Doc Gabriel
| Doc Gabriel | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ||||||||||||
| Publication Information | ||||||||||||
| Publisher | Wonderful Tales Magazine (initially) | |||||||||||
| First Appearance | Unrevealed | |||||||||||
| Creator(s) | Unrevealed | |||||||||||
| In-story Information | ||||||||||||
| Home City | Millennium City, NAL | |||||||||||
| Birth | Not applicable | |||||||||||
| Birthplace | Millennium City | |||||||||||
| Death | Not applicable | |||||||||||
| Death Place | Not applicable | |||||||||||
| Profession(s) | Superhero | |||||||||||
| Group Membership(s) | Legion of Light | |||||||||||
Doc Gabriel is the last of the Big Five of Millennium Comics to emerge. His hideous exterior hides the mind of a genius. He is slightly stronger than Doc Satan, lacking an easily bruised outer layer of skin, but is expected to have a shorter life.
Origin
A prominent Mentor villain, Doc Satan, had kidnapped his former sometime collaborator Vixen and the submarine genius Stingray in order to make evil doppelgangers of them who would commit crimes and ruin their reputations. The heroes, however, got the better of Doc Satan and trapped him in his own (presumably wrecked) device. Although they thought they had seen the last of him, a deformed Doc Satan was soon spotted outside the borders of Millennium City. The heroes and police gave chase. Doc Satan fled into the twisting corridors Monday Slough outside Millennium City after incapacitating Vixen. Stingray, however, used his atomic submarine suit to infiltrate Doc Satan's defenses. Once Stingray had cornered Doc Satan, he realized the truth. The chalk-skinned, green-haired brute was not Doc Satan at all!
The creature, who called himself Doc Gabriel, explained that Doc Satan's machine, which had been intended to make perfect evil duplicates of the human heroes, had instead created an good duplicate of the alien humanoid Doc Satan, whom Doc Gabriel had left still trapped in the duplication machine. Doc Gabriel explained that the duplication ray designed for human duplication did not work perfectly for Doc Satan's species. Despite his astonishment at this tale, Stingray offered to put in a good word for his fellow genius inventor. Doc Gabriel refused because he felt he could counter Doc Satan's future schemes as a hidden force.
The Secret Headquarters: The Island of Isolation
Doc Gabriel’s usual headquarters was the Island of Isolation in Monday Slough. The Island itself was not distinguishable on the surface from the other islands in the slough. Beneath the island, however, lay a complex of rooms where Doc Gabriel lived and performed his experiments. An underground miniature hydroelectric dam, located inside the complex and using a gravity feed and recycling system, produced power for the complex. His assistant Roots had an affinity with the other vegetation of the slough and therefore could detect intruders (but see Enemies for a caveat). A series of hermetically sealed underground transportation tubes, which on the outside resembled thick underwater tree roots, allowed Doc Gabriel quick access to any border of the swamp and provided multiple escape routes when Doc Gabriel was escaping a manhunt (at least every other issue).
The Supporting Cast
Later adventures provided Doc Gabriel with a supporting cast and established the tenor of his stories.
Doc Gabriel's girlfriend was Abigail Difer, a blind sculptress with pneumatic 'eyes', and niece of Doc Gabriel's enemy Alan Difer.
Doc Gabriel also acquired a sidekick called Roots. Roots was a mobile mass of vegetation which had grown around the corpse of a murdered Afroe named Alexander White.
Enemies
Doc Gabriel's principal enemy was Doc Satan, whose schemes he could frustrate because Doc Gabriel, as Doc Satan's good doppelganger, could reverse engineer any doomsday device Doc Satan created. However, Doc Satan could do the same with any device that Doc Gabriel created. This kept Doc Gabriel's encounters with Doc Satan rather lively.
Another prominent Doc Gabriel foe was Alan Difer, uncle of Doc Gabriel's love interest Abigail Difer. Alan Difer had lost a limb to a previous encounter with Doc Satan, and therefore harbored an irrational lust for revenge against Doc Gabriel. Alan Difer was constantly reminded of his injury by his wooden arm. The wooden arm, however, was made from a tree which had grown in Monday Slough; Alan Difer, therefore, could make his way into the maze of Monday Slough without immediately alerting Roots to his presence. Alan Difer's occupation was industrial transport and he lusted to drain Monday Slough and build a railway through it.
The Bowwomen were a pair of time- and dimension-lost Amazons 'of unnatural proportions' who had mastectomized one of their own breasts and were attracted to enmity of Doc Gabriel because the Millennium City police had posted a substantial reward for the corpse of Doc Satan.
The Headless Horseman was an equestrian who had been exposed to a mysterious gas (courtesy of Doc Satan) which caused his head to sink into his body. Instead of dying, he found that he remained alive in this grotesque condition. Therefore he made a shirt out of two-way 'mirrorcloth' and embarked on a campaign of revenge and destruction as the The Headless Horseman.
Doc Gabrielle was the result of an ill-advised attempt by Doc Satan of repeating the experiment which had produced Doc Gabriel. This female version of Doc Satan was so evil and dangerous that she outstripped Doc Satan in the level of her crimes, forcing Doc Satan to team up with Doc Gabriel to stop her.
The Unseen Seer was another victim of Doc Satan'a schemes. Doc Satan recruited Didyma Bell, a genius who had been blind since the age of four, to be subjected to an invisibility formula that he claimed would also restore her sight. Bell swallowed the formula and became invisible. She still couldn't see, but Doc Satan assured her that this was a temporary side effect. Doc Satan sent Bell into Monday Slough to pose as an invisibility-inflicted Abigail Difer (whom Doc Satan had just kidnapped). Doc Gabriel was fooled until Bell kissed Doc Gabriel. Doc Gabriel realized that the invisible girl was not Abigail Difer. Bell confessed. Doc Gabriel and Bell rescued Abigail from Doc Satan, and Bell lived for several issues on the Island of Isolation. Bell, however, was consumed with jealousy against Abigail, and attempted to murder her. Doc Gabriel expelled Bell form the swamp and wiped the location of the Island of Isolation from her mind.
Her obsession with Doc Gabriel, however, remained. This has manifested itself in various ways: trying to do in Abigail or one of relatives, including Alan Difer; impersonating Abigail in Millennium City to defame Doc Gabriel; and trying to do in Doc Satan's current concubine/victim/hostage. In this last murderous occupation, Doc Satan sometimes indulges Bell.
Tea Torquemada was Doc Satan's childhood sweetheart in Micropolis before he abandoned his civilian identity. When Torquemada tried to uncover Doc Satan's evil scheming, he embarked on a campaign to discredit her journalistic exposes, until Torquemada's continued insistence that Doc Satan, the secret identity of her ex-boyfriend, was responsible for the death and ruined lives in Micropolis led to her incarceration in a mental hospital. In the mental hospital, the drugs the staff gave her caused her luxurious red hair to fall out. After Doc Gabriel had been created, Torquemada escaped and swore vengeance on Doc Gabriel, thinking he was Doc Satan, since she refuses to believe Doc Satan has not suffered any physical damage for his evil deeds.
The Half-Man is a Yellow Peril genius stereotype, with the addition (so to speak) of being a eunuch. He was born as the immortal Chinese admiral Zheng He.
The Auditor is a man without ears who can hear everything outside the normal human range, but nothing within it.
The Decimal Devil is Decimo di Getti, another victim of Doc Satan's experiments. Decimo di Getti, a Parmagiano tailor, was blinded in one of Doc Satan's schemes (which was blamed on Doc Gabriel). Doc Satan offered to restore his sight to a better state than it had been before and di Getti accepted. Doc Satan took di Getti back to Millennium City and used his machines to grow eyeballs on the tips of di Getti's fingers. Each eyeball had a distinct visual field which overlapped with its neighbors. This provided di Getti with a visual range of perception five times broader (i.e., "better" in Doc Satan's eyes) than that of a normal human. Unfortunately, this was not what di Getti had expected from the deal. Di Getti freaked out and left Doc Satan's laboratory. Eventually, he ran across The Headless Horseman, a fellow victim of Doc Satan, who took him in hand (so to speak), and provided him with 'mirrorcloth' for the tips of his gloves and enlisted him as an ally against Doc Gabriel.
Typical Plot
The typical structure of Doc Gabriel's adventures was as follows: Doc Gabriel, ensconced on his Island of Isolation, would learn of a crime committed or about to be committed by Doc Satan or one of his other foes. Doc Gabriel would attempt to perform heroically, but the police would mistake him for Doc Satan and try to capture him while he was trying to save the world. Doc Gabriel would save the world, but the enmity of the police would force him to flee back into Monday Slough. Only the other heroes knew that he was not a criminal.
Relationship With Other Heroes
Doc Gabriel's primary emotional and intellectual relationships are with other superheroes. Mentor, in particular, takes an interest in him, as a counter-agent to Doc Satan. Mentor's interest is primarily strategic and intellectual. In 1976, a new Millennium writer XY wrote a short-lived series 'Mentor/Doc Gabriel' which used the pair to contrast intellectual law and order superheroing with a more sympathetic approach to the victims of crime.
Doc Gabriel's relationship with Vixen has been mixed. Vixen once worked with Doc Satan, and this has colored her relationship with Doc Gabriel.
Doc Gabriel's relationship with Stingray is one of somewhat aloof mutual respect between two geniuses.
Spin-Offs
Doc Gabriel proved so popular that even his supporting cast received their own comics in the 1960’s and early 1970’s. “Abigail Difer, Doc Gabriel’s Girlfriend” showed a more domestic side of the Island of Isolation. Since very few people ever came to the Island of Isolation who were not trying to kill or kidnap Doc Gabriel or one of his ‘family’, many stories in AD:DGG took place in ‘contra-factual continuities’. One of these stories introduced Doc Gabriel's contra-factual persona Doc Monday, who was a Doc Gabriel who had died on the night of his first flight and become a swamp monster.
“Doc Gabriel’s Sidekick, Roots” was also popular. Relatively few of the stories featured Roots as a protagonist, since he was a shambling marsh-creature. More often Roots played host to other peoples’ stories set on the edge of Monday Slough, either in the present or remembered in the ‘photocommunal memory’ of the vegetation of Monday Slough. Roots acquired a girlfriend, Carrie Candace, a victim of a self-induced psychokinetic burning which left her hideously scarred (more so than Doc Gabriel), but still able to emit light and heat.
The most memorable issue of DGSR was a crossover with Stingray called "Pressure", in which Roots accompanied Stingray on an underwater mission. Roots could operate easily underwater, and the pressure transformed him from a porous giant man-thing into a compact, solid, coordinated creature that could go toe to toe with a Warlord.
Darkening and New Dawn
In the late 1980s, a pioneering artist at Millennium Comics was assigned to Doc Gabriel. The occasional dark tone of the series became permanent. After another attempt on Abigail Difer’s life which Roots failed to detect on time, Doc Gabriel became more possessive of Abigail and skeptical of Roots’ usefulness. Doc Gabriel’s possessiveness began to approach domestic abuse and his skepticism criminal neglect of an individual without adult capacity. Difer and Roots chafed at their restrictions. Difer became addicted to some of Roots’ growths. An alliance between Doc Satan, the current Bowwomen, and the Unseen Seer took advantage of this knowledge to lure Difer into their grasp and away from Roots. The Bowwomen used microvolley arrows to shred Roots, while Difer became a prisoner of Doc Satan and the Unseen Seer. Doc Satan killed the Bowwomen and left their bodies to rot. Meanwhile, Doc Satan, who had the same taste in women as Doc Gabriel, raped Difer before he allowed the Unseen Seer to dissect her in one of the most graphic and horrifying seen/not-seen sequences in comics history. Doc Gabriel, Alan Difer, and Doc Gabrielle, were forced to cooperate to rescue Abigail Difer’s remains. Doc Gabrielle perished in the operation. Doc Gabriel and Alan Difer buried Abigail Difer in the tatterings of Roots before parting peacefully.
The only living intelligences remaining in Monday Slough were Doc Gabriel and Carrie Candace, who became lovers and partners in adventure. Candace soon became pregnant. In the next spring after the deaths of Abigail Difer and Roots, Doc Gabriel discovered that the remains of Roots and Abigail Difer had “conceived” a child. This child, whom Doc Gabriel named Alexis White, was a plant-girl more human than Roots, but less than Abigail Difer. Alexis grew quickly into an embodiment of fertility whose physical appearance was similar to a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old girl except for a pale green tegument. Alexis White could form 'clothes' by psychically growing flowers on parts of her body. The flowers also served as a phototropic feeding mechanism, which meant that Alexis White could not wear regular clothes. When the flowers died, their matter enriched the Alexis White's body and provided her means of physical growth. Alexis White also can mentally control plant growth beyond Monday Slough for a short time and the prospect of pregnancy rises considerably in her proximity.
Candace tried to act as Alexis’ mother, but the still-prepubescent Alexis remained aloof. When Candace fell ill late in her pregnancy, Doc Gabriel suspected that Alexis was poisoning Candace, but eventually discovered that Candace’s unborn child was the source of the problems. The mixture of Doc Gabriel’s alien might and Candace’s psychokinetic powers had produced a child who required more sustenance than an ordinary human female could bear and who was searing Candace’s womb. Doc Gabriel performed surgery on Candace. The baby, a sallow-skinned boy named Candide Kennedy, survived, but Candace herself had lost too much strength and died. Doc Gabriel constructed an artificial womb for Candide Kennedy. Candide Kennedy grew at an exponential rate and soon was physically the same age as Alexis White. Candide Kennedy was a light yellow color when he was not concentrating on his powers, but glowed brilliantly when he was illuminating himself deliberately or experiencing intense emotion. This brilliance was also useful to disguise his identity when he was outside Monday Slough.
Doc Gabriel, Alexis White, and Candide Kennedy, all lived together on the Island of Isolation. Alexis White was drawn naturally to the light-emitting Candide Kennedy, a union of which Doc Gabriel approved, but Alexis White's fertility-spirit component makes her fickle, as she demonstrated when she seduced The Headless Horseman in order to acquire mirrorcloth for her garments. Doc Gabriel is somewhat attracted to her, both as the daughter of his former lover and as an embodiment of fertility. In general, however, Doc Gabriel's romances involve Millennium City residents, including an tempestuous affair with Vixen.
The secret identity of Alexis White in Millennium City is The Green Girl, while Candide Kennedy calls himself Lumin.
The murdered Bowwomen also returned as the Greenwitches, beings much like the late Roots. The Greenwitches attacked Doc Gabriel and Candide Kennedy, but Alexis White appealed her common heritage with the Greenwitches to spare the males' lives. The Greenwitches agreed only to that restriction. They remained in the slough and the public believes that they are somehow the evil spawn of Roots or Roots turned female or other equally inaccurate theories.
Return of Doc Gabrielle
Even Doc Gabrielle returned through time travel. Doc Gabrielle left before her death for a period after her death, and will return to the past to die. During this future 'revival', Doc Gabrielle has adopted a more ecological and feminist (but no less absolutist) approach to dominating the world. Her goal is to seduce The Green Girl as her heir and aide, just as Doc Satan periodically tries to do to Lumin.
Protests Against the Green Girl
The Green Girl has attracted the wrath of the Alliance for Public Decency for her overtly sexual nature and effective nudity. A storyline which was extraordinarily offensive was "A New Spring Arises", in which the teenage Captain Silver loses his virginity to the Green Girl in a Sacred Marriage in order to save the Earth from a mystical Armageddon.
Collected Story Arcs (CSAs)
Doc Gabriel: The Three Doctors (1994): Doc Gabriel, Doc Satan, and Doc Gabrielle work together to defend the Earth from an alien threat to which their Galtosian organic bodies alone are immune.
The Green Girl: Green Death (2004): The Green Girl has a doomed, tormented love affair with a boy dying of cancer.
Roots: Pressure (2005): An out-of-continuity CSA-length expansion of the DGSG story "Pressure" featuring a team-up between Roots and the new version of Stingray.Theophilus88
