Negative Monday 25

Happy New Year! I trust everyone made it through safe and (mostly) sound.

Just a quick reminder to fill this spot for this week. No better way to start the first new comic day of the New Year than with an issue of Doom Patrol, right?

Here's the pencils for the cover, the solicited cover, and a little something extra.

Written by Keith Giffen; co-feature written by Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis; Art by Matthew Clark; co-feature Art by Kevin Maguire; Cover by Matthew Clark

This month, we spotlight Negative Man, who's going to knit the history of The Doom Patrol into one cohesive whole. Cohesive to him, anyway.

Plus, The Metal Men find another gag that those three old geezers doing the feature can run into the ground.

DC Universe | 40pg. | Color | $3.99 US

Happy Negative Monday y'all!

Negative Monday 21

Twenty-one! I win!

Twenty-one is one of those trigger words for me. Every time I hear it, I think about the Bugs Bunny cartoon where he's playing Blaque Jaque Shellaque. Of course, this post has nothing to do with Blaque Jaque, but the next post does have something to do with Blackest Night. (horrible, horrible transition, I know, but what do you want for free?)

Anyway, I've slipped once more. To make that to you, today I'm going to share the pencils for the cover from last week's January solicits. I'm still not sure HOW I got this beautiful image (and even if I was sure, I'm sworn to secrecy), but I think it is safe to share the pencils now that the actual cover has been shared.

Just to be 100% certain I don't blow anything, here's the cover and solicit from October 19:

DOOM PATROL #6
Written by Keith Giffen; co-feature written by Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis
Art by Matthew Clark; co-feature art by Kevin Maguire
Cover by Matthew Clark
This month, we spotlight Negative Man, who’s going to knit the history of The Doom Patrol into one cohesive whole. Cohesive to him, anyway.
Plus, The Metal Men find another gag that those three old geezers doing the feature can run into the ground.
On sale January 6 • 40 pg, FC, $3.99 US

Full January 2010 solicits for DC Comics can be found at Comic Book Resources, among other places, but CBR is near and dear to my heart.

And now for those pencils I promised:

It amazes me how comfortably Matthew Clark renders all of these characters, and quite frankly, it disappoints me a little bit that we can't have Rebis and Val on the team alongside Larry.

Next up, I'll be linking the DP pages from The Source. Sure, you could just click on over there, but my witty banter will still be right here.

Negative Monday 20

Here's some negativity for you. Just a little slice.

Val needed to make another appearance here. . .
I'm sure there will be a little more than this in the solicits later today.

Blackest Night

This one isn't really Doom Patrol related, or is it?!??!

As I was reading Blackest Night #1, I kept getting more and more blown away with each page. Then I got to the conversation between Hal Jordan and Barry Allen. Barry wants to know who else has fallen.
So Hal shows him. As expected, this included a few Doom Patrolers.
Celsius (far right, bottom) sure.
Negative Woman (far left middle) really? Did Val actually die in Final Crisis? I couldn't bring myself to finish Final Crisis, so I am woefully uninformed at this point.
Tempest, er, Josh Clay (middle, near crease at top of page)

Anyone else find any others? Personally, I was expecting to see Dorothy Spinner, Rita Farr (remember Chief cloned her from a skull fragment), Lodestone, Karma, and Scott Fischer, among others.

While I have never been the biggest Green Lantern fan, I've been buying into the hype leading up to Blackest Night. I cannot rationally explain why, save for the fact that I am really hoping for a great summer event comic. Sure, it's only one issue in, but I think I'm getting my hopes filled here.

Negative Monday 2

First things first - yes, this is terribly late. Or not really, after all, it is still Monday.

Secondly, sorry to string you along Ted Bruder fans, but maybe next week.

Yeah, I'm taking the easy way out here, this week, Negative Monday features the Who's Who entry for Valentina Vostok. She first exhibited the negative powers not as a dispatchable spirit, but rather could transform herself into an energy being.


As time went on, however, her powers came to manifest themselves in a manner nearly identical to that of Larry Trainor - the Negative Man. The major difference was that Vostok's expression of the negative being was decidedly female in silhouette.

The commonality ad mutual familiarity with the Negative spirit would eventually lead to a struggle between Vostok and Trainor.

Negative Monday 1

It's Monday and here's some negativity that isn't related to your job or that stupid time change thing.

When we had the Crisis on Earth-Blog crossover last week, I mentioned that Negative Woman played an important role in the outcome of Crisis on Infinite Earths. Today, I'll share. Please excuse the quality of the imagery, the frames are shot digitally from my Absolute edition, the cover of which features the heroes called into the final attack by Harbinger.


In the twelfth issue of the maxi-series that changed the DC Universe, Harbinger gathers a crew for one last attack on the Anti-Monitor - taking the battle to him. During the epic struggle, the heavy hitters like Captain Atom, Dr Light, Firestorm, Superman (both from Earth-1 and 2, along with Superboy from Earth-Prime), Lady Quark, Jade, Firehawk, Power Girl and many, many more are called into action to unleash their energy-based distance attacks upon the Anti-Montior who is burning under the radioactive touch of Valentina Vostok's negative spirit.

Her call to action from Pariah.


Her thoughts on what may be her final greatest adventure.

Her effect upon the Anti-Monitor.There you have Val's first appearance on Negative Mondays. Maybe next week we'll get to Ted Bruder.

Negative Mondays and Elasti-Girl Fridays

One of the great things about a blog, as opposed to a book or magazine, is that pagination and re-ordering parts and pieces is nowhere near as time consuming or painful as it is for printed material.

Fridays will now be Elasti-Girl Fridays and Mondays will be Negative Mondays. See? Order changed, no craziness.

Why the change? Well, it came to me as I was drifting asleep that "Elasti-Girl Friday" was a cute little play on words, a wink and a nod to the "Girl Friday" concept. That and Mondays tend to be a little more negative anyway. Maybe the two negatives on Monday wil help make Monday positive, right?

Starting next Monday, look for Larry, Val or Ted in this space. Hopefully I can get the first Elasti-Girl Friday post up this week.

History of the DCU part 2

As promised, here's the second appearance of the "new" Doom Patrol in the pages of the second issue of History of the DC Universe. Beyond this appearance in the History, the DP hadn't truly made very many other appearances (and trio in Showcase, some glimpses in New Adventures of Supergirl and a DC Comics Presents) before moving into the Paul Kupperberg-penned, Steve Lightle-drawn Doom Patrol.

Click on it to read it with significantly less squinting.



This version of the DP made an appearance in Crisis that led to Negative Woman's critical role in the defeat of the Anti-Monitor.

For the most part, with some significant wardrobe updating, this is the team that appeared in Doom Patrol volume 2.

Of course, I just realized I might be getting slightly ahead of myself. I think I'll take the next few updates to introduce the characters of the DP to you, my Doomed readers.