer person.
• Retcon: Saved by a couple of these. Originally they were largely anonymous characters but when Superman was retconned to have been Superboy during his childhood, they got plenty of character development and fans didn't want them Doomed by Canon. So in the Post-Crisis reboot, Clark's parents find him much younger and are late middle aged in Superman's adult career (though Pa Kent did eventually die).
• Small Role, Big Impact: Nearly all iterations of the two have them as nothing more than a couple of farmers who took in and raised a baby Clark as their own, and only occasionally show up as minor supporting characters in most stories. Of course, it's precisely because they were such Good Parents that Superman would go on to become the Big Good of the DC universe, having saved multiple worlds and dimensions throughout his long and illustrious career.
• Sudden Name Change: Their names kept shifting for a while before the familiar Jonathan and Martha were settled on. In Superman #1 (1939), Ms. Kent is named Mary while her husband is unnamed. Outside of the comics, they went through a couple of variations. In a 1942 novel, they were named Eben and Sarah Kent. In the 1948 serial, they were Eben and Martha Kent. Superman #53 names them as John and Mary Kent while the Superboy (1949) stories would establish them as Jonathan and Martha Kent going forward. When Earth-Two was introduced, the Kents there retained their original Golden Age names of John and Mary.
• Upbringing Makes the Hero: It is a major theme in the Superman mythos how their upbringing of Clark, and the values they have instilled into him are instrumental in shaping him into who he is.

Lana Elizabeth Lang

Species: Human

First appearance: Superboy (1949) #10 (October, 1950)

^{Click here to see Lana as Superwoman}

Lana Lang is Clark Kent's high school love interest and one of the most prominent supporting characters in the Superman mythos. She was originally created as a teenage Captain Ersatz of Lois Lane to complicate things for Superboy the way her older counterpart complicated the life of the adult Superman.

Lana was first introduced in Superboy #10 (September/October 1950). As Clark's next door neighbour in Smallville she was mostly depicted as equal parts close friend and nuisance, being determined to prove Clark and Superboy were one in the same. In keeping with the tradition set by Lois she was attracted to Superboy but had little time for the timid Clark (romantically anyway). During the Silver Age Lana would prove nearly as much a Weirdness Magnet as Jimmy Olsen himself, going through many transformations and gaining or losing powers as the plot demanded. After gaining a "bio-genetic" ring from an alien she even had a few adventures as a superheroine using the name "Insect Queen" and ended up a reserve member of the Legion of Super-Heroes.

Meanwhile Lana had started to appear as an adult in Superman's Girlfriend, Lois Lane (while still appearing as a teenager in Superboy stories). Many Superman tales of the 60s dealt with the Lois/Superman/Lana triangle. Later, in the 70s and 80s she was Clark's co-anchor on WGBS-TV's evening news.

Lana was substantially reinvented for Superman III, her first major role outside the comics, which emphasised her Girl Next Door aspects and her friendship (and romantic interest) with Clark rather than his alter-ego.

Post-Crisis, with Clark's time as Superboy retconned away, Lana's role was altered into being Clark's Unlucky Childhood Friend and Secret-Keeper, largely keeping her characterisation from Superman III. She appeared occasionally in the Superman stories and had a rocky few years, marrying and then divorcing fellow Smallville native Pete Ross and never quite getting over Clark. Later on she returned to prominence as a surrogate mother/big sister figure to Supergirl.

In the New 52, she was re-imagined as an engineer, and became a major supporting character in Action Comics and Superman/Wonder Woman, establishing a long-term relationship with John Henry Irons. Her role as one of the very few people who Superman has confided his real identity in remains secure.

In Superwoman #1, it's revealed that when the New 52 Superman died in The Final Days of Superman, the blast gave both Lois and Lana superpowers, Lois getting Superman's classic powers, Lana getting the energy powers of Superman Red and Blue. Lois convinced Lana to become Superwoman alongside her — only for Lois to apparently die at the end of the issue, leaving Lana as the series' main character.

Outside of comics, Lana's first appearance was in the unsold 1961 pilot The Adventures of Superboy in which she was played by Bunny Henning. Lana played a major role in the TV series The Adventures of Superboy (where she was played by Stacy Haiduk), Superman: The Animated Series (where she was played by Kelley Schmidt as a teenager and Joely Fisher as an adult), Smallville (where she was played by Kristin Kreuk as an adult and Miranda Cosgrove as a child) and the film Superman III (where she was played by Annette O'Toole). Jadin Gould played her at age 13 and Emily Peterson as an adult in the DC Extended Universe. Emily Procter played an Alternate Universe version of Lana who was engaged to Clark in the Lois & Clark episode "Tempus, Anyone?". Emmanuelle Chriqui plays a married Lana in Superman & Lois.

• Adaptational Super Power Change:
  • The Earth Two Insect Queen, which actually comes after her Earth One counterpart, has the power to control and enlarge insects, rather than transform into them.
  • After two continuities of becoming Insect Queen, with the kind of powers one would expect from the name, New 52 instead has Lana Lang become Super Woman, with electromagnetic powers akin to Superman Red.
• Adaptational Villainy:
  • A "return" to Earth-Two story has Lana Lang become "Insect Queen" after being possessed by a magical scarab her archaeologist father found. However, Earth-Two Lana retakes control of her body and becomes a part-time superhero.
  • Post-Crisis continuity changes Insect Queen from a Superman sidekick and Legion of Super Heroes reserve member to an invading insectoid alien who first copies Lana Lang form to capture Superman and then starts taking over Lana Lang's body to capture Supergirl.
• Affirmative-Action Legacy: For Superman in Superwoman, specifically the Superman Red incarnation from when he was split up into two energy-based beings in the late '90s.
• Alliterative Name: Lana Lang.
• Alternate Company Equivalent: Gwen Stacy from Spider-Man, who was introduced fifteen years after Lana, can be seen as her Marvel equivalent, in that they're both the First Love of the main hero, had a Betty and Veronica style love triangle between them and the character's future wife/more famous love interest (Lois Lane/Mary Jane Watson), playing the Betty in this situation, and could be quite a jerk to the hero despite their affections. Unlike Gwen, Lana at least lived.
• Animal-Themed Superbeing: Pre-Crisis, Earth-One Lana Lang is gifted a ring by an Insectoid Alien that allows Lana to imitate a trait of any insect or arachnid on Earth by transforming into them. Earth-Two Lana Lang is possessed by a magical scarab that allows her to control and enlarge insects or arachnids.
• Ascended Extra: Became the protagonist in Superwoman after sixty-odd years as a supporting character.
• Betty and Veronica: Pre-Crisis Lana and Lois were in a long-running triangle over Superman. Broadly speaking Lana was the Betty (as the childhood friend) and Lois the Veronica (as the glamorous big city gal) but they actually had aspects of each in their characters — Lana ended up a TV reporter, making her pretty glamorous too, while Lois frequently showed a softer side to her personality. Post-Crisis Lana is firmly in Unlucky Childhood Friend territory.
• Butt-Monkey: Tied with Jimmy as the unluckiest major character in the Superman mythos. Pre-Crisis it was frequently her own fault when a scheme backfired, post-Crisis not so much.
• Childhood Friend Romance: Blatantly pined after Clark and still tries to win his affection, to no avail.
• Comes Great Responsibility: How Lois convinces her to use the powers she gained from Clark's death and become Superwoman. Lois tells her that she should honor Clark's memory by reminding people what his symbol stands for.
• Damsel in Distress: Prior to becoming Insect Queen Lana Lang's interactions with Superboy often amounted to having be rescued by him.
• Depending on the Writer: Depending on the universe, and the adaptation, Lana's relationship with Clark varies widely. In some, they dated quite seriously, in others, Clark pined for her as a teenager, but never went beyond that, and in others, it's Lana who has unrequited feelings for Clark.
• Empowered Badass Normal: As "Insect Queen" in the Silver Age DC and Post Crisis. As Superwoman, New 52.
• Expy: Of Lois. She was originally introduced to be the nosy investigative love interest for a young Clark Kent. For Smallville the creators created a new character (Chloe Sullivan) to fill this role as their version of Lana didn't mesh with that role, resulting in the odd situation where they had both a Lana character and a character who was for all intents and purposes an Expy of the comics version of Lana.
• Family-Unfriendly Death: Gets charcoaled in Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?.
• Fiery Redhead: Iconically red haired but her fieryness tends to vary depending on time period (she was a lot more fiery in the 50s and 60s for instance).
• First-Episode Twist: Superwoman #1, with the twist being Lana Lang is the main character, not Lois Lane.
• First Love: She is this to Clark/Superman.
• Friendship Moment: In pre-Crisis continuity Lana was the person who stayed with the Kents during Jonathan and Martha's terminal illness and tried to keep Clark's spirits up.
• Genius Ditz: Overlapping with Guile Heroine. Silver Age Lana was notoriously reckless and lacking in common sense even for the Silver Age but in her quest to prove Superboy was really Clark Kent she could be incredibly cunning and inventive.
• Girl Next Door: Pre-Crisis Lana was initially naive, nearly to the point of idiocy, and someone Clark almost couldn't think of in a romantic context.
• Happily Married: As of 2025, to John Henry Irons AKA Steel.
• It's All About Me: Her reason for her angst with Superman is based around how he didn't choose to be with Lana during his childhood and broke her heart.
• Loves My Alter Ego: Pre-Crisis Lana was in love with Superman (or Superboy depending on the timeframe of the story). Post-Crisis she was best friends with and interested in Clark.
• Parental Abandonment: In the New 52, her parents died during the events of Superman: Doomed. Superwoman subsequently gave her a deceased brother as well.
• Parental Substitute: Post-Crisis Lana took on this role to Supergirl, taking her under her wing as her adoptive aunt.
• Pet the Dog: The pre-Crisis Lana could be plenty obnoxious at times but on many occasions she showed that beneath her often selfish exterior she was a good person.
• Secret Chaser: Pre-Crisis. That page's image says it all.
• Secret-Keeper: Post-Crisis. Pre-Crisis due to Status Quo Is God the times she learned Clark's secret she either forgot it thanks to some handy plot element or was tricked into thinking she'd misinterpreted things.
• Significant Green-Eyed Redhead: More significant at some points than others, however.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: During the Silver Age, she was one for Lois Lane, being a nosy reporter with the initials "L.L", obsessed with unmasking Superman/Superboy, as well as the main love interest for Clark. Gradually, the reporter element was dropped entirely, and Post-Crisis, Lana and Lois are very different as people.
• Small Name, Big Ego: As a teenager in the Silver Age, with shades of a Know-Nothing Know-It-All.
• Stalker with a Crush: After Clark revealed he had superpowers and left to pursue his journey to become Superman, Lana became heartbroken and alone with the knowledge the man she loved would never be hers and became a stalker, to the extent that Lex Luthor noticed the frequency with which she appeared in the vicinity of Clark in Metropolis and had her tortured in an attempt to gain whatever inside knowledge of Superman she might have.
• Zany Scheme: In the Silver Age, mostly to get Superboy to reveal his real identity. They didn't tend to work out.

Peter Joseph "Pete" Ross

Species: Human

First appearance: Superboy (1949) #86 (January, 1961)

"So Clark is Superboy, just as some people have suspected! But I'll never betray him nor even tell Clark I know! He mustn't be disturbed or hampered in any way by my knowledge!"

• Childhood Friends: One of Clark's best friends back in Smallville.
• Locked Out of the Loop: His Post-Crisis version was oblivious to Clark's secret until recently.
• Secret Secret-Keeper: In the Silver/Bronze Age, this was his defining trait.
• Unwitting Pawn: He was just a tool for Luthor. Also, while President, he inadvertently funded Project 7734, the anti-Kryptonian conspiracy.
• Youthful Freckles: He's depicted with freckles as a kid.

Professor Phineas Potter

Species: Human

First appearance: Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen #22 (August, 1957)

• Bungling Inventor: His whole shtick. He's a comical genius whose inventions tend to make a mess of things.
• Decomposite Character / Expy: The Adventures of Superman TV and radio series featured an essentially identical character named Professor Pepperwinkle. Years later in the Bronze Age, Pepperwinkle himself made a couple of brief appearances in the comic.
• Mad Scientist: Of the most benevolent and relatively harmless sort, but yeah, he's probably got a screw or two loose.
• Omnidisciplinary Scientist: He knows enough about everything to build whatever sort of almost-working nutty machine a plot calls for.
• Plucky Comic Relief: He always served this role, back in the day. Granted, if one were to deconstruct him and the consequences of some of his gizmos, it would probably be possible to play him for drama, but why would one do that? He's fun.
• Super-Empowering: His inventions sometimes give people "powers" of one sort or another, but always of a temporary nature and usually rather ridiculous ones. Most notably, he invented the serum that repeatedly gave Jimmy Olsen his powers as Elastic Lad.

Species: Human

First appearance: DC Comics Presents Annual #1 (September, 1982)

The greatest scientific genius of Earth-3, a parallel world ruled by the villainous Ultraman and the rest of the Crime Syndicate. Luthor was inspired to become the world's first super-hero after seeing Ultraman defeated by his good counterparts, the Supermen of Earths-1 and -2. He was also shocked to learn that each of these heroes fought against their own evil versions of himself, Lex Luthor of Earth-One and Alexei Luthor of Earth-Two. Luthor married crusading reporter Lois Lane and together they had a son, Alexander Luthor, Junior. Luthor and his wife died in the Crisis on Infinite Earths, but not before they sent their son to safety in a rocket.

There is also a heroic Alexander Luthor in the Anti-Matter Universe. He also fights that world's Ultraman and Crime Syndicate (including Lois Lane, who in this world is the evil Superwoman) and is very similar to the Earth-3 Luthor except for an arrogant streak.

In the New 52's Forever Evil, another version of Alexander was introduced. This one, however, despite claiming to be a hero was every bit as villainous as the Crime Syndicate. Since he has yet to encounter Superman, tropes about him should go on the page for Forever Evil (2013).

• Antagonist in Mourning: Inverted. Pre-Crisis Alexander was very upset and aghast when Superwomen died, noting that while they had fought many times, he never wanted her to die like that.
• Arch-Enemy: Of the Crime Syndicate and Ultraman in particular.
• Badass Normal: An unpowered human who fights all five members of the Crime Syndicate (the evil counterparts of Superman, Batman, The Flash, Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern) all by himself and who wins more often than not. For a minor character he is an immense badass.
• Beard of Evil: Inverted! Pre-Crisis Alexander has a sinister looking goatee, but is the hero of the story.
• Big Good: On Earth-3 and in the Antimatter universe, in much the same way that Superman is in the regular timeline.
• Brought to You by the Letter "S": Had a giant "L" on his chest Pre-Crisis.
• The Cape: Hilariously yes. Pre-Crisis Alexander Luthor was a genuinely heroic, humble guy, who was channeling our Superman for all that he was worth.
• Clothes Make the Superman: Pre-Crisis Alexander derived all his powers from his costume. Post-Crisis Alexander also made physical alterations to himself, but was still reliant on his armour to do most things.
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check: Averted Pre-Crisis. Alexander was well-known as a brilliant inventor and scientist, who avoided Reed Richards Is Useless.
• Energy Weapon: Pre-Crisis Alexander's raygun.
• Face Death with Dignity: Pre-Crisis Alex went out calmly, accepting his world's fate as he and Lois embraced one last time.
• Gadgeteer Genius: He’s a brilliant inventor and built his Powered Armor suit himself.
• Genius Bruiser: Post-Crisis, when his Powered Armour and physical modifications gave him strength and durability to match that of Ultraman.
• Good Is Dumb: Completely averted. Alexander may actually be the smartest version of Luthor out there, given his ability to outmaneuver not only the entire Crime Syndicate, but both his Evil Twins.
• Good Twin: Of Earth-One's Lex Luthor and Earth-Two's Alexei Luthor.
• Guile Hero: As a good counterpoint to Luthor this should be expected.
• Happily Married: Pre-Crisis Alexander and Earth-3 Lois Lane.
• Intangibility: Pre-Crisis Alexander had a supersuit that allowed him to turn intangible.
• Mr. Vice Guy: As mentioned, Anti-Matter Luthor is unambiguously good, but very vain.
• Nice, Mean, and In-Between: All three versions of the character fall into this trope with pre-Crisis Alexander being a genuine hero, New 52 Alexander being just as bad as as the villains he fights, and the Antimatter Alexander being arrogant but ultimately a good person.
• Non-Action Guy: Toyed with and subverted Pre-Crisis. Alexander is a terrible fighter and has an average physique but his technological prowess helped him fight the likes of Ultraman on an even footing.
• Powered Armor: Anti-Matter Alexander Luthor (who is, truth be told, very similar to Iron Man) features a version of our Luthor's purple and green battlesuit. Earth-3 Luthor never had the full suit but he did have a jetpack and raygun, as well as the ability to become an Intangible Man.
• Ret-Gone: The Crisis removed the original Alexander Luthor from history and we have yet to see him return in the new Earth-3.
• Science Hero: In contrast to the usual Mad Scientist portrayal of Luthor, Alexander uses his scientific brilliance to defend his world from the Crime Syndicate.
• Super-Intelligence: And unlike Lex and Alexei, Alexander actually put that IQ to work for the good of his world.
• Super-Strength: Post-Crisis Alexander modified his body to give himself superstrength.

Ambush Bug (Irwin Schwab)

Species: Metahuman

First Appearance: DC Comics Presents #52 (December, 1982)

Ambush Bug is the Cloudcuckoolander secret identity of Irwin Schwab, a man raised solely on TV who one day discovered a green teleportation suit that was sent within a capsule from a doomed planet (or so he claims). He started out as a rather inept supervillain who made a habit of annoying Superman, then went straight and became a rather inept superhero who made a habit of annoying Superman. You can find out more about all of this in his own article.

Beacon (Kathy Branden)

Species: Metahuman

First appearance: Superman (2016) #1 (August, 2016)

A girl who lives next door to the "Smiths", and a friend of Jon's.

• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Hasn't been seen since Jon was aged up.
• Future Badass: A Flash Forward revealed her standing alongside Batman (Damian Wayne) and Superman (Jon Kent) when she's older.
• Girl Next Door: For Jon. She literally lives next door.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: A sweet and kind girl with blonde hair who is Jon's best friend in Hamilton and deeply cares for all of the animals on her farm. Her kindness helped lead her to turn on Manchester Black after he was clearly hurting Jon and especially after he murdered her grandfather.
• Mind Over Matter: Her most used power. It's strong enough that she can effortlessly deflect Jon's heat vision.
• Only Friend: She's Jon's only friend for a long time. Then Damian Wayne came along.
• Rubber-Forehead Aliens: She has green skin, and that's the only thing that separates her from humanity, visually.
• Secret-Keeper: For Jonathan, as she knows about his powers after seeing him kill Goldie. That said, she doesn't know everything, as she's still in the dark as to why he has his powers in the first place, or why he has incredible strength and durability, the former of which he passes off as simply working out with his dad. Though it's later revealed that she knew the whole time, being a member of Manchester Black's "New Elite" as part of Black's plans to undermine Superman and bend Jon to his will. She ultimately comes around and saves Jon after Black callously murders her grandfather.
• Ship Tease: A precocious romance between her and Jonathan seems to be brewing.
• Telepathy: Her other power, although it's strong enough to compete with Manchester Black. She also uses it to appear human, although her true appearance is basically her human appearance but with green skin.
• Youthful Freckles: Her strongest feature. A Flash Forward reveals that she loses them by the time she's an adult, or they become Facial Markings.

Colonel Future (Edmund Hamilton)

Species: Metahuman

First Appearance: Superman (1939)' #378 (December, 1982)

A NASA scientist who, after being accidentally electrocuted when he spilled coffee on a control console, began having precognitive flashes of the future-but only when his life was imperiled, so he constructed a helmet and battle suit adapting them to futuristic specifications gleaned from his visions. Now he set out to correct future disasters. He was an ally to Superman, although they started out in conflict because Hamilton's first act was to steal equipment he believed he needed to prevent a catastrophe; it turned out he had misinterpreted his precognitive vision, and Superman told hm to use his powers more responsibly from now on.

• Gadgeteer Genius: Hamilton built all of Cononel Future's gadgets himself, including:
  • Deflector Shields: A device in his suit generates a personal forcefield.
  • Jet Pack: He flies using one.
  • Teleportation: His suit also include a teleportation device.
  • Tunnel King: His gun is a ultra-sonic device he can use for tunneling .
• In Name Only: "Colonel" is just his Nom de Guerre, he's really a scientist.
• One-Steve Limit: Shares the name with an Earth-Two Superman villain. This version was intended as his Earth-One counterpart.
• Seers: Colonel Future can see flashes of future events but cannot always accurately interpret them.
• Tuckerization: Named for science fiction writer Edmond Hamilton who wrote the Captain Future' stories in the 1940s, annd was also a Superman writer from the 1940s to the 1960s.

Dreamer (Nia Nal)

Species: Human-Naltorian hybrid

First Appearance: Supergirl (2015): ""The American Alien"" (October 14, 2018); DC Pride 2022' #1 (August, 2022)

A Naltorian-Human hybrid with the power of precognition. She is also a distant ancestor of Nura Nal (Dream Girl) of the Legion of Super-Heroes.

• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul:
  • She's nowhere near as close to Jimmy Olsen, Martian Manhunter, Supergirl, or Miss Martian in the comic books as she was on the show. She's got virtually no connection to Brainiac 5, while their Arrowverse counterparts were a couple. She has few if any direct hostilities with Lex Luthor, Intergang, Parasite, Malefic, Manchester Black, or Leviathan (which is a completely different organization in the comic books), and none whatsoever with Nyxlygsptlnz. She's also taking a lot longer to reconcille with her sister.
  • Conversely, she has pretty extensive interactions and dynamics with Jon Kent, Jay Nakamura, Amanda Waller, Galaxy, and Black Alice, all of whom her Arrowverse counterpart never met.
• All of the Other Reindeer: Nia Nal was regarded as a freak in Parthas for getting surgery and going on hormone blockers to become morphologically female, despite being born a physical male. That anyone had a problem with it, much less a bunch of alien refugees who had little else in common with each other is something Nal's never been able to rationalize, especially when the alien refugeess of A-Town proved to be a lot more accepting of transgender individuals.
• Arch-Enemy: Nia finds a woman even more reprehensible than Sybyll in Amanda Waller, who, from Nia’s perspective, is threatening pretty much everyone Nia cares about and actively working to undo any good Nia ever does in the world for what she assumes is Waller's misguided sense of patriotism or a fear of "other".
• Ascended Fanboy: Deconstructed: Nia was a fan of superheroes but she never had any desire to actually become one, and is completely unprepared for the simplest of consequences that came with super human abilities. Furthermore, the comic books she read were propaganda that told her one of her true enemies was someone who could be trusted. Reconstructed in that she's earnestly studying the reality of her situation and deferring to reliable authorities she can find to make the best of her situation, managing to preserve most of her morality and optimism in spite of her circumstances.
• The Atoner: Nia's only desire when it came to superheroes was to design outfits for her sister Maeve when Maeve became a superhero. Nia takes up the guise of Dreamer as a way to honor the legacy of her mother, Isabel, who Nia led her murderer to after Sybyll convinced Nia that she could give her dream abilities to Maeve, who was still living with Isabel.
• Barrier Warrior: Via The Dreaming, she can turn thought into energy and solid shape in the phyiscal world. Mostly she protects herself with walls and bubbles. More complex things often take a lot more time than Dreamer has
• Blessed with Suck: Nia was of the opinion Dreaming of Things to Come would be a wonderful ability... for her sister Maeve to have. Nia was even less thrilled when she realized she had additional abilities that could directly harm people. After Sybyll murdered Nia's mother, however, Nia decided the power to hurt people wasn't so bad after all.
• Blue Is Heroic: She sports a costume with multiple shades of blue as well as a blue Domino Mask.
• Broken Pedestal: The until then laconic Nia Nal becomes a stammering Motor Mouth when she comes face to face with Sybyll, despite Sybyll being a less than plesant person in the propaganda comic books Nia read. Sybyll claims the picture books exaggerated her worst traits, but as Nia learns they in fact downplayed the worst things about Sybyll.
• Cain and Abel: Invoked: Nia tells Black Alice that she hates her sister. It's possible this is true but more likely Nia trying to prevent another unscrupulous individual from targeting her family in the future.
• Canon Immigrant: Dreamer, who first appeared in Supergirl (2015), makes the hop to the "main" DCU comic books in Superman: Son of Kal-El #13. Helping out with this is the fact that her actress, Nicole Maines, co-writes the issue.
• The Chosen Zero: The inferior athlete of the family, prone to panic attacks, the one who has been given none of the esoteric training, inherits all of the family dream abilities, and then some. Even if Nia had been given the proper attention she needed from Isabel, she'd still be a dork ostracized by the other kids of Parthas with no life experience outside of the small town and no knowledge of Naltor and its affairs beyond propaganda deliberately designed to keep the masses ignorant.
• Civvie Spandex: She has started wearing a brown leather jacket over her costume.
• Combo Platter Powers: If Sybyll is to be believed, and she possibly shouldn't be, Nia Nal really wasn't supposed to inherit the abilites of a seer, but was supposed to become something far worse. She of course does inherit the gift of future sight and strange abilities no one beyond Sybyll and the specific version of Nural Nal descended from Nia can explain, and the two of them aren't being forthcoming. Nia proceeds to develop even more abilities thanks to the Lazarus Rains.
• Comes Great Responsibility: Nia Nal would be content with as mundane an existence as a town full of aliens and whatever societal outcasts will tolerate them would allow. Even after getting a taste of the wider world, Nia still gravitates towards a semi mundane existence in an even more tolerant refugee town. The nature of her precognition powers makes it extremely hard for her not to use them to help people, however. It becomes even harder once her dream walking powers develop and allow her to further empathize with people and even animals incapable of human speech.
• Country Mouse: Metropolis is one of the safer US cities on DC Earth, all things considered, but Nia knows so little about city life when she first goes there that she manages to wander into the exact wrong part of town at the exact wrong time of night and almost gets mugged as a result
• Depending on the Artist: The Arrowverse character had dark brown hair and dark brown eyes. The comic books often lighten the shade of brown in her eyes and or hair. Some go as far as to give her dark blue hair or blue eyes, though Dreamer's eyes did glow blue on the Supergirl show, depending on which abilities Dreamer was using.
• Domino Mask: She wears a blue one, much like she did in Supergirl (2015).
• Family of Choice: Nia's closer to Yvette Turner, Kat Silverberg, and Taylor Barzelay than she is her biological sister Maeve. In this case it is because Yvette, Kat and Taylor chose Nia, as while she doesn't dislike them, Nia had nothing against Maeve, used to be quite close to her, and is still close to their biological father, Paul, but after Nia developed the dream abilities Maeve had dedicated her life to training in, Maeve became hostile towards Nia, even after Yvette confronted Maeve over it and Isabel urged Maeve to reconsider. After Isabel's murder, Maeve wanted nothing more to do with her biological sister.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Nia’s half-human and half-Naltorian. Her Naltorian side is what grants her her powers. She has several abilities atypical for their kind, however.
• Hidden Elf Village: Nia Nal doesn't operate in her home town if she can help it, and is trying to project the illusion that Dreamer's from Metropolis.
• Highly Conspicuous Uniform: Nia took to drawing with the aspiration to become a fashion designer because she didn't like the idea of her sister Maeve wearing the silver bathing suits typical of Naltoran seers. Sybyll also refuses to wear them, if she can help it... but for the opposite reasons, wearing a similarly more conservative outfit when pretending to be friendly but switching to something far more racy after making her malicious intentions clear.
• Hollywood Healing: Frequently benefits from it, sometimes in a justified manner, often not. She healed more realistically during Bad Dream, before she was a superhero.
• Incompletely Trained: Isabel spent over a decade teaching Maeve how to trigger visions when dreaming, how to interpret what she saw to determine the future, and how to change the futures she saw, not teaching Nia anything out of the belief Nia would never gain such abilities. Not long after Isabel learned of Nia's gift Isabel was murdered by Sybyll and Maeve walked out on Nia and Paul. Nia has Isabel and Maeve's text books, but she can't make heads or tails of their contents. That's before one gets into the abilities Nia has that Isabel lacked, or the abilities Nia got from the Lazarus Rains.
• Ink-Suit Actor: Most artists tend to make Dreamer look like actress Nicole Maines, though few have made her look exactly like Mains. Some give her a different facial structure, or a slightly lighter shade of brown hair or eyes, while a few give comic book Dreamer blue hair or blue eyes.
• It's All My Fault: Dreamer has mixed feelings about the town of Parthas, not being particularly well liked by its residents, and having a strained relationship with her sister, Maeve, but after she led a murderer to Parthas who killed their mother, Isabel, Nia has been determined to never allow a similar fate befall the town or her relatives again. This attitude works against Nia, when Amanda Waller finds Parthas, finds that Nia has useful dream powers, and that Nia can be controlled by threatening either Parthas or Nia's family.
• Legacy Character: Nominally, and power wise, Nia Nal is a successor to Betty Clawman, the Global Guardians/New Guardians member who is also known as Dreamer. Functionally she's more so the predecessor of Dream Girl from Legion of Super Heroes. At least the post DC Rebirth Dream Girl.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Nia brashly rushes to aid the first alien she sees outside of Parthas, not recognizing that she is looking at a cyandii, one of the sworn enemies of Naltor. Granted, even Isabel, who knew exactly who the cyandii were, only had memories of peace and happiness regarding them, having no clue relations would deteriorate so much in the thirty years since she left Naltor. That thirty years was more than Nia and Taylor had been alive, however. Taylor didn't recognize Nia as Naltorian due to Nia's half-human heritage and Nia's refusal to disclose exactly what her abilities were, but recognized exactly what full-blooded Naltorian Isabel was. Luckily the cyandii Nia happened to stumble across, befriend, and allow into her home was a nothing less than a virtuous super hero who had nothing for Isabel but "The Reason You Suck" Speech.
• Must Have Caffeine: When Nia first started Dreaming of Things to Come, she tried to keep it from happening by drinking coffee and tea, hoping that if she stayed awake long enough she'd lose her dream powers. It's not until Nia's savings start running low that she considers learning to live with her unwanted abilities.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!: Nia's efforts to avoid hurting her sister lead to Nia and Maeve's mother being murdered.
• Not Quite Dead: Dreamer is a bit of a Glass Cannon but can anchor part of her conciousness in that of another creature while "dream walking" as insurance, in case her physical body is terminally injured. It's not perfect immortality, as if she's banished from that person's thought scape, or her "host" dies before her body can be suitably repaired, before she can reconstruct a new one on something like the astral plane in the event it can't be repaired, then Nia's done for. Getting rid of Dreamer permanently can prove challenging when quite a few people like her enough to want to help her stay alive, and she can hide herself quite well among the thoughts of the sufficiently distracted should she not find any willing channelers. Her precognition also gives her a good idea of which actions to take for her own self preservation. It's for these reasons Amanda Waller decides to just place bombs in Dreamer's more easy to kill family members after Amanda decides she wants Dreamer on the Suicide Squad.
• Open Mouth, Insert Foot: Despite being from a town half populated by alien refugees, Nia is less than tactful when inquiring about Yvette's relationship with her adopted mother, Bea. Luckily for Nia, Bea is understanding, and despite her temper, Yvette is forgiving after she has time to cool off... and Bea reprimands Yvette.
• Poor Communication Kills: If Nia had worked up the courage to tell Maeve that she had gained the dream powers the family thought were Maeve's birthright before going on her Journey to Find Oneself, then Sybyll would not have been able to track Nia back to Parthas and murder Isabel. Of course if Isabel had told her family the truth about why she left Naltor, particularly that part about a precognitive murderer who had killed Isabel's mother and was seeking to off the other seers of the family, it's likely Nia never would have considered leaving Parthas.
• Power Incontinence: Dreamer has terrible trouble using her power, as it showed up suddenly and she doesn't have many of her race around to help. Then she got another power, and another after that. Thankfully, Jon's prepared - a set of gloves given to him by Nia's descendant Dream Girl that focuses her power.
• Psychic Powers: Originally she just saw possible future events through her dreams that would come true if she did nothing to alter them. This was embarrassing, as she had hoped her sister would get them. Then she gained the power to "blast" things threatening her with "dream energy". This was unexpected and terrifying. Then she gained the power to leave physical world and "walk" among the dreams of other animals. This was annoying. Then she gained the power to manifest thoughts from The Dreaming in the physical world. This was dangerous for others. Then she gained the power to move objects in ways that defy conventional physics by literally thinking up portals, which could be dangerous even for herself. Luckily Jon Kent had some fingerless gauntlets to help Nal get this all under control. Following the Lazarus Rains, she began to get glimpses of the future even while awake
• Rage Breaking Point: Jay's attitude towards Nia for her role in the death of his mother despite her best attempts to repair their broken friendship, and the fact that her own family was held hostage, which Jay explicitly doesn't care about, finally hits Nia's breaking point in issue 6 of Secret Six (2025) when he holds her at gun point and demands to have her hand over a hard drive containing Amanda Waller's memories. But when he pulls the trigger, attempting to shoot her, he discovers that the gun is out of ammo. What follows is a fist fight between the two where she lets out all her frustrations about his attitude and declared that she will no longer try to appease him.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: Nia Nal wants nothing more than to be rid of her dream abilities, especially if she can just give them to her sister Maeve. That is until Sybyll murders their mother, Isabel, at which point Nia fully embraces her dream abilities as she turns them on Sybyll, who is sneering about Nia's "stolen" gifts.
• Species Surname: Her surname is Nal and her mother is from Naltor, making Nia half Naltorian.
• Stealth Expert: Normally someone dressing in blue and white wouldn't be able to sneak around too many places, but during Absolute Power (2024), Superman retreats to his Fortress of Solitude and Mercy Graves begins taking super heroes and "meta humans" Graves sympathizes with that are not yet captured to his Fortress, for shelter. Little do they realize Dreamer is inside the equally oblivious "Wonder Girl" Yara Flor. Luckily for them, Dreamer is a Punch-Clock Villain trying to do the bare minimum she can get away with until she can think of an effective way to screw over her boss. Still, given Dreamer doesn't physically emerge until after Yara is knocked out during an external breach it's possible they never figured out how she got in.
• Stealth Pun: Nia Nal, in her guise as Dreamer, "dream walks" through Wonder Girl Yara Flor into the Fortress of Solitude as the heroes seeking refuge there react to an overt breach. Yara Flor is a Brazilian native who doesn't remember her childhood years in the country before being taken to USA for her own safety. Dreamer emerged from a DREAMer.
• Team Member in the Adaptation:
  • She’s become a member of a new Suicide Squad roster since her debut in the comics thanks to Amanda Waller’s manipulations. While the Squad did exist in the Arrowverse, Nia was never a member, as she hailed from a completely different universe. Even after Crisis on Infinite Earths (2019) combined all of the universes into one and Nia and the Arrowverse!Suicide Squad now coexisted in the same world, the Squad was pretty much permanently defunct by the post-Crisis present.
  • She’s also joined up with a new roster of the Secret Six in order to chase down Amanda Waller after the latter was broken out of prison by Checkmate. The Secret Six were never adapted into the Arrowverse.
• Terrible Artist: Subverted Trope: Nia Nal's dream was to become an artist and stylist who designed clothing, but felt her doodles weren't very good. While they're not photo realistic compared to the rest of the panel art, Maeve thinks Nia's a lot better than she gives herself credit for, and can't wait to start wearing Nia's designs.
• Trapped in Villainy: Liberating a nation from a foreign national who installed himself as their dictator, tried to wage wars, and attempted to kill the world's most famous super hero team is one thing; Killing the democratically elected president of that nation so the United States can control it is another Dreamer actively fights against. Dreamer keeps returning to the Suicide Squad, however, because Amanda Waller is willing to expose the town of Parthas, Ohio, where Dreamer lives, and also has explosives inside Dreamer's family members when Waller needs to be even more threatening.
• Trespassing to Talk: She breaks into the Fortress of Solitude using the dreams of the animals Superman keeps inside of it as a medium so that she can tell Jon Kent that Superman is coming back, and that Superman will be too late to stop a Cyborg dictator looking to start a Forever War and kill the rest of the Justice League.
• Unwitting Pawn: Sybyll tells Nia Nal a mostly true story about why Nia's mother left Naltor, and further tells Nia that it's possible reconcille with Maeve by giving her powers she "stole" back to the "rightful" sister. This is all so that Nia will predictablyreturn to the hidden town of Parthas so Sybyll can murder her long standing nemesis, Isabel Nal!
• Unskilled, but Strong: Nia Nal, mediocre teenaged athlete with limited combat experience and barely any understanding of her dream abilities, versus Sybyll, seasoned interplanetary warrior. Sybyll has her way with Nia until Nia unleashes more energy than Sybyll's power absorbing technology can handle. Even then, Nia probably would have died if not for the fact Sybyll had already fought Isabel and then Galaxy: The Prettiest Star, shortly before engaging Nia.
• Weaksauce Weakness: A side effect of Nia's dream powers is random fainting that can be mistaken for narcolepsy. This is because Nia wasn't trained to deal with them, and it becomes less of an issue with time.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Nia proceeds to make every wrong decision after Yvette leaves her alone at the Bottom Dollar hotel, realizing she's just become the first victim of the Slasher Film. Luckily for Nia she's not in a slasher film, but a superhero comic book, and she's not the first victim but the main character, though even in this genre her decisions were pretty foolish.

Gangbuster (Jose Delgado)

Species: Human

First Appearance: Adventures of Superman #428 (May, 1987)

A former teacher who put on a costume to protect his neighborhood from street gangs and other threats, hence his name. He dated Cat Grant, but they broke up, partially because he couldn't get along with her son, Adam.

• Badass Teacher: He went into teaching and ended up as a high school teacher in Metropolis.
• Boxing Battler: He is a skilled boxer.
• Deal with the Devil: When Jose was crippled on duty as the Gangbuster he was forced to accept Lex Luthor's agreement and treatment to return the function of his legs to him. However, Luthor's cybernetic components also allowed him to control Jose's movement if necessary.
• Disability Distress: His first run as the superhero Gangbuster came to an abrupt end when his back was broken during a fight with a super-powered thug named "Combattor". Left unable to walk, the despondent Jose struggled to adjust, and told Lois Lane (with whom he had started a tentative romance) to leave, not wanting her to waste her time on a "half a man" like him.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: He found himself a little out of his depth in the Crisis Crossover Trinity, but kept going and helped saved the day anyway, since his girlfriend was in danger.
• Put on a Bus: Left Metropolis after The Death of Superman and has only been seen once or twice since.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: He packs a lot of non-lethal weapons, like nunchaku and guns with rubber bullets.

Guardian (James Jacob "Jim" Harper)

Species: Human

First appearance: Star Spangled Comics #7 (April, 1942)

The original Guardian was a Golden Age crime fighter and policeman. As Guardian he joined the All-Star Squadron and as Jim Harper he became the legal guardian of the quartet of street urchins known as the Newsboy Legion.

The modern Jim Harper was one of the early successes of the Cadmus cloning project. Like the original Guardian, he fights with an armored outfit and a shield. The Cadmus clone was sent to help capture Superboy and after Superman made it clear he wouldn't allow Cadmus to kidnap the kid he eventually became a mentor for the kid. For more info on the clone of this character who heads Cadmus security, see the Cadmus folder in DC Comics Miscellaneous.

• Badass Normal: The original Guardian has no superpower, but possesses exceptional combat and tactical skills.
• Cool Bike: Guardian rode a custom motorcycle that was fitted with a slot at the front that could store his shield.
• Cool Helmet: He wears a golden helmet.
• Legacy Character: Other people who took the Guardian alias are Mal Duncan in the Silver Age and Jake Jordan, the Manhattan Guardian.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: He carries a golden heater shield on his wrist.
• Parental Substitute: Jim became the legal guardian of the original Newsboy Legion.
• Proto-Superhero: Pre-Crisis, the original Guardian was this in-universe. In those days, it was tacitly accepted that Clark's debut as Superboy was the beginning of Earth-1's Age of Super-Heroes, but he did have a small handful of predecessors like Zatanna's dad Zatara the Magician, the original Air-Wave, and the Guardian. (In real life, of course, all these characters debuted in print after Superman, but Comic-Book Time has odd effects.)
• Shield Bash: Uses his small shields for combat.
• Stock Superhero Day Jobs: Jim Harper was a police officer outside of his Guardian costume.
• Tangled Family Tree: In addition to the several individuals descended from his siblings and the fact that one of them was adopted by Oliver Queen where do his multiple clones even go on a family tree? His grandniece Jamie then somehow had a kid with the time-traveling Daxamite Lar Gand (also known as Mon-El).
• Throwing Your Shield Always Works: He can use his shield as a projectile although he usually keeps hold of it to use for defense and bashing.

Halk Kar

Species: Thoronian

First appearance: Superman (1939) #80 (January, 1953)

"I'm not going to let you hurt my little brother Superman!"

• Acquired Situational Narcissism: Thanks to Superman constantly faking all of Halk's feats of strength, Halk gains quite an unwarranted ego as he wholeheartedly believes that all of his achievements are true. He even begins hitting on Lois Lane, much to Superman's chagrin. Because of this, the revelation of Halk's true identity doesn't exactly tear Clark up too badly.
• The Big Guy: Played with. Halk Kar is taller and beefier than Superman, but due to his differing biology, he is actually a lot weaker. Anticipating Halk to be a potent ally in his crime-fighting, Superman instead finds Halk to be something of a burden and throughout the story has to cover for his assumed brother in order to save him from potential embarrassment. Nevertheless, Halk is still far stronger than any ordinary human.
• The Bus Came Back: Recently back into modern continuity via a cameo in The Green Lantern (2019) by who else but Grant Morrison as a member of Superwatch, a space-patrolling team composed entirely of long-forgotten Golden and Silver Age characters, mostly from Superman's history. After a half-century absence, no less.
• The Cape: Strives to be this as a member of the United Planets Superwatch. He's unfortunately hampered by not being as powerful as Superman.
• Heavyworlder: He has a weaker version of Superman's powers on Earth due to Thoron being a high-gravity planet that's smaller than Krypton but still larger than Earth. He predates the Retcon that Superman's powers come from Earth's yellow sun.
• Identical Stranger: As previously mentioned, he looks very similar to Mon-El (complete with a colour-swapped mirror of Superman's costume) and his storyline has an almost identical premise.

Hyper-Man (Chester King)

Species: Zoronian

First Appearance: Action Comics #265 (June, 1960)

A near-identical doppelganger of Superman, with almost every detail of his life paralleling his counterpart's almost to the letter, Hyper-Man was sent away from his dying homeworld of Zoron to the Earth-like planet Oceania. There, he was raised by a kindly couple, who renamed him Chester King, and he grew up with amazing superpowers. He started his superhero career as Hyper-Boy, before moving to Macropolis to work as a television reporter and meeting the love of his life, Lydia Long. After observing Superman across galaxies using an advanced telescope, he sought a favour from Superman to help cure a Zoronite infection.

• Doppelgänger: On top of looking similar, Chester's life parallels Clark's with frightening accuracy. He has practically the same origin, same upbringing, same career, same superhero alter egos, same romantic interests, and more, just shifted to a different area of the universe. Like with Batman’s encounter with the Batman of Zur-En-Arrh, it’s stated to be statistically likely that two planets exactly like Earth and Krypton can exist among the billions of star systems in the cosmos.
• Water-Breathing Humans: Like Superman, he does not need air to breathe, so constructed his Fortress of Secrecy underwater instead of in the Arctic. Considering that Oceania has the same percentage of water as Earth, Hyper-Man points out that naming our planet after soil seems illogical when there is so much more water.
• Weaksauce Weakness: Zoronite, the radioactive mineral remnants of his exploded home planet. Prolonged exposure to it fatally poisoned him, which forces him to seek Superman's help.
• Your Days Are Numbered: He believed he had contracted fatal Zoronite poisoning. Superman found a way to remove Chester's powers so he could spend his last days happily married to Lydia Long, though this did not endear Superman to the population of Oceania. As it turned out, Superman knew that the true cause of Chester's affliction was the mysterious blue meteor fragment he kept in his Fortress of Secrecy, which turned out to be Blue Zoronite, even more incurably deadly than the Yellow type he was familiar with. Although Superman lied, Chester thankfully figured out Superman's motives on his deathbed and realised that his Kryptonian counterpart had given him the greatest gift he could ask for.

First appearance: Adventure Comics #247 (April, 1958)

"Long live the Legion!"

Lori Lemaris

Species: Atlantean mermaid

First Appearance: Superman (1939) #129 (May, 1959)

Lori: You don't have to tell me, Clark — I've known from the very beginning that you are Superman!
Clark: Y-You knew? But how...?
Lori: That's not important! What is important is that although I love you, I can never marry you!

• Alliterative Name: Lori Lemaris.
• Amicable Exes: She and Superman stay friends after their breakup, although years pass before they see each other again.
• Bathtub Mermaid: Lori Lemaris, whom Clark meets in college. She is in a wheelchair, but secretly she's a mermaid and spends her time at home in the bathtub.
• Childhood Friend Romance: Dated Superman in college, but despite him actually wanting to marry her she refused his proposal as they were too different.
• Consummate Liar: As a child she was very fond of telling lies, to the point Superboy created a device to help her understand right and wrong. (This was in a Silver Age story that depicted an early meeting between the two as teenagers. By the end of the story, both have had their memories of the incident erased.)
• Glamour Failure: She cannot maintain human form if she gets wet.
• Interspecies Romance: Though she appreciated how he felt about her, she wasn't willing to engage in one with Clark. In Pre-Crisis days, she ironically did eventually marry an alien, though — an alien merman doctor named Ronal who had saved her life from a deadly illness.
• The Lost Lenore: Before marrying Ronal, Lori would frequently appear in visions of Superman's past, doomed romances.
• The Matchmaker: When her romance with Superman didn't work out, Lori could often be found trying to set him up with various women.
• New Old Flame: How she was introduced in the Silver Age, with Clark reminiscing sadly about their brief courtship when he was in college.
• Our Mermaids Are Different: Lori is a descendant of the people of Atlantis that would evolve into the people of Tritonis, a sect of undersea humans whom adapted to have fish like tails. Pre-Crisis, she always had her tail, and went about on land in a wheelchair with a wrapped blanket concealing her lower half. Post-Crisis, Lori would develop human legs on land and the lower half of a fish when in water.
• Retcon: She was killed by Shadow Demons during the final battle of Crisis on Infinite Earths. This was eventually undone when she shows up later in Clark's life Post-Crisis, apparently their Silver/Bronze Age encounters since college no longer canon.
  • She was introduced before tight cross-title continuity was really a thing, so her version of Atlantis was different from Aquaman's. It was eventually established that Lori's tailed merfolk live in one area of Atlantis called Tritonis, and Aquaman's Water-Breathing Humans live in another, called Poseidonis.
• Seashell Bra: Averted in the original version. Played in post-Crisis.
• Ship Sinking: When she met and married Ronal, Superman was in the middle of renouncing everything to be with her and was understandably upset when they hit it off, but he got over it.
• Telepathy: As a telepath, she realized Superman and Clark were the same person as soon as she met them, but didn't tell him she'd known until he chose to tell her himself.

Luma Lynai

Species: Alien

First Appearance: Action Comics #289 (June, 1962)

A super-woman from the planet Staryl who debuted in the Silver Age of comics. Luma was a dead ringer for an older Supergirl and seemed to be the perfect romantic match for Superman, but she lost her powers under Earth's yellow sun and had to return home. Superman still thinks fondly of her as a lost love. In the Modern Age, she operates as Superwoman and is a member of United Planets Superwatch.

• Alliterative Name: Luma Lynai.
• Human Aliens: An alien from the planet Staryl who looked just like a human.
• Identical Stranger: She looked almost exactly like an older Supergirl. The implications of Superman romancing someone who looks just like his cousin aren’t subtextual; back in the Silver Age, Superman confessed that he had feelings for Supergirl, but suppressed them due to Kryptonians sharing humans’ taboo against Kissing Cousins.
• The Lost Lenore: Luma would frequently appear in visions of Superman's past, doomed romances.
• Ship Sinking: Her romance with Superman didn't work out due to the differences in their planets' suns, which removed her powers.

Lyla Ler-Rol

Species: Kryptonian

First appearance: Superman (1939) #141 (November, 1960)

Lyla: Don't look so sad, darling! We're young... we're in love... and we've a long, beautiful lifetime ahead of us!
Superman: (in his toughts) Lyla doesn't know... that both of us... and this whole world... are... hopelessly doomed!

• Alliterative Name: Lyla Lerrol.
• The Bus Came Back: Sort of, twice even.
  • In Superman #189, Superman encounters an exact double of Krypton that never exploded, including Lyla, who he quickly bonds with and plans to marry. Unfortunately for him, everyone there was a robot double, and robo-Lyla eventually died.
  • Years later, when Mongul's Black Mercy plant trapped Superman in an illusion where his fondest wish was granted – that Krypton had never exploded – in the dream, he was married to Lyla (since of course, in such a world he would never have met Lois or Lana). This was only an illusion, though.
• The Lost Lenore: Lyla would frequently appear in visions of Superman's past, doomed romances.
• Ship Sinking: After Superman is restored to his own time, he knows she died with the rest of Krypton's people and (by Pre-Crisis time travel mechanics) he literally can't change history to save her. The one time he did try, it was in an alternate universe where changing fate was possible but he couldn't stay in that dimension.

Rampage (Karen Lou "Kitty" Faulkner)

First appearance: Superman (1987) #7 (July, 1987)

"I have to admit, that was actually fun in a perverse sort of way! Maybe I should just join the Justice League and be Rampage full time! No, I'd miss the opportunity for research. Rampage may be better able to vent frustration..."

• Alternate Company Equivalent: Of both The Incredible Hulk and She-Hulk. See HULK MASH!-Up below.
• Ambiguously Bi: She had a relationship with the Will Payton version of Starman. Later on, in the mid-to-late 1990's, it's hinted that she had a relationship with Christine Bruckner, who stole some funds and tried to frame up Kitty for it.
• Fiery Redhead: In her Rampage form she's red-headed and very hot-tempered.
• Freak Lab Accident: She got her powers from an explosion of a device she created at S.T.A.R. Labs: a machine that used algae to generate energy.
• Hulking Out: She can transform at will between her normal self and her Rampage identity, but more often than not it's because someone makes the mistake of ticking her off.
• HULK MASH!-Up: A combined version of Hulk and She-Hulk: Her origin is similar to Hulk's: Like Bruce Banner, she is brilliant scientist caught in the explosion of a device created by herself, caused by the interference of a nasty coworker (Dr. Thomas Moyers, a stand-in for Igor Drenkov in Hulk's origin). She also tried to save somebody else (Lois Lane, in Rick Jones's role) from the explosion, which is the origin of her powers. On the other hand, she has elements of She-Hulk, like her gender and personality, lacking Banner's identity disorder, keeping her intellect while transformed^note While the Hulk can keep his intellect sometimes, it's not constant as it's with She-Hulk and Rampage, as it depends on which of Banner's multiple personalities happens to emerge during the transformation. (except for her first transformation) and transforming at will (once again, the first time being an exception).
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: She can transform at will thanks to a regulator collar. As mentioned above, her first transformation was an exception.

Tharn

First Appearance: World's Finest #92 (February, 1958)

• Bizarre Alien Biology: On top of having powers similar to yellow-sun-exposed Kryptonians, Kormoans all have identical fingerprints, which is vital to the plot of his debut comic.
• Clear My Name: After regaining his memories, he explains to Superman, Batman and Robin that all Kormoans have the same fingerprints, so a band of unrelated thieves from Kormo were guilty for the copper thefts.
• Identity Amnesia: He arrives on Earth as a young teen with no memories of who he is. He is actually Tharn of planet Kormo, sent away by his parents.
• Kid Sidekick: He was Superman's first, exposing the Man of Steel's secret longing for a crime-fighting companion like Robin.
• Memory Trigger: Superman hurls a meteor at him to awaken his lost memories and find out if he was responsible for the crimes happening in Metropolis.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Half as tall as his Kryptonian mentor, but strong enough to shatter mountains with his bare hands.
• Put on a Bus: After leaving Earth for planet Kormo, he has never been seen or heard from again.

Strange Visitor (Sharon Vance)

First appearance: Superman (1987) #149 (October, 1999)

"Y'know, when this is all over, we're going to have to do something about that name."

• Celestial Body: On her own, Kismet sometimes looks like she's made of stars.
• Childhood Friends: Sharon is from Smallville, and she and Clark knew each other growing up.
• Cosmic Entity: Kismet is this, as opposed to Sharon. According to JLA/Avengers, she is the DCU's counterpart to Marvel's character Eternity, making her a very powerful cosmic entity indeed.^note  Oh, and she and Eternity are in love. So there's that.
• Energy Beings: She's made of electromagnetic energy. That outfit she wears basically helps her hold herself together.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Strange Visitor would ultimately sacrifice her life in the Imperiex War when she gave all of her powers to Superman. He defeated Imperiex Prime by cracking his armor and draining his energy, an act which resulted in Strange Visitor's death, but opened the way for Superman to vanquish Imperiex and saving the universe. Kismet apparently survived, however. She stayed dead through the rest of the pre-Flashpoint continuity and the entire The New 52 era but returned in the pages of Supergirl (2016).
• I Just Want to Be Special: Her attempt to make a name for herself doesn't go too well when a fight with Gorilla Grodd devolved into an argument with onlookers over when she electrocuted the "monkey", ravaging her self-worth. It gets even worse when Superboy tries to save her from what he thinks is a device draining her power and she is pissed off that he just ruined something she was needed for.
• Legacy Character:
  • While not directly sharing the same identities, Strange Visitor's creation was DC's attempt to preserve and reimagine the infamous "Superman Blue" in a more palatable way. Like Superman Blue, Vance became an Energy Being given form in a containment suit that also granted various electromagnetic powers, allowing those concepts to exist while Clark Kent/Superman remained his usual traditional self.
  • After Sharon's death, when fellow blue-haired electrical person Livewire made her Heel–Face Turn, she was given Sharon's old containment suit to help her control her powers.
• Lightning Can Do Anything: Her plane was struck by lightning. She was the only survivor, and got superpowers.
• Mythology Gag: Her name is an allusion to Superman's old tagline as a "strange visitor from another planet."
• Shock and Awe: Sharon initially seemed to merely have electromagnetic powers similar to the ones Superman briefly possessed when his powers had been altered. To help her control them, she took to wearing a protective suit modeled on the one Superman had worn during that time.
• That Man Is Dead: According to Kismet, Sharon Vance was never meant to be alive, with Superman and Waverider's actions to save Kismet effectively averting her death and the lightning strike that damaged her plane basically "killing" her and allowing Kismet to take over.
• Two Beings, One Body: Sharon got merged with Kismet.

Takeo Sato

First Appearance: Superboy Vol 2 #45 (September, 1983)

Super-Male (Irn Brimba)

Species: Soomarian mutant

First Appearance: Superman's Girl Friend Lois Lane #41 (May, 1963)

Another alien Doppelgänger of Superman, Irn Brimba is, like Clark Kent, is a mild-mannered reporter in his civilian life, but has a secret identity as the strapping Super-Male. Unlike Superman, he is empowered by the rays of a red sun. Lois Lane is rather taken with him, while her own alien double Crystal Ganyrog can’t bear the sight of him. Things get confusing when Lois has to disguise herself as Crystal.

• Agent Peacock: He’s an alien superhero with a loud, flamboyant fashion sense like everyone else on Soomar.
• Amazon Chaser: He has no time for women who throw themselves at him, which is why he’s so attracted to Crystal.
• Camp Straight: He may be Lois Lane's other "Super-Suitor" besides Superman, but his ensemble wouldn’t look out of place in the House of Xtravaganza. It includes a brown, scoop necked singlet that shows off his ample chest cleavage, yellow leggings, blue boots with brown cuffs, bare arms with purple wrist bands, a black and blue wide belt that matches his shoulder pads and a blue cape.
• Hopeless Suitor: Ironically, his own Lois Lane equivalent, Crystal, wants nothing to do with him. He still tries his best to win her affections.
• The Knights Who Say "Squee!": He and the rest of Soomar’s population are avid fans of Superman, having observed his adventures across the gulf of space with advanced telescopes. Sadly, he never gets to meet his idol as Superman is away on a mission to Atlantis when Crystal makes contact with Earth, forcing Lois Lane to go with her to Soomar in Superman’s place.
• Long Bus Trip: Like Halk Kar above, he was brought back into modern continuity as a member of Superwatch, the precursors to the Legion of Super-Heroes, in the pages of The Green Lantern.

Superwoman (Kristin Wells)

First appearance: Miracle Monday (May 18, 1981) ^note as Kristin Wells; DC Comics Presents Annual #2 The Superwoman of Metropolis! (April 14, 1983) ^note as Superwoman

"Let history bear witness that no American ever had to bow to a tyrant!"

• Adaptational Badass: She wasn't a superheroine in the original novel.
• Arch-Enemy: An ingenious but hulking brute from her own era named King Kosmos.
• Canon Immigrant: Both Kristin herself, and the Miracle Monday holiday originate in the Miracle Monday novel that preceded her comic appearance by two years.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Was wiped from the DC Universe after the Crisis and hasn't appeared since.
• Demonic Possession: In her debut, she gets possessed by the demonic C.W. Saturn, her status as an outsider making her vulnerable. Superman saves her, of course.
• Field Trip to the Past: Started out as a time-traveling historian.
• Fish out of Temporal Water: There's a bit of a learning curve, but fortunately she is a historian, so she fits in pretty well.
• Flying Brick: Has the standard strength-flight-invulnerability package.
• Forgot About Her Powers: Appeared alongside other heroes in Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? trying to break through the forcefield surround the Fortress Of Solitude when she can teleport and walk through walls. It's possible that the forcefield could block these as it was created by Mxyzptlk's reality warping.
• In Name Only: A Kristin Wells is introduced Post-Infinite Crisis in The Third Kryptonian, but this version is a Kryptonian named Karsta Wor-Ul who never uses the Superwoman name.
• It Was with You All Along: Her quest to learn the time-lost secret of Superwoman's identity reveals... that it's her.
  • For that matter, her initial quest to learn the origins of Miracle Monday reveal it's humanity's vague memory of Superman saving the world from the demon that had possessed her. Everyone instinctively knows that a miracle has happened, they're just not clear on what it was.
• Kid from the Future: She's Jimmy Olsen's descendant. She's never told him. He thinks she's cute; for obvious reasons, she has not reciprocated.
• Meaningful Name: A time traveler who's named after H. G. Wells who wrote The Time Machine.
• One-Steve Limit: Don't mix her up with Wonder Woman's evil counterpart from the antimatter universe.
• Thinking Up Portals: She can open space warps at will.
• Time Travel: She's from the future.
• We Will All Fly in the Future: Devices that allow personal flight are common in Kristin's era. In our era, it's a super power.
• You Will Be Beethoven: She learns Superwoman's time-lost secret identity: herself.

Thorn (Rhosyn "Rose" Forrest)

First appearance: Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane #105 (October, 1970)

The daughter of a Metropolis policeman killed by the criminal gang the 100, Rhosyn "Rose" Forrest developed a split personality as "Thorn," who would pursue the 100 as a vigilante.

• Anti-Hero: Thorn is an outright vigilante.
• Legacy Character: Originally created as the heroic Earth One counterpart of the Golden Age Green Lantern villain of the same name.

Vartox (Vernon O'Valeron, The Hyper-man)

First appearance: Superman (1939) #281 (November, 1974) (Pre-Crisis); Superman (1987) #148 (September, 1999) (Post-Crisis)

"I cannot fault you for trying to stop me, Superman! It is what I would do were the situation reversed! But you cannot stop me! I am more powerful... faster... and far more experienced!"

Both versions

• Boisterous Bruiser: He's a big strong man who enjoys fighting, but most of the time he is friendly and he won't pick fights just for the sake of it
• Carpet of Virility: His chest, arms and legs are hairy and exposed.
• Fad Super: His 1970s era outfit hasn't aged well; but remember, this was around the same time that most of the Legion of Super-Heroes were running around in similarly skimpy attire. His current characterization as a 1970s goofball is based mostly on the datedness of his costume.
• Flying Brick: He can fly and also possesses invulnerability and strength to match. His Post-Crisis self's powers are much more clear cut and limited than his predecessor's.
• Gadgeteer Genius: He is an expert when it comes to science and engineering, despite his bluntness and lack of common sense could make him look as an Idiot Hero.
• Genius Bruiser: Vartox has decades of experience in Super Heroism.
• Hot-Blooded: Once Vartox sets his mind on something, he will pursue his goals with a passion that is hard to disuade
• Invincible Hero: Pre-Crisis Vartox had more powers than Silver Age New Powers as the Plot Demands Superman. Wherever Superman and "The Hyper Man" have overlapping powers, Vartox's will inevitably look superior to Superman's in some way and that's because Vartox is way more skilled than Superman in almost every way that matters on top of being older and more experienced. Post Crisis, Vartox is "only" relatively equal to Superman, but still superior in that his only real weakness remains a susceptibility to Psychic Powers.
• Insistent Terminology: He doesn't have super-powers. He has hyper-powers.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Can be overconfident and self-righteous, but deep down, he is a true hero.
• Kryptonite Factor: Mind Rape and Psi Blasts seemed to be his only true Achilles' Heel, also his energy could be siphoned off.
• Large Ham: Even his Pre-Crisis self was not what you'd call subtle.
• Lightning Bruiser: Especially Pre-Crisis, where his strength and speed are greater than Superman's.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed:
  • Vartox was originally based on the Sean Connery, with his appearance taken from the movie Zardoz and his over-the-top machismo from Connery himself.
  • Post-Crisis, he flies around in a spaceship based on the giant flying stone head from Zardoz.
• Porn Stache: Played entirely serious in the character's first appearances, back when he was introduced to cash in on the popularity of... Sean Connery in Zardoz.
• Shout-Out: His planet is presumably named in homage to E. E. "Doc" Smith's Skylark of Valeron.
• Superpower Lottery: The Pre-Crisis Vartox is described as a "Hyper-man", possessing "Hyper-powers". The origin of such was never revealed, but Vartox did state he "acquired" them as a young man. His Post-Crisis version seems to be of a much lower power level possessing flight, some degree of invulnerability, hyperspeed and super-strength a little below that of Post-Crisis Superman.
  • Psychic Powers: Possibly the source of all of his abilities.
    • Energy Blasts: Vartox can emit a range of energy powers from his hands, eyes and in one case his feet. These have taken the forms of hyper-charges, which are capable of killing or rendering a target unconscious, the extremely powerful hyper-obliteration charge, as well as hyper-disintegration beams and even produce fire on ocasion.
    • Hyper Breath: Vartox can generate Hyper Frost to freeze a target. He can use this to freeze a person solid; this condition wears off within the hour leaving the subject unharmed.
    • Hyper Senses: These take at least two forms, though there are possibly more: Hyper-Vision, evidenced as analogous to telescopic, microscopic (at least to a molecular level) and X-Ray Vision, that unlike Superman's own, can see through lead. He also has some form of Hyper Hearing as he was able to listen Jimmy Olsen's ultrasonic signal watch or a conversation taking place thousands of miles away.
    • Hyper Speed: Vartox is capable of unaided intergalactic flight.
    • Hyper Strength: From "a bit below" to "roughly even" with that of Pre-Crisis Superman, but with several more years of experience using it.
    • Mind Over Matter: He possesses a very powerful form of Telekinesis which he has used in many ways, to manipulate his environment, to rain "remote-control blows" on an enemy from a distance, to shape water into tidal waves, to choke Superman with his own cape and to repair a shredded parachute, amongst others.
    • Nigh-Invulnerability: He can produce Impenetrable Force Fields and can shrug off magic attacks.
    • Super-Empowering: He can transfer a portion of his energy to others, giving them his powers although temporarily.
• Third-Person Person: Constantly refers to himself as "Vartox" until Power Girl tells him how annoying it is.
• Underwear of Power: ...and he doesn't shave his legs!
• World's Strongest Man: He is the strongest man on Valeron, where Vartox's powers are not naturally occuring.

Pre-Crisis Vartox

• Always Someone Better: Pre-Crisis, his strength, speed, vision, hearing, etc. were all apparently "superior" to Superman's, and he had a wider array of powers to boot, as well as years more experience using them. Post-Crisis, they are roughly equal.
• Conflict Ball: He and Superman are friends, they have great respect for each other as heroes, and... one way or another, any time he shows up, you know they're gonna get in a fight.
• Friendly Rival: To Superman. Almost explicitly called this in Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?.
• Love Triangle: Between Vartox, Lana, and Superman before the Crisis.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands: Like being able to manipulate matter at a subatomic level, being able to turn intangible, etc.
• Older Than They Look: He's been battling evil ever since Superman was a little tot.
• Secret Identity: Pre-Crisis. After his planet Valeron was destroyed and he had to start his life over, Clark helped him set up a new identity on Earth as "Vernon O'Valeron." Hey, it's as good a name as any.
• Story-Breaker Power: No matter how many super powers Superman got, Vartox always had more hyper-powers, and whatever powers they share, Vartox's ones are apparently more potent. For this reason, Vartox doesn't get involved with most of Superman's regular problems, unless Psychic Powers that can imepede Vartox or turn him on Superman are involved, or Vartox is after the same woman as Superman.
• Takes One to Kill One: Most of his powers are psionic in nature, and psychic attacks are the best way to combat him

Post-Crisis Vartox

• Abhorrent Admirer: Towards Power Girl. Its not that he is ugly, but she is repulsed by his attitude. His infatuation with her persists even after she rebukes him and he went as far as marrying an alternate universe version of her.
• Amazon Chaser: Post Crisis, he learns that Power Girl survived the end of her native universe and determines he need not search any further for the woman who will repopulate his race
• Casanova Wannabe: Post-Crisis, he thinks his mission to save his species from extinction will be pretty easy, as he's confident in his ability to woo ladies. He brings some emergency contingencies with him just in case his chosen mate plays hard to get, however.
• Chivalrous Pervert: He really likes the ladies, but he's not a total jerk about it.
• Cultural Posturing: Even after completely failing to woo Power Girl, and admitting he made mistakes, Vartox still insist his people have the greatest mating ritual in the universe
• Fan Disservice: In-Universe, when he wore a sexy outfit to seduce Power Girl, but all he ended up doing was disturbing her.
• The First Cut Is the Deepest: While trying to woo Power Girl, he clarifies that he's not looking for love. His wife died and she can never be replaced.
• Flanderization: Before the Crisis, he was treated as a serious character. Post-Crisis, the writers played up his very 1970s look to turn him into the epitome of a disco era lounge lizard. The results are... well, frankly hysterical, but it came at the cost of every drop of the poor guy's dignity.
• It Only Works Once: He once defeated an Ix Negaspike, a Planet Eater from a higher plane of existence that previous took the Heroic Sacrifice of a galaxy's worth of super warriors to seal beneath the known universes, by simply teleporting it away. When he tries to prove his genius to Power Girl by repeating this stunt, the Ix Negaspike swats Vartox away and smashes his "transport leash".
• Ladykiller in Love: Though he grieves for the death of his wife and was first looking to repopulate his planet with Power Girl to save his people, its clear that he sleeps around, which tends to cause problems (he brought to Earth a fight with a angry alien warlord whose wife Vartox seduced). He is also very attracted towards Power Girl and keeps trying to impress her, much to her displeasure.
• Lethally Stupid: He accidentally renders Doctor Mid-Nite unconscious and, in an effort to prove his genius can conquer what Power Girl's strength cannot, gets Blue Snowman Eaten Alive. Vartox does manage to save Power Girl from the same fate, but she's still not happy with him.
• Lovable Sex Maniac: Vartox is a pervert, but this is because his planet is facing a population decline due to war, which gets worse when most of the populace gets sterilized
• Mister Seahorse: Males of his species are just as capable of carrying children as the females.
• Refuge in Audacity: Post-Crisis. The planet Valeron is ruled by the sexy superstud Vartox, assisted by Chancellor Groovicus Mellow, and Vartox wields his mighty moustache from his happening pad while fending off Yeti pirates. All in one issue!
• Superdickery: Parodied, his first on cover appearance in Power Girl volume 2 frames him as a villain out to elimate Doctor Mid-Nite and kidnap Power Girl, calling back to a Bronze Age cover that made it look like the Pre Crisis Vartox had murdered Lois Lane in an act of Misplaced Retribution against Superman.
• Super Hero Packing Heat: In more ways than one. During Power Girl volume 2, he hunts for potential mates using a "seduction musk" rifle. It's powerful enough to attract human women and knock human men unconcious, but his chosen target, Power Girl, proves immune.
• Supreme Chef: Vartox has become an excellent chef in his efforts to win ladies. He gets so nervous after his first three failed attempts to woo Power Girl that he ends up ruining the meal he planned for her, however.
• Third-Person Person: Post Crisis Vartox has a tendency to use his name instead of "me" and "I'.