art is a weapon. use it.

Anyway. Gregorio's not super into the idea of being a main character at first, but after a self-loathing suicide attempt (Wally saves him), he decides fuck it, why not be a superhero, and joins the team that will become the New Guardians. He's granted his superpowers, which are generic magic ones, and takes the codename Extraño.

Unfortunately, in the spinoff series that followed Millennium, New Guardians, things get...uh...kind of rough. By which I mean that a) the original writer left, b) the new writer dialed Gregorio's gay stereotyping waaay back in favor of, um, Latino stereotyping instead (he stops calling everyone "honey" and starts calling them "amigo"), and c) the team is attacked by the Hemo-Goblin, an HIV-positive white supremacist vampire. Yes, really. It's fucking awful.

The Hemo-Goblin scratches Gregorio and bites Jet, a Black woman on the team. They both subsequently test positive for HIV. There are many letters from fans pointing out that it's nearly impossible to contract HIV that way, but the editors insisted that actually it was totally plausible, and then implied that probably Gregorio already had HIV because he was gay (even though he had tested negative earlier in the book). Then Jet dies. Again: it's fucking awful.

New Guardians was canceled soon after that and Gregorio pretty much disappeared. By the 2000s, he was viewed as basically an embarrassment, if anyone even remembered him at all: so stereotypical, so flamboyant, so offensive, so cringe. In the Love Is Love anthology, everyone's least favorite human Dan DiDio wrote a story where he claimed that Extraño died of AIDS back in the 80s, which...literally wasn't true??? The publisher of the goddamn company and even he assumed that the Cringey Stereotype must have died the Stereotypical Death.

And then in 2016, Gregorio got a makeover, courtesy of Steve Orlando and Fernando Blanco:

HELLO.

Yeah, so Gregorio is a silver fox now who hangs out with Apollo and Midnighter, does wizard shit, and lives in Lima with his husband and their adopted daughter. SO LET'S TALK ABOUT THAT HUSBAND:

Could you tell he's Australian???

Hugh Dawkins, a.k.a. Tasmanian Devil (no relation to the Looney Tunes character except that they are both owned by WB and, obviously, Tasmanian) actually first appeared in the Super Friends tie-in comics to the cartoon of the same name, in 1977, as part of a plotline where the Justice League teamed up with a bunch of international superheroes.

As you can see above, Hugh, like the other international superheroes, is a massive stereotype. He's also a were-Tasmanian devil who can grow really big, like many Australians. (Even though he's been around for 50 years, there are very few panels of Hugh in human form, but if you need to know for reasons of all the fanfic I hope you are about to write: he's blond.)

In the late 80s, Hugh and the other international superheroes from this story were incorporated into the main DCU as a team called the Global Guardians. They became occasional supporting characters to the various Justice League International books, and some of them joined various Justice League branches. Others had random cameos here and there, and in a 1992 issue of Justice League Quarterly, Hugh's random cameo involved casually mentioning that he is gay:

Again, this is a big deal. It's only 1992, meaning the only canonically queer superheroes in mainstream comics are Extraño (1988), Pied Piper (1991), and Northstar (1992). And this is a Justice League book. AND IT'S 1992. When Hugh talks about things being hateful for gays, he's likely referring to the virulent homophobia in Tasmania at the time (homosexuality wouldn't be decriminalized there for another five years).

Which means it was also a big deal that Hugh went on to join the European branch of the Justice League shortly after this, making him the first canonically queer member of any branch of the League. Of course, his sexuality was never mentioned during the year and a half he was on the team...or in any comic...until 2006. And then it was a vaguely homophobic joke involving Hal Jordan. But still!

(There is a panel that I SWEAR exists from the JLI era of Hugh describing a total bullshit version of his origin which granted him "the power of 106 Tasmanian devils!" which I cannot for the life of me find but was the first thing that made me fall in love with this character. If you stumble across it, please let me know what issue number it is?)

Hugh then had the misfortune of next appearing...sort of...in the infamously awful Cry for Justice in 2009. I say sort of because it's revealed that the villain, Prometheus, has skinned him and turned him into a rug. So we only see his skin. The late 2000s were really, really rough, guys.

However, a year later he appeared in the Starman/Congorilla special and he was totally fine? Don't ask me how. Gorillas were involved. The issue ended with the possibility of him and Starman (the Mikaal Tomas version) hooking up, but then the New 52 happened, so that never came to anything.

...BUT WHO CARES, BECAUSE NOW HE'S MARRIED TO GREGORIO AND THEY HAVE A DAUGHTER AND THEY ARE IN LOVE.

The nickname! The clutching! I'm dying.

Did I mention the canon threesome with John Constantine?

HUGH LOVES HIS RIDICULOUS HUSBAND SO MUCH. Tragically the JLQ only showed up in these two stories but all the baby queer superheroes in the DCU call Gregorio "Tio" and it makes me want to weep. HE WAS ALL ALONE IN 1988 AND NOW HE HAS A FAMILY. I AM VERKLEMPT. 😭😭😭

Unfortunately Gregorio and Hugh are pretty much relegated to occasionally appearing in Pride specials these days, but maybe if we all wish really hard, DC will let Steve Orlando or Andrew Wheeler write a miniseries about how they met and fell in love. I think Nick Robles should draw it.