This may be the stupidest thing I’ve ever posted.

§ March 8th, 2006 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on This may be the stupidest thing I’ve ever posted.

So at work other day, Employee Nathan asked me if Pariah could fly.

Pariah, just in case you don’t remember, is this fellow, who first appeared in Crisis on Infinite Earths:


I seemed to remember a shot or two of Pariah flying in the Crisis, but I did what I usually do when asked a question like this…I busted out our run of DC’s Who’s Who series and looked it up.

Under the “Powers & Weapons” section of Pariah’s entry:

“Pariah possessed no special powers aside from an ability to be drawn to the scene of impending evil, and immortality.”

So, no, flying isn’t explicitly listed as one of his powers.

However, in issue #7, there are indeed a few shots of Pariah flying through space, as I recalled, leading a group of superheroes to the Anti-Monitor:


Okay, this was on some rock floating in outer space, where there would be little or no gravity, but Pariah appears to be directing his flight, rather than just floating in space. And, there is no visual indication that any of the other heroes are giving him a “flight boost” or any other kind of aid.

Plus, as far as I recall, he doesn’t seem to fly in his other comic appearances…though, to be honest I didn’t check ’em all. However, in this scene from DC Comics Presents #94 (June 1986), Superman is shown giving Pariah a lift:


There are a couple of scenes in the War of the Gods mini-series, his other major crossover appearance, where Pariah is floating in mid-air, but he appears to be at the mercy of your typical menacing comic book energy field/explosion/what have you, rather than levitating under his own power.

However, the explanation may simply be this. Since his powers include, as noted previously, “an ability to be drawn to the scene of impending evil,” it’s very possible that that “drawing” business would have been enough to help him direct his flight in weightless space (or over the near-negligible gravity of some decaying asteroid), as shown in Crisis #7. So maybe he can’t normally fly, but can under certain circumstances, if it’s called for, in order to get him to that source of evil.

And that is my answer to you, Employee Nathan.

While we were originally talking about this, we generalized Pariah’s powers as being “drawn to scenes of impending doom” rather than just plain evil, as according to Who’s Who. I wondered briefly about how doomed something had to be in order to draw Pariah there, which caused me to consider, say, a football game:

Announcer #1: “Boy, I have never seen such a one-sided game in all my life! Those guys are getting demolished!”

Announcer #2: “You ain’t kidding! This is the worst blow-out I’ve ever had the misfortune to witn — hey, wait a second, Bob…who’s that on the field?”

Pariah (on the 50 yard line): “Doomed! The Packers are doomed!”

But since he’s drawn specifically to evil, and not necessarily “doom,” (which can take many non-evil forms, such as natural disasters and the like) that particular scenario doesn’t work, I guess. Unless, of course, you consider the Green Bay Packers losing a football game to be evil, and I’m sure some of you do. (And I just picked that team at random, not out of malice, in case someone felt like complaining.)

Anyway, in conclusion, I’m a huge dork. Thank you.

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