Am I On Crazy Pills?: Deadman Exorcism, DC's Craziest Comic

Deadman Exorcism might be the ballsiest, nastiest comic ever featuring a DC character. If Exorcism was more popular no writer would ever want to touch the character of Deadman with a ten foot pole.

The premise is that Deadman has gone insane. He's fed up with being a ghost and is basically the villain of the whole miniseries. He possesses bodies to go on a series of gay bashings out of guilt of molesting his brother. I've never seen a character assassinated so thoroughly before, it's ten times worse that Hal Jordan killing everyone in the Green Lantern Corps.

That's just the tip of the ice berg. There's a Roman Centurion who traveled to the Americas before Christopher Columbus and the Phantom Stranger uses freakin ghost guns to kill demons.

I'm surprised that Deadman Exorcism hasn't become infamous like other " bad" comics like Marville or The Dark Knight Strikes Again, but it's hardly ever talked about despite being reprinted multiple times.

Probably because while he's a well liked character, Deadman doesn't have a big dedicated fanbase.

Cripes, I'd forgotten all about that one. Definitely one to file under the "best forgotten" stories.

Broader question with regards to Deadman - is he, as a character, basically unusable these days?

His whole schtick - taking over someone's body without their permission, and doing dangerous things with it... that raises all sorts of consent red flags, right?

I mean, it's one thing if he's floating around, sees someone about to get mugged, takes over the mugger and walks him up to the nearest cop, or otherwise uses his skills to save people's lives in the heat of the moment. But anything beyond that is kind of Starfox-level/Wonder Woman raping that poor guy in WW 1984, right?

How do you make Deadman non-squicky for modern audiences?

[QUOTE=ducklord;5481145]Cripes, I'd forgotten all about that one. Definitely one to file under the "best forgotten" stories.

Broader question with regards to Deadman - is he, as a character, basically unusable these days?

His whole schtick - taking over someone's body without their permission, and doing dangerous things with it... that raises all sorts of consent red flags, right?

I mean, it's one thing if he's floating around, sees someone about to get mugged, takes over the mugger and walks him up to the nearest cop, or otherwise uses his skills to save people's lives in the heat of the moment. But anything beyond that is kind of Starfox-level/Wonder Woman raping that poor guy in WW 1984, right?

How do you make Deadman non-squicky for modern audiences?[/QUOTE]

The first time I read about Deadman was in New 52 JLD where his first act was to possess a guy so he can have sex with Dawn. A guy who has a fiance and he took the ring off. He's slapped by the fiancee and dumped by Dawn.

No it doesn't make me not feel squicky, it does, but it's the right way, because the story knows and makes it clear that you're not supposed to root for this guy. Kinda like Constantine and Deathstroke.

[QUOTE=Restingvoice;5481205]The first time I read about Deadman was in New 52 JLD where his first act was to possess a guy so he can have sex with Dawn. A guy who has a fiance and he took the ring off. He's slapped by the fiancee and dumped by Dawn.

No it doesn't make me not feel squicky, it does, but it's the right way, because the story knows and makes it clear that you're not supposed to root for this guy. Kinda like Constantine and Deathstroke.[/QUOTE]

Ugh. That's the worst. I mean, even his regular powers are problematic (tooling around in someone's body for hours while trailing a bad guy, say), but whenever sex and violence get involved, it's like "what in the heck was Rama Kushna thinking, anyway?"

There could be ways to make his modus operandi less icky (setting him up with long-term "partners" who've agreed to help him out, etc.), but that would take some seriously world-building for a character who is, typically, rather nomadic.

Setting him up with a partner was my first thought, but supernatural entities in parasitic/symbiotic relationships with people has become utterly cliche in my mind. I say just make him a poltergeist. It's not like ghosts and spirits who can be seen AND physically move objects are anywhere close to unusual in parapsychology. Just have a caveat to it. Maybe the form is really frail because it's made of hardened ectoplasm, maybe he has to absorb energy to make a physical form that can do anything, maybe he can play by Freddy or Candy Man rules and physically interact with people who believe in him. This way he doesn't have to possess others to get every little thing done. He could just possess bad guys, which may still be morally questionable, but rampant love for characters with ridiculously invasive telepathic abilities suggest it's the sort of morally questionable people are ok with.