Missed Opportunity

I remember when 52 was chugging along, one of the things that I heard getting a lot of love was the Mad Scientist Island storyline, for the sheer off-the-wall loopiness (I think it’s a bad fit with Black Adam’s story given the genocide, but what can ya do). And DC didn’t seem to capitalize on that (a trademark problem of Dan Didio-era DC, it seems), perhaps because of a lack of a good place to feature them.

There’s been some attempts the upcoming Adventures in Space and Tales of the Fantastic that deal with further sub-genre niches and provide a place for the wide diversity of the DC universe. A similar “Mad Science” would be perfect to feature the gang of mad scientists. But for a band of villains, you need a band of heroes….

The Pantha, Baby Wildebeest, and Red Star family would’ve been the perfect team to go up against the Evil Mad Scientist group; Pantha and Baby Wildebeest were both created from mad science, and Red Star’s always worked in the genre being from Science City. You could finally work in Pantha’s mysterious origin with all the scientists. Although I kinda prefer Pantha more to be the Loner, their dysfunctional family was always offbeat fun, and was one of the few happy families, it seemed, in the DCU. And, with the family based in Russia, you could feature more of DC’s international heroes, especially the Great Ten.