Negative Woman
44 years ago - Valentina Vostok is born in Russia.
26 years ago - 18-year-old Valentina becomes a combat pilot.
22 years ago - 22-year-old Valentina becomes the pilot of the new Quad-Fusion fighter.
14 years ago - 30-year-old Valentina absorbs Larry Trainer's soul self when his body is destroyed, leaving her in a coma.
13 years ago - 31-year-old Valentina is awakened from her coma by Niles Caulder and recruited into his reassembled Doom Patrol as Negative Woman.
12 years ago - 32-year-old Valentina is arrested by Dmitri Pushkin of the Rocket Red Brigade as a Russian deserter, until Niles Caulder is able to declare her legally dead.
9 years ago - 35-year-old Valentina, clearly suffering as the host of The Negative Soul-Self has it extracted from her by Niles Caulder, ending her time as Negative Woman.
8 years ago - 36-year-old Valentina's personality is part of the compound entity formed when The Negative Soul-Self begins taking possession of cadavers. It takes the name Rebis and becomes the Doom Patrol's new Negative Man.
7 years ago - 37-year-old Valentina becomes an operative of Checkmate.
The history of the Doom Patrol is so weird. After the end of the odd, esoteric little comic from the 60s and 70s, but before the property was revitalized into the ballet of strangeness it became, it went through an odd adolescence as just another bog standard superhero team, with a small parade of fairly forgettable characters...
Negative Woman is absolutely part of that era, but she was actually more compelling than you might imagine. Her story, as she devolved from another pretty face to someone feeling themselves slowly become a monster, who had to fight against the original owner of her powers to claim that she had a right to what was now hers, was some of the more absorbing elements of these original issues. She's serving a particular role in our Doom Patrol timeline.
Negative Woman is absolutely part of that era, but she was actually more compelling than you might imagine. Her story, as she devolved from another pretty face to someone feeling themselves slowly become a monster, who had to fight against the original owner of her powers to claim that she had a right to what was now hers, was some of the more absorbing elements of these original issues. She's serving a particular role in our Doom Patrol timeline.
Negative Woman's Comic HistoryValentnia Vostok's first appearance was in Showcase #94 in 1977, the introduction of the New Doom Patrol, a new team with new characters after the original Doom Patrol was killed a full decade earlier. Those new members included a rebuilt Robotman, new members Celcius and Tempest, and Valentina Vostok, the Negative Woman. In this first incarnation It seemed that Valentina wasn't projecting out a negative energy body like her predecessor Larry Trainor, but rather was just manifesting the abilities of the negative energy body (flight, and projecting powerful dark energy) on her own. Also, she wasn't covered in bandages, which is handy because she was the series obligatory sexy blonde lady, complete with a costume with a plunging neckline down to her navel. By the end of the three issues of Showcase featuring the New Doom Patrol, it was revealed that she was actually a Russian Cosmonaut that had defected, and that crashing her stolen jet into the same location where the original Doom Patrol had been killed had made her the new host of the energy entity that had once lived in Larry Trainor.
It was a full ten years later, after the Crisis, that a new Doom Patrol series started, and in it's first year or so featured characters from the New Doom Patrol as depicted in that series of Showcase issues. Time had clearly passed for the characters as well; Valentina was now forced to wear the same bandages that Larry had once worn, although for whatever reason her hair was allowed to remain uncovered. She was now working as a spy, although as the series went on she spent more time with the Doom Patrol. Very quickly it was revealed that Trainor was still alive, and much of the tension of the series was based on him wanting his powers back from her, and her refusing to give them. By the end of these early issues she found that the energy entity left her completely, and was therefore absent from the Grant Morrison Doom Patrol, although she would surface again much later as one of the leaders of the spy orginization Checkmate. . |
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Our Negative Woman StoryValentina is actually the only member of the New Doom Patrol that we've decided to use in our timeline, because she does a great job of filling a particular role for us. Her becoming the new host of the negative energy being allows Larry Trainor to be actually killed in the explosion that supposedly killed the Doom Patrol. Valentina can fully take on that role for a good long while.
For our purposes, it kind of works for us that she actually doesn't have to wear the bandages, at least at first. It makes her feel a bit more like her own character. I do imagine that eventually it does start to become necessary, although when it does I don't know if it makes sense for her to have her hair exposed when she does. This can actually be part of the reason that she needs to have the entity removed from her, which can be part of the reason that, in our timeline it goes on to gain independence, and become the entity Rebis. As for Valentina at this point, we actually do really like that she goes on to become a spy in her own right. We also particularly like that she does so for the international organization Checkmate, which means that her defection earlier in her life actually stuck; she's not working for any one country, but instead in service to the world at large. |
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