This was part of a presentation on the Grant Morrison / Richard Case run on the comic book DOOM PATROL, published by DC comics between 1988 and 1991. I had the good forture to interview Richard Case at the Heroes Comicon in Charlotte, NC in June of 2013, and I introduced Richard, and the comic as a whole, with the images in this PowerPoint, one slide per issue published.

2. You’re sensitive and caring and
compassionate.

3. A hollow wind in an empty room.
There is no time. There is no space.

4. The leaching will be novelistic for
effacement! Curdle your pilgrimage! Curdle

5. It just has to be made to confront its own
unreality, that’s all. Hah! That’s all…

6. Alchemy starts in the hour of the knife.
The butterfly labyrinth was no accident.

7. Nothing actually dies here. Here, there is
only suffering. Pain sustains my existence.

8. They’re going to make me wear the shoes!
They’re going to make me wear the red

9. Larger. Blotting out the infinity of white with
blackness. Larger. And larger and larger.

10. Winding, winding, oh radiant ferry!
Dismember me in black strap suicide!

11. Vibrations. Subtle scents. Traumatic after-
images. There were four of them. Five?

12. We beat you fair and square and you’re just
not man or prawn enough to admit it!

13. You’re a wicked little slut and you won’t tell
or they’ll put you in a home.

14. And no one can talk to a horse, of
course, but the words of the horse are

15. The compline bell is ringing, sounding the
hour of the last day of life on earth.

16. The stupid, high-pitched voices belonged to
Hoodman Blind and Hoodman Shame.

17. I want it all, don’t you see?
I want everything I’ve ever seen in the

18. What we’re talking about here is a sentient
street. A street that can think for itself.

19. We’re normal. That’s the whole point.
We’re normal, decent Americans.

20. The quantum mesh is full of stresses.
The circus is outside.

21. Each side would ignore the other in an
attempt to irritate the enemy into

22. Our prayers are processed and our dreams
are distilled into fuel that powers the

23. It’s funny…after all these years, I’ve been
expecting the men in black…

24. The Shadow Cabinet! The souls of my
ancestors stroke predecessors are

25. Sick and tired of being soft, frail, skinny or
flabby---only half-alive?

26. I love you, Flex…all those years…Flex…I’m
sorry…help me…help me…they’re…love

27. Whenever I feel a little bit down, I just think
about the lovely, sensitive poetry of Leonard

28. I fight this war alone. Just me.
Me and my shaving cream.

29. Who? Who? Who? Who is?
Who is Number? Who is Number None?

30. A lot of the time I really don’t know what I’m
talking about.

31. We came, we cleaned up, we left without a
word of thanks. Just another day for the Sex

32. I’m the patron saint of insignificance.
I’m neither here nor there.

33. Celebrating one hundred and fifty years of
glorious Doom Patrol action!

34. His faces pick up on fear very quickly and
he may lose control of them.

35. I can’t think…thoughts like lead…earth-
bound…why can’t I…AAAAA…ah…

36. Okay folks! Onto my shoulder and just slide
down my arm like it was a slide at the

37. I thought it was a man,
but now I can’t tell if it’s a man or a woman.

38. The apocalypse is all set to break through
onto the physical plane today.

39. We’re approaching McKenna’s “Timesc-k-k-
cape Zero” and Nostradamus’s Apocuh-

40. With the nanomachines, I can do it.
I can remake the world and everyone in it.

41. World falling apart. Shapes, simplifying into
geometrical solids, grids, abstract formulae.

42. If you want to destroy a people,
first destroy its dreams.

43. Lights! My head’s full of lights! Help me,
Cliff! They’re dragging me down!

44. Oppenheimer, I am death. He saw my
light, a million candles, the death of all

45. Boyhood summer sun through the window /
Saddest and most perfect day / Going out

46. There is a better world.
Well…there must be.