Stefano Mandragora

A shadowy presence haunting the pages of DC's The Huntress, Stefano Mandragora emerged in 1989 — right at the cusp of comics' Copper Age — as part of the morally complex world that surrounded Helena Bertinelli and her vigilante alter ego. With only a handful of catalog appearances, Mandragora is the kind of character who leaves a mark disproportionate to his page count, the sort of dangerous figure who makes Gotham's underworld feel genuinely threatening. If you're diving into the original Huntress series by Joey Cavalieri and Joe Staton, keep your eye on him — he's exactly the type of villain who reminds you why Helena needed to become who she is.