Doctor Light
42 years ago - Arthur Light is born.
24 years ago - 18-year-old Arthur goes to college.
20 years ago - 22-year-old Arthur starts grad school.
17 years ago - 25-year-old Arthur begins his doctoral work on photon manipulation.
15 years ago - 27-year-old Arthur earns his doctorate. He and Doctor Kimiyo Hoshi join Jacob Finley's research project.
14 years ago - 28-year-old Arthur steals the photon technology of Jacob Finley, killing him and driving Doctor Kimiyo Hoshi into hiding. He uses the technology to steal billions. He is stopped by the Justice League, with Doctor Hoshi's help.
10 years ago - 32-year-old Arthur Light escapes prison and forms the Fearsome Five, who battle the Teen Titans.
9 years ago - 33-year-old Arthur Light hacks the Justice League satellite transporters. He tries to attack Sue Dibny who fends him off until the League arrives. They vote to have Zatanna wipe his mind, leaving him in a coma.
6 years ago - 36-year-old Arthur Light awakens from his coma. He attempts to download light manipulation data from Arisia's Rrab Green Lantern Ring. Hal Jordan traps him in a phased state.
5 years ago - 37-year-old Arthur Light, who has internalized his powers, is unknowingly released by Kyle Rayner.
4 years ago - 38-year-old Arthur Light attempts to stealing technology from the labs of Kimiyo Hoshi. He destroys an experimental photon accelerator to escape.
2 years ago - 40-year-old Arthur Light is the prime suspect when 33-year-old Sue Dibny is attacked. When the members of the original Justice League confront him his mind wipe is broken, allowing him to reconstitute his original body.
1 year ago - 41-year-old Arthur Light joins the Legion of Doom.
Doctor Light represents a pretty big line in the sand for comics. He's a long-time antagonist dating all the way back to the Gardner Fox Era. He's made appearances all over the major DC comic series for decades, and anyone who read comics regularly during those years will remember him as a goofy villain whose mustache-twirling villainy was always fun. Then, in the mid 2000's push to become more edgy, Doctor Light was used in a story that forever changed how he was depicted. It basically falls to us to figure out how we want to use this character and how he should be depicted. Spoiler alert; I liked the classic version better.
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Doctor Light's Comic HistoryDoctor Light appeared for the first time in Justice League of America #12 in 1962. It's not what you call an action-packed issue; basically it begins with Light having already incapacitated the League off-panel and explaining how awesome he was to the League's sidekick Snapper Carr. He would continue to appear in occasional issues of Justice League without much of an explanation or motivation. He was simply a criminal who used themed technology for his crimes, but just as often his whole motivation was just to defeat the heroes. A villian for villany's sake.
He really started to lean into that role in the pages of the New Teen TItans, where he was the founding member of their long-running enemy team, the Fearsome Five. Here he really earned his role as the Snidely Whiplash of DC comics, constantly making elaborately hilarious plans and failing hilariously. Eventually even the Fearsome Five didn't want him back. He was then picked up by John Ostrander's Suicide Squad where he continued to be played for laughs. The character was funny, He worked. |
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Through all of this, Light continued to make regular appearances in other series. He confronted Hal Jordan in the pages of Green Lantern and was trapped inside the power battery, only to escape forty issues later when Kyle Rayner had taken over the ring. All of the Green Lantern baddies were being redesigned and reimagined for the new character and Light was no exception. This new version of the character was even brought into Lex Luthor's Injustice Gang in the pages of Morrison's JLA. Through all of this he remained the mustache-twirlingly incompetant villain that was so much fun to laugh at.
The character underwent a major shift when he was used in 2004's Identity Crisis; a miniseries intended to work as a murder mystery within the world of DC's Superheroes. It was established that the entire reason Doctor Light was so ineffective as a villain was because he had been mind-wiped by the Justice League back in the Satellite era, which by itself isn't the worst idea. It meant that he suddenly came back in a big way, and was considered one of the more powerful, scarrier villains in the DC roster. The problem was that the series brought in some real-world story ideas that really have no place in comics. Specifically, it suggested that Doctor Light had performed a certain horrible act, and was now a serial perpetrator of that horrible act... essentially taking a long-time fun villain and making him unwatchable. |
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Our Doctor Light StoryThe core story beats of Doctor Light's story are all fun, and we want to use practically all of them. His history as a goofy Justice League enemy, his creation of the Fearsome Five, it's all good stuff. This is a fun character, and as long as we avoid certain events, he can stay fun.
We're not removing Identity Crisis from our continuity, because it actually does some neat stuff to the timeline and it should be possible to strip out the problematic parts and keep what works. As far as Light is concerned, what we need to remove entirely is even the idea of the horrible act. He can absolutely sneak onto the Justice League satellite; that's actually very in character for him, and a throwback to his very first appearance. When he finds Sue alone, we can create an awesome survival horror scenario as he tries to hurt or even kill Sue, forcing her to outwit him and stay one step ahead of him as he stalks her through the Satellite. This serves exactly the same narrative purpose, but isn't objectively horrible. The results at this point can actually be very similar to the comic, where Doctor Light was suddenly treated as a far scarrier villain. In our case, we basically establish that he WAS a scary villain (he fought the Justice League, after all), was brainwashed after his attack of Sue and became kind of a joke, and then had his brainwashing undone to become a threat again, joining the new Legion of Doom and representing a real threat as they confront the new Watchtower. Fun, classic villains are worth the effort. |
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