Who's This? The Guardians of the Universe's cousins.
The facts: The Controllers first appeared in Adventure Comics #357 (June 1967), creations of Jim Shooter, Mort Weisinger, and Curt Swan. There, they are aliens from another space-time continuum destroyed by war and want to prevent that from happening to Earth-1 in the 30th Century through forms of control. Among their weapons is a Sun-Eater, precipitating events that cause the death of Ferro Lad, as well as the Miracle Mac hine. Crisis on Infinite Earths would change their basic concept to Maltusians who split off from the Guardians of the Universe over differences of policy, but their appearances in older Legion comics were unchanged, as they ran off to another dimension. In the 90s, Green Lantern comics were big, so DC launched a rival police force known as the Darkstars, created by 20th-Century Controllers. The Legion reboots did nothing with the Controllers, leaving them to the contemporary era.
How you could have heard of them: The Controllers had a GL/Darkstars storyline in the Rebirth era, but they have also appeared in the Legion of Super-Heroes animated series, and briefly, in The Brave and the Bold cartoon.
Example story: Legion of Super-Heroes #7-8 (February-March 1985) by Paul Levitz, Steve Lightle, Mike DeCarlo and Larry Mahlstedt
After fighting the Legion of Super-Villains, a number of Legionnaires find themselves stuck in other-dimensional Limbo and find a mysterious factory planet somewhere in there. But what is the massive factory building? Phantom Girl finds out for herself, and if readers hadn't twigged to the clues yet, it's a big give-away:
But she doesn't get to report this to the others who have gone off by themselves exploring. What THEY find is a be-cloaked alien in a room filled with dimensional doorways. And walking out of one of those doorways, ah finally, a CONTROLLER!
The Controller immediately zaps the other alien with his mental powers and tells him to follow. They're out the strange doorway (a "star-gate") before either of them notice the Legionnaires. When they investigate, the heroes find that each gate leads to a different planet, Earth among them. Home free? Once Tinya returns with her findings, their priorities change. They'll have to destroy the factory planet even if it means they lose their only change of going home. In the second issue, the Legionnaires fight a whole mechanized world to prevent whatever the Controllers' plans are. When its caretaker returns, he can't help but notice the intruders and sends even more robot forces against them, managing to defeat the three power houses, Ultra Boy, Chameleon Boy and Element Lad. And from them, the alien telepathically learns Interlac and ascertains that though they once defeated a Controller and his Sun-Eater, that was a renegade so these "mortals" were rewarded rather than punished. It's a story that shakes the caretaker to his core.
And then the "mortals" start to wake up. A battle ensues, but the Controllers' armorer is no slouch (he can punch Ultra Boy through a wall). But even with translation enabled, he can't tell them what his masters' plans are because he sees them as gods, unknowable and unimpeachable. The Legionnaires would be goners, except that the Controller returns to settle things.
Psych! Don't trust anything when there's a Durlan in the room. Element Lad turns the building into some volatile material that explodes the whole planet just as they step into the star gate and that is that. We can only now assume the Controllers were up to no good, and perhaps we'll sleep easier thinking that.
So... a Controller shows up for a page out of two issues? That's exactly the kind of mysterious alien race these guys are. They work through agents and super-future weapons. Their goals are related to a big picture our heroes don't quite see. At least in the Legion era. But since that's where they were birthed, I insisted on looking at one of those stories. (And maybe I just don't want to read any Darkstars stories...)
Who's Next? A real snake.
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