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The Inferior Five (or I5) are a parody superhero team that premiered in the DC Comics title Showcase #62 (1966). Created by E. Nelson Bridwell (writer) and Joe Orlando and Mike Esposito (artists), the group was intended as a parody not only of the Fantastic Four, but of all the superhero teams whose members had such great powers that they could have solved any of the crimes put before them singlehandedly. The Five had to work as a team; none of them could have fought crime on their own.
All the characters were sons or daughters of members of a superhero team called the Freedom Brigade, a parody of the Justice League of America, and most of the Inferior Five were takeoffs of other popular DC characters, while Merryman's appearance was specifically modeled on Woody Allen.
After appearing in Showcase #62, 63, and 65 (1966), they got their own title which lasted twelve issues. The first ten had new material and were published from 1967-68. In one memorable adventure, they met a group of what appeared to be Marvel superheroes, slightly changed to avoid copyright problems, and fought alongside them to repel an invasion of aliens with hypnotic eyes and garlic breath.
Issues #11 and 12 were published in 1972, and titled Inferior 5 (using the number 5 rather than spelling out the word) and were all reprints, except for new covers. Nothing changed with the alteration of the title. Afterwards they appeared sporadically after their own series was canceled, most notably in Showcase #100, one or two panels in Crisis on Infinite Earths, The Oz-Wonderland War #3 (March 1986), in a superhero limbo in the Grant Morrison written Animal Man series. They appear in one panel in JLA: Another Nail as Flash and the Atom take a trip through many dimensions.
Although the Inferior Five's original stories made frequent references to other prominent DC heroes, The Oz-Wonderland War #3 revealed their adventures to have actually occurred on "Earth-Twelve," which thus had its own doppelgangers of the JLA, the Teen Titans, etc., meaning that any such references were out of continuity in relation to the heroes of DC's primary Earth-One.
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