Sideways (DC)
Sideways is a male comic superhero who features in DC Comics.
Contents |
Biography
Derek James
He was with his mother in Gotham during the Dark Multiverse crisis when Challengers Mountain appeared in the city. During the resultant chaos, Derek fell through a gap in reality and disappeared for a time where he re-appeared on the other side of town where he was found unconscious. James utilized his hands to tear open a circular rift in the air while positioned in a residential bedroom. He stepped through the aperture to teleport onto the roof of a high-rise building, where he performed several acrobatic leaps and tested his physical limits by jumping off the edge. He opened multiple rifts in mid-air to catch himself and redirect his momentum, ultimately returning to a street-level environment. While exploring his capabilities, he encountered a massive, crystalline entity and engaged it in physical combat. He utilized his rifts to maneuver around the entity's strikes and attempted to dismantle it by striking its physical form with enhanced strength. After sustaining a direct hit that propelled him through a nearby structure, he recovered and used a rift to reposition himself behind the target. Throughout the sequence, he maintained a verbal commentary regarding his internal state and the mechanics of his powers before successfully closing a rift to sever a portion of the entity's limb. (Sideways v1 #1)
Initially, he sought to use his powers to become a celebrity superhero and attempted to livestream his adventures. Whilst at a lake, he then heard a voice telling him to cease his activities with Sideways rifting to another location thinking he escaped it. However, the voice continued to persist with Derek rifting to various locations but was unable to shake his pursuer. In desperation, he rifted to a rooftop where he nearly fell off the ledge when he was confronted by his pursuer who was Tempus Fuginaut. (Sideways v1 #1) Derek attempted to escape using his powers, but Tempus revealed his staff renders Derek's powers inert, and decided to escape through freefall. Regaining his powers, Derek escaped but not without breaking his arm. Rushed to the hospital by Ernie, Derek's short stay was interrupted by the angered Killspeed breaking free nearby. (Sideways v1 #2) Driven outside the two would combat across the streets of Gotham. Reaching Gotham Pier, Derek's attempt at reason failed, their fighting continuing with James eventually winning as the Gotham City Police Department neared, but not without accidentally taking Killspeed's arm into one of his rifts. Unbeknownst to him, a close eye watched from above. (Sideways v1 #3) Sometime later, Derek, still looking for fame, would take on the rampaging Replicant with Hot Spot, unaware of a planned meeting with his mother and Dark Star Sciences CEO Leto Dominus. Replicating his powers, Replicant rifted himself apart, leading to opinion backfiring on Derek. Thinking of quitting, such thoughts were dashed aside by the pleading Tempus Fuginaut within his bedroom. (Sideways v1 #4) Apologizing, the Fuginaut explained to Derek his true role of sealing disruptions, through showing him the Branefold Interior. Pulled by responsibilities, Derek would later fight the Showman following the latters call-out and enthrallment of his school. (Sideways v1 #5) Continuing his duties as Sideways after an argument with his mother, Derek would join Tempus in cleaning existence of its sickness. Unknown to him, Helen had figured out his identity, later passing within Crime Alley later that day. (Sideways v1 #6)
Broken and disgruntled, his relationship with his father and Ernie would slip, ultimately leading to him nearly drowning many students at school if not for the interruption of Zatanna and the mystical Seven Soldiers, needing his aid in a threat against humanity. Attacked, he came to be separated from the team yet was later saved by the Unseen. (Sideways v1 #8) Stuck within the dungeons below, he freed a version of Superman from a kryptonite cocoon. Together the duo, later with help from the Unseen and the Seven Soldiers would defeat Sheeda, returning home with a strengthened pride in himself. However, during this time he would miss his mother's funeral. (Sideways Annual v1 #1)
Devastated by his own actions, he and Ernie would take a journey to Paris to clear his mind. Dealing with the local threat of Leviathan Organization terrorists. Returning to Ernie, he found her caught by a mysterious teleporter. Quickly saving his friend with a rift, Derek was unable to best Bolt. Placed within the hands of the Black Star Sciences, believing it was the actions of Leto and the group led to his mother's death. (Sideways v1 #11) Forcibly used to open a portal to the multiverse, the corrupted rift would unleash dark beasts within the laboratory. Broken free, Derek attempted to close the rift by opening another within causing a cascading gravity well and explosion, however he was saved by the intervention of the Tempus Fuginaut. Returning home after a talk with Detective Hopkins and his father he would meet his biological mother. (Sideways v1 #12) Re-establishing a relationship with both his adoptive father and biological mother his meeting was interrupted by a call by Detective Hopkins. Figuring out who truly killed his mother, Derek attacked Sandy Bridwell on the highway, forcing a confession out of the woman by balancing her car upon a cliff. Angered, he would rift the woman away to the police. Later meeting with Ernie they would discuss his future as a hero, mentioning various teams at the time. With a cleared mind, he responded to the last late texts of his mother and moved on, rifting away with his close friend. (Sideways v1 #13)
Derek along with Aqualad, Spoiler, and Arrowette was recruited by Impulse as a backup member of Young Justice to confront a S.T.A.R. Labs division gone rogue. He was also a key component to rescue successfully Conner Kent, bringing him back to Earth after he was lost in Skartaris. (Young Justice v3 #13) Sideways took part on the battle at the Hall of Justice between the various heroes and the army of King Deathstroke following the disappearance of the Justice League. (Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths v1 #7)
Overview
Personality and attributes
In appearance, Sideways was a male of Puerto Rican descent with a youthful face, dark eyes, and short, dark hair that was shaved closely on the sides and longer on top. His facial features included a narrow nose and a pointed chin, and he possessed a lean, athletic body type with a slender but defined frame. His superhero costume was a full-body suit that utilized a silver, red, and black colour scheme. The primary section of the torso and limbs was silver, while a wide black stripe ran down the center of his chest and back. He wore a silver mask that completely covered his head, featuring large, white, angular eye lenses outlined in black and a red circular pattern on the forehead. The suit included red segments on the shoulders, sides of the torso, and the outer thighs, along with red gloves and boots. The gloves featured reinforced knuckles and fingertips, and the entire suit appeared to be made of a flexible, high-tech fabric that conformed to his physical movements. (Sideways v1 #1)
Derek James was impulsive, brash, and often sarcastic, hiding his insecurity behind humor. He enjoyed the thrill of experimenting with his powers but lacked patience or discipline, often rushing into dangerous situations without fully thinking them through. At the same time, he showed loyalty to friends and family, revealing that beneath his arrogance was a teenager still trying to figure out his place in the world. His clashes with figures like Tempus Fuginaut highlighted both his defiance of authority and his underlying fear of responsibility. (Sideways v1 #2)
James frequently relied on witty humor and light banter to cope with the immense stress of his sudden metahuman abilities. Deeply influenced by modern internet culture, he initialised his superhero career not out of an innate sense of altruistic duty, but rather as an exciting, attention-seeking venture to stream his dimensional rifts for online fame and social media clout. He displayed a highly informal, casual attitude during high-stakes situations, routinely treating reality-warping spatial powers like a fun, everyday video game rather than a volatile threat to the space-time continuum. This youthful overconfidence frequently caused him to severely underestimate his superpowered opponents, as he preferred making quips and recording content over practicing tactical caution. (Sideways v1 #1)
Sideways harboured an anxious, conflict-averse, and highly secretive disposition when dealing with maternal authority and the restrictive boundaries of his domestic household. Because his adoptive mother maintained an incredibly strict, overprotective watch over his daily routine, Derek developed a highly evasive, fast-talking defense mechanism to avoid exposing his secret identity or his trip to Gotham City. He frequently experienced intense internal panic when his ordinary teenage responsibilities clashed with his spontaneous multiversal travels, forcing him to scramble through time-sensitive lies to explain his sudden absences. Despite his immense external bravado while wearing his mask, he remained a deeply vulnerable, insecure high school sophomore who desperately craved maternal approval and feared the domestic consequences of breaking his family's trust. (Sideways v1 #3)
His adoptive parents were Helen James and David James. Derek's mother had worked in publicity for Dark Star Sciences where she was with the company for 10 years. (Sideways v1 #1)
Derek's best friend was Ernestine Edgars who he confided in about his new powers. She had a twin sister named Emeline Edgars who was unaware of Derek's secret and had a completely different temperament to her sister Ernie. (Sideways v1 #1) Derek showed a remarkably deep, trusting, and co-dependent bond with his best friend, Ernestine Edgars, relying completely on her grounding presence to navigate his double life. Lacking confidence in his own creative sensibilities, he surrendered full artistic and logistical authority to Ernie, enthusiastically modeling the red, silver, and black full-body costume she meticulously crafted for him in her bathroom. He harboured an incredibly open, unedited honesty with her, treating her domestic home as a safe haven where he could showcase his massive metahuman strength and teleportation rifts away from his overprotective parents. This fierce platonic loyalty formed his primary emotional anchor, making him highly protective of her safety and deeply receptive to her sharp, pragmatic advice whenever his superhero antics began to spiral out of control. (Sideways v1 #2)
Powers and abilities
Originally, Sideways was a ordinary human being until his exposure to the energies of the Dark Multiverse. An aspect of his abilities was that he became stronger where it was said that hitting him was like hitting a brick wall. Similarly, his strength had increased as well whereby he was able to lift an entire table up with ease. (Sideways v1 #1)
James demonstrated the ability to generate dimensional rifts, which he referred to as 'rifts', by physically pulling the air apart with his hands. He utilized these rifts to teleport himself and others instantaneously across varying distances, including between different geographic locations and elevations. He exhibited enhanced physical strength, allowing him to lift heavy objects and deliver high-impact strikes during physical combat. His durability was shown to be greater than that of an average human, enabling him to withstand significant kinetic force and falls from great heights without sustaining major injury. He displayed a high level of agility and spatial awareness, which he used to leap through his rifts while maintaining momentum. Additionally, he possessed the ability to close these rifts at will, a process that could physically sever objects or entities passing through them at the moment of closure. (Sideways v1 #1)
The time it takes for full healing seems to depend on the level of his injury. (Sideways v1 #3)
In powers, Sideways possessed the ability to create rifts in the fabric of space-time, which he could use for instantaneous teleportation across short or long distances. He could open portals mid-combat to appear behind or above opponents, disorient enemies by creating sudden openings beneath them, and escape danger by ripping open emergency exits in reality. His rifts also allowed him to access strange extradimensional spaces, though doing so posed risks to himself and the stability of the universe. Physically, Derek was human with no enhancements, relying entirely on his spatial manipulation powers to survive confrontations. (Sideways v1 #1)
Sideways power allowed him to create rifts whereby he was able to travel point to point through a tear that allowed one to travel sideways through reality. Initially, he suffered from nausea, blurry vision, and headaches from the use of his powers but after a week of practice and use he began to get used to his abilities. Sideways could open a rift to simply look through the tear or travel through it to the other end. A rift though was blurry making it difficult to see the other end properly which could cause Derek to incidentally fall into water that he did not see through the tear. (Sideways v1 #1)
Derek was also capable of opening multiple rifts in various different locations, allowing him to look through them like windows. (Sideways v1 #3) He eventually learned to open the rifts to another universes with his power. (Sideways v1 #6)
The edges of Derek's rifts are solid and indestructible, meaning he can use them as shields to block enemy attacks. (Dark Crisis: The Dark Army v1 #1)
His costume was created by his best friend Ernie Edgars that masked his identity when he was operating as a hero. (Sideways v1 #1)
Notes
- Sideways was created by Dan DiDio, Justin Jordan and Kenneth Rocafort where he made his first appearance in Sideways v1 #1 (February, 2018).
- On CBR, Dan stated in an interview that, "It's interesting. I've always gravitated to the loner characters, and the characters that really try to find themselves and are looking for ways to really express themselves. I've always found that to be more interesting, and a character you want to really root for. So for me, the creation of Sideways really hearkened back to what I loved about comics when I first started reading them when I was a teenager. I tried to capture some of that ethos for this book."
- In an interview on Comicsbeat, DiDio said, " Because you know, Derek feels isolated because he’s adopted. He has difficulty fitting into school. He’s trying to find his place in the world. And then these powers are thrust upon him. And in some ways, he finds the powers very liberating, but not as Derek. He puts on his costume because he doesn’t feel comfortable enough as Derek to explain who he is because he’s afraid of what doing so would bring to him. So that’s why he ultimately steps out into society as that. He uses the anonymity as a release– as a way to fully express himself."
Appearances
- Sideways v1: (2018)
- Sideways Annual v1:
- Young Justice v3:
- Dark Crisis: The Dark Army v1:
External Links
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