Before he was publisher and chief creative officer of the entire DC Universe, Batman: Hush and Justice League artist Jim Lee was at the forefront of an entirely different universe—one which, someday, would join forces with DC. In 1992, Lee founded the WildStorm company, a comics house that captured the comics zeitgeist of the early nineties while dictating the future direction of an industry. It was also a place where, as an Asian American comics creator, Lee could begin reaching a hand down for those on the rise and set the stage for more involvement from Asian voices. Nearly every major team book in the WildStorm family featured at least one prominent Asian character on the team, making a statement that no picture of comics is complete without representation for this integral part of the comics community.

Today, the WildStorm family has been fully integrated into DC from the Birds of Prey through the Outsiders. But before Lee would bring his brand over to DC’s office, these were some of the most prominent Asian characters you could find in the home of the WildCATS and StormWatch—and where they are today.
 

Grail

Real Name: Salvador Joel Alonday II
Team: Wetworks/Team 7
First Appearance: WildC.A.T.s. #2 (1992)

The first Asian WildStorm hero debuted almost immediately after the first WildStorm comics went to press. In the second issue of their original flagship title, WildC.A.T.S., we’re introduced to Grail—one of the first members of the government-funded superhuman Team 7. Grail is a martial arts-trained Filipino soldier bonded to a golden symbiote that allows him to channel his life force as directed energy by entering a “Chi State.” Grail has yet to make his official debut in the DC Universe since the WildStorm integration of 2011, but we know he’s out there somewhere.
 

Fuji

Real Name: Toshiro Misawa
Team: StormWatch
First Appearance: StormWatch #1 (1993)

One of the original members of StormWatch, Toshiro Misawa was a young competitive sumo wrestler before his body mutated into a form of pure energy and he was saved from dissipation by a containment suit developed by StormWatch scientists. Now standing over eight feet tall, Fuji has proven to be one of StormWatch’s most adaptable members as his containment suit is continuously upgraded and his energy form has allowed him time and again to escape all but certain death. Despite his circumstances, Fuji typically remains a source of cheerful optimism for StormWatch, even appearing as a team member as recently as Black Label’s Waller vs. WildStorm.
 

Grunge

Real Name: Percival Edmund Chang
Team: Gen13
First Appearance: Deathmate: Black #1 (1993)

The young “gen-active” heroes of Gen13 were each designed to capture the youth culture of the nineties, and Percival Edmund Chang may have been the nineties-est. Born in Hong Kong and raised in Seattle, the super-absorbent “Grunge” was emblematic of the subculture from which he took his name. His love of extreme sports, extreme comics and extreme noise made him an embodiment of the young audience that creators Jim Lee and Brandon Choi, both Korean-Americans, were capturing with their young WildStorm lineup. While Grunge’s affinity for martial arts (and Asian entertainers like Bruce Lee and John Woo) kept him connected to his past, he was thoroughly a creature of his time, and never just one place, always adapting to the rolling boil of America’s cultural melting pot. Gen13 hasn’t been seen too much recently, but Grunge remains a team member to this day.
 

Crimson/Jet/Backlash

Real Name: Jodi Morinaka-Slayton
Team: Wildcore
First Appearance: Backlash #9 (1995)

Much of the larger sweeping narrative of the WildStorm Universe comes down to the secret, millennia-spanning war between two powerful alien species which have used Earth as their battleground for all of human history—the Kherubim and the Daemonites. Most people you ask who know the difference will tell you that the Kherubim are the good guys, and one of WildStorm’s more prominent solo heroes, the psionic whip-wielding Backlash, was one of them.

Traveling the earth for 3,000 years before emerging as a hero, however, left Backlash with a long-storied past—including an unknown daughter that he fathered in Japan sixteen years before they would finally meet. As an inheritor of Backlash’s abilities, Jodi Morinaka-Slayton would follow her father into the Earth-protecting business, at first taking the name Crimson as a member of Backlash’s Wildcore team, Jet as one of WildStorm’s solo heroes, and even, eventually, Backlash, when her father stepped down from the role. Jodi made a brief cameo in 2022’s WildStorm 30th Anniversary Special, but her future remains her own.
 

Swift

Real Name: Shen Li-Min
Team: The Authority
First Appearance: StormWatch #28 (1995)

Originally with StormWatch, the former pacifist turned avian huntress Swift was one of the founding members of the Authority, a team of powerful individuals who sought not merely to protect the Earth with their powers, but improve it—when necessary, with force. As a Buddhist, Swift often provided the team with a moral center when called for, keeping them from going too far afield…and succumbing to extreme action herself when reality became too dire to be met with compassion. Succeeding her friend and ally on the team, Swift would be the last in original WildStorm continuity to claim the title of the Doctor, a generational mantle bestowing those chosen with great magical power to heal the world. Shen would return in her role as the Doctor in 2017’s The Wild Storm and remains an inseparable member of the Authority in all its forms.
 

Jenny Quantum

Real Name: Jennifer Quarx
Team: The Authority
First Appearance: The Authority #12 (2000)

WildStorm’s “century babies,” powerful superhumans all born at the exact turn of every century, are a supernatural phenomenon formed by, predicting and dictating the direction of civilization on Earth for the next hundred years. Most prominent of the century babies is the “Jenny” line—a figure with powers derived from the spirit and advancements of her age, always living to a hundred and reincarnated at the century’s turn. The previous Jenny, Jenny Sparx, was an electricity-themed hero who worked with the Authority to change the world through the 1990s. As we entered the 21st century, she would be succeeded in the new incarnation of Jenny Quantum, born in Singapore, and one of the few characters in modern comics who always ages in real time.

Jenny Quantum boasts a host of barely understood quantum mechanics-based powers, representing new leaps in science and technology we have yet to fully comprehend, but await us in the near future. Recently, in Outsiders, Jenny was replaced through mysterious circumstances by the 24-year-old “Jenny Crisis” due to the instability of our reality. But somewhere in the many folds of our multiverse, Jenny Quantum perhaps now represents a better future than our own.
 

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 Community 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.