A
superteam owned and published by
DC Comics. They made their first appearance in
Action Comics #775 in 2001, in a story, written by
Joe Kelly and illustrated by
Doug Mahnke and
Lee Bermejo, entitled "
What's So Funny about Truth, Justice and the American Way?" The members of the team in their initial appearance included
Manchester Black, a Brit with major
telekinetic powers,
Coldcast, a musclebound, chained black man with unspecified powers of major-league
whup-ass,
Menagerie, a woman who had a
symbiotic relationship with a mini-zoo of tiny
alien monsters, and
the Hat, a Japanese man who could pull literally anything he wanted out of his
magic fedora.
In that first appearance, the Elite were meant to serve as stand-ins for the more
violent characters that populated
Image Comics, particularly the heroes of comics like "
The Authority". Manchester Black, with his British-flag T-shirt and leather jacket, was clearly meant to represent
Jenny Sparks, who wore similar outfits as leader of the Authority. Coldcast looked like most of Image founder
Rob Liefeld's characters. Menagerie seemed to be a cross between the Authority's
Engineer and the scantily-clad Image cheesecake-hero
Witchblade. And the Hat's powers were very similar to the
omnipotent magic of
the Doctor, another member of the Authority. The Elite had a giant semi-sentient
spaceship as a headquarters, just like the Authority, they had a
might-makes-right attitude, just like the Authority, they tended to
kill every bad guy they went up against, just like the Authority, and they didn't give a damn if
civilians got killed in the
crossfire, just like the Authority. It seemed clear that Joe Kelly had heard one too many
fanboys whining that
Superman was boring because he wouldn't kill and the Authority was cool because they killed tons of people and killed them all in
creative and
bloody ways. So he created the Elite and wrote a story about them trying to kill Superman because he was a boring,
goody-goody Boy Scout who was getting in their way with all that boring preaching about
morals and
ethics and not
killing random people for fun. They start out trouncing him and apparently killing him, but Supes ends up disrupting their powers, knocking them out, and winning the world's favor back. It was a great story, and if you can find it, you should enjoy reading it.
Manchester Black later returned, ferreted out Superman's
secret identity using secret telepathic abilities, revealed
Clark Kent's name to then-President
Lex Luthor, and went about making Superman's life hell. He later changed his mind about Superman, erased the memory of Supes' secret identity from Luthor's mind, put Menagerie in a coma, and killed himself.
The Elite later made a comeback, with Manchester's sister,
Vera Black, in charge. This time, the Elite starred in a 12-issue miniseries called "
Justice League Elite" which was written and drawn by the Elite's original creators, Joe Kelly and Doug Mahnke. The series co-starred Menagerie's sister, who had taken possession of her sibling's alien parasites, Coldcast, a new character named
Kasumi, and a group of recent Justice League members, including
the Flash,
Green Arrow,
Manitou Raven, Manitou's wife,
Dawn,
Major Disaster, and
Naif al-Sheikh, a devoutly Muslim expert in espionage.