Detective Comics Annual #6 (1993) Bloodlines Earthplague Part 4

[pyrotwilight]

Hmm, I'll admit I wanted to kinda skip this New Blood. His power was amazingly stupid and very ill used even in this book. Though I guess at least one hero had to be gifted with powers that are...well...useless.

Meet Geist the Twilight Man. That's. Yeah.


 

The tale opens up with Batman (Jean Paul) as he intercepts a bunch of kids who are inner city drug runners for the cities big Drug Posses.

After beating them up the capture posse (while awaiting arrest by authorities) are attacked by Pritor.



And yes this boy becomes a very minor New Blood like Channelman from the Robin annual.

We then get some recap of Jean Paul's story including how he was Azrael earlier.



We then meet newly graduated College student Dwayne Guyer who works the night shift at Chem Max a company whose public relations are pretty awful since the group dumps chemicals alot. Something that has caused Dwaye problems since his friends have avoided him because of it.

His co-worker Carl leaves minutes before he does. Dwayne isn't so lucky.



 

Meanwhile Batman tracks down where the Gangstas Nine group is located. Just in time to see that the young New Blood  (Rodney James) is beating up on his former drug boss. He's doing that because the boss decided to off him since he thinks he's stealing from his drug supply. But lo and behold the folks shoot at him but Rodney's found himself with a rubbery body something akin to Elongated Man or Reed Richards stretchiness. 



 

Have to admit Jean Paul does have the Bat Scowl down and the moment letting the kid go is rather Bruce-ish. Great job!

And so this unbelievably obscure New Blood vanished to the safety of limbo unlike some of the other New Bloods.

Meanwhile Dwayne wakes up in an alley and people hear his voice yelling about a ghost. That's Dwayne himself who can turn invisible. He makes his way home and gives some exposition on his GREAT powers.

 

Yes. His power is that he becomes invisible in the light but when he does HE can't see either. 



 

Yes. He has to wear welding goggles just so that he can see in broad daylight though I'll admit his costume looks pretty cool.

 

Geist decides to stop by his job for unkown reasons. Presumably to either see if he can find out about his powers (which he thinks are from chemicals there) or to cover his tracks from when he vanished from work. 

Carl his co-worker sees Dwayne's keys near to Dwayne's parked car, still there from the previous work day and takes them into the office.



Well, at least Geist can pull some fun pranks. maybe.

The GCPD decide to scope around Chem Max since many of the recent spinal tap victims have been near it. Similarly Batman goes there from the lead from Rodney. 



Their bullets are useless and Montoya tries some other methods of fighting back shooting at some tanks with volatile chemicals to hurt Pritor.



 

After some fightingPritor tries attacking Montoya. Geist grabs her to make her invisible and the two try running. Which is also kinda silly. If Geist uses his powers and it works the same way if they're invisible they should be blind and unable to see where they're going from what they established about Geist's powers and the goggles wouldn't let him see if he's making them also invisible with his outfit....

Pritor however can adjjust his eyes to different visual spectrum's including heat reading and chases after Geist and the GCPD are about to try firing at Pritor again.

 

"Do him." Wow. Umm.

 

Huh, it's actually kinda cute. Bullock doesn't really seem to care about Batman in other things I've seen (at least in these annuals) but he doesn't want them firing at him because he's Montoya's friend. Aww.

Jean Paul tries holding onto the line for awhile but Pritor slices through it and flies off.



 

Hah! Well, that was unhelpful Jean Paul. Yeaaaah.

Not sure what Chuck Dixon was aiming for here. The character as created was only useful really if you ignored how his powers were said to work. In fact by being invisible in the room when he grabbed his keys back a few pages he should've been blind as that's how they said his powers function yet he's suddenly able to see. The welding goggles can't do anything to help shield his eyes if they too become invisible.                                                                                  

Comments

[shanejayell]

I actually kinda liked this issue, but admittedly I didn't think about it too hard.

*lol*

[pyrotwilight]

Yeah it's kinda fun and goofy I'll admit but it annoys me to no end when a writer tries explaining an ability and then contradicts it a second later.

[icon_uk]

The character as created was only useful really if you ignored how his powers were said to work. In fact by being invisible in the room when he grabbed his keys back he should've been blind as that's how they said his powers function yet he's suddenly able to. The welding goggles can't do anything to help shield his eyes if they too become invisible.

How about; Not it they're invisible to us, but they are still effectively opaque to him. If his power acts like a cloak of invisibility around him, then the goggles would still function for him within it, but not to us outside it.

[icon_uk]

I should also add I actually like Geist, his power is pretty cool, the costume is neat, and I'm generally a sucker for low key powers like his.

[halloweenjack]

Yeah, the question of how invisible people see has been around for a while. One obvious answer--that the invisible person has a sort of clairvoyance that's limited to their point of view--requires them to have an additional, and different type of, power. One of the best solutions that I've seen was in the Wild Cards anthologies, where the invisible guy would make his eyeballs visible, and if he was in a combat situation he'd just make a note of where everyone was, go completely invisible, and attack them before they could move.

Don't have much of a use for this story, although I do like Renee here.

[jcbaggee]

This seems like an easy thing to hand wave away with "Powers don't really work like that, character is kind of an idiot who doesn't know what he's talking about."

That said, Geist seems like a pretty likeable guy. And with a power like that, you can't tell me Bruce isn't interested in using him for recon. He needs to show up, if anything as Batman's daylight eyes and ears.

[janegray]

Me: well, this Geist guy seems like a fun and interesting character. I'd like to read more about him :)

Me: *checks Wikipedia*

Wikipedia: Geist is killed in Infinite Crisis #7. While fighting Grundy, Superboy-Prime fires a blast of heat vision at members of the Blood Pack. Geist, Grundy, and those members of the Blood Pack present at that time are killed.

Me: ...of course. How silly of me to think that a recently-created character could be used for anything but cannon fodder.

[pyrotwilight]

Not sure if I'd call him recently-created, their was a good 12 year gap essentially since creation to death. 1993-2005

But yeah. Pretty awful.

[heckfire]

...with nothing involving him between those times, I imagine. He doesn't seem 90's enough for the Blood Pack.

[janegray]

Considering that the Big Three are 70 years old now, I think of ten-year-old characters as recently created.

[q99]

This answers the question of whether it was Bruce or pre-gauntlet Paul in one of the earlier issues.

[psychopathicus_rex]

I think 'Bloodlines' encompasses both, actually - it's Bruce in some of the earlier ones, and Jean-Paul in the later ones.

[pyrotwilight]

Bruce is only in the first of the Batannual (with Joe Public) for the remainder of the event it's all Jean Paul.

[psychopathicus_rex]

Well, all right, then - it still encompasses both; it's just predominantly Jean-Paul.