7 DC Heroes Who Have Only Gotten Better With Time

DC Comics has been telling superhero tales since 1938, creating an entirely new type of fiction. Superheroes proved to be a perfect way to tell sci-fi, fantasy, crime/detective stories, and basically every other genre you can imagine. DC has spent the intervening years doing ever more work on the concept of superheroes, making them better and better as the years have gone on. DC has created iconic heroes, but not all of them started out that way. The years of storytelling invested into these characters made them special, and allowed the best DC characters to enthrall decades worth of readers.

Some characters started out immediately as icons — Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman are perfect examples of this. However, other characters took a little longer to get there. They were always good characters, and that allowed creators to put the spotlight on them, subtly changing them more and more as the years have gone. The best DC characters have grown into icons as the decades have gone on, taking the simple clay of their beginnings and becoming something special. These seven DC heroes are the ones who have grown the most, joining the ranks of the greatest fictional characters of all time.

1) Nightwing

Dick Grayson was always going to be an iconic character. Dick Grayson was the first Robin, which made him one of the most popular comic book characters of all time. Robin’s success was so huge that more characters got kid sidekicks, to the point that they became a key part of the superhero comic medium. Grayson connected with generations of young readers, and he grew beyond comics to TV and movies. However, for a long time, Dick Grayson was just Batman’s happy sidekick (well, except for those stories where Batwoman showed up in the ’50s, when Robin’s jealousy over Batman having anyone other than him got to him). That changed as the years went by — for example, Earth-Two Dick Grayson took the place of Batman on the Justice Society, becoming more mature — and New Teen Titans made Dick Grayson into a special character, one who didn’t need Batman to be special. Robin became Nightwing, and Nightwing became a top rank solo hero. Dick Grayson even became Batman for a time, and many fans believe he’s a better Batman than Bruce. Nightwing grew as a character, and it made him into something more than just Batman’s sidekick. He’s become a hero on par with DC’s Trinity, something that no one would have guessed in the years when he was just Robin.

2) Wally West

Wally West has a similar story to Nightwing. Wally West was first introduced as Kid Flash, working with his Uncle Barry, and fighting alongside the Teen Titans. Wally was the stereotypical sidekick. Young fans liked him but he seemingly wasn’t going to be anything but a secondary character. However, two important things happened. The first was New Teen Titans. Co-writer Marv Wolfman and artist/co-writer George Perez took the sidekicks of the DC Universe and made them something special, each character getting just the right amount of development. Wally became much more complex as a character, and this paid off. Then, Wolfman and Perez killed Barry Allen in Crisis on Infinite Earths, and Wally became the first sidekick to take the place of his mentor. This was the make or break moment for Wally, and it was almost a break for him. Instead of doing anything new with him, they just copied Barry Allen. However, writer Mark Waid and editor Bryan Augustyn set Wally West on the road he’s on today. Wally grew as a character, and soon Wally West was considered the best Flash. Wally West made the Flash popular again, taking the basics of the character — superfast good guy fighting gimmick villains and evil speedsters with the power of physics — and adding in the kind of character work to make him unique. Wally could have failed as the Flash, but he was allowed to grown into something special.

3) Swamp Thing

Swamp Thing is a cool idea — a man transformed into a monster, trying to have a new life in his frightening new form — but one that can only go so far. Comics are full of monsters with hearts of gold and Swamp Thing wasn’t anything special. He had a low ceiling for stories until Alan Moore came along. Moore changed the character forever by making him a monster that was never actually human, but thought it was. It was an amazing idea and that was before Moore introduced the concept of the Green, giving Swamp Thing power over all plant life and making him an avatar of nature. Moore used the character to talk about subjects as disparate as love and environmentalism. Moore took Swamp Thing and made him into one of the hottest characters of the ’80s, and ever since then Swamp Thing has become a much popular character. The greatest talents in the history of the comic medium have told Swamp Thing stories, and the Swamp Thing is one of the few characters that has a nearly impeccable series of runs by multiple creators. Readers always know that Swamp Thing books will be quality.

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4) Power Girl

Power Girl has risen far beyond the level anyone could have imagined for her. Power Girl was first introduced as the Supergirl of Earth-Two, the simple superheroine working with the heroes of the Golden Age and their descendants. Power Girl was a fine character, but she wasn’t going to be headlining any books. When Crisis on Infinite Earths destroyed the DC Multiverse, Power Girl stayed around and had some rough years throughout the ’80s and ’90s because no one knew what to do with her. She wasn’t allowed to be a Kryptonian, because at this stage of DC, the only Kryptonian was Superman (the ’90s Supergirl wasn’t even Kryptonian; she was a shapshifter from another universe). Creators came up with multiple different stories for her background — from her being an Atlantean to her being from the 31st century — all while making her into something of a mouthy, take no prisoners hero. This was the key to making Power Girl popular. Instead of the goody-goody superheroine, she was a no-nonsense, tough talking, hard fighting hero, all looking for a place to belong. People connected with her like they never had before, and eventually, her original origin was brought back. Since then, Power Girl has been a beloved character, becoming an important part of the DC Universe.

5) Superboy/Conner Kent

Conner Kent was introduced in the story “Reign of the Supermen”, the next phase of the story that begun with “The Death of Superman”. One of the four replacement Supermen, Conner (that wasn’t his name back then, by the way) was the stereotypical mouthy ’90s teen. This gave him a big audience and he got his own Superboy solo series in the years to come, eventually joining the cast of Young Justice. Conner would later become a part of the newest generation of the Teen Titans, and has stayed popular basically ever since (some people would bring up the New 52 and how it butchered the character, but we just pretend that the New 52 never happened to Superboy). The key to this is the fact that creators have made the character better. Superboy moved beyond being the ’90s teen into something of a timeless character. He’s still mouthy and can still get wild, but the growth of the character has kept him rather popular. Superboy may never hit the heights he did in the mid ’90s — the comic industry has changed a lot since then — but he’s become a much better character than he was before.

6) Animal Man

Animal Man was one of many D-list characters created by DC Comics in the Silver Age to take advantage of the superhero boom. Animal Man was a simple character — he was a Barry Allen look alike who gained the power to copy the attributes of animals when he was exposed to a crashed spaceship. He had a girlfriend named Ellen. His real name was an alliteration: Buddy Baker. He checked all of the boxes of a superhero back then, and was as interesting as a glass milk and turkey sandwich on white bread. Animal Man never really caught on, and disappeared. He made an appearance in Crisis on Infinite Earths, most likely because Wolfman and Perez were doing their best to include as many DC characters as they could in the book, but that was it. Then a Scottish writer named Grant Morrison can along, and was given the reins to Animal Man. They took the basics of the character and started adding to it, giving Animal Man and Ellen a family, changing the way his powers worked and how his origin happened, and making him a warrior for animal rights. This new version of Animal Man became immensely popular, and since then has become one of the most beloved DC characters of all time.

7) Detective Chimp

Detective Chimp is a Golden Age character introduced in 1952’s Rex the Wonder Dog #4. Bobo the chimp gained the power to speak and super intelligence, and became a chimp detective. This was obviously a character for children back then, introduced in a book about crime-fighting animals. Detective Chimp was a perfectly fine character for what he was, but eventually he faded away as the fad of superpowered animals died. Detective Chimp could have stayed a trivia question for hardcore DC fans, but he was brought back to prominence with the Infinite Crisis tie-in comic Day of Vengeance. Detective Chimp was linked to the world of occult, and that became his modern claim to fame. Detective Chimp would become more and more important, joining the casts of books like Shadowpact and Justice League Dark, becoming a hallmark of DC’s magical heroes and villains. Detective Chimp has become a beloved character, with more creators throwing him into their stories. He went from a simple talking animal character into someone who rubs shoulders with characters like Zatanna, John Constantine, Swamp Thing, and Wonder Woman.

What DC heroes do you think have gotten better over the years? Sound off in the comments below.