Who's This? DC's anthology-housed heroes.
The facts: In 1983, Marv Wolfman and Gil Kane took a bunch of DC heroes from 40s, 50s and 60s that weren't in common use anymore and got them together as the Forgotten Heroes in Action Comics #552 (events set up in #545). Animal Man, Cave Carson, Congo Bill/Congorilla, Dolphin, Dane Dorrance of the Sea Devils, Rick Flagg (of the OG Suicide Squad), Rip Hunter Time Master and the Immortal Man. After that first story, they reappeared together in a DC Comics Presents two-parter, pitted against villains even more obscure than they are - the Forgotten Villains (who each got a Who's This? column since they don't have their own Who's Who entries). Post-Crisis, they've been referenced (by Animal Man, for example) so they HAVE existed. A new version of the team was assembled in the pages of Resurrection Man in 1999 (only Buddy Baker and Cave Carson were part of both).
How you could have heard of them: How could you if they've been forgotten?!
Example story: Action Comics #553 (March 1984) "The World at Time's End!" by Marv Wolfman and Gil Kane
Metropolis is overrun with unnatural vegetation. Vandal Savage's Abraxas Inc. is responsible - the company's scientists have tricked Superman into spreading prehistoric spores wherever he goes, their growth stimulated by "time pyramids" of unknown origin. Savage is merely trying to reset thing to when he was young - he's homesick for 50,000 years ago (the accuracy of the botanical history here is doubtful). Where there's Vandal Savage, there's the Immortal Man trying to stop him. But where there's Vandal Savage, there's the Immortal Man trying to stop him. At least according to this issue, which revises their very similar origins to bring them together as eternal foes. The meteor that gave Vandal his immortality is the very same from which the Immortal Man's immortality jewel came. One man lived no matter what, the other was reborn each time he was killed, but the result is the same.
Now he needs the Forgotten Heroes (because he couldn't get in touch with the JLA, ouch!) to destroy the time pyramids. The Bahamas: Sea Devil/Dolphin team-up! And didn't Wolfman read her single Showcase issue? She's supposed to be mute!
The U.S. Navy is protecting those pyramids as part of Vandal's manipulations and the FH don't have a whole lot of push. Dolphin does throw some Navy Seals out of the water though, so they have some... throw?
Africa: Congorilla enters one of the pyramids and finds it full of high-tech stuff. Cambodia: Rick Flagg comes face to face with a dinosaur. Well, didn't his dad fight them in the War That Time Forgot? Or wait, are they saying HE'S the original, 40 years on?
Don't worry, this priceless animal was only gassed... from the inside! Brazil: (Jingle) Animal Man invokes the strength and speed of a jaguar to take care of the local army after accessing the pyramid computer.
(We get the sense that they're all doing these things, but we catch them at different points in the infiltration.) Meanwhile, Superman was directed to fly through the sun's corona to burn off the offending spores and then summoned to Immortal Man's HQ. Rip Hunter and his crew, turned old by pyramid power, bring the Man of Steel to the Big Bang to destroy the time pyramid that's in there, sending feedback forward in time. We do not, however, see the Giant Hand of God, despite the sequence being drawn by Gil Kane.
It works. The Hunter-Baxter squad is young again, the dinosaur-filled primeval jungles disappear from Metropolis, and the pyramids are destroyed (or un-existed). Sure, Superman's missing, but we got the Forgotten Heroes to protect us, right?!
Hey, wait a minute! Cave Carson was summoned by the Immortal Man so he could stand in crowd scenes? There wasn't a pyramid under the Earth's crust for him to tackle? Or if there was, it's not even mentioned? What the hell, man?
Who's Next? Quality heroes.
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