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Issue 53, "And Men Shall Call Him -- Hero!"

Writer: Grant Morrison
Artists: Ken Steacy with one page by Richard Case and Steve Hanna

Summary:
written by William Sherman (sherman@netcom.com), edited by Robert Kelly (bobek@rt66.com)

This issue is a very silly filler episode. It tells a dream of Danny's, drawn in a parody of the style of Jack Kirby, and written in a parody of the style of Stan Lee, from the early Marvel comics. It features wild versions of John Constantine, the Phantom Stranger, Mr. E and Doctor Thirteen. It stars the old version of the Doom Patrol, in a close parody of Lee and Kirby's Fantastic Four: Robotman as the Thing, the Chief as Mr. Fantastic, Elastigirl as the Invisible Girl, and Negative Man as the Human Torch. A superbeing from another dimension is breaking into our world; he is an overdone cosmic bigshot called "Celestius" (as in Galactus). Robotman's body is secretly inhabited, not by Cliff Steele, but by a rival of the Chief's. The Doom Patrol is called "the Legion of the Strange" here.

When the "Legion" is called to a building in the Bronx where the dimensional warping is taking place, this rival finds himself defending an innocent little blind girl. He ends up taking Celestius back to his home dimension, falling through the gate. The girl's sight is restored by the light from the warp, and the DP are left to wonder at the identity of this unknown person who hijacked Robotman's body.

In an epilogue, a very Ben Grimm-like Robotman takes us on a tour of the Doom Patrol's headquarters.

Annotations:
written by William Sherman and Kyle Seifried (kseif@one.net)

The general Marvel references are described above.

panel 2: The Eye in the Sky is a reference to the Philip K. Dick book of the same title.

p. 24: in the first panel, we see a famous Escher print, "Relativity".

The Doom Patrol is a licensed trademark of Jost Enterprises and, of course, DC Comics.
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