Last week, I wrote about choosing the hero teams and rosters. This week, it’s the bad guys. Choosing the villain teams for the set was not completely cut and dry. The JLA is better known for taking on single big baddies than entire teams. However, the Injustice Gang and the Secret Society of Super-Villains have faced off against the JLA many times over the years. Sometimes, individual villains from these teams have tried to take on the JLA on their own. They never had much of a chance, but some almost came close enough to taste victory.

The Injustice Gang was the easier of the villain teams to choose, as they have been a foil to the Justice League in a few high profile JLA storylines. With a name like “Injustice,” there’s no hiding who they are gunning for. The Secret Society of Super-Villains had their own comic book for a while, which is unusual for a villain team. While the JLA was the hero team they feared the most, the Society fought against each other as much as they fought others. Let’s look at this team first.

Thank goodness DC Comics allowed me to abbreviate the team name to Secret Society, or those text boxes would have been even more crowded. The team was originally put together by a Mysterious Benefactor, using Manhunter Clone, Clone of Paul Kirk as his agent on the ground. A motley group of ne’er-do-wells were all sent a message reading: “Attention . . . You are cordially invited to attend the first bi-monthly meeting of The Secret Society of Super-Villains . . . Attend or Die!” That Benefactor turned out to be Darkseid, Heart of Darkness.

The first meeting of the team took place at their new base, the Sinister Citadel, and was attended by Copperhead, Slithering Assassin; Captain Boomerang, “Digger”; Captain Cold, Leonard Snart; Gorilla Grodd, Simian Mastermind; Remoni-Notra ◊ Star Sapphire, Zamoran Champion; Sinestro, Corrupted by the Ring; and The Wizard, William Zard (among others). During that first meeting, the Society was attacked by the JLA. How unlucky! However, Grodd sent Superman Straight to the Grave, only to discover that Supes was a robot. The attack was just a test put on by Darkseid. The exile from Gorilla City was not amused.

One of the highlights of the comic was the constant power struggle for leadership of the team. That’s why you see the leader keyword on so many of the characters. Funky Flashman, Salesman Supreme; Lex Luthor, Criminal Genius; The Wizard; and Grodd all fought against one another for the honor. Most of the time, this infighting led to the team splintering into separate factions. Grodd recruited Poison Ivy, Kiss of Death, while Star Sapphire recruited The Creeper, Jack Ryder, thinking he looked so scary that he must be a villain. Only a team where everyone thinks of themselves as the leader would dare to recruit new members with such reckless abandon. Funky spent a long time as a leader of the team, even coming up with Funky’s Big Rat Code as a way for members to send encoded messages to each other. The team was never all together at once, as different leaders took various members on far-flung adventures all the time, so a code was a necessity.

When the team discovered that Darkseid was their benefactor, they rebelled, knowing that working for Darkseid meant they would end up with Death Times Five. Darkseid sent Mantis, Power Parasite to quash the rebellion With Prejudice. Mantis smashed through the Society members who were present at the time. Even villains know the old adage of Divided We Fall, so the remnants of the team banded together to beat Darkseid’s agent. Soon after, Mark Desmond ◊ Blockbuster, Mindless Brute and Floronic Man, Jason Woodrue joined the team.

With Darkseid out of the picture, the struggle for leadership began in earnest. The Wizard’s leadership stock was on the rise, so he whisked several members off to Earth-2 and Earth-3 to go on The Plunder Plan. He even became the team’s new secret benefactor, helping the team move into a new Sinister Citadel, which is why it’s non-unique in the game. Once they returned, The Wizard got rid of Funky and the team added Charaxes, Killer Moth and James Jesse ◊ Trickster, Giovanni Giuseppe to the mix. The Secret Society of Super-Villains’ self-titled comic book then stopped production.

The next time we saw the team, it was being led by the Ultra-Humanite, Evolutionary Antecedent (in a new giant white ape body), and it included new members such as Crystal Frost ◊ Killer Frost, Cold-Hearted Killer; Henry King ◊ Brainwave, Sinister Psionic; The Mist, Jonathan Smythe; Psycho Pirate, Roger Hayden; and Quakemaster, Robert Coleman. Ultra’s plan was to eliminate all superheroes on Earth-1 and Earth-2 by upsetting the delicate cosmic balance of super-powered heroes in the multiverse. Not a great plan. Little-known characters like Rag Doll and Signalman were on my earliest team list, but I eventually decided to add a few more well-known names to the team instead.

In the late ’90s, the Secret Society was a scattered group with cells operating independently of each other, each led by a different person/giant ape. Brainwave called a meeting of many Society members at a secret underground mountain hideout. Unfortunately, Brainwave turned out to be a shapechanged Martian Manhunter, and the meeting was a big trap designed to catch two dozen Society members in one fell swoop. The only good thing to come of this was that it showed us some more recent additions to the Secret Society line-up, such as Deadshot, James Lawton; Dr. Sivana, Thaddeus Bodog Sivana; Hector Hammond, Mind Over Matter; Scarecrow, Fearmonger; and Solomon Grundy, Buried on Sunday. Grundy was a long way from his Slaughter Swamp, and they sure could have used Gorilla Grodd’s Quadromobile to rocket-tunnel their way out of the trap. While these characters are not the classic Society members long-time fans wanted to see, I thought the team needed a few more recognizable names, and I really wanted to use them for their dual team affiliation potential. While Matter Master, The Monocle, and the Sizematic Twins are fun characters, I figured that players not familiar with the older team needed something familiar to grab onto.

The Injustice Gang

Even if a Criminal Mastermind can’t stand up to the JLA, he can cause enough trouble and distraction that he might catch a hero alone and vulnerable. But when the whole team gets together, they can Gang-Up and have a great chance of defeating the heroes . . . at least temporarily.

The first Injustice Gang was put together by Libra, Alien Conqueror to drain the JLA of its powers. He recruited David Clinton ◊ Chronos, The Time Thief; Sam Scudder ◊ Mirror Master, Reflective Rogue; Poison Ivy, Deadly Rose; Scarecrow, Psycho Psychologist; Shadow-Thief, Carl Sands; and Tattooed Man, Living Ink. Problem was, he was just using his new recruits to try his Power Siphon on the JLA and never intended to share any of the power he gained. His “leadership” didn’t last long, though, as Libra gained so much power that he blew himself up.

As you’ve seen with concealed and concealed—optional, sometimes Vs. designers like to take an old keyword and give it a new spin. Leader powers showed up in the Avengers set, where being next to a leader was always a good thing for that character. But with the villain teams, many of the leaders are just in it for themselves. Libra was one of the first to give me this idea.

Once Libra was out of the picture, Poison Ivy tried her hand at organizing a gang of her own. She recruited Captain Boomerang, George Harkness; Floronic Man, Alien Hybrid; IQ, Ira Quimby; Ocean Master, Son of Atlan; and The Shark, Karshon. Abra Kadabra, Citizen Abra later regrouped the original team and tried to take control of the world’s energy supplies. He was never really trusted as a leader, but he was able to get the team to go along with his scheme anyway.

The first incarnations of the team weren’t too successful in their evil-doing or at staying together. While only the original team (minus Libra) spent a decent amount of time as teammates, it was nevertheless important to include everyone on each iteration of the Injustice Gang, as the team just didn’t have any extras. There really were no cuts that could be made that would allow us to keep the team’s character count in the mid-twenties.

The team never hit a good stride until Lex Luthor, Nefarious Philanthropist got things organized in response to the JLA’s “Big Guns.” This team included Circe, Immortal Sorceress; Dr. Light, Light Shaper; Evan McCulloch ◊ Mirror Master, Smoke and Mirrors; and The Joker, Headline Stealer.

In the “Rock of Ages” storyline, the Injustice Gang clashed big-time with the JLA. Lex used the power of the Philosopher’s Stone, which was chipped off of The Source, to get The Joker and even Jemm, Son of Saturn to join the team. Jemm was on my original character list as an unaffiliated character, but in the end, thirteen of them was enough, and someone had to go. Dr. Light’s Hard-Light Storage Tank produced Illusionary Warriors who looked exactly like the JLA, and Luthor sent them to distract the JLA while he carried out his insidious plans.

Batman figured out that the Injustice Gang was behind the holographic attack, so Superman and Martian Manhunter flew to the Injustice Gang Satellite, but it turned out to be a decoy . . . and a trap! It exploded, taking our heroes with it. Or so Lex thought. They somehow managed to escape and soon confronted the IGang, taking them down and scattering the team. And by that, I mean the JLA. Superman chose to Disband the League at the end of the storyline.

The next incarnation of the Injustice Gang was also headed up by Lex Luthor, Evil Incorporated. After consulting his Secret Files, he gathered up The General, Wade Eiling; Prometheus, Darker Knight; and Zazzala ◊ Queen Bee, Royal Genetrix. They invaded The Watchtower, and for a while it seemed All Too Easy, but they were eventually defeated by the JLA. This group seemed like a dangerous crew to put together, as they each had their own dreams of conquest of the JLA and beyond. It turned out that Mageddon, Weapon of Universal Destruction was using Lex and the team to clear a path for him toward Earth, where his approach nearly started World War III.

Now, about the Injustice Gang’s Army characters. They are at the beck and call of many of the Injustice Gang members. Queen Bee was the character who first made me consider this as a team theme. She sought to create an army of Insectoid Troopers from her Royal Egg-Matrix in an effort to cause an Infestation on planet Earth and elsewhere. The Troopers were designed specifically to work with Queen Bee, which is why her leader power works so well with them. In Tattooed Man’s art, it shows him creating an Infernal Minion, Army right off his skin. When a Minion gets stunned, the T-Man can get the +1 ATK / +1 DEF counter back that it took to summon it. Dr. Light, Light Shaper and his Hard-Light Storage Tank create Illusionary Warriors. Shadow-Thief, Carl Sands creates a shadow image of himself while he is safely tucked away in another dimension. Thematically, he could be bringing a minion or warrior into play with him. Circe, Immortal Sorceress can turn people into animals, so the Troopers are thematically closest. And, last but not least, Floronic Man, Alien Hybrid has total power over plant life, so he creates the Creeping Doom, Army.

What’s that? He doesn’t create Army characters out of thin air? He used to be able to do that! But after a lot of development, his power changed. Next week, I’ll have Part 1 in a four-part series on the teams’ themes and origins, and how the characters evolved from my original list to the cards you see today.

Some astute readers have mentioned that I skip over some characters who were team members but aren’t cards in the set. Indeed, I am not trying to give a complete history of the team rosters. Instead, I’m letting players know when the characters that did get cards were added to their respective teams, presenting a snapshot history. In this article, I did not mention that several members of the Injustice Gang were also a part of the Secret Society. Some have cards on both teams. Others do not. The Injustice Gang is the smaller team, so they gobbled up all the characters that were on both. I chose not to dual-affiliate them within the set, as I wanted to leave that honor only to Martian Manhunter, who is the heart and soul of the JLA and has been a member of virtually every incarnation of the team. No one else can claim to be as much of a team player as him.

Send questions or comments to mhyra@metagame.com.