Rachel Pollack Haunts the Doom Patrol Show

The question of who should get credit for comics is one that has always plagued the industry, even before characters started making their way onto the big and little screens. Just look at the controversy surrounding Bill Finger’s contributions being left out of common conversation about the creation of Batman and many key aspects of his mythos until very recently, with legal recognition only occurring in 2015, over two decades after his death. The issue has only been raised further since superhero movies and TV shows started popping up left and right, from the 90s Flash show to 2021’s Superman and Lois. Who gets credited at the end of episodes and in a flicker before the latest Marvel movie’s second post-credits scene? More importantly, who gets paid for these characters? So often, it isn’t the original writer and artist (or artists, plural), and if they are, it’s only the smallest sliver of what these movies and shows may generate. And when writers like William Messner-Loebs struggle with poverty despite creating and redefining several iconic characters and award-winners like Ed Brubaker say that they’ve made more on residuals for film cameos than they have for creating the characters making Marvel millions upon millions of dollars, this becomes a huge problem.

To the credit of the 2019-through-present Doom Patrol show currently releasing its fourth season on HBO Max, they do make an effort to credit character creators properly. Every episode opens thanking the creators of the team and several of its most iconic characters, Arnold Drake, Bruno Premiani, and Bob Haney, although there’s some contention about that last name being on that list that we don’t have time to delve into right now. Originally, previews for upcoming episodes would include a list of people being specially thanked for their contributions, and while I have been sadly unable to find the majority of that list, the end of certain episodes attempts to give credit where credit is due. The most complete list of those names I’ve been able to find includes writers for various runs (Grant Morrison, Paul Kupperberg, and Gerard Way), illustrators for those runs, event comics that the team has appeared in, or other crossovers (Richard Case, Nick Derington, Vince Giarrano, Steve Lightle, Erik Larsen, Ivan Reis, and Joe Staton), and other individuals who have influenced or created characters that feature on the show to varying degrees (George Peréz, Marv Wolfman, and Neil Gaiman). To me, while I firmly believe that all of these people should be credited for the aspects of the Doom Patrol show they are responsible for, there are some notable names missing from this list like Keith Giffen and Matthew Clark. For the purposes of this article, however, we’re going to be focusing on just a few—Rachel Pollack, the writer of the Doom Patrol run following Grant Morrison’s critically acclaimed take on the team, and the creative team that worked with her.

Even among Doom Patrol fans, Pollack’s run isn’t typically discussed, especially not with people just dipping their toes into the team. Usually, people start with Grant Morrison’s take on the character, if they don’t decide to jump all the way back to 1963 and begin at the team’s inception. While more of a cult classic when it was originally written, Morrison’s run is now easily the most famous version of the team, and after that I notice people talking about Gerard Way’s run (although it is also the most recent and more spiritually in-tone with Morrison’s work than its immediate predecessors) and sometimes Keith Giffen’s. Canonically, John Byrne’s has been all but wiped from existence, but his name being on so many famous characters like Superman and the Fantastic Four means that his Doom Patrol issues occasionally pop up in conversation. John Arcudi, Paul Kupperberg, and especially Rachel Pollack’s runs barely even make the footnote. While it’s received more recognition in recent years, especially since an omnibus of her run (an absolutely gorgeous one at that, thanks to the loving restoration of the work of the various colorists on the run) was just released a few months ago, it was practically doomed (hah) from the start as it followed hot on the heels of Morrison’s supposed masterpiece. However, Pollack’s run being relatively obscure doesn’t mean the show hasn’t directly adapted aspects of it.

Of course, comics are a collaborative medium by nature, whether that collaboration is between writer, penciller, inker, colorist, and letterer, or between one writer and the next. Often, one person gets credit above all else where a team should. For a Doom Patrol-related example, Nick Derington is often solely credited as the artist for Gerard Way’s take on the team, when Tamra Bonvillain is equally responsible for bringing his lines to life with stunning colors. The show certainly features things that were a collaboration between Pollack and the people that came before her. Grant Morrison may have decapitated Niles Caulder, the team’s abusive, controlling paternal figure, but it was Pollack who breathed more life into that head and took us on a journey through his mindscape that, in my opinion, puts Danny the Street’s Fantastic Four-inspired dream to shame. Dorothy Spinner was created by Paul Kupperberg and his art team including Erik Larsen and Michele Wolfman, but she featured extremely heavily in Morrison’s run and took on a runaway life of her own in Pollack’s, including overcoming and accepting herself in ways mirrored by the Doom Patrol show years later. But there are absolutely things they depict where the credit should fall squarely on Pollack and her team’s shoulders.

The title of this article comes from one of them, the primary example of something from Pollack’s work that has been used on the show without credit—the sex ghosts. On the Doom Patrol show, they first appear in season two, manifesting randomly around the house during a wild party running rampant with sexual magic and sporadically popping up since then. These ghosts are not only the creation of Rachel Pollack but of Linda Medley, Graham Higgins, and Daniel Vozzo, debuting in Doom Patrol vol. 2 #67. 

From their very first appearance, these ghosts tie themselves to two of the most overt themes in Pollack’s Doom Patrol, sexuality (though perhaps it would be better to phrase it as sensuality) and gender. They’re referred to as Sexually Remaindered Spirits, or “SRS,” living their un-life in pursuit of joy and pleasure with each other and occasionally with other consenting parties, such as when they run a phone sex hotline out of the basement of the Doom Patrol’s headquarters. Their name is a joke based on the other thing SRS is an acronym for, sexual reassignment surgery, and transgender superhero and member of the Doom Patrol Kate Godwin, who we’ll discuss more shortly, is both confused and amused upon first hearing the acronym because of this. Doom Patrol had dealt with gender before, of course—Morrison’s run famously had Rebis, a being of three composite parts, who struggled with having hir gender validated by those around hir and, quite frankly, by the narrative—and Kate herself is much more intended to be both representative of aspects of the transgender experience and a realistic depiction of someone living within it. But the SRS are nonetheless a wink and a nudge to a transgender and otherwise queer audience. To divorce them from the context of being created by DC’s first openly transgender writer is to make them no longer what they are, no longer SRS. The show seems to acknowledge this, to an extent. The name is gone. The sex ghosts are simply… sex ghosts. Rachel Pollack’s vision is gone, right alongside Linda Medley and Graham Higgins’ visual gymnastics and Daniel Vozzo’s ethereal echoes that put the sexually remaindered spirits as neither human nor inhuman but simply masters of their own sexual desires and an open doorway to the desires of others. 

The other primary example is Codpiece, who makes his television debut in the recently-released premiere of Doom Patrol season four, and his comic book one in Doom Patrol vol. 2 #70, created by Rachel Pollack, Scot Eaton, Tom Sutton, and Tom Ziuko. Codpiece is an interesting case, and not just because he’s a man with a gun strapped to his dick. He pops up scantly in-name-only as a joke, such as when supervillain Snowflame auctioned off his “codpiece cannon” in the pages of Catwoman vol. 5. The point of his character is to be an embodiment of toxic cisgender masculinity and insecurity. He has a complex about the size of his penis that drives him to abuse others around him including random women in his life and sex workers he hires. It is incredibly important that the person who defeats him, in her debut appearance, is transgender woman and former sex worker Kate Godwin. To bring Codpiece up as a bit character in modern comics isn’t necessarily problematic, but it does rub me the wrong way to know that the borderline joke villain created for one issue was referenced before Kate was after John Arcudi unceremoniously killed her off in a flashback in 2002 (thankfully, she has since been returned to life, something else we’ll extremely briefly touch on shortly). I am, however, willing to jump the gap and call adapting Codpiece to a Doom Patrol television show without adapting Kate problematic. The reason Kate defeats Codpiece is because she is a part of the groups that he has intentionally harmed through verbal and physical harassment and stalking. She doesn’t do it alone—she’s assisted by George and Marion, a pair of “bandage people,” and a small group of SRS called “the insects,” because the Sexually Remaindered Spirits are characters in their own right and because, well, it’s funny for a transgender writer to have a post-op transgender superhero be assisted by some spirits named after sexual reassignment surgery—but she is the catalyst for his downfall. To adapt Codpiece is to adapt Kate; she can exist without him, but he cannot be foiled by anyone other than the people he has spent his life resenting. Unless, of course, the show decides he can be.

The show has already cast its lot in with transgender people by making Danny the Street (a character originally conceived of as a drag queen by Grant Morrison, repeatedly called a “transvestite” in all manner of official material, and then slightly more favorably labeled as “transgendered” in the New 52) officially nonbinary, as they’re now explicitly genderqueer, and by having scenes where drag queens pummel the hell out of the tyrannical hand of the homophobic government. Where is the issue in presenting a positive portrayal of a transgender character who has meant a great deal to many people and in perhaps giving some money to a transgender actress? To watch Doom Patrol trip over its own feet as it covers its ears so it won’t hear the commentary the original comics are explicitly making is frustrating. And to do it all without crediting the team responsible for the characters they’re using to ignore that commentary is practically offensive. What is there to gain by ignoring the contributions of Rachel Pollack? Of Linda Medley, of Graham Higgins, Tom Sutton, of Scot Eaton, of Tom Ziuko? 

Of course, this is a precedent set by comics. I already mentioned that Kate was killed off by John Arcudi and his creative team in 2002. Dorothy Spinner took a few more months, but her end didn’t come much later. Niles Caulder’s body was restored when John Byrne’s reboot rolled around in 2004. George, Marion, and the Sexually Remaindered Spirits haven’t been mentioned in decades. Comics are used to always resetting to a status quo, and it hurts to see Doom Patrol follow that trend. Kate and Dorothy making their reappearances in DC’s Pride Month Special 2022 was a dream come true for me and many other Doom Patrol fans, and seeing the show’s official twitter account tweet a cropped panel of just Dorothy and Danny from that issue was salt in the wound that I still haven’t forgiven. Doom Patrol has always been a haven for the oppressed and the underdogs. To not credit a transgender woman and her creative team for their achievements in writing for the comics that this show is based on feels like a slap in the face to everything the team is supposed to represent. 

In August of 2022, Rachel Pollack was admitted to the ICU for emergency medical treatment after it was announced that, following a battle with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma around 2015, a different kind of lymphoma had recently been discovered in her body and she was receiving chemotherapy. While she lived to see her omnibus published after several months of delays and is currently recovering, it eats me alive to think that there is credit that she could be receiving but isn’t. To be clear, I don’t know if she’s been paid for her characters appearing on the show, and if she has but this hasn’t been made public I don’t blame her or the executives responsible for that decision—in fact, the reason I have been somewhat scarce about discussing potential monetary compensation for character usage beyond the examples in my opening is because I would like to assume that she has been. But imagining that she could pass without her work being introduced to an even wider audience beyond just comic fans, lovers of mysticism and tarot, and science fiction books is upsetting to say the least. I don’t know what I hope to accomplish by writing this. I certainly don’t think I expect to accomplish anything. I just want someone else to think that this is wrong. I want someone else to see that these characters and stories were made by people who haven’t gotten the credit or respect they deserve. I want the following people to be highlighted for everything they’ve done for the Doom Patrol as a team and as individual characters:

Ted McKeever, whose abstract and incredible illustrations certainly aren’t for everyone but who I can’t imagine Rachel Pollack’s run without. Linda Medley, who picked up where Richard Case left off and made the Doom Patrol her own. Scot Eaton, who filled in for her but contributed no less than stunning artwork that includes his work on Kate Godwin’s debut issue. Vertigo editor Tom Peyer, who made the imprint what it was at the time, and editor Lou Stathis who succeeded him and kept the fire burning bright and passionate. Jamie Tolagson and the Pander brothers, who illustrated only one issue apiece and still left their marks. Tom Taggart, whose cover work for Doom Patrol makes the run stand out in any spread, and Kyle Baker, whose covers contain such vivid colors and deep emotions they’re almost overwhelming to look at. Graham Higgins, Mark Wheatley, Eric Shanower, Alex Sinclair, Debbie McKeever, and Gene Fama, who helped make the insides of those issues live up to expectations. John Workman and Ellie de Ville, because letterers are the key that keeps comics of all kinds moving forward. And, of course, Rachel Pollack, for everything she’s done for the Doom Patrol.

Maybe one day these people will get the credit they deserve from the Doom Patrol show. And if they don’t, I hope you’ll join me in still standing up to applaud them. 

[The edit I never wanted to make: Rachel Pollack passed away today, on April 7th, 2023. She touched the lives of so many people, even those she had never met. Her writing for Doom Patrol remains a standout and many consider her to have been one of the world’s foremost experts on tarot. Her memory is a blessing.]