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Highlights
- Some members of the Justice League, like Hawkman and Zatanna, have been severely underrated and forgotten by both the League and DC Comics fans.
- Characters like Elongated Man and Firestorm have struggled to maintain popularity and have not been featured prominently in recent Justice League teams or titles.
- Martian Manhunter, despite being a founding member of the League, has been left behind and often overlooked in modern versions of the team, both in comics and other media adaptations.
The Justice League has filled the pages of DC Comics for decades, and while there are a few members who are mainstays, many of the others come and go as they please. While there are members who are loved and appreciated as they deserve by DC Comics fans, there have been others over the years who don’t receive a lot of love.
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The first Justice League team debuted in 1960, with many alternative teams coming together over the years including Justice League Dark and Justice League International. None of the other teams have managed to eclipse the original, which is consistently one of DC’s biggest-running comic book series. However, some members of the League from across the years have been severely underrated both by the League and by fans of DC Comics.
8 Hawkman
A character with a huge length of history in DC Comics, the first Hawkman debuted in 1940, making him one of the longest-running superheroes in the world. There have been different characters who take on the mantle of Hawkman, and several of them have been members of various Justice League teams.
Carter Hall is the main version that has been used throughout the history of DC Comics, and he has appeared within the main Justice League team the most frequently. However, it was his counterpart, Hawkgirl, who became a major character in the animated Justice League Unlimited series, while Hawkman mostly played a supporting role. The character has made live-action debuts in shows and had a starring role as a member of the Justice Society in Black Adam, but has been heavily forgotten about as a Justice League member for years now.
7 Zatanna
A magic user who was a major Justice League roster member at one point, Zatanna is a fascinating and fun character who doesn’t feel quite so dark as other users of the magical arts often do in DC Comics. Zatanna has always had a fun personality and makes a lot of sense as a member of the team, but has been left out more recently, her HBO Max movie even getting canceled.
In spite of this, Zatanna has managed to retain popularity as a character and has been one of the more consistent members of Justice League Dark over the past few years, mostly due to that team dealing so much with magical threats. Still, though, Zatanna is a character left completely out of the DCEU who should appear again for the DCU.
6 Elongated Man
Ralph Dibny is a character who has never been taken that seriously. In DC Comics, he was once considered a fairly important character within the Justice League, but this stretchy superhero has been shunned more recently as a comedic side character, though he did make his live-action debut in The Flash TV series.
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Despite this, the Elongated Man has not appeared in a serious capacity as a Justice League primary member in a long time. While characters like Aquaman have been revamped in the modern era to make them more serious and have had a renaissance in popularity as a result, the Elongated Man has yet to receive a similar update.
5 Firestorm
Firestorm is one of the many B-list characters in DC Comics who have fallen further out of popularity over the past few decades. Despite being a member of the original Justice League team, Firestorm has in more recent years struggled to keep up their own title or membership of any major teams, except their appearances in Legends of Tomorrow.
Usually, Firestorm is made up of two separate people who are able to join together to create one hero with nuclear powers, the character has been a fascinating one that managed to keep individual titles starring the character going for as long as eight years in previous DC continuity. Firestorm was the final new member for the original Justice League run but hasn’t found a way back into the mainstream team in a long time.
4 The Atom
One of the more notable superheroes who has been a mainstay in DC Comics even while not a member of the Justice League. Ray Palmer and his shrinking abilities as the Atom again made their way into the CW series Legends of Tomorrow, played by Brandon Routh.
The Atom first appeared in 1961, around the same time that the first Justice League comic series began. While his powers are impressive, and Palmer is usually a character depicted as being a genius, he has been left out of many Justice League teams that could really make use of a character such as this.
3 Black Canary
The Green Arrow has been a mainstay throughout many Justice League teams and animated series, and sometimes Black Canary has been there alongside him. But the character deserves the opportunity to break out more on her own, having a fascinating power and a great character.
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Black Canary is one of the super-powered DC characters who would struggle to fight some of the most devastating threats that the League faces, but characters like her still have access to excellent technology and should be given an opportunity back in the Justice League team alongside characters like Batman, who have no powers at all.
2 Cyborg
One of the primary members in recent editions of the team, Cyborg’s name is self-explanatory, his powers came from experiments enacted by his father that saved his life but turned him into part-man, part-machine. This has helped make him the Justice League’s “tech guy” in addition to being able to fight alongside them.
Cyborg was known as a member of the Teen Titans for a long time, but the 2011 New 52 reboot of the DC Universe added him as an original Justice League member. This led to his inclusion in the team for the 2017 Justice League movie, but Cyborg is still a relatively unknown entity for many fans, having appeared little besides the Justice League film in the DCEU, and not getting his own projects at all to date.
1 Martian Manhunter
Possibly the most underrated Justice League member of all, Martian Manhunter is a fascinating character who was actually a founding member of the original Justice League. While the other founding members are all still members in most modern versions of the team, Manhunter has been left to the side often.
Martian Manhunter came from Mars and has a tragic backstory involving his people being subjugated on the red planet by White Martians, a vicious race. He has his own characters around him and has fascinated audiences with his brief appearances in the DCEU, in addition to more in-depth stories in shows like Smallville and Supergirl, but he infrequently gets his own comic book series and has been left out cruelly of most modern Justice League teams.