As the animated series Young Justice returned with a new Outsiders-based storyline, the series has brought back most of that DC team’s regular members. Halo and Geo-Force gained their powers and began training under Nightwing. Black Lightning is also on hand as a mentor figure. Batman went on a mission with Katana and Metamorpho. That is more or less all of the classic members of the team. There is one, though, that so far has been missing.
That would be Looker.
To be fair, Looker was not one of the original members of the team. She came along later.
Looker began as mousy bank teller Emily Briggs. One day, she was kidnapped by an underground society called Abyssia, and that being the sort of thing that causes superheroes to come along, the Outsiders went to rescue her and some other things happened to make things more colorful. In this case, Halley’s Comet also came along and Emily gained superpowers. Most notably, that meant she gained a number of telepathic and other assorted mental powers, and with it, a big dose of confidence, prompting her to make herself look more like a supermodel. She even decided her name was Lia. This was a bit of a shock to a lot of people, including her husband.
Yes, Looker was married.
As it is, Looker’s primary role in the series seemed to be mostly to butt heads with other, less outgoing (so to speak) members of the Outsiders team. She was a pretty girl who wasn’t used to being pretty.
And then during a revival of the team in the 90s, Looker became a vampire and gained all those sorts of powers. And then she got divorced.
As it is, Looker seems to be the sort of character DC pulls out when there’s a need for a supermodel type of character. She’s often a member of one Outsiders team or another alongside Geo-Force and Halo, and is perhaps the least interesting of that trio. She isn’t the prince of a fictional country with all the responsibilities implied therein. She isn’t an alien intelligence that can hop bodies with a wide arrange of powers. She’s a telepathic vampire with a habit of wearing skimpy costumes. That sounds more like a cliche than anything else.
Of course, the CW series Black Lightning gave the title character an adversary for a few episodes known as Looker.
She used some kind of silver stuff to control people. And she was a lot less friendly. But that does put her a bit ahead of her Outsiders teammates when it comes to live action appearances.
Maybe that’s for the best. The animated series currently is a bit more adult-oriented, but it still might shy away from a vampire supermodel type.
And that does it for the Outsiders, unless I want to write up someone like Technocrat (basically Iron Man) or Faust and…yeah, Faust probably deserves a look too…
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