When I was a kid, I considered Doctor Light to be one of the main villains of the DCU. Like Doctor Doom over at Marvel, he did not seem to be tied to one particular hero or team and indeed was a menace all over the company's roster of titles. He showed up as an antagonist in many different heroes titles, not to mention taking them on as groups in the pages of Justice League of America or Teen Titans. Maybe he wasn't able to maintain his standing as an arch villain because he was defeated so often.
Dazzler fought Doctor Light with Green Lantern in STF #2043...
22 comments:
He was kind of a "Mort" for me, because he warmed up for taking on the JLA by taking on the Titans and got beaten by "those meddling kids"... He seemed such a pushover. And then, he was totally ruined for me by Identity Crisis.
Man, you dazzled us again!
The moment's past but I had a concept for a fan fiction story where Doctor Light is returned to life by an extremely bored Satan some time after the events in the first Suicide Squad. Light dies but returns a clean slate not knowing who he is as the Phantom Stranger brings him to (my revised version of ) the Justice Society to earn redemption .
The one thing I liked about Dr. Light was the costume - very clean design like the Flash before all the extras added. Of course it only works when Dr. Light has black (or white) hair - consider how it would look if he was a redhead - and it continued with the heroic Doctor Light, Kimiyo Hoshi, except when they made her costume yellow not white.
My first exposure to Dr. Light was way back in '62, JLA #12, where he was a reasonably serious baddy, although he was more into gadgets than having intrinsic powers. It was also the first time the JLA used the "two members switch costumes so they get hit with the wrong traps" trope.
And I remember years later when Dr. Light got laughed at while trying to join the SSSV because he had been beaten by both the Titans and the Atom.
I think one of the big reasons Dr Light didn't catch on as a supervillain was his name. Doctors are good, light is good, so it's hard to think of "Doctor Light" as evil. Also, there are a lot of people whose last name actually is "Light," and some of them are doctors. If your last name is Strange or Fate or Doom or Solar and you earn a doctorate, you can expect some ribbing, but Light is a common enough last name that more people are going to laugh at the comic character because he has the same name as their dentist or vet or whoever than will laugh at the dentist or vet for having the same name as the comic character.
Man how far has this guy fallen ammirite? He went from being taken seriously to being jobbed out to the Teen Titans and then he served a tour of duty with the Suicide Squad, which confirmed his mort-ness, then he died and came back. Only Morrison seemed to kinda of properly use him. Then IC really ruined him in an attempt to make him a badass again and now where is he? Killed off like a fucking chump in Phew 52 DCU, and has yet to appear now. He's due for a return, but a legit return that restores his potential as a badass.
As for the match up, Dazzler's pretty damn powerful, so I feel she has a slight edge here, even though I wouldn't sleep on Dr. Light's power potential either. So I'm thinking power-wise they either cancel each other out, with Allison having to pull a hail mary out of nowhere for the win.
Doctor Light was one of my favorite villains, too, mainly because as well as being a comics geek, I was also a physics geek in high school, with optics being my favorite field.
I once heard Marv Wolfman explain that he couldn't take Doctor Light seriously. He got beaten by the Atom, so the next thing he does is take on Green Lantern? (Apparently, Marv didn't think much of the Atom either.) So he decided to turn the Doc into a goofy loser in the New Teen Titans series.
I think that this pairing would make for some great light reading. #BadPunNoCookie
I'm with AirDave. Identity Crisis ruined the character. They turned him into a rapist in a graphic scene. He hadn't shown any such tendencies in the decades prior to that. Later stories it's all they can refer to and it's a joke. A sick one.
great cover,Ross, the highLIGHT of my day...
...and now a left-field thought for perhaps a future Thanksgiving Day....
superheroes and villians from Turkey such as Brando the Robot, Erlik, the Turkish god of the underworld, Glittergirl (aka Pirilkiz) and her dog Sparkle, Janissary, a magic user, Kara Murat, the Sentinal of the Conquerer, Rafie the Lifter (gravity powers), Turac a warlord vampire (Dracula's first victim), Vasak, a lynx beast, and from the Suicide Squad and the Secret Six the sharpshooter known as Yasemin Soze to name a few....
It appears that in the New 52 / Rebirth continuity, Identity Crisis never happened, as Sue Dibny turned up alive near the end of the New 52 Secret Six book, and the New 52 Dr. Light (with a new origin) apparently was only a minor villain before he was killed in Forever Evil.
That said, Meltzer needed a recognizable villain who had had a obvious personality transplant somewhere along the way to make the back half of Identity Crisis (an act heinous enough to drive the JL to mind-control and the resulting schism within the JL) work. There aren't a lot of candidates, and nobody was going to seriously use Dr. Light again, so he was as good as choice as any.
Personally, I thought having Jean Loring going cuckoo enough to kill Sue was a much, much weaker part of IC.
"WAH HOOO!! Ok kid let's blow this thing and go home." - Han Solo.
Baudelaire wants to see The Phantom 2049 fight AEon Flux. Same artist drew both characters.
Two suggestions which just came to me.
Darth Vader and Calvin
Or Calvin on the Enterprise "Start wrecking across the universe...."
The Guardians of Oa and the Wizard of Oz.
losthunderlads, I found your comment interesting. Light is not at all common as a name in my part of the world (Australia). In fact, I'm not sure I've ever seen someone with that name outside a comic book. Is it a common name generally where you live, or more for a particular ethnic group?
According to one site Geneanet, This last name is indexed 60,562 times. This does not count alternate spellings such as "Lyght". Contrary that to mine (Host, which I think would be good comic name) 16,535 times.
Jay Johnson said...
"Personally, I thought having Jean Loring going cuckoo enough to kill Sue was a much, much weaker part of IC."
- - - -
Yes, although her stability had already been shown as a bit shaky before that.
Now, how about the fact that Sue Dibny had apparently had no problems dealing with the heroic Dr light -- okay, female instead of male, but not just the same code-name, pretty much the same costume & powers as well -- at the JLE "after" that incident?
And the fact that the heroes searching for Sue's killer started off looking for villains with innate powers because mundane weaponry would have left traces they'd already have identified... but then it turned out that Jean had used a flamethrower, so... traces?
And the way in which the JLA lined up to be defeated by Deathstroke?
And either Loring or the Calculator apparently knowing that Tim Drake was Robin, despite the Bat-family's secretiveness?
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Mind you, I did like the scene when Superman identified the knot that had been used to hang Jean...
^_^
The only good thing about "Identity Crisis" was that it was ret-conned out of existence by "Flashpoint."
You know, this would have been perfect for the Spider-man story arc where Edward "Lightmaster" Lansky was trying to reconstitute himself!
@Anonymous 6:42 PM: Light is a fairly common name in the USA, as I think Glenn Host's comment indicates. There are certainly more Americans with doctorates whose last name is Light than whose last name is Doom, Fate, or Solar! In fact, I would wager there are more Americans named "Dr. Light" than are named "Dr. Strange," even though "Strange" is a more common surname.
@Los Thunderlads: truth is Strange-r than fiction.
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