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I had every intent to post this last night, but spent some time with the family hound at the vet, which is no way to spend a Friday evening.
Anyway, here's one Rita page from the issue that just came out Wednesday.
The art on this one is clearly from Ron Randall as opposed to Matthew Clark, but Livesay, in my opinion, did a fabulous job providing the visual glue to hold this issue together.After the events of Blackest Night (which is in our future, two weeks or so from now) the Patrol retruns home, and Rita has a score to settle with a certain Mr. Steve Dayton. Lucky for Mento, there's an explosion that brings the core DP running to the Oolong airfield. We've seen the preview at the end of issue #6, Rita's destined to have it out with Dayton. How that all plays out remains to be seen.
One point of interest - at least to me - is the color shift in Rita's eyes. They were very green to start this series, but now they're rather olive, almost gray. Keith Giffen made mention that there was some significance behind this, but what it truly is remains to be seen.
OK, here's a creepy bit of speculation I've been biting my tongue about since #6 came out, but...
ReplyDeleteRemember in #6 how Larry said that the body he was in during the Kupperberg stories was Thomas Munroe? That became Rebis I, which laid the egg containing Rebis II. Munroe's body was destroyed by the Candlemaker, Rebis II went to live on Danny. Somewhere between Caulder disappearing into the Tree at the end of the Pollack run and the beginning of the Arcudi run, he provides the N.E.B. with Phillip Sloan's body. In other words, any human body can be treated to host the N.E.B. Both Kupperberg and Byrne have stated or strongly implied that neither Larry's bodies nor the N.E.B. are radioactive (the reason for the bandages) unless they're combined. Finding a host body for Rita would be considerably more difficult.
During the Byrne run, every character gets a new origin but Rita. We assume one was planned but that the series didn't last long enough. What we do get are a number of characters who seem to remember Rita as an assistant, but with some slight difference in appearance (glasses, hair length, etc.). Then in the Geoff Johns DP arc in Teen Titans, Robin (who's spent much of the "One Year" after "Ininite Crisis" trying to clone Conner) overhears Caulder's claim to have regrown Rita's body. In that same arc we see the Brain's own attempts to clone a body after years of preparation fail. Did Caulder succeed? Or did Caulder use the one body that could have been used to fake it? One that older scientists might have mistaken for an assistant he once had? One that could grow or shrink, or even, if need be, change appearance? One who died before the Kupperberg stories took place, by which point he had the know-how to retrofit Munroe's body for Trainor? One for whom the romantic interest hinted at in the Byrne run had a precedent?
Did Rita's body once belong to Madame Rouge?
I'm with you on the Madame ROuge front. . .
ReplyDeleteI bet that Rita's power now includes regeneration for the reason above mentioned.
ReplyDeleteThat might explain why her exploded hand in the latest issue doesn't seem to cause her much grief. It's just gonna regenerate in a little while.
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