The Australian film industry has a long history of contributing to the superhero genre. Australian actors have taken on roles such as Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), the Joker (Heath Ledger), Jor-El (Russell Crowe) and Thor (Chris Hemsworth). A score of blockbusters (including the new Thor: Love and Thunder) have been filmed on our shores; however, George Miller’s planned Justice League film got curtailed in 2008 when the government ruled that the project wasn’t Australian enough to earn tax rebates. While superhero cinema might often feature Australian faces or locations, Australia itself has rarely been represented on screen.
The most prominent role Australia as a nation has played in a superhero flick would still be in 1980’s Superman II, where Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman) sets ownership of Australia as his price for selling out Earth to the Kryptonian tyrant General Zod. It would take 25 films for Australia to officially make an appearance in the sprawling Marvel Cinematic Universe, as Angelina Jolie’s secluded hideout in Eternals. The one possible predecessor to this would be the delightful (but non-canonical) Team Thor shorts, in which Thor takes a working holiday in Australia and flatshares with a put-upon IT professional called Darryl.
However, if we shift our attention to comics, it becomes a different story. Despite the action in the Marvel and DC Universes both being primarily US-based, there is a surprisingly long history of Australia appearing as the site of superheroic conflicts, terraformed, blown up and rebuilt. In my purely subjective opinion, here are the 10 greatest events to happen to Australia in Earth 616 (Marvel) and Earth-1 (DC).
10. Captain America saves the Brisbane blood bank from Dr Necrosis
Joe Simon and Jack Kirby’s Captain America famously debuted in 1941 by socking Hitler on the jaw. For Simon and Kirby, two working-class Jews in New York, their patriotic hero could serve as agitprop to encourage a reluctant US to take action against Nazi Germany.
For the vast majority of his publishing history, Cap is situated within the European Theatre of the second world war. A rare exception to this is 1944’s Captain America Comics #36, which opens with the tale The Blood of Dr Necrosis. It is the earliest example I can find of Australia being depicted in what would later become the Marvel Universe.
The story opens with Captain America and Bucky fighting side by side with an Australian battalion, when they get reports of mysterious cases of gangrene among wounded Australian soldiers. They fly to Brisbane to investigate and discover that the grotesque Dr Necrosis, who runs the blood bank, has been tainting the plasma supply. Of course our heroes defeat the Nazi spy, but you have to wonder how the Queensland Health Department’s background checks didn’t suspect there might be an issue giving a critical public service job to a guy named Dr Necrosis. (Maybe he was a National Party donor.)
9. Rex The Wonder Dog tames The Beast From The Stars
It is harder to establish the first on-panel depiction of Australia in the DC Universe. My favourite of these earliest examples has to be The Beast from the Stars, from 1958’s The Adventures of Rex The Wonder Dog #39, written by John Broome and illustrated by Gil Kane.
Rex, a White Shepherd, accompanies journalist Paul Henley on an assignment to Australia to investigate a strange bug-eyed monster that was caught in the bush. Rex serves as Henley’s official photographer, with a camera hanging off his collar; he also happens to be the only being who can understand the alien astronaut Xtar’s instructions on how to capture the monster. Rex finds a convenient apple tree and sets up a trail to lead the beast straight into Xtar’s spaceship. Once he returns to the US, Rex is rewarded with pats and being told that he’s the smartest dog in the universe.
8. Lord Zedd’s monster attacks Flinders Street Station
Power Rangers is a superhero franchise that has deep Australian connections, despite being a hybrid of the US and Japanese kids TV markets: 1995’s Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie is basically the genesis of Sydney’s modern status as a global film-making hub, while the 2017 reboot was directed by Curtin University graduate Dean Israelite and stars Aussie Stranger Things star Dacre Montgomery.
Melbourne-based writer Tom Taylor scripted the first ever crossover between the Power Rangers and the DC Universe. Working with artist Stephen Byrne on 2017’s Justice League/Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, the pair united the two superteams and their respective villains Brainiac and Lord Zedd. The evil duo send out giant octopus monsters to major cities across the globe to divide and conquer the superheroes. One such monster finds its way to Victoria, where it starts the rampage at Flinders Street Station. Thankfully for Melburnian commuters, Batman and the Black Ranger arrive in the Mastodon Zord to save the day.
7. Debut of Manifold, Marvel’s newest Australian superhero
Manifold, AKA Eden Fesi, has become the most prominent Australian hero in the modern Marvel Universe. An Aboriginal man from the Northern Territory, he was trained in his teleportation powers by X-Men ally Gateway and was recruited by Nick Fury to be part of his covert team working to regain control of the spy agency Shield from the fascist terror group Hydra. When writer Jonathan Hickman took over the Avengers franchise in 2012, Manifold was reintroduced as a key member of the team. He has also been a close ally of Black Panther, helping T’Challa stop a civil war in Wakanda.
When The Babadook director Jennifer Kent was asked if she wanted to make a Marvel movie, she highlighted Manifold as the character she was most interested in exploring. Kent also nominated the star of her film The Nightingale, Baykali Ganambarr, as her choice to play the hero.
6. Batman inducts the Dark Ranger into Batman Incorporated
In 1955, a team of international heroes inspired by Batman was formed, known as The Batmen of All Nations. This included Ranger, an Australian hero who adopted Ned Kelly iconography. In a creepy 2007 mystery written by Grant Morrison and illustrated by the brilliant JH Williams III, the Batmen of All Nations are reunited to investigate the murder of their original benefactor. The Dark Ranger falls victim to the murderer as well, leaving his sidekick Scout to become Australia’s next Batman equivalent. In z #6, Scout – AKA Johnny Ridley, an Aboriginal tattoo artist from Melbourne – is formally inducted by The Dark Knight into his new team in a quasi-religious ceremony that sees him swear the same oath Batman and Robin made to fight against crime.
5. Perth is terraformed by a biobomb
Jonathan Hickman’s run on The Avengers starts with biological bombs being fired at Earth from Mars. Each transforms the site they hit, terraforming the location by forcing billions of years of evolution to occur instantly. It was a profoundly weird experience to open up the latest adventure of Marvel’s top superhero team to find out that my home town had essentially been destroyed.
About 10 issues later, The Avengers return to a bug-infested Perth. It was a truly uncanny feeling to see familiar Perth streets like St Georges Terrace overtaken with weird vines.
4. The Revolutionaries hijack Australian nuclear submarines in Fremantle
The 2019 Suicide Squad series opens with a new fleet of nuclear submarines being proudly unveiled in Fremantle Harbour. The show is disrupted by The Revolutionaries, a team that could be described as Extinction Rebellion with superpowers. Bizarrely, writer Tom Taylor prophesised the Aukus deal that would be announced two years later by having The Revolutionaries hijack a nuclear submarine sold to Australia by the US.
This series (which is available as a graphic novel called Suicide Squad: Bad Blood), also saw Taylor and artist Bruno Redondo introduce Thylacine, a new Aboriginal anti-heroine for the DC Universe. They consulted with Aboriginal actor Shari Sebbens and Cleverman creator Ryan Griffen in developing the character.
3. The X-Men base themselves in the Australian outback
In the later stages of Chris Claremont’s 17-year run writing the X-Men, he had the mutants leave the leafy grounds of Xavier’s Institute for Gifted Youngsters for the remote outback town of Cooterman’s Creek. The base debuted in Claremont and artist Marc Silvestri’s Uncanny X-Men #229, as the mutant heroes fought off cybernetic mercenaries who were occupying the town. The X-Men would be based in Cooterman’s Creek for around a year, during which they meet the aforementioned Gateway, who became their main means of transport from the NT to the rest of the world.
2. Australia becomes the beachhead for the invasion of Earth
Invasion! was a big crossover event for DC Comics, published in 1989. Here, the alien race known as the Dominators put together an alliance of alien civilisations all fearful that Earth’s superheroes will displace their power in the galaxy. They choose Australia to be their beachhead for the invasion, believing that the island continent has no superheroes to defend it.
It is striking to see the future Spawn creator and Image Comics founder Todd McFarlane draw the destruction of Melbourne, which becomes the Alien Alliance’s base of operations on Earth. All of Australia is quickly subjugated, becoming the example the Dominators use to try to blackmail the rest of the planet into giving up their superheroes.
1. Lucifer watches the sunset in Perth
What could possibly be a bigger event than all of Australia being invaded by aliens? Only the (former) Lord of Hell deciding to make Australia his first stop after throwing away his crown. In my favourite story from Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman (and yes, I can already hear people complaining that Sandman isn’t a superhero comic – except that the Justice League actually appear on panel in the first arc), the series’ moody hero, Dream of the Endless, journeys into hell to free his lost love who has been unjustly imprisoned there for millennia. Expecting to have to face Lucifer in combat, Dream is instead given the keys by Lucifer, who is sick of having to rule over the damned. Throughout Seasons of Mists, Dream has to negotiate with delegations of demons, gods and angels, all trying to secure prime psychic real estate in hell.
In the story’s epilogue drawn by Mike Dringenberg, Lucifer (depicted as David Bowie), has buggered off to a beach in Perth. After a brief chat with an old bloke on the unfairness of life and how it contrasts with the physical beauty of the world, even Lucifer himself gives props to God, telling him “The sunsets are bloody marvellous, you old bastard.”
Kevin Chiat is a writer and academic from Perth. His PhD thesis explored superhero narratives and masculinity. He teaches at the University of Western Australia and curated the comics program at the 2019 Perth Writer’s festival
