Talk:Celsius (character)

Caulder's retraction of denial of marriage to Arani
This article has stated that under Grant Morrison's control, Dr. Niles Caulder, aka the Chief, retracted his statement that he and Arani had never been married. I have indicated my doubt of this. First, I have been a fan of the Doom Patrol since the 1960s, having assembled a collection of every appearance from My Greatest Adventure #80 through the end of the Vertigo series, including all their guest appearances elsewhere&mdash;I still have everything from the 1960s run, including the three-issue revival as a reprint title in the early 70s, the Challengers crossover, the B&B team-up with Flash, and the Teen Titans cameos with Beast Boy's guest starring spot there. Being very familiar with what went on there, I doubted Arani's claim of marriage from the first time she claimed it. And while the idea that both Niles and Larry had survived the explosion was difficult to accept&mdash;the way that Cliff had didn't really leave room for any of the others to do so&mdash;I was very glad to hear Caulder's statement that Arani was mentally ill and deluded. Between the fact that he said this in the very last pre-Grant Morrison issue and the fact that she was dead, I see no good reason for Morrison to have back-tracked on this, which does not match my memory of the comic anyway. Throw in all the other big factual inaccuracies I have found in various Doom Patrol articles&mdash;I am early in the process of doing what I can about them&mdash;I have to doubt the accuracy of this claim. Can someone verify it, with issue number, specific quote, page number?

A couple of other things about this article:

1. Jim Aparo gets the artistic half of her creator credit, but while he did draw the covers of the Showcase run that introduced Celsius, Joe Staton did the interiors, and he got the blame for redesigning Robotman to look like John Byrne's ROG 2000. Can anyone verify that Aparo designed Celsius?

2. Concerning "immortality" in the DP, the only way that the word was ever used was in the sense of an extended life span; that is, not growing old. Nothing was ever said about not being killable, a la the immortals of the Highlander franchise. Between this and the fact that the article strongly indicates Arani hasn't appeared since her "apparent" death in the Invasion!, I suggest that the statement fudging about her demise should be removed. Indeed, as John Byrne's Doom Patrol series just a few years ago retconned the DP back to its very beginnings&mdash;leaving Beast Boy/Changeling a continuity problem like Wonder Girl (the comparison was made on that title's first issue's text page, there being no letters yet, of course, but I admit that I have read only that one installment)&mdash;she may not even exist in current continuity (very few of the 18 issues have been indexed at the GCD). Ted Watson (talk) 19:48, 14 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I have since seen the Doom Patrol article itself, and now know that Byrne's retcon has itself been retconned out of existence. Everything else above still stands, however. Ted Watson (talk) 20:50, 16 April 2008 (UTC)