Doctor Fate #10

Doctor Fate isn't quite as imposing as he used to be.

Rating: Still ranked at 43 out of 51 DC Comics. This is one of those DC Comics where I'm just waiting for it to end. The entire premise seems to be "What if Doctor Fate were a boring, risk-averse medical student who lived at home with his parents?" It seems strange that nobody could have answered that question with "everybody would be bored" before putting out ten issues of this slog. How does DC not know that what sells is adorableness? You know the kinds of characters people wind up thoroughly loving? The kind who they either want to be or want to fuck (sometimes both!). And I don't mean "fuck" literally. I suppose I could have said "have some kind of weird crush on" but then I'd still have to explain further that the crush doesn't necessarily have to be romantic either and that sometimes it's just a strange longing to be near the character that you don't quite understand. I figured it would be easier to just say fuck.

• I couldn't remember what was happening in this comic book until I turned to the first page. And then I only vaguely remembered what the current plot was. The things I remember are these: Khalid won't fuck the neighbor who desperately wants to fuck him; Khalid won't fuck his girlfriend who desperately wants to fuck him; Khalid didn't really give a fuck about his cat drowning in the flood. Those are also three reasons why I don't like this Doctor Fate.

• Doctor Fate has discovered that Egyptian ghosts are keeping people prisoner beneath the Egyptian Consulate. Although the way the comic has been going, maybe "discovered" is too strong a word. It's more likely that he believes he's hallucinating the ghosts and the prisoners and the helmet and his entire life. Also he might believe he's dreaming it or he's gone insane. Accepting reality isn't one of his strong suits.

See? Insanity! While I've got a few people's attention, I'd like to point out that color fade in the Narration Boxes of DC Comics? It might be my own ego and narcissistic tendencies but I'm fairly certain DC made that change during The New 52 because they got tired of my photoshopped Narration Boxes making their way around the internet and making their characters look like idiots. Not that it's stopped me. It's just more difficult to swap letters around when the background is a gradient and not a solid color.

• Doctor Fate is battling the ghosts in the basement of the Egyptian Consulate. So when he brings the roof down to crush some ghosts, it shows he hasn't thought about a single aspect of this battle.

• While Doctor Fate battles ghosts to save some protesters, the two women who want to be in his bed are desperately trying to find him. Maybe the earlier flood was a metaphor for the desire of these women? Have I been missing the entire subtext of this comic book?! Is it more fascinating than I realized? Is everything Khalid going through a metaphor for becoming an adult with responsibilities and sexual partners and leaving the toys of childhood behind? Probably not.

• Doctor Fate frees the protesters but is then caught by Roman ghosts and taken before Caeser's Ghost to be punished. I suppose this is probably just another dream.

• I would go back through this series and read it as a young man navigating the path to adulthood but I found it too boring to read the first time through. At one point in this issue, his father says, "[Khalid] is much too busy changing...becoming American...a doctor...whatever he'll be." Later he goes within himself, seeing glimpses of his family's past, and thinks, "But I'm mom too...why isn't any of that in me...or any of my own time, my own world...America...". So see? There's evidence that this is all a metaphorical trip into adulthood and one's own sense of self. I suppose if I were getting paid for this, I'd spend a few work days rereading Doctor Fate and writing about it from this angle. But I'm not so I'll just go back to waiting for this comic book to end.