No matter how much Guy Gardner talks up the Justice Gang, there’s really only one team that matters in the DC Universe: the Justice League of America. Not only has the team traditionally included in its membership the seven most important heroes in the DC Universe, but they also have auxiliary teams that cover every part of the world, such as the magic-based Justice League Dark or the massive Justice League Unlimited.cnx.cmd.push(function() {cnx({playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530",}).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796");});But as Guy Gardner also makes abundantly clear, the Justice League isn’t for everyone. Fortunately, the DCU actually has tons of other teams to bring in the stragglers. Some of them are B-teams that have a fan following, such as the Teen Titans, the Legion of Super-Heroes, and the Doom Patrol. But others are true deep cuts: underrated teams that deserve more attention, collections of oddities that would never break into the big-time, and just a bunch of wonderful weirdos who would never fit in with any other group.All-Star SquadronMost comic fans know that the Justice Society of America was the first superhero team. What they may not know is that the majority of Justice Society stories from the Golden Age were in fact solo stories about Flash, Sandman, Starman, or other members, bound together only by a frame narrative. Simply put, the Golden Age Justice Society wasn’t so much a team as it was a social club.Roy Thomas sought to change that in his 1980s revival, which not only turned the Justice Society into more of an active team, fighting against threats foreign and domestic during World War II, but he also combined them with other Golden Age heroes, from individuals such as Superman, Batman, and Amazing-Man (a new addition to add some much-needed diversity) to groups such as the Freedom Fighters and the Seven Soldiers of Victory. The combined forces became the All-Star Squadron, a massive collection of heroes who defended liberty against every type of threat.Blood SyndicateEven though Black superhero comic book fans have existed as long as superhero comics have existed, comics rarely reflected its readership, to the point that even the futuristic, utopian future of the aforementioned Legion of Super-Heroes featured only Caucasian (or Caucasian-coded) characters. One of the most exciting attempts to rectify this problem came with the launch of Milestone Comics in 1993. An imprint of DC Comics created by greats such as Dwayne McDuffie, Denys Cowan, and Christopher Priest, Milestone introduced non-white characters such as the powerful Icon, the teen breakout Static, and the unique super-team, the Blood Syndicate.Created by McDuffie, Cowan, and Ivan Velez Jr. for 1993’s Blood Syndicate #1, the team brought together survivors of various street gangs living in Dakota City. After the Big Bang, the catastrophic event that gave most of the Milestone characters their powers, the gangs put aside their differences to fight together as the Blood Syndicate. Well, they tried to put aside their differences. To their credit, the writers of Blood Syndicate never ignored the group’s internal tensions, and built compelling stories from the differences. The team more or less dissipated at the end of their book’s run in 1996, but with the Milestone characters now integrated into the DC Universe, the team was reimagined in the 2022 miniseries Blood Syndicate: Season One, by Geoffrey Thorne and ChrisCross.The Challengers of the UnknownCreated by Jack Kirby for 1957’s Showcase #6, the Challengers of the Unknown have been mainstays in the DC Universe since the Silver Age. They’ve had several solo series over the years, most recently in 2025. Yet, as Teen Titans Go! to the Movies memorably told us, the Challengers of the Unknown remain unknown—it’s in the name!Originally, the Challengers of the Unknown were a quartet of adventurers who escaped certain death and were thus living on borrowed time. To make the most of that time, the Challengers devoted themselves to exploring the secrets of the universe, risking their soon-to-be-ending lives for the good of humanity. Kirby famously revamped the idea a few years later with Stan Lee, swapping out the four manly men of the challenger for the dysfunctional family that is the Fantastic Four. But the Challengers remain an exciting concept, even if most revival series tend to make them a generic superhero team instead of a group of explorers with a death wish.Forever PeopleAnyone with a slight interest in superheroes at least tangentially knows of the New Gods, thanks to Darkseid’s current standing as the big bad of the DC Universe. The New Gods are one of Jack Kirby’s most incredible creations, a channel for his boundless creativity and belief in superhero comics as a medium for myth-making. Less well-known, however, are the ancillary characters around the New Gods, such as the Forever People.In Kirby’s original conception, Darkseid was less an evil cosmic conqueror and more the embodiment of nihilism and conformity. Thus, the true counter to Darkseid wasn’t any of the New Gods—not even his son Orion, who was prophesied to finally kill him. Rather, it was the Forever People, Kirby’s interpretation of hippie culture. A group of motorcycle-riding long-hairs with names like Big Bear and Beautiful Dreamer, the Forever People existed only to embrace freedom and joy. That makes them the ideal counters to Darkseid, but it also makes them difficult to write, at least for those who don’t share Kirby’s embrace of high-concept weirdness.The Green TeamLike the Blood Syndicate, the Green Team hails from an earlier era of comics and was recently reimagined. However, it’s a lot easier to understand why modern readers have trouble connecting with the characters. Created by Joe Simon and Jerry Grandenetti, the Green Team was a collection of “Boy Millionaires,” adolescent boys with vast resources. The first incarnation included of shipping magnate Commodore Murphy, oil tycoon J.P. Houston, film director Cecil Sunbeam, and Abdul Smith… a Black shoeshine boy who got rich off of a banking error.Unsurprisingly, the Green Team never caught on with the public, not even around their first appearance in the 1970s. But the concept is so strange that it keeps coming back. A New 52 miniseries from 2013 turned them into Boy Trillionaires who used their riches to go on altruistic adventures. Even though DC paired them with The Movement, a grassroots group who looked at the rich with skepticism, the Green Team were still heroes. However, that changed in the Tom King series Danger Street, which portrays the boys as cruel billionaires, whose riches rob them of any empathy.Infinity, Inc.Originally, the All-Star Squadron existed on Earth-Two, a world built around Golden Age heroes, not the Silver and Bronze Age heroes who make up most of the mainline DC Universe. Those characters lived during World War II, which meant that they were quite elderly by the time Thomas started writing their adventures in the 1980s. Rather than keep his characters in the past, Thomas came up with a modern group, consisting of the Squadron’s heirs. And so, Infinity, Inc. was born.The main members of Infinity, Inc. are the children of the All-Star Squadron: Green Lantern’s kids Jade and Obsidian, Hawkman and Hawkwoman’s son Silver Scarab, Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor’s daughter Fury, and the Atom’s godson Nuklon. Rounding out the team is Brainwave, the son of a supervillain by the same name, Batman and Catwoman’s daughter Huntress, and Kara Zor-El, who took the name Power Girl instead of Supergirl in this reality. As the second generation of crime fighters, Infinity, Inc. leaned into the legacy concept, something that grew more complicated after the timelines merged in the Crisis on Infinite Earths. But with alternate realities back in mainline DC, the time is right for Infinity, Inc. to return again.The Legion of Substitute HeroesFew comic book concepts inspire as much devotion and confusion as the Legion of Super-Heroes. For everyone who loves the massive group of super-teens living 1000 years in the future, there’s a comic book reader confounded by their many reboots and weird powers. Who knows what that second set of readers would think of the Legion of Substitute Heroes, a group that’s much smaller than the main Legion, but 10 times weirder.The Legion of Substitute Heroes assembles teen heroes who failed to pass their audition for the main team. Why did they fail? Well, in the case of Infectious Lass, it’s because she kept getting everyone sick with her disease power. In the case of Stone Boy, it’s because he could only turn into a statue. Antenna Lad only has big ears, while Double-Header just has two bickering heads. And yet, these rejects remain so devoted to helping people that they’ve gone ahead and formed their own team, making the Legion subs perhaps the most heroic group on this list.New GuardiansIn most cases, the teams on this list are underrated and undeservedly so. But no one questions the sorry reputation of the New Guardians, who made their debut in 1988. The New Guardians spin out of the little-loved 1988 crossover event Millennium, an extension of Steve Englehart and Joe Staton’s excellent run on Green Lantern. Millennium posited that humanity was poised to enter a new stage of evolution, an event the Guardians of the Universe dispatched a group of Green Lanterns to protect from the murderous androids the Manhunters.Despite the Manhunters’ best efforts, the new stage of evolution arrives, specifically in the form of eight people from across the planet. Each of these eight people, which include Hal Jordan’s best friend Thomas Kalmaku and the plant-based baddie Floronic Man, gains incredible abilities to lead humanity forward as the New Guardians. That’s a fine concept, and it’s hard to get mad at Englehart’s desire to fill the team with people of different races, nationalities, and sexualities. However, in practice, the New Guardians were a collection of broad stereotypes and lame powers, making them an embarrassment and a missed opportunity.The Omega MenThe Omega Men have been a constant in the DC Universe their first appearance in 1981’s Green Lantern #141, by Marv Wolfman and Joe Staton. However, they’re constantly overshadowed by things going on around them, whether it be the bounty hunter Lobo, who debuted in 1983’s Omega Men #3, the Tom King Omega Men miniseries that put Green Lantern Kyle Rayner front and center, and now the TV series Lanterns, in which Laura Linney plays Guardian and sometime Omega Men member Lianna.Lobo, Lanterns, and Kyle Rayner are all great, but they do tend to overshadow the fun of the Omega Men themselves. Most often led by the surly Tigorr, the Omega Men are a group of freedom fighters engaged in guerrilla warfare against the tyrannical Citadelians, who rule the twenty-five planets in the Vega System. With a large and constantly-changing line-up, the Omega Men lend themselves to high-stakes stories, as the team often faces overwhelming odds. And if there’s one thing that would resonate with readers today, it’s the tales of a bunch of weirdos forced to work together to fight oppression.The OutsidersIn a different world, the Outsiders wouldn’t qualify for this list, not when the Doom Patrol and the Legion of Superheroes are too popular to be called “obscure.” Since their introduction in 1983’s The Brave and the Bold #200, by Mike W. Barr and Jim Aparo, the Outsiders have been on more or less the same level as those aforementioned teams—not the Justice League, but popular enough to regularly carry their own book. Yet, while the others have gone on to get regular adaptations, the Outsiders are relegated to guest stars on Batman: The Brave and the Bold and Young Justice.Which is a shame, because the Outsiders are a really cool team. Originally formed when Batman got tired of putting up with the rest of the Justice League, the main Outsiders line-up consists of under-appreciated greats Black Lightning, Metamorpho, and Katana, and has fun oddballs like Halo, Geo-Force, and Looker. Even the edgy 2000s reboot led by Nightwing and Arsenal had fun characters like Thunder. The Outsiders work well as a collection of people who don’t feel like they fit in the Justice League, people with their own mission.The post Justice League, Beyond: 10 Obscure DC Comics Teams appeared first on Den of Geek.