Another fun thing to do is expand the character rosters. Given that we’re folding everything into one universe, we can grab from anywhere (Movies, cartoons, what-have-you).
Let’s take a look at the Rogues. The ‘classic rogues’ are a bit of a sausage-fest, especially when you consider that the smurfette (Lisa) is dead.
In “A Mirror Darkly,” season 5 episode 5 of the Batman (2004 series), Sam Scudder, AKA Mirror Master I, is joined by a henchman- Smoke. This actually solves another problem- in the new 52, Lisa has been dating Sam, not Roscoe. She also has a different power set. So let’s say that in the stable timeline, Lisa has the old powers (Which is pretty much stabbing people and her brother’s cold gun), whereas Smoke has the phasing powers. Maybe Sam and Smoke are dating as well? Smoke’s not given an alias, but her actress’s name is Amanda Anka. This is alliterative, which is nice for comic book characters, but it’s usually nicer when using real people’s names to at least combine the names of two people rather than simply taking the names. A quick trip to IMDB, and we can see that Mario Azzopardi was a director for several episodes of the 1990 Flash TV show. Amanda Azzopardi sounds like a pretty good alias for smoke. Maybe this also gives a connection to James Jesse? (Azzopardi himself is from Malta, not Italy, but I digress). A lot of this stuff might never come up, too.
So if we say Lisa never died, or came back, now we have two female rogues. Satisfied, right? Ha! No.
Peek-A-Boo, AKA Lashawn Baez, started out as more of an antivillain. She was never an ‘official’ rogue, merely branded as such by Wally West, and she ended up turning herself in to the police, and was never brought up again. Since the Rogues frequent jail often, it’s entirely conceivable that she might be extended an invite. (I’m pretty sure she was in the background at Captain Boomerang’s funeral, too).
There we go! A canon rogue, even if it’s not a canon Rogue.
We can also take a closer look at what the rogues’ roster should look like in 1974. Going completely with canon, we have these Rogues present in the group, prior to Flashpoint, in the storyline “Dastardly Death of the Rogues:”
· Captain Boomerang I (Revived)
· Captain Cold
· Mirror Master II
· Trickster II
· Heat Wave
· Weather Wizard
Other characters in the ‘Rogues’ family who are alive at the time:
· Pied Piper
· Billy Hong – Trickster’s son from the New Year’s Evil storyline
Rogues family who died after 1970:
· Captain Boomerang II (Died in 1974)
· Josh Jackam (Died in 1973)
· James Jesse (Died mid-1972)
Maybe the rogues who died after 1970 came back because of the ‘Time Flux’ from the merging timelines. It’s about as good an excuse as ‘The Entity’ bringing back Captain Boomerang I, anyways. Lisa Snart died too long ago for this excuse, but maybe we can still find legacy characters.
I mentioned earlier the possible descendants of the Rogues. Perhaps the close-call with death that Josh Jackam faced in Final Crisis prompted the rest of the Rogues to look into kids they might have left behind? I can think of a few stories.
Cadet Cold: Given Len’s track record, this one is most likely a child of Lisa and Roscoe.
Heat-Whelp: Naturally, Mick’s concerned about passing on the pyromania.
Weather Whiz-Kid: The powers of 5-year old Josh Jackam act up again. Despite distrusting the Rogues, Iris West I (Josh’s adoptive mother) knows that Mark Mardon is the best chance at figuring out Josh’s powers.
Captain Slingshot: Another kid of the first Captain Boomerang (Is Meloni throwing them back through the timeline haphazardly? Trying to guess the correct time to send them back to?), or maybe he’s Owen’s kid.
Mirror Miss: Evan might’ve known about this one- maybe he deliberately placed her in his old orphanage (Which now has the nice Wayne funds from when Batman bribed him way back when). If we bring in the story from the Justice League Unlimited comic, he also has a son, Colin McCulloch, and is married to ‘Maggie.’ Evan’s always had more of a punch-clock feel to him, so I could easily see him starting a family after he kicked the drug habit, by Len kicking him. During the JLU #44 story, Evan is under pressure to come up with money for medical bills.
Going into this story, I also found Dr. Alchemy’s son. In the comics, his wife Rita was already established, but not the kid. He’s sometimes a Rogue, but he’s usually just a rogue.
Now, the Rogues family looks like this in 1974:
· Captain Boomerang I: 45
o Captain Boomerang II: 23
o Captain Slingshot: 6-12 months
· Captain Cold: 47
o Cadet Cold: 7 to 17 (Lisa died in 1967, so 7 is the minimum age. Roscoe kept coming back to life so his time of death isn’t all that important.)
· Mirror Master II: 31
o Colin: 11
o Mirror Miss: Less than 10
· Smoke: 21, or greater than 32 (Her first appearance was mid-1973, so we could put her age at 20 then. However, Sam Scudder, her partner, died in 1962, and if we say that she worked with him then we put her age at 20 in 1962 or before. However, this could’ve caused issues with Mirror Master II when he showed up. I kind of like the idea of a punch-clock ‘intern’ for the Rogues, too.)
· Trickster I: 45
o Billy Hong: 17
· Trickster II: 24
· Heat Wave: 44
o Heat-Whelp: Less than 3 or age 14-24. If we assume that a reformed Heat Wave would have kept track of his kids, then 1960 is when he reformed and mid-1971 is when he went back to crime. Thus, the child would probably not have been born during this time.
· Weather Wizard: 46
o Josh Jackam/Weather Whiz-Kid: 5
· Pied Piper: 46
· Peek-A-Boo: 24
By the way- I don’t care if anyone uses any of the ideas I’m writing about for fanfic, but I would appreciate being sent a link to read it!
