Who's This? An evil locksmith.
The facts: Created as a JLA villain for Justice League of America #41 (December 1965) by Gardner Fox and Mike Sekowski, the Key may or may not have been inspired by a similar keyhole-headed Justice Society villain from All-Star Comics #57 (1951). This Key "unlocked" his full mental potential with drugs and went up against the League several times of the course of two decades, but does not reappear after Crisis until 1997, when Grant Morrison updates him in JLA #7-8 as a much creepier figure who has the keys to the Leaguers' minds and puts them in Elseworld-like dreams. In the 2000s, he'll have occasion to mess with various Batman's brain in Batman: Gotham Knights, make the JLA disband in "World Without a Justice League", and run from the Suicide Squad in Justice League of America vol.2. After DC Rebirth, the Key goes up against the Titans and gets a story in World's Finest.
How you could have heard of him: June 2026 just had him messing with Galaxy and Dreamer in Justice League: Dream Girls - A DC Pride Event mini-series. He also appears in the Justice League Unlimited animated series as part of Grodd's Secret Society, and in a very modified form, in Beware the Batman.
Example story: Justice League of America #150 (January 1978) "The Key--or Not the Key" by Steve Englehart, Dick Dillin and Frank McLaughlin
If you don't mind, I'm going to skip over all the stuff about Star-Tsar/Mark Shaw in this issue and concentrate on the Key. He's why we're here. But he IS an ally of the Star-Tsar, so he attacks the League in the middle of their St-Ts adventure. And of course, he must stick to his theme:
Nice play on keys looking like machine guns, though no one seems to be aiming these with any accuracy. Once these are dealt with, the Key's next trap is much more cosmic level...
On one side of the door, our universe. On the other, another. The space inside the door (accessible through the keyhole), Limbo! Batman's a damn liar, because if there's one DCU character who was NEVER relegated to Limbo, it's got to be him. Elongated Man, the Hawks, Red Tornado and perhaps even Black Canary have more to worry about, however. Limbo or not, they can still have a chat between themselves and with the Key. At the very least, the villain gets to explain how he survived his last encounter with the League. See, he was dying from having taken too many mind-expanding drugs. When he thought his Key-Bomb would destroy the League, he raced to his underground coffin, like a vampire, but Green Lantern John Stewart (oh, Hal, watch out for Limbo, and I don't mean Kari Limbo, though, of course, her too) redirected the explosion underground. It burned off the offending chemicals and cured the Key! Science!
Meanwhile, the rest of the League is equally captured and keyholed by the Star-Tsar, whose identity is revealed as none other than former JLA mascot Snapper Carr. But Snapper, in a St-Ts costume, is also among the prisoners. What gives? Well, Snapper HAD done a heel turn at this point, and the Key capitalized on it. A bottle of champagne and the promise of super-powers is all it took.
So they're BOTH the tongue-twisting Star-Tsar (no, honestly, the absolute worst pun name in comics history), and now Snapper claims he's back on the side of the heroes, that he tried to guide them to the true villain, and he's sorry it all went wrong. I'm starting to see why people who discovered Snapper in this period really (but REALLY) hate him. But if we want to get back to the Key, the League is going to have to escape. Thankfully, Ralph has an insane plane that involves him turning into a cosmic treadmill so the Flash can run between dimensions and out of Limbo.
It works and Barry can then turn the power off on the other traps. When they reach the Star-Tsar/Key, we discover the villain's rebirth wasn't it all it was chalked up to be.
Apparently, the explosion also turned his body into jerky (I'm not kidding, the words "dried meat" are said over and over) and he used his big brain to create synthezoid bodies (the Vision should sue!) for himself. He passes out before he can reveal who the REAL Star-Tsar (and if I never have to type that name again, it won't be too soon) and I suppose Mini-Key's story will have to be continued at a later date.
This is one of those villains who has a very specific iconography and it works fine in a classic comic book context, but he'll get a massive glow-up once he starts sticking keys in people's ears to change their minds and memories. Creepy, creepy stuff. At this point, not so memorable.
Who's Next? DC's Klingons.
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