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Negative Monday, today, is going to focus on the Negative being(s?) in the most recent issue - Doom Patrol #5. Giffen could have gone in so many different directions with the Black Lantern DP going against the living, but he decided to put the seemingly logical connections together. In this case, Larry Trainor was challenged by the reanimated Val Vostok, who, somehow, brought along a semblance of the negative being with her.
The static between Vostok and Trainor is nothing new - Kupperberg touched on this in his take way back in Volume 2 - but here, Larry exerts his control of the negative energy in a surprising manner, especially considering "Vostok" took Larry out in a hurry in the last issue.
Rather than blather on, I'm going to share the confrontation with you. Read on to see what happens when two Negatives enter into the equation.
Larry maintains his personality all the way through, even as Black Lantern Vostok seems to have the upper hand.
A few of you have wondered aloud in the comments section why Cliff was referring to Rebis. Honestly, I don't know. the best I can hypothesize is because the two negative beings have seemingly merged, but I truly suppose we'll only find out more next month with the return of Matthew Clark when the spotlight shines heavily on Larry in
I quite enjoyed the Blackest Night issues. Sure, it is a little disappointing that the DP couldn't wrap up the challenge in these pages, but it appears as though the Patrollers - with Cliff not really registering in the Black Lanterns emotion spectrum vision and Larry single-handedly defeating one of the Lanterns - might help turn the tide and win the war against the Black Lanterns.
I guess we'll find out more about the DP and their involvement in this struggle on December 30 with the release of Blackest Night #6.
One reason for Cliff to mention Rebis is because one died. During INVASION!, the Negative Energy being separated from both Val and Larry. Val went on to espionage and Larry to the hospital, where the Neg (who could suddenly talk-- maybe humans weren't the only ones affected by the Gene Bomb) fused him with his nurse, Eleanor Poole. In the last Morrison year the three of them (as Rebis) went to the moon and produced an egg, then returned to find the DP battling the Candlemaker. Cliff watched that Rebis knock the C-M for a loop using the neg-energy, then claim the energy was gone, then be incinerated to a skeleton by a revived C-M. Willoughby Kipling later finds the egg and a new fully integrated Rebis emerges, with the energy, and defeats the C-M decisively. In the "Blackest Night" scene above, Cliff has figured out that their assailants are dead former members but is trying to figure out where the second Neg came from. Val wasn't connected to one when she died. If the BL-Val's Neg is part of Rebis, then the being to whom the energy belongs (the third of Rebis who 'steers') will be far more dangerous and adept at using the energy than Larry. It would also mean Rebis II was dead.
ReplyDeleteAh-ha!
ReplyDeleteThanks for stitching it all together! I hadn't made the leap of Rebis being a potential BL.
Did any of you check out the Doom Patrol story in the DC Universe Holiday Special 2009? It stars the classic DP line up and is pretty good. I was just happy to see the DP included.
ReplyDeleteHmmmmmmm, no. The massive pricepoint on that book scared me away.
ReplyDeleteI might have to look it up.
Regarding the X-mas story: if you check DC's own official site for the DC Holiday Special ( http://www.dccomics.com/dcu/comics/?cm=13615 ) they give the page count as 32. GCD, however, has been in the habit of creating pages for each week's new books and indexing them later. Their page count is 84 (meaning 80 interior plus the covers, the way Overstreet counts them). I haven't picked up a copy yet (I'm guessing the solicitation had the 32pp/$5.99 stats too, otherwise I would have asked my retailer to hold one). I can't confirm any of this, but if the story is 10+ pages I might be dumb enough to hunt for one after the holidays.
ReplyDeleteSorry, sorry... I forgot to give the GCD page for that above comment: http://www.comics.org/issue/687536
ReplyDeleteAnd Merry X-Mas! (...although DP was actually published in a manger three months earlier...ARRgh! Sorry, it's a reflex now...)