The lumbering villain King Shark began as a post-Crisis Superboy antagonist, but is now front and center in The Suicide Squad, a rise in popularity that surprises creator Karl Kesel -- especially because an Oscar-winning star provides the beastly villain's voice.
"Never in my wildest dreams when I put the name King Shark on a piece of paper did I think that someday Sylvester Stallone would be saying a half-dozen words as King Shark [in a movie]," Kesel told Entertainment Weekly.
Kesel was the writer for DC Comics' 1994 Superboy series, which was set in Hawaii. That locale led Kesel to learn about local lore, including shark gods. "Somewhere in there I decided one of the shark gods has a child with a human. It's a demigod character except as a shark. And that's how King Shark really started," Kesel said. King Shark debuted in Superboy #9, cover-dated November 1994. The character design included a "shark-toothed pattern" of tattoos, though most subsequent artists haven't included them.
Kesel needed to differentiate this character from Green Lantern antagonist The Shark, a tiger shark with evolved intelligence and powers derived from exposure to radiation from an atomic pile. Kesel said, "So, I couldn't call it 'The Shark,' but Hawaiian myths kept referring to 'The Shark King,' and I thought, 'I'll take those words and flip it around.'" Voila!
Source: Entertainment Weekly