Challengers of the Unknown

In a short-lived 1976–77 revival, the Challengers were again a four-man, one-woman team in Super-Team Family #8–10. The group then returned to its own title continuing the number with #81. During this period, they were joined by Deadman and Swamp Thing, and June Robbins got a uniform and official status. No explanation was given for Corinna Stark's departure, nor June's joining the team. The revived series was canceled with issue #87 in 1978. Adventure Comics Digest #493–497 (1982) featured an expanded version of the team's origin.

The Challengers returned in a limited series, Challengers of the Unknown vol. 2 (1991), by writer Jeph Loeb and artist Tim Sale. It ran eight issues and was reprinted in trade paperback as Challengers of the Unknown Must Die! (2004). This series depicted the Challengers in middle age, breaking up after a tragic accident and coming back together as a team. Loeb hoped for a monthly title, and planned at least a second limited series, but neither volume materialized.

In 2000, DC published a one-shot, Silver Age: Challengers of the Unknown, done in the style of the original Silver Age of Comic Books Challengers.

Prepublication solicitations for various Countdown tie-ins referred to the group of Donna Troy, Jason Todd, Kyle Rayner, and "Bob", (a nefarious, renegade "purist" Monitor), as "Challengers from Beyond". This group went on a quest through the newly formed multiverse in order to find Ray Palmer, who Bob claimed was essential to the survival of the universe. Eventually the earth heroes were betrayed by Bob, who sought to kill Ray Palmer, rather than protect him or acquire his aid. Palmer, Troy, Todd, and Rayner found themselves involved in a war between the Monitors and the forces of Monarch. Later they traveled to Apokolips where they teamed up with Jimmy Olsen, Forager, Karate Kid and Triplicate Girl. After returning to Earth, Troy, Rayner, Forager, and Palmer decided to team up again. They traveled to the Monitors headquarters, where they informed the shocked beings that they would be watching over them as a sort of interdimensional border guards.

The 2007 revival of The Brave and the Bold series features a storyline involving the Challengers. Destiny of the Endless reveals to Supergirl and Lobo that his Book of Destiny has changed because there appeared to be men who existed, but were not recorded in the book, and their undocumented actions made the book unreliable. Destiny cast the book away, and it was eventually recovered by Batman and Green Lantern with the help of the Challengers, the men in question, who become the new holders of the book. Destiny later reclaims the book.

Leslie "Rocky" Davis appears regularly in Doom Patrol, in which he serves as something of a counselor to the members of that team, and resides on Oolong Island.

In 2011, the DC Universe was dramatically altered, giving very different back stories to many of its heroes and villains.

The Challengers were formed for a reality television contest, when several notable people were assembled by archaeologist presenter Clay Brody for his "Challengers" program. However, Clay, the contestants, producer June, and pilots Ace and Maverick, were lost in the Himalayas when their plane crashed under mysterious circumstances.[12] However, all but one of them showed up weeks later, remembering a recuperation in Nanda Parbat, in which the city's elder told them to beware the unknown, but also to challenge it. Returning to civilization, the group found a talisman that had led Clay to pick them, and a note explaining that it was one of a set.

The Challengers program was retooled to take advantage of the quest. With their home base on a Metropolis soundstage dubbed "Challengers Mountain", the group sought out the talismans in far-flung corners of the world, usually accompanied by some oddity, like warrior statues or giant-ant-spewing portals. Their greatest initial challenge came when in a short period their show was cancelled and they were attacked by their dead friend, "Ace" the pilot. Though he killed two of them, they managed to defeat him, and the survivors vowed to find the rest of the talismans and save the world.

The original Challengers Prof, Ace, Red, and Rocky were on a mission on an Earth in the Dark Multiverse when Prof was badly wounded. He figured out how to use the dark energy to heal himself. In doing so he inadvertedly sent his dark multiverse counterpart to the multiverse. The Dark Prof created a new Challengers that he could use to collect the remains of an ancient god who's remains were flung through time and space when the Source Wall was destroyed. The Dark Prof recruits Trina Alvarez, Moses Barber, Krunch, and Bethany Hopkins as the most current incarnation of the team. They soon discover his evil intentions and send him back to the Dark Multiverse, saving Ace, Red, Rocky and Prof in the process.[13]

DC published two other series, also titled Challengers of the Unknown, featuring the original Challengers' concept combined with a new set of characters.

The Challengers were revamped by writer Steven Grant in vol. 3 (1997), which had a totally new group of characters and was one of four series making up the Weirdoverse group of titles. This ongoing series ran 18 issues, through 1998. This team of paranormal investigators met the original Challengers and even had Rocky agree to advise them.

One more revamp was done by Howard Chaykin in a six-issue miniseries (vol. 4, 2004–2005). This series had another new group of characters and was entirely unrelated to the previous two incarnations. The mini-series was collected in trade paperback as Challengers of the Unknown: Stolen Moments, Borrowed Time.

The Challs are later semi-retired, their mountain a theme park, and their adventures disregarded as cooked-up articles in a tabloid, The Tattletale. The nearby town has renamed itself Challengerville, managing to thrive on the team's name. A cosmic entity, which prides itself as "the personification of all evil", influences the entity Multi-Man to blow up the mountain. The town is destroyed. Hundreds die, including, seemingly, Prof and June.[17] The surviving Challengers are placed on trial, but eventually freed with the testimony of Superman. They are, however, ordered to disband.[18]

A tabloid reporter, Moffet, becomes involved with the group after several unexplained incidents. Moffet begins to piece together many seemingly unrelated massacres. Red became a violent, vigilante mercenary. Ace becomes an addled mystic, losing new-found friends due to inattention and incompetence. Rocky becomes lost in a life of luxury and ends up in an insane asylum.

Eventually the three reunite, and with Moffet's aid, find a strange portal near what was once Challengerville. They discover Prof and June, pregnant, "alive" in a strange "phantom zone". The dark demon confronts them and the final battle comes down to Moffet and a neutron bomb. The decision to attack is literally taken out of his hands by Multi-Man, who sacrifices himself to destroy the demon.[19]

"The New Challengers of the Unknown", including ghostly Prof and June, were poised to take on menaces in the dark corners of the world.[19]

Later, four new Challengers pursue X-Files-like horrors. They are Clay Brody, NASCAR driver; Brenda Ruskin, physicist; Kenn Kawa, radical games designer; and Marlon Corbet, commercial pilot, who also miraculously survived a plane crash. They stopped sacrificial wackos, drug-juiced zombies, vengeful ghosts, Amazon cults, Lovecraftian monsters, mass suicides, humming buildings, and other oddities. They were advised by Rocky Davis, older and grayer and alone. It was eventually revealed the original Challengers were dematerialized by a mad scientist's ray-weapon. The same ray caused both plane crashes, as well as others. Soon the original Challs reappeared, helped the young Challs defeat the madman, then walked back into oblivion (minus a wounded Rocky) to shut down a runaway Tesla field. The young Challengers vowed to fight on.

Superboy discovers the missing Challengers —Ace, Red, Prof, and June—in Hypertime. The team was waging guerrilla war against Black Zero (a Superboy variant). With Black Zero defeated, the team returns to Earth, but loses Red along the way. Reunited with Rocky in Metropolis, hosted by Rip Hunter, the original Challengers vow to explore Hypertime, "the greatest unknown", to find Red.

Two Challengers partake in Infinite Crisis. Rocky Davis and Prof Haley help stem the escape of prisoners from Blackgate Prison.[20] Rocky fights in the Battle of Metropolis. He is one of dozens of heroes fighting the opposing army of the Secret Society of Super Villains. The Society is ultimately defeated.[21]

Later, on a world without superheroes, a blogger, a hip hop artist, an eco-terrorist, and two others discovers they'd been genetically enhanced and chip-programmed to be soldier-pawns by the Hegemony, a cabal of billionaires who secretly run that world. Made slaves on a Moon base, three Challengers blow up the base, escape to Earth, and declare war on the Hegemony until (like the obliquely mentioned earlier Challengers) their "borrowed time" runs out.

• The outfits that were worn by the Watchtower workers in Justice League Unlimited are very similar to the team's classic uniforms.
• The Challengers of the Unknown appear in the Batman: The Brave and the Bold episode "Revenge of the Reach" with Walter Mark "Prof" Haley voiced by Armin Shimerman, Matthew "Red" Ryan voiced by Ioan Gruffudd, Kyle "Ace" Morgan voiced by J.K. Simmons, and Leslie "Rocky" Davis voiced by James Arnold Taylor. All four go to Dinosaur Island to investigate a meteorite that fell there. Batman helps them fight a giant spider on Dinosaur Island. They are later attacked by a group of Starros after he leaves. In "The Siege of Starro" Pt. 1, the Challengers of the Unknown are among the superheroes that are under the control of the Starros when they helped in the Starro Invasion.
• Following their appearance in the movie, the Challengers reappear in the Teen Titans Go! episode "TV Knight 4" where they attempt to explain to the Titans what a staple remover is.

• The Challengers of the Unknown appeared in the animated film Justice League: The New Frontier. Ace Morgan (voiced by John Heard) in particular is spotlighted, acting as friend and mentor to Hal Jordan. Professor Haley is also in a cameo in the meeting of him, Agent Faraday, Ace Morgan, and Dr. Will Magnus. "Red" Ryan, Dr. June Robbins, and "Rocky" Davis are also present during the battle and in the end.
• The Challengers of the Unknown are featured in Teen Titans Go! To the Movies with their leader, presumably Ace Morgan, voiced by Dave Stone in an almost stoic manner while the other members have no dialogue. The Challengers are composed of five members with the fifth one being a woman, possibly June Robbins, and are featured as a running gag in the film. They show up to the premiere of Batman Again where the bouncer recognizes them, but not the Teen Titans who criticize the Challengers for being an obscure group. In response, Raven uses her powers to drop them into a portal of unending darkness. She uses it again to drop all the possessed heroes whom the Challengers believe are there to save them, but end up getting blasted and attacked by them. The heroes are let out, but the Challengers fail to escape the abyss. In a post-credits scene, the Challengers continue to float around with Ace postulating that they missed the whole movie, referring to the film they were attending the premiere to as well as Teen Titans Go! To the Movies.

• In 1977, author Ron Goulart penned the novel Challengers of the Unknown as part of a DC experiment in new venues. The original four and June Robbins trekked to South America to investigate Zarpa the lake monster. While on the case they encounter young men with old Nazi tattoos, ancient alien cults, a castle in the desert, a robotic dog, and a bomb in a piano crate. (Dell Books, ISBN 0-440-11337-7)

• The team is tributed in The New Pornographers' song Challengers.

Archie Comics occasionally featured a parody segment called "Explorers of the Unknown", featuring versions of their characters as an elite team of adventurers.