Seventy-four years ago, the cover of Detective Comics #38introduced Robin the Boy Wonder to the world as Batman’s new junior partner in crime. Crashing through a canvas drum, the trade dress declared him “The Sensational Character Find of 1940!” In that grand tradition, we at DC.com take the opportunity at the end of every year to look through the gallery of new faces that have joined the DC Universe and determine which freshmen stand out the most. Here are five new characters who left a real impression on us in the past twelve months and rank among the Sensational Character Finds of 2024.
Princess Fione
Sensational Debut: Suicide Squad ISEKAI
“Are you tired of being nice? Don’t you just want to go ape spit?”
This memorable, slightly censored memetic phrase is what comes to mind whenever we think about Princess Fione, Harley Quinn’s identical counterpart from the fantasy world of Suicide Squad ISEKAI. Sent through a rift in reality to set up an operation to exploit the resources of the world on the other side, Suicide Squad ISEKAI sees Task Force X embroiled in an interdimensional power struggle—with a wicked sorceress and a demented queen sacrificing their people as a kind-hearted princess is helpless to protect them. But it’s through Fione’s fresh eyes that we see the appeal of Harley Quinn in our own world: the idea that true freedom comes with embracing your wildest impulses and throwing caution away, all sense and logic be damned. Princess Fione is for everyone who ever looked at Harley Quinn swinging her mallet at her oppressors with maniacal laughter and thought, “It me.”
Alice the Fourth
Sensational Debut: Harley Quinn: Redemption
In 1992, Batman: The Animated Serieswas reinventing nearly every regular Arkham inmate in Gotham with new depths of pathos and relatability. In the episode “Mad as a Hatter,” Frank Paur and Paul Dini took one of Batman’s most bizarre enemies, the Lewis Carrol-obsessed Mad Hatter, and gave him a motivation anyone could relate to: he was a man in desperate, unrequited love, with an idealized version of a woman he’d placed on a pedestal in his own mind. His “Alice.”
Decades later, the lion’s share of Mad Hatter stories would come to center the pursuit of Alice, casting whatever girls he could capture into the role of his dreams. But for all that narrative, the Batman reader has never really been made to sympathize with the victim. What of the young woman bent into Alice’s shape? This year’s Harley Quinn: Redemption, Rachael Allen’s conclusion to the Harley Quinn Young Adult novel trilogy, gives us a surprising deuteragonist in Evelyn, known among the Dollmaker’s brainwashed captives as “Alice the Fourth.” Each chapter of Harley’s escapades through Gotham gives way to a shift to Evelyn’s perspective, a girl who had her own life and her own problems until the day she got a ride from a stranger. It’s a fitting narrative for the end of the series, which stands defiantly against defining Harley Quinn by her relationship to the Joker. By centering the victim with Evelyn, Allen enriches the women in these stories so often cast as props, while also adding new layers to the threat of their manipulators. In a book drenched in the dramatic romance of Harley and Ivy, it’s the ersatz Alice who stands out as the breakout star.
Jadestone
Sensational Debut: Absolute Power
One of the substories within this year’s major event, Absolute Power, was Amanda Waller’s deployment of “Task Force VII”—seven powerful Amazo androids, each based on a core member of the Justice League. Devoid of personality or morality, these robots were designed across the board to be mere heavies. Dragons to slay before everyone could team up for the big finish.
As practically every creative team in the DC Universe factored their stories into the Absolute Power takeover, Green Lantern’sJeremy Adams and Fernando Pasarindid something particularly special with their Lantern-inspired Amazo, Jadestone. In its absorption of Alan Scott’s Starheart, the droid found itself gifted with willpower—the true power of a Green Lantern. Learning gradually to make its own decisions, Jadestone is influenced by Alan himself to take up the role of a hero. Despite the retirement of all the other Task Force VII androids, Jadestone has now taken an essential place among the new Green Lantern infrastructure. After all, even a killer android who grew a soul wouldn’t be the strangest member in the Corps’ ranks.
Vic Aguilar
Sensational Debut: The Penguin
When the young hubcap thief Vic Aguilar first appeared in the premiere of The Penguin this year, the entire fan community started tripping over themselves to identify which “major Batman character” he was supposed to become. Was he Victor Zsasz? Victor Freeze? Victor Stone? Robin?
Why did we all think that this new kid on the scene had to be somebody we already knew? As we see it, the answer is that Rhenzy Feliz’s young protege to Oswald Cobb was immediately so likeable, we wanted him to be an old friend—just for some excuse to keep him around. Because if he were new here, then he might not be safe. Like the Penguin himself putting his gun away at the end of that first episode to tie up a last loose end, we didn’t want to see him go.
A kid from Gotham’s neglected Crown Point, fighting hard for a come up so he wouldn’t have to struggle the way his doomed family had until the moment the flood took their lives. The Penguin had everything that Vic wanted for himself, and with his heart far too big to survive in Gotham’s underground, we wanted it for him too. In a series studded with unforgettable performances by a singularly talented cast, Vic stands among the very best of them.
Jenny Crisis
Sensational Debut: Outsiders
In the introduction to Jenny Sparks we wrote earlier this year, we explained the concept of the “Jenny” as the living embodiment of the state of humanity in each century of human progress. As the comics put it, she’s the Spirit of the Century, born the moment the last two digits of the year turn over, and put to rest the moment they turn again. The first Jenny we got to know in the comics was Jenny Sparks, spirit of the 20th century—an embodiment of the proliferation of electricity, and in a broader sense, power, that defined the era. With the dawn of the 21st, it was proposed for a time that her replacement would be “Jenny Quantum,” a hopeful figure representing further untold leaps in energy production and human progress.
A quarter of a century in, we can take a step back and admit it: they got it wrong.
In Collin Kelly, Jackson Lanzing and Robert Carey’s Outsiders epic exploring the forgotten corners of the DC Universe, we are reacquainted with a new Spirit of the 21st Century—one who better reflects all we’ve seen of this period so far, and who stands as a far more apt representation of where we are. Jenny Crisis is a deeply emotional figure, whose changing moods can affect the planet on a global scale. This Jenny represents the true change in direction we’ve seen over the past generation: the claustrophobically exponential shrinking of the world stage to the forum of the web and social media. Fear, rage and depression spread memetically, with an unceasing news cycle presenting fresh disasters each day.
But this modern Jenny, while informed by the dramatically changed world we find ourselves in, has a duty to do what she can to save it. Sometimes, that means disconnecting from humanity. Sometimes, it means feeding into the very channels which turn us against each other as a force for good. Ultimately, Jenny Crisis is a reflection of the potential we all have to use our small and scary world, interconnected like never before, to save the planet…or to bring its destruction. The Crisis is here. What are you going to do about it?
Alex Jaffe is the author of our monthly “Ask the Question” column and writes about TV, movies, comics and superhero history for DC.com. Follow him on Bluesky at @AlexJaffe and find him in the DC Official Discord server as HubCityQuestion.
NOTE: The views and opinions expressed in this feature are solely those of Alex Jaffe and do not necessarily reflect those of DC or Warner Bros. Discovery, nor should they be read as confirmation or denial of future DC plans.