The Mysterious Case Of Jane Doe

[foxhack.insanejournal.com]

xdoop posted some scans from Batman: Streets of Gotham's Manhunter stories a few hours ago. They featured Jane Doe, who was... quite different from the last time I'd seen her in comics. The first time I'd seen her was in Arkham Asylum: Living Hell, where she was one of the three or four parallel stories featured in the six issue miniseries. This post contains a summary and several spoilers for the book.

All books were written by Dan Slott, illustrated by Ryan Sook, and colored by Lee Loughridge. The artwork has a very Hellboy, Mike Mignola vibe to it which works well in this context.

Arkham Asylum: Living Hell #1: Jane Doe killed and impersonated Doctor Anne Carver. She then tricked Warren White (a large-scale con artist who by the end of this series becomes Great White Shark) into giving her money so she could transfer him out of Arkham. And well, she seduces him, but Batman intervened. A scuffle happens, White discovers Dr. Carver's head stuffed in a mask ornament, and... well, this happens. (Two and a half pages out of twenty-three.)








In issue #2, one of the guards (who had a thing for Dr. Carver) confronts her and asks her what she did with her body.





In issue #3, she speaks to a not-quite-very-honest guard...



She impersonates him afterwards, and starts a breakout by leaving some cells open.

In issue #4, she sets more inmates free, and kidnaps Warren White. (No scans, she was barely in the issue.)

And in issue #5... she explains her plan to Warren.





(The skin she was working on had no scars, but since White got beat up so often, she had to make some adjustments to it...)



Issue #6 only features her trying to escape from the ghosts of people she's killed, and after the demonic event that cause them to happen is over, she almost gets out, but Batman stops her at the door.

So what have we learned here? Whoever this is, it's not the same Jane Doe from this miniseries, unless some weird retcon happened while we weren't looking... The Jane Doe featured here has some very good crafting skills, can create fake skins with facial features and fake hair with materials (I'm guessing she made the Fish skin while she was still impersonating Dr. Carver) but nowhere is it mentioned that she's a metahuman. Nowhere is it mentioned that she doesn't have any skin, or that her skins have "expiration dates" (but I wouldn't have a problem buying the idea that they wear out, because the fake skin that Jane is wearing in these scans ripped easily when other people tugged on it). Unless someone did this to make Jane Doe different from that guy featured a while back... the one that superglued his face to a mask and his father ripped it from his face, taking the face itself with it No-Face. (Thanks, suzene!)

Comments

[suzene.insanejournal.com]

...that guy featured a while back... the one that superglued his face to a mask and his father ripped it from his face, taking the face itself with it.

Alessio Morandi/No-Face.

And I think you mean "most recent appearance".

[foxhack.insanejournal.com]

No, a while back, as in "it happened a few months ago but I can't remember when" :p

Thanks for the clarification, I'll edit the post.

[icon_uk.insanejournal.com]

Given the absurdities this sample implies (changing her apparent gender, height, build and even ethnicity based on wearing a skin???) I think you HAVE to make the character a metahuman to make this schtick work.

[foxhack.insanejournal.com]

Not really. She only appears to impersonate people who are around her same height, and the build can be faked with the proper padding. Didn't you watch Big Momma's House?

(Is ashamed he saw Big Momma's House.)

[icon_uk.insanejournal.com]

Mercifully the trailer served as a warning to avoid that one like the plagues of Egypt... which it might well qualify as.

And the same height size thing limits her more than seems entirely wise for a character you might want to make a credible threat.

[foxhack.insanejournal.com]

Well, she's not a supervillain in this book. She's a serial killer. When it comes to the Batman universe, there's a big difference.

(We could argue about Joker and Two-Face and so on, but there's no point, I don't think...)

[icon_uk.insanejournal.com]

If you don't want to argue the point that's fine, but I see nothing particularly out of keeping about classifying a serial killer as a Batman level threat, like Mr Zsasz, or Kadaver, or Vox, or Black Mask in his original personality, or many, many of the other threats that Batman has faced.

[petalsinthewind.insanejournal.com]

Her facial features change.  She gets a jawline when she impersonates that last guy.

[foxhack.insanejournal.com]

Like I said... padding.

She most likely made the suit during her time as the doctor, so she would've had access to better materials.

[petalsinthewind.insanejournal.com]

That "padding" would basically have to be a skull-face-mold to shape the nose, lips, jawline, etc.

I do prefer this over the skinless meta though.

[foxhack.insanejournal.com]

That "padding" would basically have to be a skull-face-mold to shape the nose, lips, jawline, etc.

Sorry. My head wasn't translating words the right way. Considering she made the fake skins on her own I wouldn't find it unsurprising if she actually did build prosthetic facial attachments into the faces or other parts of the body to appear to have the proper features. :)

[fungo_squiggly.insanejournal.com]

So, wait, why didn't she kill Warren?

[foxhack.insanejournal.com]

She left him to die in a freezer - Mr. Freeze's cell. He didn't die, but did get some nasty hypothermia that cost him his ears, nose, and several fingers.

(Sorry for the triple comment!)

[fungo_squiggly.insanejournal.com]

Thus completing his transformation as the Great White Shark. Ah, yes.

I really ought to buy this story arch sometime. It's always looked very interesting.

[aaron_bourque.insanejournal.com]

Why does Mr. Freeze have a cell at Arkham? He's not insane. He may be depressed, but they can treat that at normal prisons, right?

[foxhack.insanejournal.com]

Criminally insane. He does crimes, and he's killed people, but he can't be considered sane by any means so they stick him in there. :p

[aaron_bourque.insanejournal.com]

I would like to see a pathology report, then.

"does crimes, and he's killed people" doesn't make someone criminally insane.

Well, I guess it does. That doesn't stop people like that from being thrown in jail rather than committed.

[foxhack.insanejournal.com]

Does crimes.

Christ. Why's my English going to shit lately. -.-

[xlineartx.insanejournal.com]

Are the local prisons equipped to deal with metahumans? It's possible that could sway a Gotham judge into sending him to Arkham if he had a good lawyer who wanted him sent there.

[aaron_bourque.insanejournal.com]

There are other prisons in other cities, Metropolis can't be that far . . . although I don't know enough about the criminal justice system, is it wrong to jail someone out of state for non-federal crimes? If so, how is The Slab, which is the meta-metacrime prison (meaning it's supposedly for criminals from those places that aren't set up for metacriminals), justified?

Or are all metacrimes federal.

Aaron "The Mad Whitaker" Bourque; sometimes I hate when the fans think things through more thoroughly than the creators.

[foxhack.insanejournal.com]

If we didn't discuss this stuff, we'd never get our No-Prizes.

[icon_uk.insanejournal.com]

None of Batman's "criminally insane" supervillains satisfy the legal definition of insane for a defence. Even the Joker is perfectly aware of the consequences of his actions, he just doesn't care.

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

True, though the legal defination of insane is pretty ass backwards, thanks to a rich boy shooting a president.

[icon_uk.insanejournal.com]

Or actually use HIS face to make her mask of him?

[foxhack.insanejournal.com]

Because it doesn't look like she takes the skin off her victims, like the recent story says. She only makes copies somehow.

[icon_uk.insanejournal.com]

And it's the "somehow" which makes her character so vague that I can easily see a writer wanting to use her making alterations to her to make her more of a threat, and up the "Ick" factor a bit.

[xlineartx.insanejournal.com]

She'd have to do some kind of cast to get the shape exactly right, at the very least. Is she telekinetic? Because it'd be hard to manipulate that realistically without intense animatronics or something.