In its time as a publisher, DC Comics has introduced its fair share of offputting and offensive villains, but none were worse than Hemo-Goblin, a short-lived bad guy who took on the New Guardians. In New Guardians #1, in an attempt at social commentary highlighting real-life problems in the world, the white supremacist vampire who gave anyone it bit HIV/AIDS made its debut. Unfortunately, the villain totally missed the mark and only lasted a single issue.
Hemo-Goblin represented a low point for DC Comics, as the publisher had previously done some incredible stories on issues that shined a light on real-world problems. From Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams' Green Arrow/Green Lantern run that featured Speedy getting hooked on drugs and, more recently, Superman and other heroes ing the fight against climate change, there have been many excellent stories that have tackled issues current happening outside the pages of the comics. However, in the late-80s, DC Comics tried to tackle a handful of real-life topics but did so in one of the most offensive ways imaginable with Hemo-Goblin.
In The New Guardians #1 by Steve Englehart, Joe Staton, Mark Farmer, Anthony Tollin, and John Constanza from DC Comics featured a diverse team of heroes who were given superpowers to form a new group representing the entire human population. In their debut issue, the team sparred with a villain named Hemo-Goblin, a cannibal vampire-like man who white supremacist Janwillem Kroef created to eliminate those who didn't fit under his bigoted ideology. Hemo-Goblin would bite multiple team , but it would turn out that the villain actually was infecting his victims with HIV/AIDS.
While comics have dealt with HIV/AIDS and white supremacy before, the whole execution of Hemo-Goblin is flawed from the beginning. A cannibal vampire created to eat non-whites in South Africa was already an incredibly bizarre way to tackle white supremacy, but the twist that he was infecting people with HIV was entirely unnecessary. The New Guardians would deal with getting infected in subsequent issues, and the social commentary was a bit more apt - although still very of the times. But, Hemo-Goblin was a one-and-done villain for a good reason, as he would die in captivity after succumbing to HIV/AIDS. Mixing real-life issues with an outlandish supervillain made it feel like DC Comics wasn't taking the topics seriously, resulting in a less-then-fleshed-out villain that seemed to be making fun of serious problems in the real world.
In the end, The New Guardians series had some incredibly wacky villains as it tried to tackle real-life issues with the superpowered heroes. After all, the same comic introduced Snowflame, the cocaine-powered supervillain, in the next issue. But, Hemo-Goblin was a considerable miss from a creative standpoint as the white supremacist, HIV-infecting vampire villain was understandably killed for good for being way too offensive in his debut issue at DC Comics.
