Cliff Steele was a famous racecar driver who brought enough fame and fortune to afford a nice mansion and a high class life for his wife and kids. Here he's played by Flipino-American actor Alec Mapa. Updated August 5, 2020. A third season has been ordered and will air exclusively on HBO Max. They try and knock us down, but change is coming, it's our time now. Rita Farr still appears youthful despite being a young woman in the 1950s. Victor's relationship with his father implies some sort of mental or emotional abuse. Steve Dayton, the world's fifth richest man, builds a helmet to enhance his mental abilities and calls himself Mento.This is an attempt on Dayton's part to impress Elasti-Girl (a.k.a. In the second episode, they utterly fail to prevent the town from being sucked into a. Larry and the negative being in his body are pretty much a metaphor for his image as a 'normal' straight man, and his secret, other, true self of being a gay man. Heinrich von Fuchs' comic book counterpart is Dr. Bruckner, presumably specifically so they could call his Paraguayan theme park Fuchtopia. It premiered on February 15, 2019. Crazy Jane suffers this when she finds out the Chief planned to put her in the asylum with the rest of the original Doom Patrol. A background serial in Doom Patrol #s 100, 101, 103 & 105 (December 1965 – August 1966, within 30 months of his introduction) retconned that Caulder made a mistake in the operation, causing Steele to go on a rampage, which Caulder corrected when he recruited Steele for the Patrol. While they try to fight off their former comrade, Cliff is approached by his own brainless corpse, which has also been revived as a Black Lantern. Batgirl is the name of several fictional superheroes appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics, depicted as female counterparts to the superhero Batman.Although the character Betty Kane was introduced into publication in 1961 by Bill Finger and Sheldon Moldoff as Bat-Girl, she was replaced by Barbara Gordon in 1967, who later came to be identified as the iconic Batgirl. He is capable of flight, as well as underwater travel. Larry Trainor was a famed, decorated fighter pilot and considered an American hero. His body boasts a wide array of sensors as well as greatly enhanced senses, and is able to recharge itself by consuming and processing organic material. Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man's first attempt at a robbery ends with his dinosaur head attacking his normal head. as an authoritarian trying to take away farmers' rights, as a group of heroic rebels uniting for the common good, while being oblivious to the fact she just described them rebelling against the union by forming a union. There was nothing wrong with the original body designed by Bruno Premiani. Ultimately, the whole Doom Patrol loses faith in Niles when they discover he was behind the accidents that made them who they are now. The only exceptions are Mento and the original Doom Patrol, but this is explained as a result of the trauma Mr Nobody inflicted on their psyche causing their bodies to decay, indicating their physical health is linked to their mental state. Caulder subsequently placed Cliff's intact brain into a robotic body. Mr. Nobody's face (or what's still there of it) is the same age as before the experiment. Publication history. Her daughter, Dorothy Spinner, inherited the same ability. (She ends up, Cliff's brief appearance shows him as a cheating, drunk, self-aggrandizing, In one of Jane's memories from when Kay Challis was going to school in the 60s, her (apparently Southern) school teacher portrays Abraham Lincoln. Robotman made his first live adaptation as a guest star on the Titans television series for DC Universe played by Jake Michaels. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Series/DoomPatrol2019. This team was eventually almost all killed in action, with Cliff voluntarily committing himself to an asylum in Doom Patrol (Vol. The team battles strange and bizarre villains, including the sinister Mr. Nobody (Alan Tudyk). The Doom Patrol's lack of training, teamwork, and control over their powers mean their earliest battles are complete failures. The second season was streamed simultaneously on DC Universe and HBO Max. In the first episode, going into town nearly ends with them destroying it. What Mr. Nobody initially shows Rita and Larry. Cliff's original mechanical body possessed superhuman strength, speed, and endurance. [2], At the time, Drake didn't realize that there had been a previous character named Robotman, published in 1942-1953 during the Golden Age of Comic Books. In the comics Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man was Swedish. Made worse because Cliff has a mouse messing around in his head, leading him to act out far more than usual. This version of Cliff Steele is an adventurer and daredevil who agrees to be injected with experimental nanomachines designed to improve and repair his body. The Doom Patrol sacrificed their lives to Madame Rouge and General Zahl (who pushed the actual kill button) to save the small fishing village of Codsville, Maine. Rita Farr's origin is almost completely intact, except instead of being able to grow and shrink at will, Rita finds that her body has begun to distort and melt like a blob. Its their glory days that only gradually turns into an image of horrifying despair. "And then, in a single moment, I realized I understood absolutely nothing at all." —Rita Farr. He was famous enough to get cameos in soaps. The post-Flashpoint version of Cliff's robotic body is nanomachine based, allowing him to change its shape and abilities when needed. [3], Robotman was the only original member of the Doom Patrol to appear with the team's second incarnation, which debuted in Showcase #94-96 (Aug. 1977 - Jan. 1978). It's stated that he's 95 during the present day of the first season. Slava can create artificial beings from her imagination, primarily using this to create a werewolf/Wendigo-looking creature to ward off intruders. seeks to ensure that everything is normal. The series makes Larry Traynor a gay man, played by, Cliff in the comics was a hot-headed but otherwise. He's not, Larry Trainor was a gay man cheating on his wife with another man who suffered with the duality of his personas, and is now bound to another being whom he hates and can't connect with, but. Crazy Jane has dissociative identity disorder, implied to have stemmed from sexual abuse by her father as a child. Mandark's last words before his body explodes and becomes a disembodied brain.Noooooooooooo!! When he is involved in a fatal car crash during a high-speed race, the nanomachines respond by creating a robotic body in order to encase and protect his still living brain. Mento adored Rita and was falling in love with her when he read her mind and turned away from her in disgust due to something in her past. Zigzagged with Animal-Mineral-Vegetable Man, who is less buff than usual, but at least his face isn't half-melted into the side of a dinosaur's neck. [2] He commented on the character's original name, Automaton: That name was pretty stupid. Cliff then joined a new Doom Patrol headed by a woman claiming to be Niles Caulder's wife Arani. In Rachel Pollack's creative run, Cliff's artificial brain began to malfunction so Dorothy Spinner's Imaginary Friends "rebuilt" Cliff's old brain.[10]. He is best known as a member of the Doom Patrol, being the only character to appear in every version of the team since he, and the team, were introduced together in June 1963. And the accident that turned him into Robotman happened with them in the car, crashing through a semi-truck, decapitating his wife Kate and damaged Cliff’s body beyond repair, leaving him and his daughter Clara as the only survivors of the crash. Instead of being injured by an extradimensional being or invasion, he is in a simple lab accident when he gets angry and throws a volatile chemical, which explodes. —Niles Caulder[src] Doctor Niles Evelyn Caulder, (born c. 1881)1, also known as the Chief, is the father of Dorothy Spinner and an experimental doctor and pioneer in medical science. Sales of Doom Patrol had waned, and the creative team chose to kill off the entire team, including Robotman, in the final issue, Doom Patrol #121 (September–October 1968). Doom Patrol is a 2019 superhero series on the DC Universe and HBO Max streaming services, based off the classic Doom Patrol comic series.. Each member has suffered horrible accidents that gave them superhuman abilities but also left them scarred and disfigured. After coming to terms with his new body, he becomes a freelance hero, assisted by a woman named Maddy, who was involved in the nanomachine project and blames herself for Cliff's condition. Dear Twitpic Community - thank you for all the wonderful photos you have taken over the years. Traumatized and downtrodden, the team found purpose through The Chief, who brought them together to investigate the weirdest phenomena in existence — and to protect Earth from what they find. We come into this world unknown, but know that we are not alone. Cliff Steele was born in Brooklyn.[9]. He is unique for being the only character to appear in every version of the Doom Patrol.[6]. AH-ha-ha, AH-ha-HA-ha-HA!Mandark's famous evil cackle. Flex Mentallo looks exactly the same (after a haircut) coming out of the Ant Farm as he did going in. [11] Crazy Jane, who is white in the comics, is played by Latina actress Diane Guerrro. [8] After the operation, Cliff suffered from frequent depression because he viewed himself as less than human. Cyborg (Joivan Wade) plays an important part, but whether he's officially on the team isn't yet clear. When the universe was reset after the events of Milk Wars, Cliff regained his human body. Doom Patrol is a 2019 superhero series on the DC Universe and HBO Max streaming services, based off the classic Doom Patrol comic series. In the final episode of season 1, after the group splits apart upon learning what Niles did, Larry and Rita live together in a new house. Like the team's roster, I should have left that alone, too. Doom Patrol is a re-imagining of one of DC’s most beloved group of outcast Super Heroes: Robotman, Negative Man, Elasti-Girl and Crazy Jane, led … Holding a therapy group between several individuals with deep-seated traumas, all without a trained therapist to mediate, is not going to end well. Near the end of Grant Morrison's creative run on the title, Robotman’s human brain was revealed to have been replaced with a CPU, making him a robot in reality. 2) #19 (Feb. 1989), having fallen into a state of depression due to his condition and the loss of his teammates. [clarification needed] He and Negative Man trick the Black Lanterns into entering a warp gate to a JLA checkpoint then try to put the incident behind them. In The New 52 reboot, a different version of the character debuted in the My Greatest Adventure miniseries in October 2011, written by Matt Kindt. DC's previous Robotman also had a human brain. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. [1] According to Drake, the issue's co-writer Bob Haney was not brought on to the project until after Robotman was created. Possibly. REALITY SHOWS AND DOCUSERIES. He was potentially going to be one of the first men in space. It was also equipped with electromagnetic feet that enabled him to scale metal walls, heating coils in his hands that enabled him to melt metals, an oxygen tank that could sustain his brain in an emergency, and a video communicator strapped to his chest that allowed Caulder to maintain contact with the team in the field, complete with visual information. LGBTQ representation on TV has been advanced through reality shows – both competition and otherwise – and documentaries, even those that aren’t explicitly billed as queer: Netflix’s Cheer is ostensibly a sports doc, but a beautiful portrait of young gay friendship emerges over its six episodes; MTV’s The Real World was a groundbreaker for gay and … Of course, since he was literally transformed into a metaphysical (and metafictional) super-being, this is really to be expected. Doom Patrol features the likes of Negative Man (Matt Bomer), Elasti-Woman (April Bowlby), Robotman (Brendan Fraser) and Crazy Jane (Diane Guerrero), under the guidance of Dr. Niles Caulder aka “The Chief” (Timothy Dalton). Larry Trainor is still a test pilot who merged with the Negative Spirit in the upper atmosphere, but here, he, Crazy Jane still has 64 different personalities and each personality has their own superpower, but since there was no gene bomb in this universe, her powers instead come from a drug she's injected with by the. At one point, Kate and Cliff merged and shared his memories. Susan "Mandark" Astronomonov, also publicly known as Mandark, is the overall main antagonist of the Dexter's Laboratory series and Cartoon Network's 1st animated feature film, Dexter's Laboratory: Ego Trip. The reboot was accompanied by Robotman getting a new body, which was designed by artist Joe Staton at writer Paul Kupperberg's request. [4], Staton said he patterned Robotman's new body after a young John Byrne's fanzine contribution (Contemporary Pictorial Literature) of the robot character Rog-2000 "as a joke". Rita needing to constantly focus and control her mind in order to not literally melt into a pile of goo is akin to people suffering from anxiety disorders. Mento first appeared in Doom Patrol #91 (November 1964) and was created by Arnold Drake and Bruno Premiani.. Fictional character biography. Magnus introduced him to a person with "worse problems than [his]": a woman called Crazy Jane. Robotman has appeared in numerous cartoon television shows and films. Both Kipling and the Beard Hunter are more heavy-set and unkempt than their comics counterparts. Niles Caulder is portrayed initially as the beloved fatherly figure of the team, with hints of a more ruthless, pragmatic persona underneath, whereas his comic self was a far colder man who turned out to have been a complete sociopath. Note that both series, in any case, are very much in their own worlds from the Arrowverse, the DC Extended Universe, and other DC properties. Niles Caulder, while still appearing visibly older, looks to be the same age during Jane's flashbacks to the seventies. And that's just from the first few episodes! Rita Farr) of the Doom Patrol. TVTropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Robotman (Clifford "Cliff" Steele, called Automaton in first two appearances) is a fictional character, a cyborg superhero in the DC Comics Universe. He is part of the main cast of its spinoff Doom Patrol which is also on HBO Max. Caulder sent Magnus round to try to help Cliff. Her previous need for constant validation and attention also implies some form of narcissism or deep-seated inferiority complex. He actually hasn't aged since some time in. In the third episode, they can't get to Paraguay until Jane just teleports them there and even then she only takes Cliff and Larry. redundancy of having two cyborg characters, Elasti-Girl is now Elasti-Woman, to avoid confusion with Disney-Pixar's. Rita Farr has a one-armed cameraman fired because his appearance disgusts her, although it's not clear whether it's because he's black, disabled, or both. In fact, ain't no one come up with a better design. [5], Robotman is one of the founding members of the Doom Patrol, along with Negative Man and Elasti-Girl. When it's revealed he was the cause of everyone's 'accidents', as in the comics, his motivation for doing so is far less selfish (motivated by a desire to protect his metahuman daughter) and he genuinely felt remorse for what he was doing. We’ve tracked the best (and worst) TV and streaming offerings since mid-March, gathering a list of all the premieres this season — series, miniseries, and TV movies across cable, broadcast, and streaming — and ranked them by Tomatometer. In the "DC Rebirth" reboot, Cliff has reappeared as a member of the latest incarnation of the Doom Patrol, in the iteration both his origin and romance with Crazy Jane return. While some members of the Doom Patrol appeared in Episode 4 of Titans with the same actors, to set up this show, there was some Flip-Flop of God as to whether Doom Patrol was actually in the same universe as Titans. Brendan Fraser provides the voice of Robotman and portrays Cliff Steele in flashbacks in the series. Mento's powers make them think that they are teachers of an X-men like school for gifted youngsters. Only the Doom Patrol and their doctor are present with the school being a rundown ruin. Though he is initially distraught over his condition, the nanomachines prevent him from being able to kill himself. Each of their origins also happened in different decades: Rita's in. Jane still looks just as young as she did in the seventies. The cause of her Dissociative Identity Disorder, and got pissed when he thought she was cheating on him with his best friend. In the early comics, Cliff boasted of superior sight and hearing, though at the start of Grant Morrison's run, he complained of the crudity of mechanical senses as compared to human ones. Robotman first appeared in My Greatest Adventure #80 (June 1963) and was created by Arnold Drake and Bruno Premiani. We all know that Doom Patrol is an absolutely batsh** crazy show in the best way possible, but that feeling isn't just felt by viewers like us. Cliff became Jane’s guardian, eventually falling in love with her. Larry's burned body has not degraded at all since his accident in the '60s. Kupperberg explained, I was looking to update the strip, I suppose, [and] wanted to put my mark on it. In an exclusive first look at the Season 2 home release for the DC series, members of the project's makeup and special effects team discuss the project's unpredictable nature. This is a. Flex Mentallo wears nothing but trunks to show off his chiseled physique, which is also the source of his powers. In addition, the nanomachines allow his body to repair itself from even the most severe damage. Cliff lost his respect for the Chief when he discovered he was lying about his daughter being dead. Cliff's wild swings from rage to depression to cheerfulness to guilt implies some sort of manic or bipolar disorder. "DC Universe's Doom Patrol TV Show Casts Brendan Fraser as Robotman", "Every Crisis on Infinite Earths cameo ranked", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Robotman_(Cliff_Steele)&oldid=1009903640, DC Comics characters with superhuman strength, Wikipedia articles needing clarification from March 2021, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, Superhuman strength, speed, and endurance, Ability to recharge itself via consumption of organic material, Robotman appears in the "Doom Patrol" segments of, This page was last edited on 2 March 2021, at 21:43. (Photo by Netflix) 2020 Spring-Summer TV Scorecard. Cliff later met and began a relationship with a bisexual, transgender woman named Kate Godwin. Later bodies have featured various other functions, such as tools and weapons systems. Crazy Jane is white in the source material but played by Colombian-American actress Diane Guerrero. The school that the original Doom Patrol teaches at is one of these. The Negative Spirit is most likely preserving him as he is. I've been responsible for a lot of stupid things, but that was one of the stupidest, so, within two issues, I figured that out and changed his name to Robotman. In the Doom Patrol's Blackest Night tie-in storyline, Robotman and Negative Man are attacked by Negative Woman, who has been revived as a member of the Black Lantern Corps. Cyborg (Victor Stone) is a fictional superhero appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics.The character was created by writer Marv Wolfman and artist George Pérez and first appears in a special insert in DC Comics Presents #26 (October 1980). Cliff Steele became Robotman, initially dubbed Automaton,[7] after the daredevil and race car driver was in an accident during the Indianapolis 500, destroying his body. Cliff has since re-appeared as a supporting character in the Metal Men comic featured in the Legends of Tomorrow anthology. The question was supposedly answered in the Arrowverse's Crisis on Infinite Earths, where Titans was set in Earth-9, and Doom Patrol was in Earth-21. Refusing to believe that Niles was dead, she formed this new team to search for him and took his place as leader, calling herself Celsius due to her heat-and-cold-based powers. We have now placed Twitpic in an archived state. Cyborg's accident is much more mundane than usual. Cliff Steele is still a race car driver, but now he has a wife (whom he was cheating on with the nanny) and a daughter. Matt Bomer is still an incredibly handsome man and his flashback sequences illustrate this to audiences. If one assumes that Cliff was about 40 before his accident, an elder statesman for an active NASCAR driver, he'd be in his 70s or 80s during the show's present day storyline. During that time, his youthful wife became an elderly woman. Each member has suffered horrible accidents that gave them superhuman abilities but also left them scarred and disfigured. Robotman's origin remained largely the same as his pre-Crisis origin save for the fact that it was revealed that Niles Caulder had caused the accident that destroyed Cliff Steele's body. to protect his daughter, and went so far as to arrange the accidents that would cause their powers to develop in the first place. Thanks to Rita's orgasm attracting a sex demon, the Sex Men arrives to save the world from sextinction. In Showcase #94 (Sept. 1977), it was revealed that Cliff's brain had survived and that Will Magnus, the robotics expert who created the Metal Men, had recovered Cliff's brain and built him a new body. Cliff correctly surmises that the ring powers his corpse, but finds removing it only causes a new body to regenerate instead. Riley Shanahan took over from Michaels in the role. Robotman (Clifford "Cliff" Steele, called Automaton in first two appearances) is a fictional character, a cyborg superhero in the DC Comics Universe.He is best known as a member of the Doom Patrol, being the only character to appear in every version of the team since he, and the team, were introduced together in June 1963.. Robotman has appeared in numerous cartoon television shows and films. In particular, he was angry about being in a metal body and unable to enjoy the feeling and senses that humans take for granted. Images "We're going to save the world, or whatever, and then I will have a stiff Manhattan and go to bed. Cliff can't exactly "look the part," being in a robotic body and all, but his mental capabilities don't seem to be any worse for the wear despite what his age should be. Turns out having an independent raptor brain in a high-stress scenario might cause an outlash. Though Victor Stone wasn't particularly famous before his accident, after becoming Cyborg he's became a solid B-lister among the superhero community, and is regularly recognized and applauded. Rita Farr was a beloved actress of the 50s, who's movies are still looked at quite fondly today. Doom Patrol finds these reluctant heroes in a place they never expected to be, called to action by none other than Cyborg, who comes to them with a mission hard to refuse, but with a warning that is hard to ignore: their lives will never, ever be the same.