Thinking Hypothetically: The Silver Age Doom Patrol
/It's a lazy Saturday here at the John pad, so I'm going to engage in some thought-exercise. Specifically, I'm going to try to figure out just what kind of chance the members of the 1960s version of the Doom Patrol would have had if they'd applied for membership in the Legion of Super-Heroes.
I've changed things up a bit since the last time I did this: instead of arbitrarily deciding whether someone gets in or not I'm going to give everyone a hundred points, then subtract a varying amount based on any ways in which they don't qualify for Legion membership (being 25 might lose you 5 points, while being as old as time itself would bump it up to 20) However many points are left at the end of my brutal evaluation process will be the likelihood of their admittance into the LSH, percentage-style. And then, being a well-rounded nerd, I'm going to roll 2d10 to see if they get in.
Today we'll be doing things in reverse alphabetical order!
Robotman
Cliff Steele, former racecar driver, had his brain placed in a powerful robotic shell following a terrible accident. He's been the Martian Manhunter of the Doom Patrol, having been a member of every incarnation so far. And noone has yet stabbed him fatally with a fire spear!
Penalties
Over 18: -5 points
No powers/duplicate powers/device-based powers: -15 points (no matter how he swings it he's going to get dinged here. He's either an ordinary guy, a guy whose power is being made of metal [which is Ferro Lad's schtick] or is reliant on a robot body. No way someone isn't going to bring that up).
Likely to mouth off during the interview: -10 points
Not too bad, actually. The simplicity of Cliff's position is his strength here - he's a brain in a jar in a robot. If he applied post Sun Eater then there could hardly be any arguments against the usefulness of having a metal guy around. Plus, Robotman's cavalier attitude toward his body comes in handy with surprising frequency. I've seen him rip off his limbs to use as missiles or hurl himself into machinery to gum up the works with surprising frequency - he'd be worth having around for the novelty factor of seeing Mordru get a robo-leg upside the head during one of his soliloquies, if nothing else. And Brainiac 5 would have the fun of replacing his various parts. Try to tell me that he wouldn't enjoy that.
The only real problem is that Mr Steele here is a bit of a big mouth, with a penchant for insulting people at the slightest provocation. I reckon that there's a pretty good chance of him calling someone "something-puss" or "something-snoot" during the interview, with the "something" being replaced by physical idiosyncrasy. Chameleon Boy, for example, would be "pumpkin-snoot".
Still, he stands at an astonishing 70%. Let's get out the old dice and see... hooray! He's in!
Negative Man
Larry Trainor was a test pilot who flew too high one day and was filled with radiation. Now he himself is radioactive, necessitating that he wear specially-treated bandages in order to keep the people around him safe. On the plus side, he can release the super-fast energy being Negative Man from his body in order to do his bidding. On the minus: if Negative Man is away for more than sixty seconds, Larry will die.
Penalties
Over 18: -5 points
Drawback ("If your bandages were to slip off during a mission, you could irradiate and kill your teammates!"): -10 points
Another drawback ("What if Negative Man were away too long and you died? We'd never finish a mission that way."): -10 points
Very likely to mouth off during the interview: -20 points
Larry's got more bankable powers than Robotman but on the other hand has a heck of a lot more negative (ha!) traits. Barring the super-generalists like Superboy and Ultra Boy, the Legion is traditionally low on speddy types, so he's doing all right there, as well as with the radio energy that he is usually described as crackling with. A little fancy talk to downplay the inherent downsides to the Negative Man condition, maybe a bit of a mention of the whole pilot thing along with a hint that he'd only be too happy to fly the Legion Cruiser on missions (I'm sure that they need more pilots - half the damn team flies outside of the spaceship) and he's in.
Problem is, Larry's got a bigger mouth than Robotman. He starts more of their many fights and definitely starts the name-calling more than his share of the time. There's no way he gets through the judging process without calling someone a "tin-plated gavel jockey" or something equally nonsensical. There might even be a fist-fight.
It's an even fifty-fifty chance for Larry Trainor, folks. And... he doesn't get in! Larry ends up joining the Legion of Substitute Heroes for about two weeks before he punches out Stone Boy during an argument over a sandwich and is asked to leave.
Mento
Steve Dayton! Billionaire industrialist, philanthropist, inventor, super-hero! Steve Dayton, AKA Mento! Not really a member of the Doom Patrol, but associated heavily-enough with them that I include him here.
Penalties
Over 18: -5 points
Uses a device (the 'Mento helmet') to achieve his powers: -15 points (I knocked off 5 points because there's some indication that the helmet just amplifies some powers that he already possesses)
Somewhat likely to mouth off during the interview: -10 points
More than a little creepy: -10 points
Possible criminal record: -20 points
Mento is an interesting character but only occasionally a likeable one. Yes, he has telekinetic powers in addition to being in top athletic condition, but he's also a bit of an arrogant dick. Since he only really associated with the Doom Patrol in order to get into Elasti-Girl's pants I have to assume that that would be his motivation for applying for Legion Membership as well. The only question would be: who is he stalking? Shrinking Violet? Triplicate Girl? Princess Projectra? Whoever it was, it'd likely come up at the interview. Steve is a little more cool-headed than Larry or Robotman but is more than ready to rise to any baiting that he might encounter. Throw in the fact that he uses a device to gain his powers and the fact that he might have a record either for insider trading or for this sort of thing:
and his score is down to a measly 40 percent. Did he get in? Nope! Bitter, Steve takes to the drink, slowly losing his holdings to RJ Brande's corporate takeovers and racking up an impressive number of restraning orders from female super-heroes.
Elasti-Girl
Rita Farr was a movie star and (I think) an Olympic swimmer before she was exposed to strange gases and gained the power to grow or shrink at will. Later, she refined the ability so that she could grow only a part of herself at a time.
Penalties
Over 18: -5 points
Duplicate powers (Shrinking Violet, Colossal Boy): -20 points
Bit of a pushover: -5 points
Now Rita, she's a good fit for the Legion. She's got a fairly straightforward power, no major personality flaws and is quite good at the actual mechanics of super-heroing. As noted above, though, she can be pretty passive at times - two to four men at a time were usually squabbling over her in the old Doom Patrol comics and she was not terrific at doing much more than going with the flow. I reckon that if Superboy or someone started claiming that "If you suddenly expanded while we were all in an elevator or something then you could seriously harm all of us. Except me. Unless you're magic." then she might not do more than agree with him and slink out of the room. Or maybe not - she did show some spine from time to time.
Okay, assuming that she emphasized the usefulness of being able to grow parts of herself instead of the part where she has powers that are already represented on the Legion... 75 percent chance. Go, Elasti-Girl! And...aw. She didn't make it. Reverting to her sex-object roots, Rita went on to date Sun Boy, Matter-Eater Lad and Chemical King in quick succession before settling down with Kid Psycho in a little split-level Moon Dome.
The Chief
Niles Caulder is the genius behind the Doom Patrol: the man who placed Cliff Steele's brain into the Robotman body, who coordinates the Patrol's activities and who creates all of the scientific devices that they require to fight monsters and other weirdies.
Penalties
Over 50: -10 points
Duplicate powers (Brainiac 5, Rond Vidar): -15 points
Drawback ("Dude, you're an old man in a wheelchair."): -20 points
Aloof: -5 points
The Chief is going to have a hard time winning over the Legion. Put aside the fact that he's older than most of their parents or that he's used to being in charge of a team and is likely to put people off with his attitude - the guy's in a wheelchair due to supervillain misadventure. It's highly likely that Wildfire is going to walk over and tip him onto the floor as an illustration of why they're going to reject him. Of course, Niles Caulder doesn't roll around in just any old wheelchair, and is likely to pull what I like to call a Val Armorr Manouvre: beating up a Legionnaire to prove that you can cut it in the Legion. In Niles' case, there's a giant mechanical arm in the back of the thing for smacking people around, plus a machine gun in the arm.
Of course, the Legion already has a couple of guys whose claims to fame are their big brains. Do they want someone who specializes in Sixties-style mad science cluttering up their lab? Let's see: another no. Well, don't worry about old Niles. He gathers together a rag-tag team of heroes like The Mess and Arm Fall-Off Boy and sets out to prove that they're more than their freakish deformities. Then, years later, Grant Morrison writes their adventures. The Mess becomes a hermaphroditic comet with some pretty interesting theories about popular radio!
Beast Boy
Look everyone, it's Garfield "Gar" Logan! Given an experimental serum when dying of a rare illness, he turned green and gained the ability to turn into various animals! If you grew up during the Eighties or Nineties, you might know him better as Changeling!
Penalties
Kind of likely to mouth off during interview: -15 points
Power duplication (Chameleon Boy): -10 points
Same name as a dead guy: -5 points
Bonus
Great hair: +5 points
Beast Boy is a bit of a troubled lad as a result of being orphaned at a young age and then entrusted to a scheming uncle who was interested in his inheritance and nothing else, but the structure of a group like the Legion might be just what he needs. It has to be better than him hanging around with the Doom Patrol, for heavens' sake - two grown men yelling at him and calling him names in Sixties lingo can't help his self-esteem. As long as he doesn't antagonize the Legion members like he did the original Teen Titans, he'll be fine. His powers are only kind of like Chameleon Boy's, after all (especially if Reep can grow an imagination) and I'm sure that Brainiac 5 would like to see another green face around the Clubhouse. After all, it's not like he's a token or anything - surely the Legion can have more than one guy of a certain colour at a time. Right?
Beast Boy has the same name as the deceased semi-villainous former member of the Heroes of Lallor, but the creepiness of that is offset by his great hair, and by the fact that he retained that hair, well...
... that's right. He kept his wicked mop-top while he was in animal form. How could the Legion resist that? 75 percent chance of getting in and... he gets in!
Robotman and Beast Boy are our newest members of Johnathan's Possible Legion of Maybe Super-Heroes, who need a better name! Feel free to suggest one!
Until next time, mes amis.
Hmm. I'm not too sure about this series. I mean, it's basically Oracle vs Calculator, which was among the best subplots of Birds of Prey, but this Oracle isn't quite as interesting. Maybe it's the fact that this is a distinct series - some of the character that was built up over the course of n issues had to be discarded in order to keep people who didn't read those issues but are following Battle for the Cowl in the loop. So Oracle spends some time being stoic about her paralysis and gets mugged and kicks the muggers asses and gets mistaken for an agent of the real/male Oracle. It makes me wish that this were just a crossover sneaking into a series that I read, much as I normally dislike that.
The Phantom appeals to me in theory: line of adventurers stretching back hundreds of years and doling out justice in a purple union suit, whoopee! So much to read, so little time, though: the only time that I've ever read the Phantom was as a part of a 1980s team called Defenders of the Earth, with Flash Gordon and Mandrake the Magician, I think. Their battle cry wasn't "Liscenced Properties Assemble!" but it should have been.
I know next to nothing about American McGee. I don't, for example, know whether he is the one that sticks his name in front of the titles of his projects. Heck, I haven't even played any of his games. Well, we had a copy of American McGee's Alice when I was in university but nobody had a computer that would play it unless we turned the graphics down to Virtua Fighter levels, which detracted from the dark reimagining. Anyway, it's a shame that all I have to judge him by is this comic. Heck, he didn't even write it (unless he is also this "Dwight L. MacPherson", possibly for tax reasons). Bah. I know that it's a tie-in to a video game (to the extent that the Grimm character gets what look to be in-game hints throughout the comic) but that's no excuse. From what I gather, American McGee's Grimm is about taking the happy-go-lucky fairy tales of today back to their gross and violent roots. This is an interesting concept, I admit. BUT! It is neither interesting nor clever to then try to do the same thing to comic books by essentially ignoring anything that has happened artistically or naratively in the last forty years. Grimm drops into a meeting of Sixties-esque villains and makes them dark and spikey and then takes them off to kill super-heroes. That is not subversive, Grimm - that is what we call The Early Nineties. Bah.
Speaking of The Early Nineties, remember Image Comics back then? Home of spikey violence and questionable plotting? How happy am I that it eventually became this neato home for creator-owned comicing (and they still have a little spikey violence if you like that sort of thing, don't worry). Now you got stuff like Invincible and Killer of Demons and Johnny Monster, which is a fun tale about a guy who fights creatures that resemble Sixties Marvel monsters and who secretly was raised by them and works to keep them safe rather than killing them like his fellow monster hunters. You got monsters and fighting and tentacle beasts and a little moral about communication. I'd check out a second series.
There's an interesting trend in recent years toward writing tales where those who write about the fantastic end up in fantastic adventures themselves. I have a novel somewhere in which Arthur Conan Doyle battles secret cults and Lovecraftian horrors and a few years ago I read a decent little comic about Charles Fort... battling Lovecraftian horrors. Well, now it's Lovecraft's turn to battle his own horrors, which should please Doyle and Fort. And it's good! H.P. is written (by Mac Carter) super-well: he's properly awkward and verbose, he has trouble with women and his aunts are creepy. The art is fantastic - check out the crazy-good, hyper-kinetic scene in the jazz club! Tony Salmans draws the Twenties astonishingly well - he both conveys why flappers are so appealing and that they weren't all ephemeral waifs.
More Green Lantern fun. I'm pretty fond of the Corps and now of the Corps-es (and in this series, there are plenty of corpses) - having a superteam where everyone has the same abilities and thus cannot be defined solely by their powers leaves a lot more room for neato personalities. Or for countless weird aliens to bump off in an indiscriminate manner, true, but I think that this series manages to fall somewhere in the middle of that spectrum. The whole buildup to Blackest Night is being handled pretty damn well, I reckon, even though Dan Didio and others have been flinging spoilers to the winds for more than a year (oh look, an ad for Blackest Night toys! And there's a character that hasn't appeared in the comic yet! I sense... a spoiled dramatic reveal!) so it's more like when you watch The Sixth Sense again - you spend a lot of time admiring the mechanics of the storytelling process rather than the story itself. Not that the story isn't great - there's a giant snake in this one! And a dramatic reveal!
Another story dealing with craziness in DC Outer Space. Vril Dox (aka Brainiac 2) has been ousted from L.E.G.I.O.N. again and is hopping around the universe gathering a team in order to reclaim his robot space police force. He's got a brainfull of information sent into the past by Querl Dox (aka Brainiac 5) in order to ensure that his ancestor lives long enough to spawn a little Brainiac 3 and continue the bloodline, though I thought that that was already taken care of back in the L.E.G.I.O.N '9X days with his dictatorial kid Lyrl Dox. Eh, what do I know. As usual, there are plenty of links to Legion of Super-Heroes future-continuity, now with more justificacation than ever thanks to the aforementioned brainfull of information. And of course he's acting like a total bastard, being Vril Dox. A magnificent bastard!
Speaking of bastards, though Mysterius has a more endearing sort of bastardry than Dox does, this series continues to be great. This issue: a really cool new character with a neato history and a smart plan! And not necessarily 100% evil! There's lotsa delicious moral ambiguity in Mysterius - Jeff Parker ain't no Objectivist, that's for sure. Also: "tall and paunchy" and "short and curvy" are underused body types in the funny books. Aw, I won't go on and on about this one - there's a relevant interview just a few posts away, after all. The writing is great, the art is great... definitely a series to check out.
Of course, as soon as the Legionnaires turn their backs, some asshole aliens show up - these ones seem to have evolved from replilian beavers. Maybe they're from Tree World!
Well, at least they had the forethought necessary to keep the Legion from swooping in as soon as they cleared the ionosphere and... HEY! That is clearly a piece of glass on the side of that thing! And (scroll, scroll) they have glass cockpits on their space ships! I am so damn confused by these guys.
No, no. No, they're stealing glass. They're putting a lot of effort into stealing glass.
Superboy shows up just after the Subs finish mopping up, and the two Legions finally meet! The Substitute Heroes, despite having just stopped a fleet of technologically-advanced-if dumb aliens with the super-powers equivalent of a bag of firecrackers, are riddled with low self-esteem and all worried that the Legion will make them stop hanging around in a cave and picking up after them. Instead, the Legionnaires are so impressed that they offer to make one member of the Substitute Legion a super-duper official Legion member.
Polar Boy gets the first assignment and it's a bit of a doozy. The Legion sure isn't slacking on the "challenging" aspect of these tests.
Meanwhile, "the Human Guinea Pigs" is a great name both for a scientific group and for a band. It doesn''t really come up later on in the comic but I bet that they're young mavericks, flouting the established conventions of Thirtieth Century scientific research and testing strange formulas on each other because they can't get the funding to purchase convicts and wearing their hair in unconventional 
Polar Boy's game to try, though, which is one reason that I like him so much. If you put me in a room with cold powers and orders to thaw some frozen guys the best I'd come up with would probably be something along the lines of "Well, they're frozen all right. I wonder what will happen if I cool them down even more? Maybe they'll loop around to being warm 
Safety considerations aside, he does it and does it in style, using his power to protect himself from the blazing heat while baking the scientists to a crisp golden brown, if my youthful experiments with the noble frozen meat pie are applicable here.
A good first showing for the Substitute Heroes, even if it set back cryogenic research by decades ("the freezing works okay, but we just can't get the thawing oven hot enough" "Try the self-cleaning setting!") and made that one scientist quite a bit tubbier somehow.
Night Girl's plan is to have the Vannar citizenry burn huge piles of coal around the city in order to block out the sun and thus deprive Sun Woman of the source of her powers.
Anyway, that's that for Sun Woman, except for one more panel where she's looking super pissed-off as Night Girl flies her off to jail. Note that Night Girl, in addition to being well-dressed, knows how to make an entrance. The only thing that would have made this whole thing better is if she had done it a few feet to the left and turned it into a double uppercut. Violence solves everything, kids!
What?
I think that this is the point tthat the Legion Task Selection Squad gives up. Despite all of their efforts, those damn Subbies just keep finishing their tasks. Besides, the next challenger is Stone Boy - no carefully tailored task for him, no sir, just some big generic monster with a huge ass.
A while back (I'd link to it but I can't find the damn post), Rachelle pointed out that various Green Lanterns occasionally use their rings to facilitate extreme laziness, to do something like picking up a piece of paper off of the floor. Saturn Girl seems to have fallen into that same habit here. Did she really need to read Stone Boy's mind to figure out what he was doing, or is there something else going on here? Did she lose sight of him and want to avoid using her neck and/or eye muscles to look around (overly-developed eyes are a real turn-off, ladies)? Or is it that she has only ever seen a hole being dug by a swarm of tiny DTCH-DGGR class robots and that the concept of manual labour was so alien to her that she had to violate someone's consciousness before she could reconcile what her eyes were telling her with reality? maybe there's a reason that the 
Stone Boy is the winner! He was all selfless and so forth! Yay! Somehow this is more impressive than flying to the core of the planet!
