Challengers of the Unknown is the title of a comic book

Comic book

A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...

 series used on various occasions by DC Comics

DC Comics

DC Comics, Inc. is one of the largest and most successful companies operating in the market for American comic books and related media. It is the publishing unit of DC Entertainment a company of Warner Bros. Entertainment, which itself is owned by Time Warner...

. Most of these series dealt with the original Challengers of the Unknown

Challengers of the Unknown

The Challengers of the Unknown is a group of fictional characters in comic books published by DC Comics. Created by Jack Kirby, or co-created with Dave Wood , this quartet of adventurers explored science fictional and apparent paranormal occurrences and faced fantastic menaces.Scripts for the first...

. The concept behind this team was a group of individuals surviving a disaster (a plane crash with the original group) and deciding to collectively do something with the "borrowed time" they have left.

On two occasions DC used the name and concept, with a new set of characters, as the basis for a new series. The first of these two, intended to be an ongoing series

Ongoing series

The term "ongoing series" is used in contrast to limited series , a one shot , a graphic novel, or a trade paperback...

, was published from late 1996 to mid 1998. The second was a six-issue limited series

Limited series

A limited series is a comic book series with a set number of installments. A limited series differs from an ongoing series in that the number of issues is determined before production and it differs from a one shot in that it is composed of multiple issues....

 published in 2004.

1996 series

Started as a part of DC's Weirdoverse

Weirdoverse

The Weirdoverse is a name that refers to a group of semi-related comic book series published from late 1996 to 1998 by DC Comics. The idea of Dan Thorsland , the Weirdoverse titles were connected by the fact that they all fell into the mystery/occult genre...

 group of titles, the 1996 series was published for a total of eighteen issues -- cover dated February 1997 to July 1998. The characters were a mix of races and were, like the original group, the only survivors of a plane crash:

• Kenn Kawa: A man of Japan
  Japan
  Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
  
  ese heritage and originally a game designer.
• Clay Brody: A white male, originally a race car driver
  Auto racing
  Auto racing is a motorsport involving the racing of cars for competition. It is one of the world's most watched televised sports.-The beginning of racing:...
  
  .
• Brenda Ruskin: A white woman, originally a physicist
  Physicist
  A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...
  
  .
• Marlon Corbet: An African American
  African American
  African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
  
   man, originally the pilot
  Aviator
  An aviator is a person who flies an aircraft. The first recorded use of the term was in 1887, as a variation of 'aviation', from the Latin avis , coined in 1863 by G. de la Landelle in Aviation Ou Navigation Aérienne...
  
   of the plane that crashed.

The 1996 series was originally conceived as the basis for a television

Television

Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

 series that never came about, as writer Steven Grant

Steven Grant

Steven Grant is an American comic-book writer best known for his 1985-1986 Marvel Comics mini-series Punisher, with artist Mike Zeck and for his creator-owned character Whisper.-Biography:...

 revealed in 2000:

2004 series

The 2004 series was a six-issue limited series, written and drawn by Howard Chaykin

Howard Chaykin

Howard Victor Chaykin is an American comic book writer and artist famous for his innovative storytelling and sometimes controversial material...

. Unlike the other two versions this group didn't originate in a plane crash, instead, it was made up of survivors of a large scale terrorist

Terrorism

Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition...

 attack in Long Beach, California

Long Beach, California

Long Beach is a city situated in Los Angeles County in Southern California, on the Pacific coast of the United States. The city is the 36th-largest city in the nation and the seventh-largest in California. As of 2010, its population was 462,257...

:

• Zach Dyamond
• Tessa Crowne
• Rydell Starr
• Kendra Harte
• Holden Crosse

Collected editions

Chaykin's series have been collected into a trade paperback

Trade paperback (comics)

In comics, a trade paperback is a collection of stories originally published in comic books, reprinted in book format, usually capturing one story arc from a single title or a series of stories with a connected story arc or common theme from one or more titles...

:

• Challengers of the Unknown: Stolen Moments, Borrowed Time (March 2006, ISBN 1-4012-0941-6).