One of the best things about comics is their vast collection of weird and obscure heroes. In DC's near-century of history it's developed a tremendous catalog of characters. However, not many of them are as recognizable as Superman, or has powers as intuitively helpful as the Man of Steel's.
Of course, some of DC's characters are both obscure and have odd powers, some even vanishing into the background because of their off-kilter abilities. Others have weird powers that are too similar to higher-profile characters and are lost in the shuffle. In fairness, some heroes with weird powers really should be more popular, since they have interesting personalities, provide positive representation or use their powers creatively and effectively. Comic books have always been a place where oddballs have thrived.
10 Rainbow Girl Was Sidelined Early In Her Career
Hailing from the planet Xolnar a thousand years in the future, Dori Anderson, AKA Rainbow Girl, hoped to join the Legion of Super-Heroes. When they rejected her, Rainbow Girl opted to join the Legion of Substitute Heroes, the home for many of DC's oddest characters.
As her name indicates, Rainbow Girl makes rainbows but she also emits pheromones that effectively make her everyone's favorite person. Her more recent appearances have linked her to the emotional spectrum, the powers the various Lantern Corps use.
9 The Metal Women Are The Metal Men's Competent Counterparts
The Metal Women appeared once in the Metal Men series. Designed by Doc Magnus to be romantic interests for each of the Metal Men (and Tina), Gold Girl, Lead Girl, Mercury Girl, Iron Girl and Platinum Man had the same bizarre abilities that their male counterparts did, including Lead Girl's massive weight and Mercury Girl's liquid body.
Unfortunately, all of Dr. Magnus' metallic robots have superpowered internalized sexism, so the Women sacrificed themselves even though they had proven themselves more than capable of using their weird powers. The Metal Men both weird and obscure but this shortlived team is even less well known.
8 Danny The Street Is Only Just Starting To Get Their Due
Danny The Street's inclusion in the TV series Doom Patrol (2019-) has raised the character's profile a bit but they're still wonderfully obscure and notably less recognizable than their allies, Robotman and Elasti-Girl. Since they regularly rearrange their molecules and appearance, they don't have a single, signature "look," though they enjoy playing with historically gendered imagery.
Being a teleporting sentient street is as weird as any superpower but Danny knows how to use their abilities to their advantage. Their flexibility actually makes them all the more effective not just at fighting evildoers but at providing a haven for the world's outcasts and oddities.
7 Night Girl Would Be A Great Partner For Nightshade
Lydda Jath has super strength but only in the dark. Since her powers are unreliable, she is a member of the Legion of Substitute Heroes like Rainbow Girl and Polar Boy.
Night Girl might be more effective and more recognizable if she teamed up with a darkness-manipulating hero like Nightshade, or if she fought primarily against darkness-manipulating villains like the Shade. However, DC's never exploited her power this way, dooming her to obscurity along with the other Substitute Heroes.
6 Coagula Is Good, If Obscure, Representation
Created by Rachel Pollack, Coagula was DC's first transgender hero, paving the way for the likes of Alysia Yeoh and Dreamer. Still, she was killed just twenty-six issues into her tenure with the Doom Patrol, so she is not as recognizable as some of her fellow Doomers.
Coagula has the weird power to coagulate liquids and liquefy solids. She ups the weirdness of her superhero persona by wearing of a frog head when in combat, though her powers alone are already quite unusual. Still, her ability to help her teammates by clotting wounds, for example, made her an enormous asset and she had a special bond with Robotman.
5 Polar Boy's Powers Are A Twist On A Popular Theme
Instead of pushing cold into his environment like many other ice-themed characters, Tharrian Brek Bannin, AKA Polar Boy, sucks the heat out of his surroundings. The laws of thermodynamics dictate that his powers are functionally the same as those who "add cold." but since Polar Boy himself takes on displaced heat, rather than dispersing it, his more realistic power set is quirkier than, say, Killer Frost's.
After he was rejected from the Legion of Super-Heroes, Polar Boy founded the Legion of Substitute Heroes. He was eventually accepted into the Legion of Super-Heroes and became a little more visible in the process, but he still does not have the notoriety of many other Legionnaires.
4 Insect Queen Can Only Be Part-Insect
Though Earth-One's Lana Lang is gifted with a magical ring and Lonna Leing is a future Xanthuan hero with innate powers, both benevolent iterations of Insect Queen can only turn the bottom halves of their bodies into a giant insect's or arachnid's thorax. Neither character is particularly high profile, probably owing to their odd abilities.
Lana's incarnation of Insect Queen is even weirder than Lonna's, though. She can only use the powers of a given arthropod once every day, meaning spinning webs or stinging someone is a one-time thing.
3 Everything About Hoppy The Marvel Bunny Is Weird
Hoppy the Marvel Bunny actually had his own line of comics that ran from 1945 to 1947. Nevertheless, even Tawky Tawny, another anthropomorphized animal in Captain Marvel lore, is better known than Hoppy, who is a walking, talking rabbit imbued with the powers of the Wizard Shazam.
Hoppy's powers are pretty intuitive. Like other members of the Marvel family, he gains the Wisdom of Solomon, the Strength of Hercules, the Stamina of Atlas, the Power of Zeus, the Courage of Achilles, and the Speed of Mercury when he says, "Shazam!" However, the fact that these powers manifest in a rabbit who lives in a cartoon forest makes them unusual, especially since it's not clear that his world even has any gods.
2 People Forget About Element Woman Because She's A Woman
Metamorpho has some strange powers. As his nearly identical female equivalent, Element Woman's powers are every bit as potent and peculiar as Rex Mason's
Versions of Element Woman and Element Girl have existed since 1967 so she's almost as old as Metamorpho the Element Man, Unfortunately, she's always lived in her male counterpart's shadow. The power to convert into living chemical elements is as impressive as it is arcane but historical comics have been male-dominated. Metamorpho's hardly well-known but it's unfortunate that Element Woman is almost invisible in DC Comics.
1 Louis Sendak's Scarab Makes Less Sense Than The Other Beetles' Powers
Instead of being a predecessor to Dan Garret, Ted Kord and Jaime Reyes, Louis Sendak gets his powers from a completely different magical scarab, the Scarabaeus. To make matters more confusing, a third "Scarab," who is unrelated to Louis Sendak's heroic persona and the Blue Beetle but also receives special abilities from an enchanted beetle, also exists in DC's canon, as does the Red Beetle, Black Beetle, and the Silver and Scarlet Scarabs.
Sendak's Scarab is likely the most obscure of the lot because his presence in the comics was the shortest lived. His somewhat generic magical powers are also a strange fit for a beetle-themed hero, making him feel more like a buggy version of Doctor Fate than anything else. Caught between several superheroic themes, Scarab never committed enough to an identity to be memorable.