13 Characters Who Need To Appear in DC’s Young Adult Line

It took only moments after DC announced a pair of new imprints — DC Ink for young adults, and DC Zoom for middle grade readers — for fans to begin speculating about what characters might be represented in them.

So far, there is already a pretty healthy crop of stories, featuring characters ranging from Superman and Batman to the Super-Sons, Harley Quinn, and DC Super Hero Girls.

There is also an impressive roster of talent lined up to work on the books, including comics veterans like Gene Luen Yang and YA standouts like Danielle Paige.

As one might imagine, we have put together our own potential lineup of characters we would like to see in the lines, and we will provide a bit of commentary below as to why (and/or which of the two we figure the character would be better suited to).

This list comes with a tip of the hat to Jess Plummer, whose list was so close to mine that I literally joked about it on Twitter this morning.

Jaime Reyes

Jaime Reyes is arguably the most obvious choice for this list.

As a DC superhero in the main publishing line, he has been featured in three ongoing series, all of which spent most of their existence on the cancellation bubble. 

In the last, which was just cancelled, Jaime was taught by Ted Kord, the previous Blue Beetle, which was literally exactly the book fans had been saying they wanted since the character was introduced.

Outside of comics, meanwhile, he has blown up, playing a significant role in animated series like Batman: The Brave and the Bold and Young Justice. He has been made into a toy several times, and connects with two underserved audiences in comics — young people and people of Latin descent.

He could fit into either Ink or Zoom fairly seamlessly — Ink, probably by examining the “voice in his head” that the Scarab that gives him his powers represents, while Zoom could set him in a younger environment and position Ted Kord as a literal teacher.

Adam Strange

There are few DC properties more custom-made for a YA romance-style audience than Adam Strange.

Living on an unfamiliar but distinctly Earth-like planet, Adam finds himself literally pulled (via Zeta Beam) between his home and the woman he loves.

That he is going to be appearing on Krypton starting next month means only that DC has even more motivation to provide fans with an easy way to get to know him.

Shazam!

This one feels like cheating a little, since he is pictured (alongside Supergirl, one of the Green Lanters, and Hawkgirl) on the promotional announcement art for DC Zoom.

Still, Shazam! could easily be one of the best young-readers titles DC has made in years. For evidence, look no further than things like Shazam! and the Monster Society of Evil or Superman/Shazam!: First Thunder, both of which were great, stand-alone stories with few barriers to entry.

Again, the fact that Shazam! went into production today, and will be a major feature film by the time the next wave of DC Ink and DC Zoom books are getting ready to be released, can’t hurt anything.

Helena Bertinelli

Helena Bertinelli seems like a perfect opportunity for a YA character.

Like Batman, she lost her parents — but in a different way, and at a different age.

Helena’s realization, as a teenager, that her father was mobbed up and that the relative wealth and privilege she had enjoyed for years came from the suffering of others is a powerful story to explore, and seems perfectly suited to that familiar formula that pairs the coming of age/puberty/whatever with a larger-than-life story that mirrors that same physiological journey in a psychological way.

It would also provide fans with a powerful, female character in the Batman-verse who is not romantically associated with one of the male leads.

Jon Kent

Writer Dan Jurgens has often said that Jonathan Kent’s personality is a blend of Lois Lane and Clark Kent — and in his stories, that has been the case.

Most of the time, however, Jonathan is Superboy — and so we see him almost exclusively as the son of Superman.

A solo story, ideally set during the Kents’ time at the farm before they moved back home to Metropolis, could provide readers with a few things: A Jonathan Kent who is a bit more like Lois, and one who lives in a small town rather than in a big city.

How does somebody who lives in a town of 1,000 people disguise his identity with a pair of old horn-rimmed glasses? How useful is leaping tall buildings in a single bound when you are living half a mile from your nearest neighbor? This could be fun stuff for kids, while an exploration of how his whole life changed rapidly after learning about his parents’ true lives before he came along could provide some meaty material for older readers. And all the while, we could have some Riverdale-style scandal with Jonno on the school paper.

Traci Thirteen

The daughter of Doctor Thirteen has become a wildly popular character with hardcore comic fans, even if she has had very few chances to break through to the mainstream.

A character like her — irrepressibly optimistic in the face of the supernatural — could be the perfect YA counterpoint to a world where the current Sabrina the Teenage Witch TV series is going to be hard-R horror, apparently.

Cassandra Cain

Another character seemingly custom-built for YA, Cass Cain lives in one of the most dangerous and shabbiest cities in the world — and it’s exactly where she belongs becuase she is more dangerous than the city itself, and more dangerous than almost anyone living there.

She’s also recovering from a lifetime of trauma and has just, at the start of her story, found the people who will eventually take her in and become her “real” family…a group of Bat-folk who are as dysfunctional as she is.

Khalid Nassour

Khalid, the Doctor Fate of the DC You universe, was a standout from that brief period in time.

Doctor Fate and Black Canary were probably the two most beloved reinventions from DC You, and Black Canary is already confirmed to be a part of the DC Ink initiative.

An Egyptian-American with a strong family to bounce off of and a cool twist on a Golden Age hero, Khalid could be a great YA character, especially if they were to delve into the mysticism of the hero’s mythology.

Wally West

There is not a ton of backstory for Wally West (II), the African-American teenager introduced during The New 52 who currently serves as Kid Flash (not to be confused with the other Wally West, who was The Flash for 20 years).

That seems to give audiences an opporutnity to learn who he is in an extra-canonical situation, while capitalizing on the popularity of the character from The CW’s The Flash.

Emiko Queen

With Benjamin Percy leaving Green Arrow but sticking around DC, we would love to see him spotlight Emiko, a character he made us love during his Rebirth run on the Emerald Archer’s comic, in her own right.

Gen 13

Before Jim Lee sold WildStorm to DC, one of his last great successes as a creator was Gen 13, another book about teen superheroes, but these heroes a lot less pristine than the Legion or even the JSA kids.

Gen 13 was a book full of misfits, who argued and felt out of place. It was like a Marvel title that had fewer restrictions on it (becuase it was at Image), and after Lee sold to DC, the property never fully felt at home in the DC Universe, despite multiple attempts and a few genuinely good stories along the way.

After Flashpoint, Gen 13 disappeared and its members would only occasionally show up in odd places. Recently, longtime artist J. Scott Campbell did a short story that aligned the team’s military handler John Lynch with the alt-right.

The team could easily be a success with the right approach; hell, look at how other ’90s Image properties like Savage Dragon, Youngblood, and Prophet have recently experienced renaissances.

Felicity Smoak

Yes, Felicity Smoak barely exists in the comics and functioned for years primarily as Firestorm’s stepmom. 

Still, TV’s version has already made her way into the comics, and now it could be interesting to get a look at a younger version of her, as she grows up goth or becomes the super-hacker we have all come to know and love on Arrow.

Kamandi

We would KILL to see Julie and Shawna Benson, who have experience with post-apocalyptic dystopia on The CW’s The 100, tackle Kamandi.

It would also be cool to see Kamandi once more doing something boundary-pushing after The Kamandi Challenge, where 12 art teams and 12 writers paired up to do a year-long project within the Kamandi map created by creator Jack Kirby.