King Shark from Suicide Squad: his powers, his origins and his sex appeal explained

James Gunns The suicide squad features a grinning DC Comics villain whose presence has dominated the company’s adaptations across all entertainment media: movies, video games, live action, and animated television. He’s in the Arrowverse, he’s in the Harley Quinn cartoon, he’s gonna be in Rocksteady’s upcoming Suicide Squad game.

It’s not the wild card: It’s King freakin ‘Shark.

The DC Universe only has one Shark Man in it? Is this allowed? And why is he in so many DC Comics adaptations? How did he get involved in all of these different projects with completely different continuities, tones and main characters?

Once you know the secret of King Shark, its appeal becomes apparent. First, he’s a shark. Second, that’s the only thing you really need to know about him. For real

King Shark is a shark man who needs no introduction

King Shark reads the Persian poet Rumi in Suicide Squad. — The New 52 reboot turned him into a hammerhead shark, but we all know he’s better than a great white man.

It’s a universally accepted truth that every comic book villain has an origin story. Maybe it’s full of pathos, such as that Killer Croc has a weakness for the underdog because he was abused for his appearance, or how Man-Bat is always looking for a cure for his tragic condition. Maybe he’s a weird but strangely persistent big Flash villain like Gorilla Grodd, who hails from a secret African city of sentient gorillas called Gorilla City. But what you need to understand is this: In a genre notorious for tangled continuity, gritty reboots, and decades of history …

There is no explanation for King Shark.

King Shark is just a big, stupid, hungry shark man.

He just is a goddamn one Street shark that exists in the DC Universe with no solid reason for it. At its first full appearance in 1994 Superboy # 9, Karl Kesel and Humberto Ramos did to set it up with a vague ancestry story about perhaps the child of the king of all sharks and a human woman who virtually no comic has ever mentioned again.

King Shark himself doesn’t care why he is what he is because what he is is is a shark. That is a level of confidence that we should all fortunately achieve.

Embrace life’s indescribable secrets and embrace this shark man too

It’s this mix of an inexplicable concept with nothing to support that has kept King Shark in DC continuity while forgetting about other one-off characters. King Shark wasn’t left out on the New 52 reboot: he made his debut in his first month as a member of the Suicide Squad. However, if you’re a comic book reader with a thing for the guy, it’s probably because you read Gail Simones Secret six

in which a clear personality shines through in his handful of appearances.

King Shark can regenerate whole limbs, but doesn’t like to be called “petite” to the small growing chicken wing of a new appendage. King Shark likes all meat and he likes to fight and kill things made of meat and eat them. King Shark wants everyone to know he is a shark and he loves being a shark. One story arc states that the most effective agony Hell could cause for him is to lock him up in a vegetarian restaurant for eternity.

King Shark is a pure distillation of the joy of superheroes

King Shark slides down a hill and runs towards a building while singing, — Gail Simone said that King Shark is singing his song “I’m a Shark”, the melody of the map song by Dora the Explorer.

The superhero genre requires some kind of abandonment of belief from its readers, with the promise that the reader will be rewarded with characters and storylines that are only possible because of their own willingness to embrace the fantastic. How genres go is not alone in that.

But King Shark takes this business to the limit. At least even Street sharks, a cartoon based on a line of toys about four anthropomorphic shark men named Jab, Streex, Ripster and – I can’t stress this enough – SlammuHe came up with a backstory for his characters. King Shark has performed several times since its inception, in Secret six, In Suicide squad and even in a short while as Aquaman’s sidekick. But he never got a backstory that stuck.

Because if you’re the kind of person interested in adding a huge, stupid shark man as a recurring character in your story, you already know that there is no way you can make this idea cooler for him by explaining it. A huge, stupid shark man is inexplicable.

“Hug this shark man,” the story goes. “He’ll never move you to tears, and the fact that he’s a shark won’t go into any meta-narrative. But if you but hug this shark man, I promise we will have fun together. “

Readers, if you can believe that a man can fly, you can believe that a man can be a shark.

And King Shark is a shark.