King Shark is one of the weirdest characters in the DC Universe — and now, thanks to
The Suicide Squad, he's one of the most beloved, too.
But who is this furious fish, and just what keeps him swimming?
This is DC's King Shark explained.
"You're gonna need a bigger boat."
You'd probably be forgiven for thinking that King Shark started out as an Aquaman villain.
After all, it makes sense that DC's most notorious aquatic villain would be the nemesis of DC's
most famous aquatic hero, right?
However, although King Shark would face off with the king of Atlantis in later issues,
this isn't the case.
He actually made his comic book debut as an adversary of the lesser-known hero Superboy.
In the 1994 comic Superboy (Volume 4) #0, King Shark is introduced in the shadows under
the name of Nanaue.
He subsequently stirs up trouble in the series' ninth issue, in which he breaks out of prison,
has a grisly reunion with his mother, and attempts to gobble up surfers at the beach.
Predictably, Superboy himself puts a stop to all this.
This cemented a long-standing rivalry between this original version of King Shark and Superboy.
They would continue to face off across the issues that followed, including one storyline
that sees King Shark squaring off against his foe as a member of the Suicide Squad.
In the years that followed, King Shark battled a wide array of DC Comics mainstays, including
Aquaman himself.
He also became a member of the central ensemble in a number of Suicide Squad storylines.
But his earliest stories are very much confined to Superboy's comics — where he first established
himself as a comic book baddie with serious teeth.
Some comic book characters have a very specific origin story; one that is rarely altered,
even over the course of many decades.
Others, however, take a little more time to have their origins filled out.
This is true of King Shark, who was initially presumed in his earliest Superboy appearances
to be either a human being who had turned into a shark-like creature or a highly-evolved
form of shark.
This carried over into subsequent King Shark appearances, but it wouldn't remain that way
for long.
Future comic book storylines made clear that King Shark was neither mutant nor amped-up
shark.
In Aquaman: Sword of Atlantis #40, King Shark is confirmed to be the son of a Shark God,
an idea that had been introduced and dismissed in his original Superboy appearance.
This didn't just clear up where this supervillain came from, though — it also provided a nice
dose of humor in subsequent adventures, juxtaposing King Shark's status of royalty with his low-life
thuggery in the Suicide Squad.
Meanwhile, the character's royal ancestry has played a part in many of his non-comic
book appearances, such as forming the basis for his backstory on the Harley Quinn animated
series.
Everyone knows that sharks don't talk.
This simple fact is ignored by King Shark, however, who usually displays at least some
level of speech.
However, the various comic and media incarnations of King Shark have given him varying degrees
of eloquence over the years.
In the early Superboy comics, he doesn't talk at all.
Subsequent comic book appearances had King Shark be capable enough of talking that he
could make pointed comments and grim jokes.
But later on, he was again reduced to a more feral creature with a limited ability to speak.
Modern media has taken a similarly fluid approach to King Shark's speech patterns.
For example, The Suicide Squad's version of the character seems unable to say much other
than a few choice words.
Other incarnations of the character, like that seen on the Harley Quinn animated series,
are about on par with an average human being, even displaying more emotional sensitivity
than many of the people around him.
"We put the profile up and we're not getting any bites."
"Is that a shark joke?
If so, it's very funny!"
The flexibility of this quality in King Shark was certainly a total accident, but it actually
has its advantages, as it allows a greater degree of freedom for individual storytellers
to put their stamp on the character.
The Secret Six were a D-list group in the DC Comics pantheon, until acclaimed writer
Gail Simone breathed new life into them with her 2006 iteration of the team.
This group's ever-shifting roster eventually included none other than King Shark, who,
like the others, were included in the team as something of a last resort.
Once her original plan to utilize A-list DC Comics supervillains fell through, Simone
shifted over to the lesser-known bad guys.
Simone once explained:
"It started as a joke.
We should just pick the crappiest villains that no one in their right mind would want.
So I picked a bunch of losers too low to even be on the Suicide Squad."
Though not on the initial Secret Six line-up, it wasn't long before King Shark became a
prominent part of the group, appearing in 15 separate issues of Secret Six.
As Simone herself has noted, this more loveable take on King Shark has served as inspiration
for many subsequent versions of the character.
When you're making a CW TV show, you have to be aware that your storytelling opportunities
might be limited by budgetary restrictions.
Even the best major broadcast TV shows are typically made on shoestring budgets and,
for a superhero series, that sadly rules out a number of the flashier, more CGI-heavy villains
out there.
But that hasn't stopped The Flash from delivering some grandiose and expensive-looking foes
during its time on the air — including the unexpected live-action debut of King Shark.
Brought to life through full CGI, King Shark was an unexpected presence for a major broadcast
network program, but there he was, right in the final moments of a season 2 episode.
The character would go on to have a recurring presence on The Flash that has extended well
beyond mere cameos.
In fact, King Shark has become enough of a staple of the show to have episodes largely
revolving around his own storylines, such as the season 5 episode "King Shark vs. Gorilla
Grodd."
King Shark may not have been much of a Flash adversary in the comics, but he nonetheless
cemented himself as a fan-favorite villain for the CW's take on the super-fast superhero.
King Shark's presence in the virtual world began with his debut in DC Universe Online,
before making a couple of appearances in the more family-friendly titles LEGO Batman 3:
Beyond Gotham and LEGO DC Super-Villains.
In all of these instances, King Shark's presence was less a reflection on how popular the character
himself was and more of an attempt to make sure all three titles had as comprehensive
a library of DC Comics characters as possible.
King Shark's most prominent video game appearance has yet to arrive, however.
The upcoming game Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League will finally feature the character
in a capacity beyond that of a glorified cameo.
In this game, King Shark will serve as one of the game's four leads alongside mainstays
from the comic book version of the Suicide Squad, including Harley Quinn, Captain Boomerang,
and Deadshot.
Voiced by Samoa Joe, the trailer for the game establishes King Shark as a more considerate
soul with an extensive vocabulary, as well as the ability to chomp down enemies in a
single gulp.
In recent years, King Shark has become a prominent fixture in a number of animated DC Comics
properties.
While his presence in DC Super Hero Girls demonstrated that the character can work in
family-friendly animated properties, King Shark has had a notable animated presence
on shows aimed at adults.
For instance, King Shark appears in the extremely violent direct-to-video movie Batman: Assault
on Arkham, in which he is voiced by John DiMaggio — who would reprise the role in Justice
League Dark: Apokolips War.
Though these versions of King Shark share a voice actor, they're quite different in
personality, with the version in Apokolips War having his dialogue largely limited to
this:
"King Shark is a shark."
But the most popular animated incarnation of King Shark was featured in the recent Harley
Quinn series.
Voiced by Ron Funches, this version of King Shark reimagines the underwater villain as
a relaxed tech-savvy everyman.
First introduced in the show to help Harley Quinn with an online profile meant to attract
potential foes, King Shark ends up becoming a prominent part of Harley's team.
This version of the character became so popular that The Suicide Squad director James Gunn
even gave it a shout-out on Twitter.
Speaking about the design inspiration for his own take on King Shark, Gunn said:
"I love [King Shark's] design & the Harley Quinn show & @RonFunches version."
The 2016 Suicide Squad movie featured plenty of leading lights from the DC Comics mythos.
A man-sized crocodile who eats people, a lady who traps the souls of her victims in her
sword, and of course, Slipknot, the man who… can climb anything?
Okay, so it wasn't a great movie.
But that weird line-up would have been even more peculiar had it included King Shark,
as the movie's writer-director David Ayer originally intended.
Ayer himself revealed this in a Twitter video, when a fan asked if there were any comic book
characters he wanted to include in the film but couldn't.
King Shark turned out to be one of those figures.
Of course, this isn't all that surprising, considering the character has been a regular
member of the comic book incarnation of the team.
So why didn't he get into the original Suicide Squad movie?
Well, as Ayer said:
"We realized it would take a lot of work, a lot of CG Work.
I wasn't comfortable going with a fully CG character."
Hoping to keep the film as practically-realized as possible, King Shark was left behind for
the Suicide Squad's silver screen debut.
Ayer also revealed that the exclusion of King Shark allowed for the inclusion of Killer
Croc, who was realized through makeup effects rather than CGI.
James Gunn has always been a proponent of motion capture technology in his comic book
movies.
Usually, he has a CG character represented on set by one actor before another takes on
voice-over duties in post-production.
This is a method Gunn utilized for the roles of Groot and Rocket Racoon in his two Guardians
of the Galaxy movies, with the latter character being portrayed on-set by Sean Gunn before
being voiced by Bradley Cooper.
Gunn has also returned to this curious method of casting for the character of King Shark
in The Suicide Squad.
For this incarnation of the character, Gunn had the character represented on-set by another
of Gunn's regular collaborators: Steve Agee.
It was made clear early on that Agee wouldn't be providing the voice for the character,
however, since he was only credited as an "On-Set Actor" in the DC Fandome 2020 materials
for The Suicide Squad.
Although he wasn't to voice King Shark himself, Agee still scored an on-screen role in The
Suicide Squad in the form of Amanda Waller's right-hand man, John Economos.
In November 2020, the internet was thrown into a flurry of speculation when James Gunn
announced that he would be reuniting with his Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 cast member
Sylvester Stallone for a voice-over role in The Suicide Squad.
And it wasn't long before the internet found out who Rocky Balboa would be playing in the
DC Universe.
The day the first Suicide Squad trailer dropped, it was confirmed that Stallone would be lending
his distinctive voice to the character of King Shark.
The news came on the heels of speculation not only over who Stallone would be playing,
but also who could be voicing King Shark — with frequent Gunn-collaborator Michael Rooker
being a name previously rumored to provide the character's voicework.
All that speculation was for naught, however, as Gunn had apparently long imagined Stallone
inhabiting this fishy role.
In fact, in the wake of the announcement, Gunn revealed on Twitter that he wrote King
Shark specifically for Stallone.
Turns out, there was nobody more perfect for the role of King Shark than this icon of 1980s
cinema.
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