Doom Patrol 99: The First Appearance of Gar Logan

[jlroberson.insanejournal.com]

From Doom Patrol #99, Nov. 1965, a brief excerpt with the first scene featuring Gar Logan, aka Beast Boy. Which is a name Cliff gives him as an insult. Plus one other page.
First, a truly Silver Ageriffic cover. The story it refers to barely has to do with this(and is very much like an old Birdman episode) and in fact is mostly about how much Larry resents Negative Man(meaning the black energy dude inside him) getting all the glory.

How'd Gar get into the group? He broke the fuck in and wrecked the joint.


He'll take ya all on, see? He's a tough guy, see? Nyehh!

>

Cliff, you goddamn racist. A complete amputee should be more broadminded. Also: "Beatles?" Maybe when they were in Hamburg, Cliff. I thought you were supposed to be the hip one. You wanna call him "Kookie" with a 'do like that. Even I know that and I was born in '69.
I find this a little unclear as to why they're rejecting him...

I'm claiming the joke before someone else does. IT'S NOT EASY BEING GREEN. There.

In the end, the Chief must have realized the dissection possibilities, so here they are asking him back.
And now, some ads. Make a copy of the coupon. Do NOT use scissors on your screen.


...including a filler cartoon that shows us just how much times can change.

They say forever after in Littleburg, the Willy and Dilly Massacre two weeks later at the local elementary school would be the stuff of nightmares.
(c)1965 DC Comics Inc.

Comments

[kamino_neko.insanejournal.com]

Man, Gar's powers looked so freaky back then...I'm glad they changed them... (Anyone know when the swap from 'regular animal with a green face' to 'green animal' happened?)

[jlroberson.insanejournal.com]

I would imagine one day some colorist went "fuck it," and that was probably that.

[manofbats.insanejournal.com]

I believe it was when he first started appearing in the Teen Titans.

[freddylloyd.insanejournal.com]

Gar kept the green head through his Doom Patrol run, and was all green from the start of New Teen Titans. But there were a couple of 1970s Teen Titans appearances that I haven't seen.

More shifts came in the past decade, when he started to change gradually instead of instantaneously (McKone's Teen Titans run, I believe), and most recently stopped wearing shoes.

[kamino_neko.insanejournal.com]

That last I can totally dig. Shoes are for suckers.

Sidenote, I just noticed his lion form has HANDS...as if the head wasn't freaky enough!

[freddylloyd.insanejournal.com]

Gar's bare feet and longer, unkempt hair (plus occasional sideburns) may be an attempt to move the character closer to the naked, hairy Animal Man glimpsed in some Teen Titans possible futures.

Yet at the same time, most artists aren't bothering to give Gar all the body hair that George Pérez used to draw. Too much trouble, I suspect.

[thanekos.insanejournal.com]

elephantigerilla, Cliff?

i bet you named the animal-vegetable-mineral man, didn't you?

[jlroberson.insanejournal.com]

Race car drivers are not known for their taxonomical imagination. Well, Jackie Stewart, but that's an exception.

[kamino_neko.insanejournal.com]

Remarkable drawing skills, though.

[psychop_rex.insanejournal.com]

He did, actually.

[volksjager.insanejournal.com]

The covers of the old Doom Patrol was just excellent. Animal-Vegetable-mineral man a personal fav.

I always wondered why the light is on RM's chest and not his head ?

[jlroberson.insanejournal.com]

Caulder probably blames bad design by that imbecile Magnus. But it was probably really because he wanted to see what would happen in the middle of a crisis should it get smashed in one of the usual fights. And of course, the Chief chuckled, and birds fell dead from the trees.

[rab62.insanejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure it was a camera and microphone, not a light. This was how the Chief was supposed to keep an eye on their missions while he was back at headquarters. That idea may have fallen by the wayside when the stories had him taking a more active role and not just staying behind. Anyway, it's not built into Cliff, he's simply got it strapped on his chest; I remember at least one story where the Chief wore it while a damaged and immobile Cliff watched the action on the screen.

[jlroberson.insanejournal.com]

Notice how often nowadays Cliff wears a shirt. And why shouldn't he? I always thought it a bit weird, with both him and the Thing, that they had no problem going around more or less naked, if only that clothes would help them mentally compensate for their already inhuman appearance. Though Ben does wear clothes more these days.

[volksjager.insanejournal.com]

I just asked that question about the pants in the other DP post today. personally I would just go "robot-naked" , HMMMMMM maybe a codpiece ?????

[jlroberson.insanejournal.com]

If in real life you'd liked that, it'd be one thing, but both he and Ben were "regular guys" and doubt they were much into clothing-optional unless a dame was involved. It would just reinforce their feeling of not being human.

[darklorelei.insanejournal.com]

Bees, my god!

That cover is AWESOME.

[jlroberson.insanejournal.com]

Look at Larry's reaction. He can imagine no greater terror. BEES!

[rab62.insanejournal.com]

LOL at the Kookie Byrnes shout out...though he would have been a couple of years out of date by then, wouldn't he? But yeah, the negative Beatles references make even less sense in 1965...and I was three years old at the time, so I'm a first hand witness!

[jlroberson.insanejournal.com]

He actually makes two of them, the first referring to the state of the place having been caused by Beatles fans. Now, that one makes sense. But that hairstyle a Beatles cut?

[aaron_bourque.insanejournal.com]

Hmm. Nowadays, they either would have waited for the 100th issue, stretched the story out so that it's a multi-parter (and had him debut in the next issue, natch) and/or renumbered the series with Gar's introduction or due to it, possibly renaming the title "The New Doom Patrol" or "Doom Patrol featuring Beast Boy!"

[silverzeo.insanejournal.com]

Hey, what is that? Some kind of Gortigerphantagle?

[jlroberson.insanejournal.com]

I think it was a hippokangarootypus.

[psychop_rex.insanejournal.com]

Man alive, this is great stuff. To beans with Beast Boy being all conflicted and whatnot - here he's a snot-nosed punk, and you'll take it and like it! If THESE aspects of the Silver Age were what was being emulated today, I'd be all for it.
Cliff is a surprisingly good artist, isn't he? Considering that he whipped up that 'Eaglephantigerilla' sketch as a joke, it turned out pretty well.
Oh, and - SUPER-HIP! Yay! Someone needs to post some Super-Hip on here. How can you not love someone whose secret identity is 'Tadwallader Jutefruce'?

[jlroberson.insanejournal.com]

Caulder reached into the future, stole a torrent of Adobe CS, loaded it into Cliff and told him he'd invented it.

[psychop_rex.insanejournal.com]

I prefer to think of him as a robot savant.