No one who is a fan of superhero comics can deny that the medium has its moments of silliness. In fact, oftentimes those moments can stretch out to a decades-long superheroic career and becoming an icon of the page and screen. Other times, those moments can lead to infamy and laughs.
It's really quite strange the silly gimmicks that work and the ones that don't. Nothing really separates them, since every superhero starts off as a gimmick. A strong origin can help but it's also not a one to one causation; a silly gimmick with a good origin doesn't always mean a good hero. Whatever that magic factor, the following DC heroes have it, surviving silly gimmicks to become successful.
10 The Flash
This one doesn't target any singular Flash in particular; instead, it pretty much targets them all, since just about all of them have an extremely similar origin (except Bart Allen, who was born that way) Jay Garrick, Barry Allen, and Wally West were all involved in accidents that gave them powers to make them run fast.
Accidental gaining running powers is the Flash's gimmick and while it's been fleshed out over the years, that doesn't mean the gimmick at its core isn't fairly ridiculous.
9 Metal Men
The Metal Men are a group of robots created by Doctor Will Magnus. Each one has abilities based on the properties of the metal they are named after. The female robot also has a crush on the doctor. Basically, their gimmick is that they are made of metal.
That's really it. Sure, one is really strong, one is really malleable, and one has a crush on the doctor and is pretty and shiny, but their entire gimmick is metal. It was a nice way for Silver Age era kids to learn about the properties of different metals, so it has that going for it.
8 Green Arrow
Green Arrow is very much a beloved superhero but his whole gimmick was that he was s guy with a Robin Hood fetish who can shoot arrows very well and uses that ability to fight crime mixed with a liberal dose of Batman-isms, like being rich and having an Arrowcave and the Arrowcar.
Over the years, the more blatant Batman rip-offs would be discarded, but the Green Arrow gimmick at its core is just a guy who shoots arrows very well. While that's a great gimmick for, say, a guy in medieval times who travels from town to town righting wrongs, it doesn't stand up very well in a world full of people with guns.
7 Shazam
Shazam's gimmick is both very silly and kind of genius when one thinks about it. Superman was extremely popular with kids, so they made a kid who said a magic word that gave him all of the powers of Superman. It's simple, elegant, and silly as all get out.
And it worked. It worked so well that Shazam started to outsell Superman and DC had to sue Fawcett. There's something that's so weird that a kid who says a magic word and gets superpowers almost destroyed Superman, whose gimmick is much stronger and one of the greatest of all time.
6 Blue Beetle (Ted Kord)
Blue Beetle's gimmick is that he's really smart and there was a Golden Age Blue Beetle, so name recognition. That's pretty much it. Steve Ditko had already co-created one bug-themed superhero and the Golden Age Blue Beetle was a thing.
If one takes away the Golden Age Blue Beetle name recognition thing, Blue Beetle's entire gimmick is that he's smart and he fights crime, which is a Batman ripoff. However, it all worked out and Blue Beetle's unique personality turned him into a fan favorite.
5 Wildcat
Ted Grant was a boxing champion who decided to put on a costume to fight crime and also gained nine lives at some point. He doesn't have claws, doesn't always land on his feet, none of that. In fact, at first, the only thing that made his cat gimmick clear was that he wore a cat costume.
It seems like, eventually, someone thought that maybe they needed to lean into the cat gimmick a bit more and so they gave him nine lives as an afterthought. Luckily, Wildcat is a great character who is very fun to read about so it didn't matter that he didn't at all follow his gimmick for years.
4 Hourman
The whole thing with Hourman is that he created a pill that gave him powers for an hour. It's a weirdly specific power and it's also sort of mystifying in that he was never able to just, you know, make a pill that had his powers last longer than an hour. Other people do it all the time in comics, so Rex Tyler is probably just a lousy chemist.
The Hourman gimmick has been strangely resilient, with his son taking up the mantle and an android version springing up as well. The whole concept would be welded to addiction, which is actually really smart and something that DC has never leaned into as much as it could have.
3 Zatanna
Everyone loves Zatanna and people that don't love Zatanna just haven't read stories with her in them yet but her gimmick is extremely silly. We're not talking about magic, but the way she does magic- the backward talking thing. While other comic sorcerers used made-up nonsense words (Doctor Strange) or veered into Egyptian-esque mysticism (Dr. Fate), Zatanna did the backward talking thing.
It's a very novel gimmick and worked out way better than anyone would have ever guessed. It helps that Zatanna is one of the most pleasant comic characters around.
2 Aquaman
Aquaman's entire gimmick is that he swims very well and talks to fish. Which, to be fair, is one of only two gimmicks that someone named Aquaman can have (the other being the ability to control water, which is a power his wife would have), but is still very silly.
Thankfully, someone wedded the whole concept to the undersea kingdom of Atlantis, and then someone else realized that anyone who could swim at the bottom of the ocean was also amazingly strong and durable. Otherwise.... well, watch Superfriends.
1 Batman
This is going to be blasphemous, but Batman has a silly gimmick. Not a silly origin- the two things are extremely different. At first glance, his gimmick makes sense. He fights criminals at night, bats are nocturnal, that's all you need.
However, he dresses like a bat because criminals are a cowardly and superstitious lot and for some reason would be scared enough of a guy in bat-themed spandex not to shoot him before dying of laughter. Remove everything else and Batman is a guy who dressed like a bat because he thinks criminals would be scared of that enough not to shoot him in the face.