Well, former employee Kid Chris may be off to UCLA for some of that book learnin’, but we have ourselves a new employee filling his shoes…Nathan, who as yet lacks a catchy nickname by which pal Dorian and I can refer to him. Hmmmm…”Big Nathan?” I don’t know…we’ll see.
Regarding some of the new comic day arrivals:
Dor noticed in Teen Titans/Outsiders Secret Files 2005 yet another reference to pre-reboot Doom Patrol continuity…specifically, to the Brotherhood of Dada from Grant Morrison’s run on the title. Once again…nobody is paying the slightest bit of attention to the team’s current “together again for the first time” status. Look for the next Doom Patrol incarnation to explain away this current series as some of kind of aberration. (EDIT: Just noticed Dorian made essentially the same comment…actually, I’m surprised we don’t overlap more often.)
If you were wondering where this image from one of my corner pictures came from, the new issue of Archie Pals & Gals Double Digest (#97) reprints the story that features that particular panel. As Dor said to me when he spotted it…”someone at Archie is reading your site!” (Well, if someone at Archie was reading my site, I’m sure the cease-and-desist would have shown up long ago.)
My insane Lex Luthor post from yesterday got me thinking about that particular bit of business regarding Luthor’s current status in the DC Universe as compared to his status as of the mid-80s reboot. Particularly, the whole “coming back in a clone body and pretending to be his own 20-ish son” thing. Okay, that would work if only Luthor is about, say, twenty years older than Clark and Lois. Perhaps even ten. And, post the mid-80s reboot, Lex did appear to be significantly older.
That doesn’t seem compatible with the current Luthor status, where his Smallville TV show-mandated back story has him as a slightly older contemporary living in Smallville, and briefly attending Smallville High with a teenaged Clark Kent. If you were to open your copy of Superman/Batman Secret Files 2003 to the story “Young Luthor in Smallville,” Lex in the narrative is explicitly placed at age 18, and Clark in the story is in 9th grade, making the difference in age at about four or five years, tops.
So, in order for the “clone/son” ruse to work, assuming that Clark and Lois are in their early thirties, Lex would have had to father this alleged son while still a young teenager himself…technically possible, but not really fitting with the back story presented for “Lex Jr” (in which Lex was apparently already an established businessman).
Plus, don’t forget that the post-reboot continuity established that a young Lex and a young Perry White were contemporaries…so unless Perry is only about five years older than Clark and Lois, what we have here is one screwed-up timeline.
I suppose the way out of this is the events in the Underworld Unleashed crossover, where Lex cut a deal with the demon Neron to regain his health and vigor. Perhaps, at the same time, Neron also altered reality, retroactively remaking Lex’s history so that he was literally a younger man, and, um…
…okay, this is sad, even for me.
I am not Jack Klugman, nor am I Norman Fell. The jury is still out on whether or not I am Alan Thicke, Ted Koppel, or Cantinflas.
