Origin

The extremist were created by Keith Giffen, Gerard Jones and Bart Sears. In a similar fashion as their enemies, the Champions of Angor (Avenger's DC take) and Squadron Supreme (Marvel's doppelganger JLA) , the original Extremists were molded after the most notable Marvel supervillains from that time: Lord Havok (Dr. Doom), Dr. Diehard (Magneto), Dreamslayer (Dormammu), Gorgon (Dr. Octopus) and Tracer (Sabretooth).

Even if their first appearance is in Justice League Europe #15, his paradoxical origin was revealed in Justice League Quarterly #3: five normal humans criminals were trapped in a nuclear explosion and the radiation give them powers. This is a nod on the fact than a lot of Marvel characters have their powers from radiation (From Fantastic Four to Spider-Man)

History

The Extremist Vector

The original Extremists are from the extradimensional world of Angor, same as their enemies, the Champions of Angor. In a bold move, the five more powerful villians united all the supervillians of Angor and take control of their nuclear weapons. When the country leaders refuse their demands, the Extremists let the bombs felt and destroyed the world and themselves too. But that was only the beggining.

Wacky world, an advanced automatized amusement park created robotic duplicates of the Extremists were created as part of a theme attraction for visitors than were not going. The robots from heroes and villians were modeled too closely after the originals and started to fight for real. Eventually the robotic Extremists destroyed all the other characters duplicates and started to believe themselves the real ones. After their triumph, the robots hungered for new worlds to conquer.

The Extremists duplicates were lucky to find one of the surviving Champions, Silver Sorceress and used her connection to Blue Jay to travel to Earth, and tried to destroy the planet in the same way the origianl Extremists destroyed Angor. They were defeated by the surviving Champions and the heroes of the Justice League Europe . However one of the Extremists, Dreamslayer, revealed not to be a robot, having survived the destruction of his world due to his mystical nature. Instead of being deactivated, he was defeated by the Silver Sorceress and supposly killed. He insted was banished to his home dimension. The Extremist robots were taken to "Madame Clouseau's" wax museum in Paris.

Extremists duplicates later appearances

The robots were later reactivated by Dreamslayer, who was possessing Maxwell Lord at the time. Dreamslayer was again defeated by the Sorceress, though at the cost of her own life. The defeat of Dreamslayer deactivated the other Extremists.

Later, Queen Beatriz of Bialya tries to create an army based on the Extremists' technology, tranforming bialbyans volunteers into cyborgs extremists but her plans were foiled by Captain Atom and Extreme Justice. However the political aftermath of this incident culminated in the disbanding of the UN sanctioned league..

New Extremists

While he was trapped in the Astral Plane, Dreamslayer's services were acquired by the Overmaster. Together, they assembled a new group called the New Extremists. After this, Overmaster imprisoned Dreamslayer in the Astral plane again. The New Extremists became part of Overmaster's Cadre. After the defeat of Overmaster, the New Extremists worked as hired thugs.

These new group included: Brute, Cloudburst, Death Angel, Gunshot and Meanstreak. The analogy with Marvel characters (a trait from the original Extremists) is debatable, However, the new extremists would reappear as Angor natives in Convergence.

Return of the Robots

The Extremist robots would later be reactivated again by Twilight to fight Supergirl and Power Girl. However, after the understanding they were robots, the heroines fighted and destroyed the Extremists, leaving only Gorgon "alive".

Earth-8 Extremists

On Earth-8, the Extremists are a group of villainous outlaws who have refused to comply with a law stating that all metahumans need to register with the government (analogous to the way certain Marvel heroes behaved during the Civil War event).

They battle against the Meta Militia, a group led by Tin Man (a parody of Iron Man), and currently reside in a captured country called Slovekia.

They were encountered by Donna Troy, Jason Todd, "Bob" the Monitor, and Kyle Rayner while the heroes were searching for Ray Palmer.

Lord Havok would later refuse to join Monarch's Army , leading to an encounter where he and Monarch fought, allowing Lord Havok to steal some of Monarch's power for later use.

Convergence

In Convergence, the Extremists were selected by Telos to defend their reality (Angor's New York). Set against the heroes from the pre-Flashpoint Gotham City (DC's New Earth circa 2010), the three different teams felt under the determination of the heroes: Barracuda was defeated by the team-up of both Atoms (Palmer and Choi); the core team was tricked by Arsenal (Roy Harper) and the Titans; the Carne lead team was defeated by Batman, Robin, Red Hood and Scarlet. (This last cell of Extremists is composed by members of the New Extremists, originaly native from the main universe. In Convergence they were retroactively made Angor natives).

The core team of original Extremists would later fought against the survivors of Earth-2 and would join the Deimos army. However with the return of Telos and Brainiac, the Extremists and their allies were overwhelmed. With the cleaning of the Telos world, is presumed than this version of the Extremists returned to their original universe/timeline.

Justice League of America: Rebirth

The Extremists had reappered as transdimensional people of Earth-8, where they aare proclaiming had killed all the superheroes of their world. They are opposed by Batman and his new Justice League.

Other Media

The original Extremist (less Dr Diehard) made an appearance in the chapter "Shadow of Hawkman" from the Justice League Unlimited Animated series. In the prologue of the story, they were battling Hawkgirl, Green Lantern, Batman and Vixen.