Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol 24

Este numero es mi favorito de la Doom Patrol, les entrego un resumen en ingles, para que entrenen este idioma oficial y se acostumbren a leerlo, hago esto por la misma razon que un japones intentaria enseñaros su idioma si deciden residir en Japon.

LA CASA QUE CONSTRUYO JACK

Rebis, Crazy Jane and Cliff are all separated, which means we get a grand tour de force of weirdness that is Red Jack’s mansion. Rebis finds himself in a giant room full of clockwork and a nasty giant puppet. Rebis is definitely not impressed; s/he cuts the puppets strings and heads off to find Cliff.

Crazy Jane finds a movie projector of sorts. Her crazy curiosity is piqued, and she watches a lovely little film about a fat naked man in a bowler hat that gets eaten by disembodied hands. Oh yeah, there’s also a nanny cradling some gross little bug baby. This is a little too disturbing, even for Crazy Jane, so she decides to stumble off. She discovers Red Jacks collection of pinned butterflies, and suddenly she’s all awash with sympathy and girliness.

While the others are having fun, Cliff is trying to reason with Red Jack. Trying is the key word here. For example, Cliff isn’t pleased with the fact that Jack and Rhea are now man and wife. “This is insane! You can’t marry her, She’s in a coma, for god’s sake!” Jacks none too pleased with snippiness, so he opens a canyon under Cliff’s feet.

Now that he has Cliff’s attention Jack can go on a super-villain monologue TM. He explains that he’s God, and he banished himself to this mansion for committing the unspeakable crime of filling nothingness with horrible, horrible existence. Every hundred years he makes a brief journey to Earth, and the last time he did so he cut up hookers and tried to reassemble them into something better than human. Back then they called him Jack the Ripper. S’true. This time around he decided to spice up his love life by getting hitched. Jack chose Rhea because he senses that she is transforming into something powerful and unique while she’s in a coma. ***

While Jack is babbling away, Cliff tries numerous sneak attacks that just result in Jack beating the shit out of him. See, while in his home, Jack has god-like powers (which sort of lends credibility to his claims of divinity). Cliff gets his jaw and arm ripped off, his eye falls out, a chandelier drops on his head, and he’s soundly thrashed with his own amputated arm (insult to injury I suppose). None of these things make Cliff give up, cuz he’s a super hero and noble(stupid). Rebis finally shows up, and Jack impales him on icicles. Rebis doesn’t die because nothing dies in Jacks house. He feeds off of suffering; thus the purpose of his butterfly collection. See, there was a reason for it! I bet you just thought he was flitty or something.

Dumb luck, as always, saves the DP. Rhea briefly wakes from her coma and stabs Jack with a conveniently located knife, and Crazy Jane lets all the butterflies go free.

Jack dies, but he sure does take his damn sweet time. A soliloquy ensues: He only wanted to bring meaning to existence, but as he dies he realizes that life is pointless, so he couldn’t possibly have succeeded. Very post-modern.

Cliff hopes Jack wasn’t really God, Rebis couldn’t care less, and Jane missed the whole thing while she was playing with butterflies, so she’s just confused. And Rheas in a coma again. So ends another pulse-pounding DP adventure….except the DP have no idea how they’re going to get home.