![]() ![]() Apocalyptic circumstances lead to Cliff receiving a new human brain and the Chief being altered so he can live as simply a head. Rebis and Crazy Jane have both been left to retire on Danny the World. Dorothy Spinner is living on her own on Earth, the Chief has been reduced to a severed head after being attacked by the Candlemaker, and Robotman’s new digital brain is glitching out. Pollack simply establishes the new status quo by immediately picking up where Morrison left off. Covers were supplied by Tom Taggart and Kyle Baker. Rachel Pollack’s time as Doom Patrol’s writer started at issue #64, with a three-part arc called “Sliding in the Wreckage.” The title is of course a callback to Morrison’s opening arc, “Crawling from the Wreckage.” While Richard Case, the main artist to work on Morrison’s run, handled the majority of #64-66, penciling duties were then taken over by Linda Medley, Scot Eaton, Eric Shanower, Mark Wheatley, Ted McKeever, the Pander Bros., and Jamie Tolagson. Unfortunately, Kate got summarily fridged in John Arcudi’s run so that Robotman would have a tragedy to angst over and DC has shown no desire or attempt to bring her back. Kate is infamously one of the earliest transgender superheroes created by a transgender writer. Most importantly, Pollack’s era featured the creation of Kate Godwin, the hero also known as Coagula. Her run also featured a lot of sex and queer-positive narratives, and evolved from Morrison’s theme of “Normal vs Weird” to “Stagnancy vs Growth.” Critics have also rallied against Pollack breaking up Robotman and Crazy Jane (although Pollack has shared that Morrison asked subsequent writers not to include Kay Challis in their storylines).īut on closer inspection, it’s fair to say Rachel Pollack did far more with the Doom Patrol’s female members than Morrison ever did. The main argument seems to be that she was only trying to copy Morrison’s brand of weirdness. It’s concerning to see the lack of attention and amount of disrespect Pollack’s run tends to receive. Grant Morrison even used Dream in his JLA run. Geoff Johns’ JSA run made it a plot point to reference Hector and Lyta Hall’s connection to The Sandman in that their son was the new incarnation of Dream. Recall how Animal Man appeared in Peter David’s Aquaman looking exactly as he did in his final Vertigo issues. However, there have been notable exceptions. ![]() For years there’s been debate on where those titles, such as Kid Eternity, Black Orchid, Animal Man, Shade the Changing Man, Swamp Thing, Hellblazer, and The Sandman, fall within DC’s continuity. When DC released an updated trade collection of Vertigo’s Children’s Crusade crossover, Neil Gaiman’s heavy rewrite of the entire event greatly diminished Rachel Pollack’s contribution to the story by removing almost every aspect that featured Dorothy Spinner, a character with roots in both Kupperberg and Morrison’s Doom Patrols as well as Rachel Pollack’s take on the team.įinally, there’s no reference to anything from Pollack’s era in Gerard Way’s Doom Patrol books that I can find, even though Way claimed to have interviewed Pollack for the series.Īt least some of this lack of acknowledgment comes from Pollack’s run being one of the first books published under DC’s Vertigo banner. Yet any glimpse of the Pollack era is skipped over to head straight into the Arcudi era. ![]() More distressingly, Giffen’s series seemed to operate in a system of story arcs calling back to previous DP eras in the order by which they were published. That might make some sense since Larry Trainor and Rita Farr weren’t involved with the Pollack Doom Patrol, but even Cliff Steele’s focus issue leaves that era unattended. In Keith Giffen’s Doom Patrol run, there’s absolutely no mention of Pollack’s version of the team in any of the character spotlight issues. When Cliff starts remembering teammates from the past Doom Patrols, he doesn’t mention Kate Godwin or the Bandage People at all. And when Geoff Johns restored the Doom Patrol’s history during Infinite Crisis, the only visible reference to Pollack’s tenure was a brief image of Niles Caulder’s time as a severed head. To fans of Pollack’s characters, this felt like an incredibly cheap excuse to reset the status quo.
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