While many readers of 52 puzzle over the clues on Rip Taylor’s Hunter’s blackboard, or wring their hands over Booster Gold’s self-serving actions, Ron Hogan of GalleyCat braces himself for the return of “long-dormant” Wonder Woman villain Egg Fu:

Why long-dormant? Let’s put it this way. In the history of comic books, it takes some real doing to come up with a more racist caricature than this supervillain, created at the height of the Cold War: He was a giant, hyperintelligent egg with a Fu Manchu mustache and an outrageous accent (which, as one of the fanboy sleuths pointed out, isn’t even a Chinese stereotype, but Japanese). This was a character so ridiculous that one of his rare appearances in the last two decades was in a series where Keith Giffen made fun of the goofiest excesses of DC’s Silver Age. Coincidentally, it was Giffen who provided the final piece of the puzzle, identifying Egg Fu in his art breakdowns as reproduced online (which have since been relabeled as “GOTCHA”).

Hogan writes that he’s waiting to hear back from DC editors on the character’s return: “In the meantime, relying on nothing more than my own instincts, I’m willing to trust them on this. Why? Because I remember back when I was a teenage comics fan and DC successfully rehabilitated one of the few characters with an even more racist legacy than Egg Fu: Chop-Chop, sidekick to the WWII flying ace Blackhawk.”

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