Since Secret Wars has not been overly kind to my favourite mutant

[icon_uk]

With two deaths and a third looking a bit dodgy, it's time to balance the scales with a little



This time I've commissioned someone new, the terribly misnamed tumblr artist averagexmendrawings, who is way, way WAY above average IMHO.

Another Cypher and Warlock fan, they jumped at the chance, and I've got a couple of prelims I have permission to share.

First up, a colour test of the New Mutants outfit (Which remains, even after all these, years, one of my favourite costume designs. It's simple, it's striking and it's bold.



The next up was a pencil shot of a possible pose for the Team Supreme, this was the first one suggested.



[corny TV announcers voice]

Doug’s an uptight mutant omniliguist with self-esteem issues.

Warlock’s a wacky shapeshifting alien…. [lowers voice an octave, add syrupy tone] with the mutant power of compassion.

When they find that they have to share a body sometimes to get their job done, anything could happen!
Coming this Fall, it’s “Doug/Lock: The Team Supreme”, Sunday’s at 8!

[/corny TV announcers voice]

Whilst it IS awesome, it wasn't quite what I was looking for, I wanted more of an action shot and boy howdy did the artist deliver!

Now while it wasn't a deliberate link, I couldn't look at the end result without thinking of this fun, if slightly bittersweet, scene from way back in Excalibur #5, as Kitty gets involved in rescuing the rest of the team from one of Arcade's more diabolical Murderworld's..



Now you think that would be bad enough, but....



Kitty maliciously trolling Arcade will never, ever get old.

But she's not done yet!



It would seem that on top of his many other desirable traits, Doug is an afficianado of "Dangermouse" (whose sidekick was a hamster named Penfold), perhaps Rahne introduced him to the series.

(I have no idea what the "Ford" joke is here, it crops up a time or two elsewhere in the issue, given Mr Davis' tendency to include comic shop owners in his work, it might be something along those lines).

Anyway, this is what the finished piece of art that arrived with me looked like!



And it struck me, in order to get Arcade's sourcecode to allow them to write the program, Doug might have had to do a little fieldwork which we never knew about eg a trip to a Murderworld....

“SelfsoulfriendCypherDoug…. Self recommends hurrying… unfriendspaceinvader saucers are approaching faster!”

"I’m typing as fast as I can Lock…. Just keep those shields up as long as you can!”

“–When Captain America throws his mighty shield–”

“NO! No throwing (or singing) Please just keep the shields (hey his WWII one too… nice touch Lock) between me and the shooty bang-bang spaceship things.”

“Query - Is that a game of Tetris on your screen?”

“What? Ummm no… I’ve hacked Arcade’s Operating System and he designed it so the interface looks like Tetris… Honestly, what a loser… I RULE at Tetris!”

“Self is glad to hear that but self would like to NOT be in place which rejoices in name of MurderWorld”

“Right there with you buddy… almost there….”

and the resulting chaos I leave to your imagination! ;)

Well, the laptop and memory stick are a little anachronistic but hey, Doug somehow managed a wireless computer connnection in 1985, so I just assume he and Kitty used some Shi'ar hardware to be WAY ahead of their time)

(Oh, and I wrote that text before I'd even HEARD of the abomination in the eyes of the Lord (and probably in the eyes of the Dark Lord too, who has SOME standard) called "Pixels")

Though i could post from a Davis Excalibur issue way past the limits of the 1/3 rule, I thought I had to post this image of how the Lockheed standoff ended...



Yeah, that'll work!

Comments

[thanekos]

Unexpected Captain Confederacy reference, that.

[icon_uk]

Claremont's work is always full of unexpected references. This story includes one of the more blatant, with the appearance of little-known but real-world music group Cat's Laughing as part of the Murderworld scenario, or possibly one of Doug's little additions.

[philippos42]

Of course!

Emma Bull sang with Cat's Laughing (which is largely made up of F&SF writers) and her husband Will Shetterly wrote Captain Confederacy.

And, no, I don't know who Ford is, either.

[thanekos]

John M. Ford seems likely.

[cainofdreaming]

Kitty went on their gig and danced on the stage later (before?) this too, didn't she? In that story with X-Babies. She seemed to know them personally.

[xakko]

"Mojo Mayhem", yes. Supposedly her favorite band, at least prior to too much sliding time scale.

Claremont *really* liked Emma Bull, putting her and the Fabulous Lorraine (a.k.a. Pansy Smith & Violet Jones, The Flash Girls) in Sovereign Seven as recurring characters.

[starwolf_oakley]

Doug Ramsey isn't a bad character, but his power is the definition of "useless in a fight." Until they try this Cassandra Cain-like body language power.

[sagrada]

Is that a bad thing? I mean, it's not like everyone needs to have powers vague-defined enough that they can all be excused in doing god-like feats.

[starwolf_oakley]

Well, I think that was why he was killed off: Doug's powers were useless in a fight, which would happen every issue. But it did give all the X-Men something to angst over.

[icon_uk]

He was killed off because Louise Simonson (who to her credit has always been open about it) couldn't work out how to use him in stories often enough (and has noted that she received a lot mail saying how useless he was).

The fact that she had simultaneously removed his combat partner Warlock from the story for the sake of the Fallen Angels miniseries, leaving him abandoned and more than slightly morose (to the extent of near clinical depression, which no one noticed) is perhaps a little glossed over.

So rather than anything more creative, like maybe him just deciding that he didn't want to be part of Xaviers any more and quitting and going back to a normal life, which would at least been different, she killed him off (and then got a lot of mail saying how great he was) for the sake of about two issues of cheap angst and then "Hey ho, it's on with our horrible new costumes and away we go"

If she had actually come up with an equally interesting character to replace him I might feel less irked, but her tenure gave us Bird-Brain (Groan!), Gossamyr (Shudder!) and led into Cable...(Whimper!)

Bitter? Moi?

[philippos42]

As someone who was reading the mutant books in that period, I thought Weezi's run was painful. I think she wrecked the mutants.

[icon_uk]

As someone else who was there at the time, I have to agree, which pains me as I loved a good deal of her other stuff, like Power Pack.

Whilst "her" New Mutants might have talked a little bit more like actual teenagers, it was too different from what they had been before, with Sam's peer pressure problems, Dani and Amara bemoaning the lack of decent guys on the team (right in front of Doug and Sam IIRC), Doug being a social wallflower etc...

[icon_uk]

You're lucky that I was too tired to respond to that one on Sunday night, as it might not have ended well. "You come into MY thread and show no respect to MY mutant omnitranslator!" and so on... ;)

Aside from Doug reading body language a good ten years before Cass Cain was even created, there is the whole question why should usefulness in a fight be a consideration to be a pupil at the Xavier School?

Bear in mind that the New Mutants were never intended to be a superhero team, they were mutant kids learning to control and expand the powers they had. They had adventures rather than missions.

His links with Warlock made him just as effective as, say, Sunspot (Whose superstrength was limited to how long he'd been in the sun), and in many ways Mirage (Whose powers were entirely psionic too, so would have no effect on the likes of Sentinels (And Doug, canonically, has destroyed more Sentinels (and future Nimrod-class ones at that) than every other X-Team put together, but that's by the by).

I'm actually quite pleased that the only time he's really used his body langauge skills for combat was when Selene controlled him. Doug being not particularly adept at hand to hand adds to his character rather than detracts from it IMHO.

[philippos42]

I thought removing Doug made the team weaker, honestly. Narrower powersets.

[steverequin]

I hope Miss Locke's hairline doesn't really start between her eyebrows.

[icon_uk]

Thankfully, the 80's was a time of eccentric fringes rather than unfortunate widow's peaks! :)