Many DC Comics superheroes are reaching eighty years of age, with comic books published monthly featuring their stories ever since. Over that length of time, it becomes important to keep the character changing and fresh, especially when times change and the hero needs to stay relatable in some way.
For this reason, there have been times when DC heroes end up going a little emo in their personal lives and changing their looks accordingly. There are many reasons why writers and artists decide to take turns like this, and varying successes or failures with such runs.
6 Batman
Arguably, Batman has been in one long emo phase ever since Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns storyline set him down a much darker path than he’d ever been on before. The Adam West style of Batman as it is known today was similar to the comic book version until the late 80s. Since then, Batman has turned into the pinnacle of darker, emo-style heroes in DC Comics.
There are particularly dark stories and comic runs, like Legends of The Dark Knight. Robert Pattinson’s new version of the character was particularly emo in nature and drew on comic runs such as Batman: Shaman from 1989-1990. While Pattinson’s version of Batman never relied on complete accuracy in one comic run, there are several darker runs such as that which heavily influenced the new film.
5 Swamp Thing
The Swamp Thing was always a reasonably dark character in DC Comics, being a man-turned-creature who was constantly chased and harassed for his appearance. But it was when Alan Moore took over the series at DC and began The Saga of Swamp Thing that the darkest turns were taken. It is a stretch to ever call the character emo, but this series began what people referred to as Alan Moore’s emo phase.
The stories, which began in Moore’s first issue with Swamp Thing getting riddled with bullets, were dark and shocking. Much of this was in Moore’s early career and helped lead him to the massive number of opportunities that followed.
4 Green Arrow
Green Arrow isn’t considered a hero that ever went down the Batman path of becoming consistently darker and anti-heroic. Even today in DC Comics, he often remains a more light-hearted touch reminiscent of how Batman was in the golden and silver age of comics. However, the CW show Arrow was a dark, grounded version of Oliver Queen’s story and took inspiration from one particular comic run.
The run in question was Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters by Mike Grell and the subsequent series starring Green Arrow was a renaissance for the character, which took him seriously and presented the darker, brooding style that many heroes today have become known for.
3 Martian Manhunter
Martian Manhunter is a character made for an emo persona and style. While his initial story began with him coming to Earth from Mars through an experimental teleportation beam, there were some significant changes towards him becoming a darker character with a much sadder backstory later in his comic book appearances.
In his 2015 Martian Manhunter comic run (Martian Manhunter Vol.4) the new backstory is revealed that Manhunter came from Mars after a tragedy ended in all the other creatures living on the planet dying. As the final Martian, the Manhunter took on a much sadder personality and found a new, darker style to his character.
2 Robin
While the various personas of Robin have changed over the years, they have all generally gotten sadder as time goes on. Whether it is Dick Grayson’s more emo persona as Nightwing when he moved on from Robin to Jason Todd’s Red Hood persona following his death and subsequent revival, all the Robins in DC Comics seem to follow the footsteps of Batman in becoming darker characters as they age.
Robin himself reached the darkest point yet when Damien Wayne held the mantle. Having been raised by the league of assassins and going through several dark periods in the New 52 era before also being killed. While Robin usually appears in Batman stories, his sidekick role allows him more freedom to stray from the overly serious and dark style of his mentor. Thus, sometimes he isn’t as emo, but there have been a number of times when he sinks to a more depressed level.
1 John Constantine
John Constantine isn’t a typical superhero. His associations dealing with demonic characters and mystical creatures leaves him more of an anti-hero, and his motivations change drastically through different comic book runs. Another character created by Alan Moore, and first appearing in his Swamp Thing run, Constantine is known as the Hellblazer and struggles to stop either heaven or hell from ruling over humanity.
Though compassionate, Constantine is often depicted as having questionable morality and has long been one of the more consistently dark and emo characters in DC Comics. The Hellblazer: Original Sins run was perhaps one of his very darkest moments, including many mentions of drug addiction and Constantine being haunted by the ghosts of his many dead friends.