People Like Us Postmodernism and Otherness in Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol

FACULTADE DE FILOLOXÍA DEPARTAMENTO DE FILOLOXÍA INGLESA E ALEMÁ People Like Us Postmodernism and Otherness in Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol Marta Pastoriza González | Superviado por Noemí Pereira Ares | Grao en lingua e literatura inglesas Liña temática: Literatura e cultura en lingua inglesa 2022/2023 ug FACULTADE DE FIL OL OXÍA -- - -- --·---·---- - UNI VER SI DAD E DE SA NllA GO DF: CO MPOSTE LA FACULfADE DE FILOLOXÍA [ 9 NOV . 2 02 2 1 ENTRADA CUBRIR ESTE FORM UL ARIO ELECTRONICAMENTE .__ _ __..; N ~ º ..;.; · ·.;.;; · · · .;.;;···;,:;· · ·;,:;··· ;,;;. ···;.:;· · ·;,;;.····;,;;. " ';,;;. " ';,;;."".;,;;."•;,;;.··--_, Formulario de delimitación do título e resumo Traballo de Fin de Grao curso 2022/2023 APELIDOS E NOME: P astor i za González, Roq ue GRAO EN: Lingua e Lit er atu ra Ingle sas (NO CASO DE MODERNAS) MENCIÓN EN: TITOR/A: Pe re ir a Ares, Noemí LIÑA TEMÁTICA ASIGNADA: Li teratura e c ultura en lingua inglesa SOLICITO a aprobación do seguinte título e resumo: Título: "People Like Us": Postmodernism and otherness in Grant Morrison's Doom Potro/ Resumo [na lingua en que se vai redacta-lo TFG ; e ntr e 1000 e 2000 caracteres]: Sin ce its inception, seq uential a rt h as been s tru gg ling to be recognized asan independe nt a rt form and no ta mer e product deriv ed from the amalgamation of te xt and imag es . Under postmodernity, a nd particularly a ft er th e publication of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon's seminal work Wotchmen (1986}, several comi cbook authors have so ug ht to inject the medium with n ew id eas , incorporating philosophical and inte rt extual elements to th eir works, while s imult aneously widening the scope of re pr ese ntation and giving voice to peripheral, marginal and liminal ide ntiti es previously underrepresented in lit erat ur e and the arts. Departing from these premises, th e present thesis intends to examine Gra nt Morrison's run on Doom Potro/ (1989-1993} both as a work th at pa rtakes in the p os tmodern va l or i za tion of intertextuality andas a te xt th at puts "ot herness" at the centre by presenting a panoply of characters that embody a wide range of liminal a nd peripheral iden titie s. To this end, the study will be struc tur ed into two main parts th at are nonetheless closely related. In the first part, 1 shall l ay bare the main theorical concepts informing the s tud y, engagin g, int er ali a, with postmodernism and th e notion of ot hern ess . This will be followed by a clase reading of M or ri so n's work in which 1 shall examine its postmodern eleme nt s a nd , most import antl y, its attempt to blur the lines between the margins and th e putative ce ntr e. San tiago de Compostel a, 2 de novembro de 2022. SR A. PRE SI DE N TA DA CO MISIÓN DO TRABA L LO DE F IN DE GRAO Sinatura do/a interesado/a - Visto e prace (s inatura do/a ti tor/a) PEREI RA ¡ 1 Firmado di gitalmente por PERE IR A ARE S ARES NOEM I N OEM l- 4 737 0 505G 47370505G F ec ha :2 0 22.1 1.02 -I 23 :44 :5 9 +o 1 '0Q' S RA . PRE SIDENTA DA C OM ISI ÓN DO TRABALLO DE FIN DE GRAO Aprobado pola Comis ión do Trabal lo de Fin de Grao coa data Eu, dona Marta Pastoriza González, con DNI 53863431F, declaro que o presente Traballo de Fin de Grao é orixinal, non tendo sido empregada ningunha fonte sen ser referenciada. Para que así conste, asino o presente documento, en Santiago de Compostela, a 14 de xuño de 2022. Asdo.: Marta Pastoriza González. -Grant Morrison To my mother, my friends, and everyone who has dealt with me during this strange, strange time in my life Table of Contents Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 2 I. Theoretical Framework ............................................................................................................... 5 1.1 “Who Watches the Watchmen?”: Grant Morrison, Alan Moore, and the Birth of Postmodernism in Superhero Comics................................................................................. 5 1.2 “Is he Man, or Monster… or is he Both?”: An Introduction to Otherness and its Implications in Superhero Fiction .................................................................................... 15 II. Analysis .................................................................................................................................... 23 2.1 “No Good, No Evil, No Truth, No Reason”: The Postmodern in Doom Patrol ........... 23 2.2 “Nobody Wants to Be a Brain in a Robot Body”: the treatment of otherness in Doom Patrol .............................................................................................................................. 30 2.3 “There Is Another World”: Danny the Street and Grant Morrison’s Subaltern Utopia 38 Conclusion..................................................................................................................................... 41 Works Cited .................................................................................................................................. 43 2 Introduction In February of 1989, writer Grant Morrison and artist Richard Case took over the creative duties on the second volume 1 of Detective Comics’ superhero publication Doom Patrol. The volume, a 2-year-long attempted sequel to the fictional team introduced in the science fiction publication My Greatest Adventure by Arnold Drake, Bob Haney, and Bruno Premiani, had been long suffering from a steep decline in readership, and it was through a deal with Paul Kupperberg, the then-current writer for the publication, that Morrison was given the chance to take over as an executive decision to try to increase the title’s popularity, and to make it stand out from its contemporaries. This deal involved the calculated removal from the fiction of every character Morrison was uninterested in writing about, giving them 2 a relatively blank canvas from which to begin crafting the stories they wanted to tell. Tellingly, the characters Morrison decided to dispose of were far more aligned with the traditional idea of a superhero than the ones that were allowed to remain in the story –all either physically and/or mentally disabled, or having otherwise failed to meet the expectations of normativity that society had imposed upon them. Their superhuman abilities, much like those of Negative Man, Robotman and Elasti-Girl, the original triplet that conformed the Doom Patrol in the Drake and Haney run, 3 were not seen by the narrative as blessings; they were depicted as complex and life-changing disabilities that, under the right circumstances, could be used for the benefit of society. The Doom Patrol, thus, crawled from the wreckage guided by Morrison’s pen, and continued their adventures in the 45 issues that are the subject of this dissertation. This version 1 In serialised comics, “volume” refers to a collection of consecutive issues of the same series, and is used to differentiate series with the same title once their numbering is restarted for any number of reasons. 2 Grant Morrison identifies as non-binary and allegedly uses the singular “they” to refer to themself. This convention will be followed through the remainder of this thesis. 3 A “run”, in the context of serialised comics, is understood as the corpus of –for the most part– consecutive monthly issues authored by a specific writer, and is not necessarily tied to the official numbering of the publication. The second volume of Doom Patrol is composed of three runs: Paul Kupperberg’s (#1-18), Grant Morrison’s (#19-63) and Rachel Pollack’s (#64-87). 3 of the Doom Patrol was unlike anything that had come before it, something that Morrison immediately made evident by abandoning the mostly formulaic and intellectually unremarkable stories Kupperberg had been writing up to that point. Instead, they introduced surrealist and postmodernist elements to the publication, peppering it with references to literary fiction, political ideologies, and philosophical concepts. Every issue and every page were full of both overt and implicit intertextual references which, far from being mere aesthetical choices, gave depth to the stories and characters portrayed within them, and blended seemingly into a literary cocktail that looked to challenge the mere idea of canonicity by seamlessly integrating into itself references to both contemporary popular culture and “high art”. This wordless questioning of the concept of canon also extended to the depictions of the run’s main characters, each of them embodying a different set of paradoxical and peripheral identities that defied classification and sought to challenge the parameters by which an individual or group was designated “normal”, functional, and valid. This dissertation, therefore, has a double-edged focus: it seeks to analyse both the postmodernist elements of Morrison’s Doom Patrol as well as the peripheral and othering position of the book’s main characters in order to explore how the two subjects bleed into one another to express the author’s opposition to canonical structures and traditional power dynamics, along with their vision of the figure of the superhero as a potentially positive power fantasy. In order to achieve this, this dissertation will rely on close reading strategies and deploy different theoretical frameworks to illuminate the analysis of Morrison’s work. The first section aims to provide a definition of what is putatively understood as “postmodernism”, and to enumerate its main characteristics through the writings of key thinkers. The concept of intertextuality and the perceived separation between high art and mass culture will also be explored to properly contextualize the parodic and counter-cultural elements featured in the book. The term “otherness” will then be defined and analysed through the work of different 4 critics in order to provide the necessary framework to understand the subaltern and marginal themes of Doom Patrol. Additionally, this section will illuminate these terms’ historical importance within superhero fiction, as well as the reasons as to why they became particularly relevant during the time period in which Doom Patrol was being published. The second section of this dissertation serves to put into practice the concepts explored in the first one by analysing how Grant Morrison utilises postmodernism to criticise and parody the superhero genre’s main tenets, particularly through the relativisation of concepts such as good, evil, and normativity, and especially through the character of Mr. Nobody. Otherness will be analysed in regards to how the main characters of Morrison’s run interact with their world and each-other, providing an extensive critique of traditional power structures and placing special emphasis on the elements of their bodies and minds that mark them as “others”. The close reading will finish with an explanation of how the elements of postmodernism and otherness come together into a comprehensive thesis that rejects the very existence of a status quo and embraces the subaltern in all of its forms. 11 While Morrison, at the time, was already writing their own independent superhero comic in Zenith (1987-1992), it was their involvement with DC Comics that can be seen as the inception of the particular brand of postmodernism that would permeate through their Doom Patrol run. Their choice to venture into mainstream superhero comics through Animal Man in 1988 was, according to Martin Holub (2011, p. 46), “a postmodern act in itself”, in the sense that the superhero genre was “frowned upon by literary circles,” yet Morrison still sought to imbue the text with layers of social commentary, deconstruction of genre tropes, and themes that ran parallel to the main character’s development. Even the choice of character appears to show a sort of postmodernist intent from Morrison’s part: in spite of Animal Man’s pre-existing years of continuity, he was a grossly underdeveloped character who had “never had a book of his own, never a miniseries, never even a major role in the DC Universe” (Carpenter, 2016, p. 115). Though DC was looking for them to write another subversive, revisionist superhero story in the vein of Watchmen, Morrison would break the rules of superhero storytelling in a vastly different way. They would demonstrate “both a love for and distrust of comic book conventions” (Carpenter, 2016, p. 116) by embracing the absurdity of the superhero while still psychologically grounding Buddy Baker, the titular Animal Man, and analysing the role of a character often considered inconsequential in a far larger fictional universe. Unlike Moore, Morrison would constantly bring attention to the fact that the reader is, in fact, consuming a superhero comic through the implementation of subtle metanarrative humour that used the genre’s conventions to its advantage. A clear example is their subversive play with the “guest star” trope, usually a commercial ploy to bring attention to a lesser known character by including them in a higher profile publication for at least an issue. Morrison decided to bring Superman into the pages of Animal Man, a character who, far from fitting the profile of the traditionally lesser-known characters included in these crossovers, would completely overshadow –both in popularity and physical strength– the titular character in his own 12 publication, a deliberate artistic choice designed to feed into the themes of identity Morrison had introduced earlier in the book. Baker was also brought to his logical political extreme by being turned into an activist fighting for the rights of animals and even becoming a vegetarian, ideals that were born from his supernatural ability to empathise and borrow the powers of the animals around him. Where Watchmen was deconstructive and analytical, Animal Man was parodic and subversive, though both books certainly engaged with the same set of tropes and assumptions, and both actively worked toward tearing them down. The difference was key: Moore sought to ridicule and de-mystify the figure of the superhero as a power fantasy, while Morrison, through their body of work, openly embraced it. Because, while Moore argues that if superheroes were to somehow appear in the real world, they would be fascistic and uncaring, Morrison believes that it is useless to discuss such a hypothetical when these characters have never existed. They argue that “[s]uperheroes aren’t real, but they are absolutely real as drawings on paper,” and that “only on paper can we be assured that they are real.” (Morrison, 2011) Superheroes, under Morrison’s pen, are valuable precisely because they are fictitious power fantasies, and they serve the narrative purpose to influence the reader’s morality without having to physically exist outside of the paper by challenging the ideas of what “good” and “evil” truly meant. This intent was fundamentally at odds with the main regulations of the CCA, which were designed to present a simplified, non-confrontational version of superhero narratives in which the relationships between truth, power, and normativity were seldom allowed to be explored in any meaningful way. For decades, the figure of the superhero had been that of a defender of the status quo, never allowed to develop a moral consciousness beyond what was considered socially acceptable, and therefore never aligning itself with any sort of minority group or counter-cultural political ideologies. Animal Man and its contemporaries were, however, complex works that delved into the political implications of said status quo, with both Moore 13 and Morrison dipping their toes into feminism, minority narratives, and the nature of good and evil as monolithic, tangible ideas. The main characters in these works, be it implicitly or explicitly, challenged the power relationships that governed their worlds in ways that no other book in the medium had done before. However, the main feature that separates the two authors’ processes of deconstruction was that, while Moore sought to destroy the traditional idea of the superhero to expose the flaws inherent to the genre’s particular brand of storytelling, Morrison was looking to pick apart the pieces and build something new from them, to show the world how powerful superhero narratives could be to examine real-world problems without resorting to realism. They, therefore, follow their deconstruction with the creation of a new kind of fantasy that, in their words, can only be realised on paper: a power fantasy for those groups who specifically lack one. What makes Morrison’s early works in Animal Man and Doom Patrol particularly interesting, however, is the fact that they were published during the beginning of a period of transition that would lead to what is today known as the “Dark Age” of comics. This period is characterised by the increasingly desperate attempts to imitate the style of British authors’ works by less involved writers. The necessity for moral complexity, deconstruction, and thematic exploration gave way to a pursuit of surface-level “mature” elements that, while certainly inspired by the body of work of authors such as Moore and Frank Miller, 6 lacked the depth and postmodernist analysis that had characterised them. Mainstream readers, seeking works of a similar tone and subject matter to Moore and Gibbons’ seminal work, were driven toward these violent, cynical works that plagued mainstream publications during the late eighties and most of the nineties. Their lack of any truly postmodernist analysis, as well as their dwelling on surface-level elements such as gratuitous violence, blood, drug-use and explicit 6 Author of The Dark Knight Returns (1984), a work often cited alongside Moore’s Watchmen as one of the kickstarters of the Dark Age of comics. Its depiction of an older, anti-heroic version of Batman would prove key in shaping the morality of superhero comics for decades to come. 14 depictions of sexuality, are imperative to understand one of the main driving forces behind Doom Patrol, as Morrison was as critical about their mindless reproduction as they were about the tropes developed during the decades the CCA was culturally relevant. While Animal Man started as a more traditional deconstruction that would slowly morph into the metatextual masterpiece it is known as today, Doom Patrol distanced itself from the deconstruction of superhero tropes right from the start, and sought to embrace instead the absurdity of its historical context by parodying and commenting on its contemporaneity. The publication found itself at a point of intersection between two cultural landscapes characterised by moral simplicity and uncomplicated, surface-level depictions of superhero characters that seldom challenged the perception of the reader. Morrison’s course of action, then, was to abandon the pretences of realism that had characterised many of the imitators of Watchmen, while at the same time poking fun at the corporate-mandated homogeneity of ideologies seen in books under the CCA. To achieve these goals, Morrison decided to build their stories around a core cast of characters that were, in one way or another, acting as representatives or analogues for existing minority groups. At the same time, instead of infusing their works with the sense of realism and self-importance that permeated the transition into the Dark Age, Morrison would actively avoid logical, realistic explanations and operate, instead, through their world’s own internal consistency, using surrealism to parody the necessity for grounded and realistic stories and the paradox of attempting to extrapolate impossible characters into the real world. 15 1.2 “Is he Man, or Monster… or is he Both?”: An Introduction to Otherness and its Implications in Superhero Fiction In its broadest possible definition, “otherness” can be explained as “the result of a discursive process by which a dominant in-group [...] constructs one or many dominated out-groups [...] by stigmatizing a difference” (Staszak, 2009, p. 43) between the two groups. The difference is then weaponized, becoming a “motive for potential discrimination” (2009, p. 43) and an excuse to negate the identity of the out-group (the “other”) for any number of reasons. While the notion of “othering” was coined as an academic term by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak in 1985, in reference to the process by which European colonists “world[ed]” 7 the culture and history of colonised countries, the concept can be traced back, at least, to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s Phenomenology of the Spirit (1807), particularly to its passages regarding the “lordbondsman dialectic” or, as is commonly known in English, as the “master-slave dialectic”. This parable is divided into two fundamental parts: one concerned with the political relationship between lords and serfs, and another of a far more psychological, existential nature. In his foreword to the Oxford University Press translation of the book, J. N. Findlay (1977, p. xvii) describes this dynamic as the result of a “Life-and-death struggle” consequence of the inherent wish of both self-consciousness –described in the parable as two men– to be recognized as “the sole centre of active universality”. In the aftermath of the struggle, one of the subjects adopts a dominant position in the relationship –the “lord”– and the other, inevitably, becomes subservient to him –the “bondsman”–, and consequently begins to be seen by the “lord” not as a person, but as a thing. According to Hegel, the “lord” is “a consciousness existing for itself” (Hegel, 1977, p. 115) that, in order to properly comprehend and contextualise his own existence, must exist in opposition to another consciousness, one “whose nature [...] is to be 7 A concept originating in Martin Heidegger’s The Origin of the Work of Art that signifies the constant reestablishment of a world by a piece of art, erasing the previous visions of said world. 16 bound up with an existence that is independent” (1977, p. 115). The “bondsman”, then, exists to allow the lord to relate himself to an independent existence, and is othered and objectified after the initial struggle that originally proved his existence to be “something merely negative” (1977, p. 115). The basic principle behind the nature of this dialectic relationship implies that, in order for the two subjects to be able to exist as they are, the bond between them must be one of opposition, of antagonism; for one side to be able to establish his power, the other must irrevocably be subservient to him, but this second entity also necessitates the relationship in order to be able to recognize himself. Paradoxically, however, the only side of the struggle with the capacity to ever transcend the nature of the relationship is the “bondsman”; by the very same process of objectification that allows the “lord” to subdue the “bondsman”, the former becomes unable to find recognition in the latter’s self-consciousness, as “the lord cannot get the reciprocal recognition that his self-consciousness demands from a consciousness so degraded and distorted” (1977, p. 522). Consequently, the “bondsman [...] becomes shaken out of his narrow self-identification and [...] becomes the ideal which he contemplates in his lord” (1977, p. 522), gaining an advantage in the relationship and transcending the very same limits that keep the lord’s self-recognition process stagnant. Hegel posits that every historical dominator/dominated relationship follows this pattern, and that it is required for the “bondsman” to transcend past this stagnant state to drive history forward. Simone de Beauvoir would write about this parable in The Second Sex (1949), agreeing with the idea that “a fundamental hostility to any other consciousness is found in consciousness itself” and that “the other consciousness has an opposing reciprocal claim.” (1949, p. 27). She later exposes the relativism inherent to this parable by proposing a hypothetical of her own, in which a local “is shocked to realize that in neighboring countries locals view him as a foreigner,” and is therefore faced with the reality that “otherness” is entirely dependent on the culture from which each perception of “normalcy” stems. Her larger point by referencing the 17 parable, however, is to extrapolate this idea and apply it to feminist studies to question why, under patriarchal society, this notion of reciprocity seems to be non-existent. In this relationship in which men are the “lord” and women the “bondsman”, the transcendence that should, in theory, be achieved by the “other”, by the dominated side, has not yet been reached by women within patriarchy. In this situation, she argues, “it is not the Other who [...] defines the One; the Other is posited as Other by the One positing itself as the One” (1949, p. 27). There is no reciprocity to be found in this relationship, as women were defined as “other” by completely bypassing the struggle stage, and they have historically lacked “the concrete means to organize themselves into a unit that could posit itself in opposition” (1949, p. 28). They were left with “no history, no religion of their own” (1949, p. 28) and, therefore, unable to form a force that could pose an opposition against the system that binds them, unlike colonised “others” with pre-existing cultures that allowed them to resist struggle and, slowly but surely, break the bonds that tied them to their “lords”. This critical difference between the cultural “bondsman” posited by Hegel and the real, tangible experience of a minority group with no means to become opposed to their “lords” allows de Beauvoir to create a special category of “others” that have never had the means to oppose their position. The means by which these “others” are designated as such was named “othering” by Gayatri Spivak, who adheres to the definition given by Jacques Lacan: the “other” as an entity in which the subject sees its reflection and both recognizes itself and understands it as separate enough to aspire to a fictional “anticipated mastery” (Ashcroft et al., 2000, p. 155). Othering is the process through which colonial discourse creates a separation between the imperial subject and the colonised “other”, a “mastered” entity that is based on a reflection and therefore entirely fictional; it exists only in the mind of the subject and is imposed upon the “other” against their will. The Othering, then, “locates its “others” by this process in the pursuit of that power within which its own subjectivity is established” (Ashcroft et al., 2000, p. 158). This process notably 18 differs from the idea of struggle between “lord” and “bondsman introduced” by Hegel, as it requires no “fight to the death” to occur at all, instead being much closer to the interpretation de Beauvoir put forward in The Second Sex: the creation of colonial “others” not through a process of mutual struggle, but through the delineation of an opposition that exists only in the mind of the subject and requires no previous knowledge or interaction from the other’s part. This non-struggle, this complete and reiterated negation of identity that becomes embedded into a given culture or in-group from the very moment it begins to exist in the same space as the subject, fosters the creation of patches of “othered” identities that must develop their own independent cultures in order to resist their erasure. Non-normative sexualities, transgenderism, dysfunctional bodies, and mental illness are all signifiers of “otherness” for the prevailing culture based on biologically-determined criteria, and have historically lacked the ability to resist their placement. Much like de Beauvoir exposed, however, the criteria to determine who becomes an “other” are dependent on the culture of any given society, and not based on empirical, ontological truths that justify the continued oppression of these groups. The idea of “otherness” is not only relevant for the discussion of Doom Patrol, but the concept of the superhero as a whole. In the words of Barbara Brownie and Danny Graydon, “[a]ll superheroes have a complex relationship with identity,” as they are often forced to perform two different roles through their life; “one of otherness, and one of ordinariness” (2016, p. 152). There is, then, a conflict of identity at the core of virtually every superhero narrative: their superpowered personas must be hidden behind a veil of “normalcy”, lest they face discrimination for the characteristics that separate them from non-powered human beings, marking them as the “other” out of no fault of their own. In essence, they hide a part of their identity out of the fear of ostracization, understanding that, under most societal standards, the “othering” aspects of their identities (in this case, their superpowers) are incompatible with a 19 functional performance of normalcy. This practice, known in psychology as masking, 8 is often used in real life by individuals with non-normative identities to easily navigate social situations while avoiding discrimination and/or prejudice. This is colloquially referred to as “being in the closet”, and, while it is nowadays almost exclusively used in reference to queerness, can be and has been applied to many other non-visible identities with the potential to be masked. In the context of many superhero stories, however, “othered” identities become exceptional, spectacular, astonishing; superpowers are used to help individuals in need and assert a character’s own sense of individuality against a society that constantly pressures them to erase their non-normative characteristics. The idea of the superhero as a complex interaction between two identities can be traced back to DC Comics’ Action Comics #1 (1938), the debut of the archetypal figure around which the entire superhero genre would be constructed: Superman. Created in 1938 by two Jewish men in a moment in time when tensions were high among the Jewish communities of the United States as a consequence of the rise of antisemitism around the globe, the Man of Steel arose out of a necessity to see this particular minority defended in fiction – a modern Golem of Prague, an unstoppable force given life by Jewish people with the purpose of protecting them from harm. According to Jerry Siegel, co-creator of the character, Superman’s inception was the result of him “reading of the oppression and slaughter of helpless, oppressed Jews in Nazi Germany” and “seeing movies depicting the horrors of privation suffered by the downtrodden” (Siegel, qtd. in Sommerland, 2018). The parallelisms between the origin story of Superman – whose given name, Kal-El, is of Hebrew roots– and prominent Judaism prophet Moses are overt: both characters were saved at a young age from certain death –the destruction of Krypton and the purging of Egyptian children in Exodus 1:5, respectively– by their parental figures, 8 In psychology, a process by which an individual camouflages any number of personal traits in order to fit within a specific set of societal parameters. 20 becoming the sole survivors of said calamities, and both are seen as a figure of hope and justice among their peers. Superman was, then, utilised by its creators to appropriate the figure of the Übermensch to construct an overtly Jewish-coded character who fought oppression and injustice –and, particularly, antisemitism. The earliest issues of Action Comics would depict Superman standing up for the working class and fighting for the rights of people of colour of the United States, showing a level of intersectionality that would slowly erode away through the years within superhero publications. In other words, he was an “other” conjured up by two similarly “othered” individuals to fight for the rights of groups of people who, at the time, held very little individual power. The two identities at the core of the prototypical superhero would become visually and narratively sundered, however: Superman, still had the advantage of being able to camouflage his otherness whenever necessary, adopting the performative identity of Clark Kent to blend in and avoid the negative connotations that his superpowers brought – coding him as a “Closet Jew 9 ”– though he would continue to report and condemn anything he perceived as an injustice. This dualism of identity within the superhero genre would continue to be explored through the 40s and 50s by both DC and Marvel Comics: characters such as Batman and Spider-Man would see a substantial amount of major plot points within their stories built upon the tension between their two separate identities. Paradoxically, and at the same time, disabilities such as physical deformities (Red Skull in 1941) and mental illness (the Joker in 1940) were often used as design shortcuts to signal a character as villainous. These characters were presented as “disfigured, inhuman Others, their maleficence going hand in hand with their deviation from the superhero’s physical ideal,” (Alainz and Smith, 2019, p. 14) creating a clear dichotomy between what supposedly a putatively acceptable “other” and their dehumanised, Machiavellian opponents. It would not 9 Performers of Crypto-Judaism, colloquially referred to as “closet Jews”, are members of the Jewish community who publicly hide their faith. This was usually done to enable a private performance of one’s faith while keeping the privileges that came from being perceived as a follower of a different religion, notably Christianism. 27 understand what is really going on, and seem afraid to interact with the painting out of an existential fear of the unknown (Morrison 2004b, p. 55). In fact, it is implied that the Doom Patrol are particularly qualified to deal with threats of this nature because of their subaltern identities and dysfunctional, non-conforming physical or psychological configurations. In this particular instance, the painting may only be accessed through a meditation on the incompatible and paradoxical, and Crazy Jane is instructed to concentrate on the existence of Rebis as an “avatar of contradiction” to allow them passage (Morrison 2004b, pp. 56-57). Through the navigation of contradiction and subjectivity and the understanding of the relativity of ideas such as good, evil, and truth, the main characters are allowed to interact with the paranatural forces that threaten the fabric of reality in each of the stories, usually rejecting traditional superhero violence in favour of dialectics. When the paraphysical city of Orqwith threatens to merge with the DC Universe, Rebis stops its advances by posing a philosophical question that forces the rulers of the city to confront their fictional nature within the context of the story, driving them back (Morrison, 2004a, pp. 100-101). Similarly, instead of physically confronting the indestructible Decreator, a cosmic entity that deconstructs reality just by staring at it, Jane uses her powers to send a telepathic message that will theoretically keep it occupied, slowing down its decreation of reality to a point where it will become unnoticeable, and only inconsequential objects will become deconstructed under its presence (Morrison, 2004b, pp. 200). In these examples, the decisions taken by the members of the Doom Patrol subvert the archetypical hero/villain conflict by bypassing the dichotomy of inherent good and evil altogether and embracing the absurdity of the situations they are taking part in to seek solutions beyond physical conflict, often operating within the realm of paradox. While physical struggle does take place on several occasions through the run, it is often secondary to the main ideological or psychological conflict of any given story arc, and does not serve the purpose of proving any given character right. In The House that Jack Built, while the antagonistic presence 28 of Red Jack is as close to a proper traditional villain as the run ever gets, the means to his defeat rely not on direct physical conflict, but on the release of the butterflies he kept captive in his home, which allowed him to stay alive by feeding on their never-ending pain (Morrison, 2004a, pp. 150-151). The antagonist had been, up to this point, the only one to personally threaten the life of one of the members of the Doom Patrol, and his patriarchal imposition of marriage upon Rhea Sheehorn is what eventually sees him punished and defeated – not his inherent quality as an outside, incomprehensible force. Another important way in which postmodernity bleeds into Doom Patrol is the addition of intertextual literary references that serve to create an interplay of fictional works within the very narrative of the story. The clearest and earliest example of this running theme is the treatment of Orqwith, the diegetically fictional city that becomes real through the imaginations of a group of philosophers. The city is not only fictional within the world of Doom Patrol; it is also a direct reference to Jorge Luís Borges’ Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (1940), which sees a fictional city slowly take over reality, albeit in a much slower manner than Orqwith does in Crawling from the Wreckage. Here, Morrison plays with several layers of reality at the same time as they unapologetically explore the themes and ideas of the original short story, while also implementing tropes from the superhero genre that, as mentioned above, are relegated to a secondary role once the comic delves into the paradoxical ideas most of its length is built upon. This is far from the last implementation of intertextuality in Doom Patrol –of notable mention are the references to the Brothers Grimm story Spirit in a Bottle that serves to frame Rebis’ story of self-discovery and acceptance, and the many titles of songs and poems that Morrison recycles as names for the various personalities of Crazy Jane, such as The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter and Jane herself. In all cases, the author shows a level of self-awareness that implies these references are not only introduced to add flavour to the text, but to create intertextual relationships that help give new meaning to concepts introduced through the run. 29 This collection of seemingly random references, taken from all dimensions of “high art” and popular culture, appear to paint a picture of homogeneity when put together. That is, Morrison seems to be attempting to challenge the very absurdity of a literary canon, of assigning importance to certain works of art while others –mostly related to minority and outsider narratives– are left in the dark. The implementation of deeper literary elements in contrast with traditional superhero tropes in such a way that the former often supersede the later offers insight into one or more characters’ arcs –while it is not necessary to understand the references in order to fully comprehend Doom Patrol, they often complement the text in ways that are rarely mentioned directly. For example, in the opening issue of the run (Morrison, 2004a, p.19), Larry Trainor is seen reading Harlan Ellison’s Partners in Wonder (1971), whose short stories are described by the author as “products of two minds working together, sometimes in complete harmony, more often in opposition” (Ellison, 1983, p.4). This hints at the relationship between Trainor and the Negative Spirit, as well as their eventual fusion with Eleanor Poole and the complexities of Rebis’ personality. Similarly, minor characters like Dorothy Spinner are also elevated through the use of intertextuality: through her name and the visual motif of the red shoes, she is connected to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), which by itself points at her own development. Dorothy’s entire character arc is dependent on her ability to mature and gain self-confidence (a major theme in Oz) in order to avoid relying on her self-destructive “imaginary friends”, entities that she summons during particularly traumatic moments as a sort of paranormal coping mechanism. 30 2.2 “Nobody Wants to Be a Brain in a Robot Body”: the treatment of otherness in Doom Patrol Through the explicit depiction of their metahuman abilities as life-changing disabilities, Morrison emphasises the physical and psychological issues the main characters face during their daily lives. Virtually every one of the main characters in Doom Patrol presents a nonnormative or anomalous physical or psychological trait that marks them as an “other” in the eyes of society at large, and are often correlated with some sort of superpower. The main trifecta of characters in the run, especially, seem to exemplify the main three dichotomies Morrison explores through their stories, with Cliff representing the disconnection between body and mind, Jane being depicted as a mentally ill person, and Rebis being an agender, hermaphroditic being that blurs the lines between genders. Although these characters will all be explored in the present section, the main focus will be placed on Clifford Steele, alias Robotman, as the development of the themes of otherness that permeate Morrison’s Doom Patrol runs almost perfectly parallel to his character arc. Having suffered from a racing car accident from which only his brain survived, Cliff was fitted with a mechanical body crafted by scientist Niles Caulder (Drake & Haney, 1963, pp. 7-8), who would later go on to become the leader of the Doom Patrol. Morrison turns Cliff’s power, the source of his identity as Robotman, into a physical disability that has dire consequences for his mental health: though Cliff had shown plenty of discontent with his situation in previous runs, these feelings are elevated into a deep sense of dysmorphia, a direct result of his new body’s inability to access his senses of smell, taste and touch. Tom Peyer, in his introduction to the 2004 edition of Crawling from the Wreckage, refers to Cliff as “omniplegic” (2004a, p. 5), a word that perfectly expresses his condition as seen under Morrison’s particular lenses: a brain within a body that, in spite of –or perhaps because of– its artificial nature, is dysfunctional in its entirety, and must be regularly fixed or upgraded. Cliff 31 becomes coded as an “other” through both his lack of access to the full spectrum of human sensations and his reliance on outside forces to allow his prosthetic body and organs to properly function. At the beginning of the run, Cliff is revealed to have “signed himself into a psychiatric hospital” (Morrison, 2004a, p. 15), though the institution itself seems far too underqualified to provide him with proper psychological care, causing Cliff to spiral into self-destruction and prompting him to attempt to damage his own robotic body in an attempt to feel anything (Morrison, 2004a, p. 22). Nobody, within the personnel of the hospital, seems to be able to help either Cliff or Jane –who has been signed into the same institution– in a meaningful way, as they fail to understand what causes Cliff’s self-destructive tendencies. The physical space of the dilapidated psychiatric hospital signifies a distrust for the authority that is supposedly in charge of healing the human mind, its state of disrepair a sign of a larger problem that is explored through the entire run: the inability –or unwillingness– of the state to take proper care of those who have been deemed as “others” and excluded from society. Although Cliff is, of course, an exceptional case, several panels depict other patients harming themselves or roaming through the building in varying states of distress (Morrison, 2004a, pp. 21, 26) as virtually nothing is done to put a stop to their tribulations or help build a more adequate environment for them. Through the intercalation of two plotlines, the space of the psychiatric hospital is contrasted with that of Alamance Memorial Hospital, in which a depowered Larry Trainor has been resting and being taken proper care of. Considering the differences between Larry and Cliff’s body configuration –with Larry being a white, cisgender man showing no signs of dysfunction– this can easily be read as commentary on the difference in treatment between an individual who represents a set of hegemonic identities, and one who is, for all intents and purposes, an “other”. In spite of the physical space of the psychiatric hospital not returning until the very end of the run, Morrison revisits the idea of an attempt to find a cure for otherness 32 in the short segments that see Cliff and Jane visit “Hell”, once more establishing it as a manifestation of an establishment that operates under the façade of helping the mentally ill reintegrate into society while in actuality attempting to “cure” their individual deviancies, often with negative results. The root of all of Cliff’s psychological problems is revealed, in the very first page of the run, to be his attachment to his only remaining organic organ: his brain. His rejection of his dysfunctional, non-normative body stems from the belief that his humanity depends on the existence of his brain – the “beautiful bit” as he refers to it in the dream sequence that kickstarts the run (Morrison, 2004a, p.10). This first approach to the character reveals his unwillingness to accept his own subaltern identity, believing himself to still be a part of the norm, as opposed to an exception to it, as long as he can cling to his last living organ. He has been convinced by the matrix of normativity built around him, as well as the mockery and scorn he became a victim of after his accident, of his own state as an “other” – still, he attempts to reassure himself that, as long as his brain remains intact, the part of him that is “normal” and that corresponds to the hegemonic masculinity his daredevil persona exemplified, he will have a place within society. Cliff’s character arc revolves around letting go of the concept of “normalcy” altogether, not out of a misplaced belief that he will never be able to partake in it, but as part of a larger theme of allowing himself to surrender his trust on the monolithic concepts that have shaped his life up until this point. Through the run, Cliff’s trust in traditional power structures is slowly eroded away as his teammates become more and more comfortable expressing themselves through their subaltern identities, and the institutions around them reveal themselves to be agents of a status quo that has little place for someone like Cliff. This can be seen clearly in the way that his teammates, Rebis and Jane, slowly acclimate to their own dysfunctions and accept their position as “other”, understanding that “normalcy” is a set of standards picked in opposition to hegemonic identities and holds no inherent value. Cliff, 33 meanwhile, continues to misgender and deadname Rebis, unwilling to compromise and accept their new identity as a non-binary, intersexual being, and attempts to help Jane “cure” herself, while she understands that the only way forward is to accept her identities and integrate them into herself. This behaviour stems from his belief that, much like himself, his teammates must have a sense of normalcy for them to cling to, though they very much seem to be perfectly comfortable living life on their own terms, in the edges of society. Jane understands that the turmoil within her mind is born out of a childhood trauma that she must let go of, stopping it from ever taking over her life again. Once she learns to release herself from the grip of her long-dead abuser (Morrison, 2007, pp. 157-159) and accepts that her trauma should not have to define her, she manages to appease her many alternate personalities, allowing her system of alters to “integrate” and become far more functional and happier as a consequence, referring to themselves as a “team” from then on (Morrison, 2008, 40). At the same time, Rebis learns to accept the contradictory identity of their own existence, a fusion between opposites, and achieves a form of immortality that allows them to ultimately defeat one of two main villains of the run and save their comrades (Morrison, 2007, pp.87-110). Cliff, however, does not fully embrace his subaltern personality until the very end of the run. His bonding with Jane through shared trauma and the mutual exploration of eachother’s disabilities slowly erodes away Cliff’s self-destructive tendencies, even though he continues to still use his own body as a shield to protect her during the course of the run. The two characters complement each-other exceptionally well, with Cliff’s social skills helping Jane navigate a world that sees her as irrational and dangerous, and Jane’s emotional depth, as well as her own eventual acceptance of her subalternity, help Cliff develop a more profound idea of what it means to not fit in, and why that may have more to say about the world around him than about his own dysfunctional body. Jane also slowly dismantles the more toxic traits of Cliff’s masculinity, including his necessity to act as a sort of father figure to other members 34 of the team, believing to know what is best for them. Though their bond paves the way for their ultimate development, it is only after they part ways that each of them is allowed to experiment the change that will help them move forward with their lives. After the Candlemaker destroys his original brain and he is rebooted into a completely mechanical body, essentially losing the one part of him he considered valuable, Cliff becomes the only one who can access the Think Tank and stop Niles Caulder’s plan to come to fruition. It is during his final confrontation with Caulder, through a virtualized gatekeeper designed to restrict access to the core programming of the Tank, that Cliff accepts his own identity by rejecting the possibility of regaining his human form, a proposition Caulder makes as a lastditch attempt to convince him to stay away from the Think Tank. Cliff, however, chooses to save his teammates, and by extension the rest of the world, over his last opportunity to ever live a normative life again (Morrison, 2008, pp. 116-117). After a brief return to the psychiatric hospital, however, it is revealed that Cliff feels nothing from having saved the planet, as he does not believe it worth saving; he has witnessed the way personalities that fall outside the canon of “normalcy” are treated and does no longer want to fit within the parameters of said system (Morrison, 2008, pp. 120-122). The antagonistic forces the Doom Patrol face also play a role in allowing these characters to grow and better understand their own subalternity, both from the inside and outside of the margins of society. The previously mentioned Mr. Nobody, through his two appearances in the run, is used to exemplify the growth Rebis, and especially Jane, have undergone, as well as Cliff’s inability to accept his own otherness until the end. In Nobody’s first appearance, the team travels to Paris to prevent his Dadaist schemes from coming to fruition, but in the latter half of the run, both Jane and Rebis refuse to face him. Having come to understand, through the trials and tribulations they’ve faced through the story, that Nobody’s postmodern philosophy more closely matches their paradoxical existences, they see no need to 35 thwart his plans to become president of the United States. During his electoral campaign, Nobody advocates for a world that breaks the arbitrarily imposed rules of capitalism and the existence of canonical structures of power between human beings, which particularly resonates with Jane and eventually becomes the event that catapults her into seeking help not within the psychiatric system, but within herself. At the same time, the run points the finger toward a very specific type of threat: that of an imposition of artificial normalcy condoned by the system. The true “villains” of Doom Patrol are not the extra-dimensional entities that readers are more likely to remember, but the systems built to exclude and erase the identities of the members of the team, all of them dysfunctional and “other” in different, often overlapping ways. The most pronounced example of this antagonization of authority and normalcy can be seen in the story arc regarding the Ant Farm and the Men from N.O.W.H.E.R.E. Through several nonconsecutive issues, various members of the Doom Patrol confront the government body known as the Bureau of Normalcy, whose mission is to remove every and all deviancy from the world in an attempt to homogenise humanity. The run presents them as overtly unsympathetic and borderline sociopathic in their desire to forcefully erase anything that escapes the definition of what is considered normal, to the point where they will instrumentalize entities like the Thing behind the Pentagon or “Yankee Doodle” Dandy. Despite their overt hate toward anything that escapes their comprehension, they will still utilise the powers of others to their own benefit. Their own adherence to the status quo, however, is presented by the run as far more artificial and harmful than any of the deviancies they have made their mission to erase, and pokes fun at the absurdity of attempting to erase what has naturally arisen from human nature. It is also worth mentioning the role of Sergeant Washington in the events that unfold under the Pentagon, as he switches sides and aids the Doom Patrol in their escape. Washington is revealed to have joined the army in an attempt to repress his own queerness and, once relieved from his charge, he is salvaged by Danny the Street and becomes a drag performer. The implication here is that 36 an enforcement of a particular set of traits is far more dangerous for humankind than any one individual who deviates from the status quo and that, in fact, if cleansed of values like toxic masculinity, patriotism, and conservative Christian ideology, and allowed instead to lead lives based on their own personal identities, individuals would become far happier. The alternative to this change, which Morrison sees necessary for a development of a society that embraces subalternity and rejects any set of parameters that determine the value of individuals, manifests into two specific sequences that happen independently from each other, but are relevant both to each other and to Morrison’s previous work. Both Cliff and Jane are heavily implied to visit the “real world” through sequences that can be ambiguously presented as dreams or delusions, each happening at a different point and under different circumstances in the final half of the run. When Cliff is suffering from hallucinations upon having his personality and memories backed up into a computerised version of his brain, he sees himself in a place his mind recognizes as “Hell” (Morrison, 2008, p.15): a world that lacks superheroes and in which his physical disabilities manifest in a more realistic, grounded manner. Similarly, when Jane confronts the Candlemaker, the latter uses his powers to send her “to Hell” (Morrison, 2008, p.70), which is eventually revealed to be a world not dissimilar to the one Cliff visits in his own delusions. These short incursions into a world that is seemingly a mirror of ours echo the latest half of Morrison’s Animal Man, which saw the titular character escape the fictional world of the comic he was in and eventually meet the author writing his adventures (that is, Morrison themself). 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