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Character tropes for But Doctor, I Am Pagliacci.
Jack's crew
Jack Napier
Jack Napier/The Joker/The Batman
The former Clown Prince of Crime, now sane and realizing he's in a universe gone wrong.- Adaptational Wimp: The native Joker of the new timeline was apparently a low-tier villain, given that Punch and Jewelee think they can take him alongside the fact that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service once foiled one of his plots without any assistance from the Justice League. Of course, that all goes out the window when he gets his sanity back and recalls the original timeline, whereupon he demonstrates exactly what makes the Joker one of the most feared villains of the normal DC universe.
- Badass Normal: He spent years as one of the most dangerous supervillains in the world, and regularly going up against one of its three greatest superheroes, as well as his students, and returning to sanity didn't cost him any of that skill and experience; if anything, it enhanced it. With a baseball bat. After getting a White Lantern Ring, he becomes an Empowered Badass Normal.
- Batter Up!: His main weapon becomes a high-tech baseball bat which he uses to beat Superman up. It even leads to the general public calling him "Batman".
- Beware the Nice Ones: Jack Napier with his sanity restored is a friendly, goofy, and even heroic individual, but make no mistake; he still has everything that makes the Joker as dangerous as he was in the main timeline aside from the murderous insanity. When he decides to start causing problems for the Justice League, it doesn't take long for him to escape from their custody, repeatedly humiliate them, and bring together several very dangerous villains into an organization capable of taking the Justice League head-on.
- Chronic Hero Syndrome: His sanity has come with a new case of this. When he sees someone rob the noodle place he's at (actually Cassandra Cain, his League of Shadows contact, testing him), he initially thinks that this is the sort of thing Batman would handle... but Batman isn't there, so he intervenes.
- Combat Pragmatist: He uses every advantage he has, whether it be calling on his allies when his opponents are unsuspecting, to using equipment like hidden liquid kryptonite sprayers. When your usual opponents are Superman and the Justice League, it pays to be prepared.
- Deadpan Snarker: Even when he's not the Joker, he's a joker, though more through force of habit if nothing else.
- Empathic Weapon: Jack's White Lantern ring responds only to him and is fueled by life, more specifically, when Jack just lives his life and doesn't let himself be bogged down by his problems. He goes to see Harley to get some of his issues out of the way and thus charge the ring.
- Evil Laugh: Averted. While Jack does laugh on occasion, it's normal laughter instead of the Joker's manic cackling.
- Gambit Roulette: It doesn't always work out for him (see Calculator's betrayal for a good example), but he's very good at incorporating coincidental elements into his plans on the fly.
- Harmless Villain: Altered Timeline Joker wasn't completely harmless, and Punch and Jewelee are still worried about him, but not having a Batman to fight has done a number on his skill and threat level and he's very much a C-lister with occasional ambitions- one of his plans was even foiled by the US Fish and Wildlife Services, without any superhero involvement whatsoever. Original Timeline Joker/Jack Napier? No. Not at all. Though he does technically subvert this on the grounds that he isn't a villain anymore.
- Home-Run Hitter: Pulls one off on Superman after becoming a White Lantern. Superman ends up flying out of the Solar System. He even quotes Casey at the Bat while he does it.
- The Immune: As a benefit of his time spent as Emperor Joker, he's completely immune to the Anti-Life Equation.
- Kansas City Shuffle: A favorite trick of his is to convince his enemies he's after something, only for it to be something else they thought was unimportant.
- Think he's trying to steal time travel devices? Nope, he's actually trying to steal The Eradicator.
- His challenge to Superman was stated to be an attempt at one, distracting the Justice League while his allies stole Element X, but it didn't work out as expected, since the thefts failed, but the Father Box solved that problem by defecting to his side.
- Non-Action Guy: The altered timeline Joker, prior to being overwritten by Jack, apparently wasn't much for close combat, which is why Green Arrow thoroughly underestimates Jack when the Justice League have him captured.
- Outside-Context Problem: He's this to the modified timeline as A) the only one who remembers the Prime Timeline, and B) a much bigger threat in the Prime Timeline than the modified version. The Joker everyone is familiar with once got foiled by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, but the Joker they're facing is The Dreaded for the entire DC universe. And now, he's perfectly sane.
- Post-Victory Collapse: Faints after batting Superman out of the solar system, having severely strained himself using his White Ring.
- Restoration of Sanity: The story begins with the Joker having recently regained his marbles under Arkham's treatment, with the exception of remembering an overwritten timeline. Mr. Mxyzptlk helped him with that.
- Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Thanks to the time he gained the powers of Mister Mxyzptlk, he now bears a 5th dimensional soul structure, which makes him immune to changes in the timeline.
- Sad Clown: For all his jokes, he admits he does it partially to keep himself from thinking about the horrible things he did, and he feels that the fact that he exists and Bruce doesn't is just wrong, not out of a belief that "The Joker needs the Batman", but that Gotham (and the world) need Batman and Bruce Wayne, but they do not need the Joker.
- Sanity Has Advantages: As the insane Joker, he was exceptionally dangerous, but often foiled by his obsessive nature, especially since his primary opponent named the Batman Gambit. As the sane Jack Napier, he has all the cunning, skills and experience that made him so dangerous, but none of the irrationality that occasionally tripped him up. In fact, he's even less predictable this way, because who'd ever think the Joker of all people would get his marbles back?
- Story-Breaker Power: With how powerful the White Lantern ring is, you'd think he could take out the Justice League no problem. Of course, the thing is limited by his Willfully Weak nature and the fact that it is a pain in the ass to charge up.
- Take Up My Sword: Despite Lex making sure to Ret-Gone Batman (because Batman would have figured his plan out), Jack winds up becoming the new timeline's Batman (though in his case the "bat" refers to a baseball bat rather than the animal). Jack is heavily reluctant to take over his former archrival's legacy, but he's eventually persuaded otherwise. He even gets a shirt with the Batman logo.
- Willfully Weak: After he gets a White Lantern ring, he makes it a point not to use it much to avoid too much collateral damage. Eradicator shows him that this is detrimental to him honing its abilities and prevents him from regulating the strength of his constructs.
- Xanatos Speed Chess: Part of what makes Jack so dangerous is that he doesn't rely on rigid master plans; he has an idea of what he wants, an idea of how to get there, and he's great at working unexpected elements into that framework.
Dr. Sivana
Dr. Thaddeus Bodog Sivana
A mad scientist and among the first recruits to Jack's crew.- An Arm and a Leg: He ends up losing an arm fighting Hawkgirl in order to take her Nth metal mace out of her possession long enough to kill her.
- Anti-Hero: He's a major supervillain and arch-enemy of Captain Marvel in the prime timeline, who's only helping to restore said timeline because it has his family in it. At the same time, he's often the backbone of Jack's team and provides most of their resources that aren't mooks (Talia takes care of that).
- Bystander Syndrome: Doesn't see why he should care about what Lex is doing to the timeline...that is, until he learns that Lex erased his family from it.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: He's a legitimate family man (barring his sibling) and was downright pissed when he learned that the altered timeline included erasing their existence.
- Evil Genius: He's good enough to rival more well-known villains, such as Lex Luthor. He regularly constructs his own robots powerful enough to hold out against Kryptonian-level threats and could even deduce that the timeline was off without being informed by a third party.
- Intangible Man: One of Sivana's specialties is knowing an equation that can make him intangible.
- Multidisciplinary Scientist: Sivana, in best comic book fashion, is good at every field of science that might be useful against a superhero. He also studies magic, seeing it as another field of science to master.
- Mundane Utility: Besides making robots strong enough to fight against Kryptonians, he also has these same machines function as his butlers for personal use.
Talia Al Ghul
Talia Al Ghul
The leader of the League of Shadows in the new timeline, who with no Batman has never found a worthy partner for herself. Her father is out of the picture.- Action Girl: She's a very competent female assassin and one of the deadliest warriors on the planet.
- Badass Normal: Has no superpowers, just considerable fighting prowess and the loyalty of her Shadows.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: She, like Dr. Sivana, is in Jack's group because of loved ones she had in the prime timeline but not in the altered one- in her case, Bruce and Damian Wayne.
- I Control My Minions Through...: Blind Obedience and Indoctrination, plus the promise of the Lazarus Pits for talented employees.
- Mooks: She provides the foot soldiers for Jack's plan.
Father Box
Father Box
An Apokoliptian supercomputer introduced aiding the Justice League, much to its own disgruntlement.- Beeping Computers: Speaks with a 'TING' sound effect. Most people can understand it, though notably Oliver Queen can't.
- Comedic Sociopathy: Would you really expect anything else from something made by Darkseid's followers?
- The Corrupter: Jack is pretty sure that it's trying to subtly nudge him to a Darkseid-like mindset. Jack deals with this by trying to corrupt Father Box to his way of thinking first.
- Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: It was made on Apokolips, so this is kind of a given. It also approves of this in others. It's sincere about aiding Jack because it hates Lex for killing Darkseid.
- Flipping the Bird: One of the reasons it switches sides is because, being a box, it can't give Lex the finger properly.
- Hazy-Feel Turn: It's still cheerfully sociopathic, but it hates the Justice League far more than it hates Jack, so it's helping him out to spite Superman.
- Teleporters and Transporters: It can teleport people via wormholes called Boom Tubes.
- Too Kinky to Torture: It's very enthusiastic about being interrogated. Again, Apokolips programming.
- Undying Loyalty: Yes, it has this and Chronic Backstabbing Disorder. Darkseid may be long dead (well, mostly dead), but it is still loyal to him.
- The Unintelligible:
Word of God is that Father Box's tinging will never be translated for the audience, though the characters (except Green Arrow) can understand it.
The Eradicator
The Eradicator/Supergirl
A Kryptonian artificial intelligence inhabiting the body of a defunct clone of Kara Zor-El.- Adaptational Heroism: The version of the Eradicator (there are four distinct entities calling themselves that) is largely based on an antiheroic-at-best A.I. created by General Zod. Luckily for Jack, here she's far more pissed at Superman than the heroes.
- All Your Powers Combined: Thanks to Sivana, she has the powers of Shazam, albeit deriving power from Kryptonian deities rather than Earth ones.
- Benevolent A.I.: She eventually grows into this as she adjusts to her new body and developing emotions.
- Berserk Button: Mistreating Kryptonian culture, one that Superman smashes with extreme prejudice, being a human bodysnatching a Kryptonian and wearing the crest of said Kryptonian's house without knowing or caring about what it means.
- The Big Gal: Among the Jokers allies, her Kryptonian strength combined with gaining the powers of Captain Marvel/Shazam make her the muscle of the group and the only one that can match Superman in a fight.
- Cool Shades: Like the comics, she wears a visor that looks pretty intimidating.
- Superpower Lottery: Take the powers of your average Kryptonian, add the powers of Shazam, and you've basically got this version of the Eradicator in a nutshell.
Booster Gold (Spoilers)
Michael Carter/Booster Gold
A fun-loving, time-hopping superhero who just so happens to be the only time traveler to escape Lex Luthor's attempts to lock down the timeline, thus making him the sole person unchanged from the original universe. He reluctantly teams up with Jack to bring Lex down once and for all.- Beneath Notice: He's pretty sure that the reason Lex didn't go after him was because of this trope.
- Beware the Silly Ones: Yes, he's a goofball. But a large part of that persona is an act to make people not realize he's competent and capable of getting serious when the situation calls for it.
- Book Dumb: Admits to having gone to college on a football scholarship, and not graduated.
- Last of His Kind: As far as he knows, he's the last surviving member of the Time Police, and possibly the last surviving time traveller that isn't either imprisoned by or working for Lex.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Jack gets worried when he sees that the normally relaxed and goofy Booster Gold is being entirely serious and relentless in their fight.
- Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: He's the third person after Jack and Lex to remember the old timeline.
- Robot Buddy: He has one, named Skeets. He stole it from a museum.
- Time Police: He did this job in the original timeline, but Lex forced him into hiding.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: It's one-sided on his part, but this is how he feels about working with Jack, because he's from the original timeline (from Future Gotham, no less) and is understandably wary about working with the supervillain who terrifies other supervillains out of their wits. For his part, Jack trusts Booster because he's aware that Michael is a true hero.
- Token Good Teammate: He's the only member of Jack's group who was a hero in the original timeline and still is one.
- Underestimating Badassery: Notable as the one person in the story who doesn't underestimate Jack since he remembers the original timeline. As such, he knows what the Joker is capable of and isn't blinded by ego like Lex.
Harleen Quinzel
Dr. Harleen Quinzel
A former psychologist for the Joker who was fired after vouching for his sanity. She later joins his team as their shrink for certain members.- Adaptational Heroism: The Joker never interacted much with Alt-Timeline Harleen, so she isn't the violent and unstable Anti-Hero that Harley Quinn is in canon. She's a normal woman who genuinely wants to help people as a therapist.
- Adaptational Wimp: Since she's still Jack's psychologist, she doesn't have the physical augmentations or the combat experience she gained as Harley Quinn.
- Ambiguously Bi: Her original counterpart is bisexual, but it's unconfirmed if she also is here. She is attracted to men, but she states that she had an "experimental year" in college.
- Cassandra Truth: She suffered for declaring the Joker sane, given that he almost immediately afterward escaped Arkham and humiliated Superman. Of course, the readers know that Jack is sane, and the reason he started causing problems was because Superman is a Villain with Good Publicity and Jack is trying to Set Right What Once Went Wrong.
- Has a Type: Jack semi-jokes that the version he knew was apparently attracted to the clinically insane, if her relationships with him and Poison Ivy were anything to go by, and he wonders if this Harley has similar tastes.
- The Shrink: Her previous occupation was being Jack's therapist, and she's recruited by him to serve as this for his whole crew.
- The Team Normal: Harleen is the only one of Jack's crew to be an ordinary civilian without powers or combat experience. Her value is instead in helping keep the various dysfunctional personalities of the group in check.
- There Are No Therapists: She's very much an aversion, as one of the major reasons Jack wanted her on the team was because of her skills as a psychologist and how they could help the more troubled members.
Pamela Isley (Spoilers)
Pamela Isley
Jack may remember her as an ecoterrorist supervillain, but in the new timeline, she didn't get the chance as she became the Avatar of the Green instead of Alec Holland. Problem is, a prerequisite for becoming a plant elemental is having burned to death, something that never happened to Pamela Isley...- And I Must Scream: As Jack describes it, being a failed plant elemental is an absolutely horrific fate to endure.
- Green Thumb: She was the next choice for Avatar of the Green after Swamp Thing (who doesn't exist because he's a very powerful hero Lex can't control) because she has plant powers, but she wasn't quite a perfect fit for the job.
- Kill It with Fire: A necessary part of the process to becoming the Avatar of the Green. Unfortunately for her, this never happened to her, leaving her trapped as an emaciated husk encased in a dead swamp tree, still aware of her surroundings but unable to die. Luckily, Jack tracks her down and burns her alive so she can complete her transformation.
- Mercy Kill: Jack sets her on fire with his White Ring so she can properly complete her elemental transformation.White Ring: PAMELA ISLEY OF EARTH, DECEASED. PAMELA ISLEY OF THE GREEN... YOU RISE.
- Mook Maker: Her first use of her new powers is making plant mooks for Jack and company.
Justice League
General
The greatest superhero team-up in the world... suspiciously, sans Batman.
- Elaborate Underground Base: The League operates out of one, with the only way to get there being teleportation of some sort.
- Evil Knockoff: Most of the Justice League isn't actually the original heroes, but rivals and villains who've taken on their names, and they're often less effective than the originals. This is likely a side-effect of Lex trying to create a team of minions instead of a team of heroes.
- We ARE Struggling Together: Many of the members don't actually like each other, and tend to do the minimum to help each other in fights.
Superman (Spoilers)
Warning! Unmarked spoilers for this character below.
Superman/Kelex/Alexander "Lex" Luthor
The Man of Steel, though far crueler and more heartless than one remembers... but not really. In actuality, he's the digitized mind of Lex Luthor inhabiting the cybernetically augmented body of Kal-El.- As Long as It Sounds Foreign: 'Kelex' is actually this trope In-Universe. The canon Kelex was an AI that ran the Fortress of Solitude, and Eradicator notes that it's not actually a name in the Kryptonian language, but a designation that would be used for a robot. Lex Luthor is just so egotistical that he found some way that he could still be called 'Lex', despite becoming Kal-El.
- Big Bad: The leader of the corrupt Justice League, the most powerful being around, and the main reason why the timeline is as messed up as it is.
- Evil Is Petty: Extremely so. Besides sidelining Lois Lane into a backwater job in the dying world of radio via buying out the Daily Planet, his entire reason for becoming Superman is to show off that he can be better than Kal-El at anything he could do.
- Fatal Flaw: Pride, obviously. Luther's ego just keeps writing checks his actions can't cash. He might be brilliant, and he might be powerful, but his inability to take an insult of any kind means that, above all else, he's predictable.
- Genius Bruiser: He's a master of technology, both Earthly and alien, a successful business owner, and has the strength to fight and kill super-beings that can easily destroy planets.
- Grand Theft Me: Lex Luthor was able to take over Superman's body - and create the altered timeline - by sending nanomachines containing a digital copy of his mind back in time to when Clark Kent was an infant, before Clark's powers would have become strong enough to protect him.
- Kryptonite Factor: Despite his New God physiology, he's still vulnerable to Kryptonite. Question speculates that the Kryptonite weakness is so thoroughly ingrained in the Superman mythos that Lex as Superman has to be weak to Kryptonite on a conceptual, rather than biological, level. He does later have Circe temporarily remove this weakness for later fights.
- Physical God: In a literal sense compared to usual. This Superman became a New God after being augmented by the stolen Omega Effect, meaning that he is literally a god for all intents and purposes.
- Superpower Lottery: He has all the power of the Man of Steel, coupled with his genius intellect and the stolen abilities of Darkseid alongside the Anti-Life Equation. Yup. he's definitely got this in spades.
- Unskilled, but Strong: He has all Superman's powers plus some New Godhood, but he's nowhere near as good as Clark Kent was at using them.
- Villain with Good Publicity: Publically, he's the head of the Justice League and the greatest hero ever to live. People who get to know him tend not to care for him, but they obey him out of fear of what he could do. Though his actions through the story do cause it to crack. Superdickery is apparently quite popular in this timeline.
- Would Hurt a Child: Well, considering that his machinations with the time stream deliberately killed Bruce Wayne when he was eight, yeah...
Wonder Woman
Wonder Woman/Circe
A witch/goddess and the second-most powerful of the League. She also has a Youtube channel.- Evil Is Petty: She turned Green Arrow into a pig for absolutely no reason other than to make a point.
- Forced Transformation: She has the power to turn people into animals. She once turned Green Arrow into a pig.
- Hot Witch: She's noted as being extremely attractive and is an evil sorceress.
- Human Sacrifice: She uses this to tease Thawne, but ultimately confirms she uses real animals for her rituals, not transformed humans. Using humans complicates things and she's not going to make magic harder for herself.
- Mundane Utility: She uses her magical powers to get Super Cell Reception.
- Support Party Member: Her greatest story role so far has been to use her magic to enhance other League members.
Green Arrow
Green Arrow/Oliver Queen
A genius billionaire playboy philanthropist... no wait, wrong company. And while Oliver Queen might like to be Tony Stark, he definitely doesn't have the charisma to pull it off and make it look good.- Adaptational Villainy: Unlike the rest of the League, who are actually villains taking their rival hero's place, this is the real Oliver Queen, though he's more of a boor in the new timeline.
- Ambiguous Situation: He's the only one who can't understand the Father Box's tinging, but it's unknown whether that means there's something wrong with him (he does later mention that he has a physical reaction to magic), or that he's the Only Sane Man and the Father Box can only be understood by people with a few screws loose.
- Audience Surrogate: He's the most common League POV character, and generally learns about the League's secret plans when the audience does.
- Badass Normal: He's one of the few members of the League that is in no way a super-being.
- Butt-Monkey: Gets zero respect from the rest of the League and Jack beats him up while escaping from League custody. And then he gets hauled before the United Nations to be berated for things the other Justice League members did without telling him.
- Locked Out of the Loop: No one else in the League even bothered to tell him about the assault on Silvanus' compound on Venus, leaving him completely unprepared when it all goes wrong. Apparently, this is a fairly common thing.
- No-Respect Guy: He's one of the least respected members of the Justice League. They don't even tell him about the Venus raid until it's over, and they only tell him after because he's the only member of the league still active who can run damage control on the raid's PR fallout.
- Not Hyperbole: When he complains that he feels like he'd fought a gorilla after Jack beats the tar out of him, he notes that this isn't just a standard comparison; he'd actually fought gorillas before.
- Only Sane Man: He points out to Superman that running headlong into a battlefield of Jack's choosing just because he needled Supes' ego isn't the best idea, but gets ignored.
- Underestimating Badassery: Underestimates Jack when the League had him captive and ends up with Jack curbstomping him. Though to be fair to Oliver, he did take precautions, it's just that he thought he was facing his own timeline's native Joker (who apparently had little close combat skills), and not a version of the Joker that regularly faced Batman in fist fights.
- Upper-Class Twit: This Oliver's internal monologue is full of him lording his status over the "plebs".
The Flash
The Flash/Thaddeus Thawne
The scarlet speedster and fastest man alive. Or sometimes, the sole normal inhabitant of the slowest world that exists.- Adaptational Heroism: An interesting sort. He's still a villain in that he's one of the corrupt League members, and his motives are a rather unheroic combination of familial expectations, Superman pressing him to give the League good publicity, and not really having anything better to do, but his actions are still heroic; he stops disasters, thwarts villains, and makes an effort to prevent civilian casualties- which is far more than canon Inertia could say.
- Blessed with Suck: Unlike most Flashes, he doesn't have Required Secondary Powers that let him mentally operate from the perspective of both super speed and normal speed at the same time. Instead, when he uses his super speed, he sees it as himself moving normally while everything else is practically motionless. It takes him as much subjective time to do something at super speed as it would take him to do it at normal speed, and the rest of the world being on pause limits what he can actually do. In particular, he can't use vehicles in frozen time, so if he wants to go somewhere "instantly", he has to walk. And with the long distances he often has to cover, he can spend weeks or months in this state. No wonder he's so bored...
- The Eeyore: Superman constantly keeps him busy going around doing heroics, and having to spend most of his subjective time literally walking through a world on pause in order to get to the next emergency has left him extremely bored and thoroughly miserable.
- Freudian Excuse: He spent his childhood in a simulation before being sent to the past to be the Flash, a job that requires him to spend months at a time completely disconnected from other human beings. Now he just doesn't have it in him to care about anything.
- Inadequate Inheritor: To the legacy of Flash, not because of any lack of talent, but because of how little he cares about his work.
- Nominal Hero: While he does do heroics and protects people, he does so to alleviate his boredom (and because it's what Superman tells him to do) more than he does it out of any genuine desire to do good.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Normally, Thawne is aloof at best and only barely cares about being nice or paying attention to anyone or anything. When he wakes up Green Arrow after the League's assault on Venus, and goes to the trouble of brewing him a fresh pot of coffee, Queen immediately realises something has gone very wrong.
- Punch-Clock Hero/Punch-Clock Villain: He only saves people as part of his job (and really wishes someone else could do it), but at the same time, he takes said job seriously no matter how much he dislikes it and doesn't care to do any villainy or oppose the heroes unless provoked or ordered to.
- Super-Speed: Well, he is the Flash, and he's shown moving so fast that from the human perspective, he looks like he's flat out teleporting. Superman even looks like he's moving in slow motion compared to him.
- Time Stands Still: From his perspective, this is how his powers work. If he wants to do something at "super-speed", it takes him the same amount of subjective time it would take anyone else. Since he often has to cross the globe to reach problem areas, he spends months or years with the world completely frozen.
The Question
Victor/The Question
The League's detective and information man.- Ambiguous Situation: It's been left up in the air whether this Question is the real Question (like Green Arrow), or a villain who's taken on the name, like the rest of the League.
- Empowered Badass Normal: He takes from the 'City Shaman' days of the canon Question.
- Non-Action Guy: Hasn't actually been seen fighting.
- Properly Paranoid: Of course. His procedure for meeting with the Calculator involves an abandoned building with no electical connections and a laptop hooked up to a portable generator.
Hawkgirl
Hawkgirl/Vanessa Kingsbury
A winged woman who carries an Nth metal mace.- Carry a Big Stick: Most of her threat factor comes from possessing an Nth metal mace.
- C-List Fodder: Her original self, Shrike, was a minor Suicide Squad villain who wound up dead in her first mission. Lex Luthor recruits her as a Hawkgirl substitute because he thought he could control her and didn't trust that a Thanagarian Hawkgirl wouldn't be a threat. And she still dies in her first mission, this time to Sivana.
- Leeroy Jenkins: Charges directly into her fight with Sivana, trusting her mace to protect her. This leads to her death when Sivana temporarily separates her from the mace and rigs the building's climate control systems to explode.
- Winged Humanoid: Though she isn't a Human Alien like the original.
Nightwing
Nightwing
One of the League's Kryptonian members, being a cybernetically enhanced clone of Kara Zor-El. She's partnered with another Supergirl clone, Flamebird.- Chekhov's Gunman: She and Flamebird are first mentioned when Jack is searching for Batman and his associates.
- Cyborg: She has nanites implanted in her that regulate her emotional state and provide backups for her personality and memory.
- Expendable Clone: One of a series of clones of Kara Zor-El that Superman has created to serve as living weapons. Her nanotechnology means that she can be restored to life in subsequent cloned bodies. This happens several times during the story.
- Those Two Guys: Works as a team with Flamebird, and they're rarely seen apart.
Flamebird
Flamebird
An imperfect clone of Kara Zor-El who works with Nightwing, and tends to get the short end of the stick whenever she appears.- Anger Is Not Enough: The Lantern can't heal her after a nasty beatdown because she was only feeling anger, and the Red Light of Rage is not good for healing. He can only fix her after he encourages her to feel hope.
- Came Back Wrong: Inverted. When Jack resurrects her with the White Lantern Ring, she comes back sans the Clone Degeneration and brainwashing.
- Clone Degeneration: For unknown reasons, she has a degenerative condition that causes her to be in constant pain.
- Expendable Clone: Superman cloned her from the corpse of his cousin and uses nanotechnology to brainwash her into a weapon. Superman is very cavalier with Cadmus's cloning technology.
Martian Manhunter
Martian Manhunter/Ma'alefa'ak
The League's resident Martian.- Be Careful What You Wish For: Snaps at Black Adam to stay out of his fight... so Adam stands by and watches Cassandra kill him.
- Cain and Abel: He's the Cain, who in this universe was able to kill his brother J'onn J'onnz and take his place in the Justice League.
- Continuity Nod: In Bloodwynd's first canon appearance, it was actually the Martian Manhunter impersonating him. Bloodwynd's first appearance in the story is of him impersonating the Martian Manhunter by controlling the imperfect clone of him that Cadmus made.
- Came Back Wrong: This occurs when Cadmus clones him after he dies in the Venus raid. They were unable to bring back his mind, leaving him as a cyclopean mess controlled by Bloodwynd.
- Karma Houdini Warranty: Gets away with genocide of the Martians only for Cassandra Cain to kill him with Hawkgirl's mace. His Martian nature means he can't even be properly cloned back.
- Never My Fault: Blames his race for taking away his natural telepathy, brushing aside that it was done because he raped J'onn's wife.
- Secret-Keeper: Lex brought him in on his plot to usurp the Justice League, because he's telepathic and would probably find out anyway. He still supports Lex because Lex gave him his telepathy back and allows him on the team to one-up his brother.
- The Sociopath: Word of God is that Ma'al was written as a sociopath.
The Lantern
The Lantern/Frank Laminiski
The Justice League's resident Lantern Ring bearer- note, not green Lantern ring. He has all seven, though the contrasting emotional states needed to use them have done a number on his mental state.- All Your Powers Combined: He has all seven rings, though in his case they're not combined like a White Lantern ring.
- The Empath: His rings had to have several safeguards removed so that Frank could wield them- with the result that they're finicky and respond as much to others' emotions as his own.
- Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Heavily downplayed, but he notes that he has the easiest time working with the Orange light (greed), and the hardest with the Violet light (love).
- I Just Want to Be Special: His primary motivation.
- Inadequate Inheritor: The big reason Frank was chosen as a Lantern Ring wielder is because anyone actually worthy of the rings would probably refuse to play ball with Lex Luthor's plan to replace Superman. The rings had to have their original safeguards and programming removed to let Frank use them. This backfires on Lex when the rings recognize Jack as a more worthy bearer on all fronts and fly to him instead.
- It's All About Me: He can't bear to not be the center of things.
- Mood-Swinger: He has to be in order to utilize his rings properly.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Jack is able to take his rings by being a better exemplar of their traits, and fuse them into a White Lantern Ring that he promptly uses to bat Superman out of the Solar System.
- Power Incontinence: His seven-ring setup is inherently unstable, and he often has difficulty getting the powerset he wants.
Other
The Calculator (Spoilers)
Noah Kuttler/The Calculator
A supervillain who's something of a villainous answer to Oracle, though he did field villainy at one point. Aided Jack for a while, but later betrayed him to the Justice League. In the new timeline, he is the Avatar of the Metal, much like the Swamp Thing in the canon timeline is Avatar of the Green.- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Like Dr. Sivana, he has a beloved family. Unlike Sivana, they weren't erased by Lex's meddling.
- Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Betrays Jack to the Justice League, but betrays the Justice League by withholding necessary information to send them into a battle they can't win, and later tries to warn Sivana of the Justice League's assault on the League of Assassins' base.
- Not So Above It All: Jack has rubbed off on him, much to his annoyance.
- Jack notes that while he currently goes for the information broker route, even he was not always immune to the siren call of dressing up in a silly costume and punching superheroes in the face.
- Pet the Dog: He cares deeply for his human family.
- Playing Both Sides: He's trying to play Jack and the Justice League against each other in hopes they'll kill each other off. It hasn't come to bite him... yet.
- Technopath: As the Avatar of the Metal (basically a machine elemental), he can connect to and control any type of machine that isn't magically shielded.
- Transhuman Treachery: Downplayed, as he limits himself to dismissive sentiments about humanity in general; most of his treachery is very personal.
Punch and Jewelee
Punch and Jewelee
A husband and wife pair of mercenaries that Jack hires to bring him the Mobius sensors he needs to make sense of the new timeline.- Adaptational Heroism: Canon Punch and Jewelee were a prime example of Mad Love. Here, they seem to be a normal, loving couple... except for the 'thieves and mercenaries' thing.
- Magical Accessory: Jewelee has magic earrings.
- Pregnant Badass: Jewelee is pregnant during their viewpoint chapter.
- Underestimating Badassery: They make sure that they're the ones being underestimated, which allows them to generally get away with street-level crimes while not provoking the big guns into coming after them. They have a downplayed moment of this themselves when they think they could take the Joker if he betrayed them, but they remain cautious and the point is moot since Jack turned over a new leaf.
Black Adam
Teth-Adam/Black Adam
An associate of the Justice League, and a long-ago Shazam champion who took over the body of his descendant Theo Adams (who in the normal timeline, would have used his powers to become a supervillain), and took up rulership of his old country- Kahndaq.- Anti-Villain: He's a Justice League associate, but mostly wants to rule Kahndaq well and doesn't really like the Leaguers.
- Berserk Button: Insinuating that he isn't being a good ruler to Kahndaq will provoke his wrath.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: A big problem he has is that the moral codes that he lived by in ancient Kahndaq have changed, which creates a rift between him and more modern heroes.
- The Good King: Believe it or not, he's genuinely trying to do his best by Kahndaq.
- Modest Royalty: He'll partake in displays of wealth when he needs to for diplomatic reasons, but left to his own devices, he prefers to live more like his subjects do.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: When he's in his element. For example, while he worships the Egyptian pantheon, he doesn't force it onto his people and would rather they convert voluntarily than forcefully.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: He goes on the Venus Raid with the Justice League, but largely disassociates himself from them and just focuses on fighting the Eradicator. Flash even speculates that he doesn't save Lex after Jack bats him out of the solar system because "he just couldn't give a shit".
Amanda Waller
Amanda Waller
A United States government official who's very suspicious of Superman... and in this timeline, she's right.
- Mistaken for Racist: Notes that while she doesn't like Mr. Bones, it has nothing to do with his strange appearance (every part of his body except his skeleton is invisible), or his African-American heritage (she doesn't know whether or not he's kidding her about that- he isn't, for the record). It's because she sees herself as a woman of principles, and she doesn't think he's the type to have any.
- Leeroy Jenkins: Mr. Bones has to pull her back from outright confronting Superman on what he did to the President, although he agrees with her that they've got to do something.
- Properly Paranoid: Beware the Superman is justified when your Superman is Lex Luthor. She's also very suspicious when President Ross starts acting odd. He's been affected by the Anti-Life Equation.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: She acts as one for Superman; showing that no, he can't use the Anti-Life Equation to solve all his problems without people noticing.
