Doctor Fate Appreciation Thread and his 74th Birthday!

[Doctor Kent Nelson]

I had no idea there were so many Dr. Fate action figures out.

Yeah a great collection and there are more than that too!


Don't you mean Earth 3?

Dr Chaos was Earth 1 before Crisis occurred. Horrible character

[Doctor Kent Nelson]

Won't be too long until we see Doc Fate in multiversity either! I really hope it's Kent Nelson too and the series sounds fun as well!

The image is not from the series either but an artists interpretation from the brief glimpse we saw of Doc Fate with Lady Blackhawk.

[Doctor Kent Nelson]

And of course we have Nabu the Wise... the "power" and "corrupter" behind Doctor Fate...

[John Venus]

Won't be too long until we see Doc Fate in multiversity either! I really hope it's Kent Nelson too and the series sounds fun as well!

The image is not from the series either but an artists interpretation from the brief glimpse we saw of Doc Fate with Lady Blackhawk.

I love that pic. It has a very Indiana Jones feel to it.

Multiversity is taking an eternity to come out. Can you post that glimpse we saw of Doc Fate and Lady B?

[Blueferret]

One thing I never understood about Dr. Fate was why they killed Hector after spending so much time developing him after the debacle of the 90's with anything Fate related. I loved the redesigned costume and then to just dump it on a drunk doctor named Kent made no sense at all. It just seemed to go back to the mess of the 90's.

[John Venus]

Here is a good retrospective of Hector Hall's time as Dr. Fate with scans and all.

http://asylums.insanejournal.com/sca...ly/892501.html

http://asylums.insanejournal.com/sca...ly/907097.html

http://asylums.insanejournal.com/sca...y/1103207.html

http://asylums.insanejournal.com/sca...y/1117687.html

http://scans-daily.dreamwidth.org/1086864.html

It analyzes the good, the bad and the ugly that came during his tenure.

Whilst Kent Nelson was my first Dr. Fate, Hector Hall was my first time seeing the man behind the helmet, thanks to the above links and he quickly became a favorite of mine. Moreso because the first arc that brought him back as Dr. Fate was awesome but spoilers:

the stuff that followed was inconsistent. Bringing back Lyta was a good idea but her and Hector's death was terrible but strangely heartwarming, not to mention the inconsistencies and flip flops that came during his run

end of spoilers.

[LoneNecromancer]

One of my favourite Fate appearances. An unorthodox pairing but they're thematic opposites and it worked great.

[John Venus]

One thing I never understood about Dr. Fate was why they killed Hector after spending so much time developing him after the debacle of the 90's with anything Fate related. I loved the redesigned costume and then to just dump it on a drunk doctor named Kent made no sense at all. It just seemed to go back to the mess of the 90's.

Good timing. I just posted links that lead to a site that examines Hector's role in the JSA series.

One guess is because there was a hard split between the Vertigo titles and the main DCU at the time. Hector and Lyta's son, Daniel Hall became the next Dream of the Endless after Morpheus died during Neil Gaiman's 80's Sandman series. Lyta herself played an important part in that series.

The other guess is because of how convoluted Hawkman's and especially his off spring's history had become. Hector has been the Silver Scarab, an incarnation of the Sandman and now Dr. Fate. While normally that's no issue, his family history is about as tangled as Scott Summer's Family tree. Consider this: Hector was the son of the Golden Age Hawkman and Hawkgirl but his new body was the rape child of Dove who was raped by Hawk. So basically, he has two sets of biological parents.

The Hawkgirl on the team; Kendra Saunders? She is both his mother and his cousin by the way of his mother's soul animating Kendra's body but has no memories of her time as Shiera. So in mind and body, she is Kendra but Shiera in soul, the latter of which influences her to wear bird wings and fight crime and get hit on by sparsely dressed hairy men.

In addition to all of that, they decided to kill off for a shock death. Hector and Lyta had two qualities Didio abhors; too much continuity and thus in Didio's eyes made him the perfect shock death for the 'Days of Vengeance' mini.

[Blueferret]

Good timing. I just posted links that lead to a site that examines Hector's role in the JSA series.

One guess is because there was a hard split between the Vertigo titles and the main DCU at the time. Hector and Lyta's son, Daniel Hall became the next Dream of the Endless after Morpheus died during Neil Gaiman's 80's Sandman series. Lyta herself played an important part in that series.

The other guess is because of how convoluted Hawkman's and especially his off spring's history had become. Hector has been the Silver Scarab, an incarnation of the Sandman and now Dr. Fate. While normally that's no issue, his family history is about as tangled as Scott Summer's Family tree. Consider this: Hector was the son of the Golden Age Hawkman and Hawkgirl but his new body was the rape child of Dove who was raped by Hawk. So basically, he has two sets of biological parents.

The Hawkgirl on the team; Kendra Saunders? She is both his mother and his cousin by the way of his mother's soul animating Kendra's body but has no memories of her time as Shiera. So in mind and body, she is Kendra but Shiera in soul, the latter of which influences her to wear bird wings and fight crime and get hit on by sparsely dressed hairy men.

In addition to all of that, they decided to kill off for a shock death. Hector and Lyta had two qualities Didio abhors; too much continuity and thus in Didio's eyes made him the perfect shock death for the 'Days of Vengeance' mini.

Now you've got me thinking about Infinity Inc. and what a wonderful book it was....

[Doctor Kent Nelson]

One of my favourite Fate appearances. An unorthodox pairing but they're thematic opposites and it worked great.

Yeah this issue of Brave and the Bold was one of the best "modern" interpretations of Kent Nelson as Doctor Fate. What made it even better was that Straczynski managed to bring a character that was a dead (Kent) back but somehow make an important impact on a now Hal Jordan.

If Doctor Fate was written like that, I don't think we would have ever had the musical helmet of Nabu either.

[Doctor Kent Nelson]

Now you've got me thinking about Infinity Inc. and what a wonderful book it was....

It was a great series and I wish DC would collect it as an omnibus... some great stories and characterisation there.



And although Dr. Fate dodged a bullet from the rest of the JSA, he was later killed with DeMatteis and Giffen's Kali Yuga.

[Doctor Kent Nelson]

Some Silver Age Dr. Fate love!

[Doctor Kent Nelson]

Good timing. I just posted links that lead to a site that examines Hector's role in the JSA series.

One guess is because there was a hard split between the Vertigo titles and the main DCU at the time. Hector and Lyta's son, Daniel Hall became the next Dream of the Endless after Morpheus died during Neil Gaiman's 80's Sandman series. Lyta herself played an important part in that series.

The other guess is because of how convoluted Hawkman's and especially his off spring's history had become. Hector has been the Silver Scarab, an incarnation of the Sandman and now Dr. Fate. While normally that's no issue, his family history is about as tangled as Scott Summer's Family tree. Consider this: Hector was the son of the Golden Age Hawkman and Hawkgirl but his new body was the rape child of Dove who was raped by Hawk. So basically, he has two sets of biological parents.

The Hawkgirl on the team; Kendra Saunders? She is both his mother and his cousin by the way of his mother's soul animating Kendra's body but has no memories of her time as Shiera. So in mind and body, she is Kendra but Shiera in soul, the latter of which influences her to wear bird wings and fight crime and get hit on by sparsely dressed hairy men.

In addition to all of that, they decided to kill off for a shock death. Hector and Lyta had two qualities Didio abhors; too much continuity and thus in Didio's eyes made him the perfect shock death for the 'Days of Vengeance' mini.

It's a shame that DC dumped the previous JSA series... it was such a well written series. It probably didn't help that Hector and Lyta were married as well... don't DC have an edict about that now?

[marshal99]

It was a great series and I wish DC would collect it as an omnibus... some great stories and characterisation there.

And although Dr. Fate dodged a bullet from the rest of the JSA, he was later killed with DeMatteis and Giffen's Kali Yuga.

Fate was too cool to get dragged into limbo and not be used.

[John Venus]

It's a shame that DC dumped the previous JSA series... it was such a well written series. It probably didn't help that Hector and Lyta were married as well... don't DC have an edict about that now?

Agreed. Hector and Lyta were a great couple.

JSA will forever be caught in a sweep of retcons due to their ties to WW2. If we are lucky we get people like Roy Thomas, Starman/90's JSA era James Robinson and Geoff Johns who love the characters and knows how to implement just the right retcons to keep them alive in the modern day.

If not, we get writers dumping them into time limbos and EiC's like Mike Carlin who wanted them brutally killed off for shock value in Zero Hour or the current Nu 52 series that strips away everything that made them cool in the first place.

Fate was too cool to get dragged into limbo and not be used.

More like the Spectre punted him out of eternal hell. :P Despite my distaste for the Ragnarok thing, this scene is actually very well written and the characters are treated with respect.