Who's This? The Doom Patrol's leader.
The facts: The wheelchair-bound leader of the Doom Patrol as of their first appearance in My Greatest Adventure #80 (June 1963), Niles Caulder appears to die with his team at the end of its Silver Age run only to show up alive and well in the 80s just in time for Grant Morrison's seminal run on the book, giving the character an even more manipulative edge and eventually turning him into a disembodied head in an ice bucket. Infinite Crisis is blamed for giving him his body back so he can participate in the DP series that follow. A young and healthy Caulder shows up in the New52's Ravagers, so that's a big who cares, but he does recreate the Doom Patrol in Justice League following the Forever Evil event.
How you could have heard of him: But the REAL place to get more contemporary Chief stories is the Young Animal series that takes its cues from the Morrison era, and the television series where he is played by Timothy Dalton (all the cred).
Example story: Doom Patrol #45 (July 1991) "The Beard Hunter" by Grant Morrison, Vince Giarrano and Malcolm Jones III
99% of Chief stories are Doom Patrol stories (who he leads but also pisses off a lot), but there IS one Chief solo adventure of note. And it's the one where he becomes the target of the Beard Hunter, an absurd parody of the Punisher who collects facial scalps. Normally, he kills whoever reminds him of his stepfather, but on this day, he's hired by the enemy - the Bearded Gentlemen's Club of Metropolis - who want revenge on the Chief for refusing to sell them his beard. Where's Niles Caulder while this is going down? In an all-night supermarket, shopping. The encounter starts with him getting knocked out of the chair.
The Beard Hunter's code is pretty flexible. "Punk was probably planning to grow a bead anyway." As for our boy Niles, if there are secret weapons in his chair, it's now out of play. But to a genius, even one crawling around a grocery store, everything is potentially a weapon. Like... sunflower oil.
In the fall, Beard Hunter loses track of his shaving cream. Uh-oh.
The Chief hides away somewhere and his opponent starts to indiscriminately shoot up the place. Household items are all very well and good, but the Chief is an engineer. So it's time to do some engineering.
Bit of foil, bit of electricity, a lot of cereal to hide the trap, and
yeah, the Beard Hunter is electrocuted. Fried, really. As everything
goes dark, he is visited by God, a beard wearer if there ever was one,
and it's over. These superhero geniuses who have no powers but their big
brains may seem like easy targets, but do NOT mess with them. We'll let
Niles Caulder have the final word.
Who's Next? A boy with a green thumb.
Comments