The "I'm going to pull an obscure character from the way past" Award

[tib2d2]

There was (and prob still is) a trend where writers wanted to pull some super obscure/minor character from years/decades ago and thrust them into a major story and into the spotlight.

Who wins this most prestigious, sometimes pretentious award for basically saying "hey remember this guy from 1971, that appeared in 6 issues", I'm bringing him back as a major character!

[Restingvoice]

Damian Wayne, who appeared as a baby in a non canon story for a few panels?
Ruh al Ghul, whose only role was to give birth to Ra's?

[SiegePerilous02]

I think the current Wonder Woman team won it by bringing Professor Calculus back and putting him on the new Villainy Inc

[exile001]

Steve Englehart pulled off two belters in his legendary Detective Comics run (1977).

Deadshot, a one off villain who'd appeared 17 years earlier (1950), and Hugo Strange, who had 3 outings the latest being 37 years earlier (1940).

I'll add that he had to either remember them or go through the archives to find them, as previous issues weren't anywhere near as easy to go through back then.

[jb681131]

Steve Englehart pulled off two belters in his legendary Detective Comics run (1977).

Deadshot, a one off villain who'd appeared 17 years earlier (1950), and Hugo Strange, who had 3 outings the latest being 37 years earlier (1940).

I'll add that he had to either remember them or go through the archives to find them, as previous issues weren't anywhere near as easy to go through back then.

DC has archives of all its comics. So He might have asked to visit the archives.
Well now, DC doesn't have all its archives because they had a fire.
A few issues are now extreme collectors because DC won't be able to ever print them again.
Like some early Superboy comics. 24,000.00€ for a mint #1.

[the illustrious mr. kenway]

Currently John Ridley with Jace Fox. He started out as Tim Fox- Lucius's firstborn kid from the 70s (issue #313- April 10 1979)

[ducklord]

I gotta imagine that there are few things as exciting for writers in a shared universe as the discovery of a forgotten, obscure character with buckets of untapped potential. But it's rare that that potential ever pays off. Roy Thomas has probably exhumed the fictional corpses of hundreds of Golden Age characters over the decades, for example, but very few of them have caught on.

Still, here's a few candidates:
Quicksilver/Max Mercury
Before Waid recrafted him as the Zen Master of the Speed Force, Max was so obscure that Roy Thomas had barely included him in All-Star Squadron, and his most recent appearance had literally been in Limbo in an issue of Morrison's Animal Man. Since then he's been Bart Allen's mentor for 100 issues of Impulse, and perpetually in the running as "missing Flash Family member that fans most want to return." Not bad.

Animal Man
Literally a member of the Forgotten Heroes before Morrison got hold of him. Since then, he just keeps popping up.

Two-Face
It's hard to believe that this guy nearly disappeared for over a decade before Denny O'Neil brought him back.

[WonderScott]

King’s use of Kite-Man has to rank in here somewhere.

This seemed like the whole premise of the animated series Batman the Brave and the Bold.

[BohemiaDrinker]

Damian Wayne, who appeared as a baby in a non canon story for a few panels?

To be fair, Damian (not by this name) was also a relatively important player in Kingdom Come.

[j9ac9k]

Isn't this Grant Morrison's whole thing?

[williamtheday]

Ed Peale, The Gong (Batman #56 October 1949) waits for his turn...

[superduperman]

Polka Dot Man in The Suicide Squad. Rat Catcher is another one that's been getting a lot of play lately. YJ has a tendency to pull obscure characters out of nowhere and use them. Artemis was a second tier villain before they got their hands on her. Peacemaker. How many people had a use for Peacemaker?

[G-Man27]

Mikaal Tomas who had appeared only once in the mid 70's was one of several obscure Starman related characters that was brought back in James Robinson's legendary Starman run

[James Cameron]

Not the most obscure but I appreciated Scott Snyder bringing Starman into his Justice League run.

Also, Greg Rucka using the Purple Ray in his WW run

[TheRay]

I’d imagine the Black Lantern story used a lot of obscure characters as essentially Lamtern-fodder, like when we saw Abattoir’s reanimated corpse as a member.