Negative Man
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
The tense of this article or section is not suitable for an encyclopedia. Please consider copy editing to past tense if historic, present tense if not time-based (e.g. fiction), or future tense if upcoming. |
| Negative Man | |
 Negative Man. Art by Bruno Premiani |
|
| Publication information | |
|---|---|
| Publisher | DC Comics |
| First appearance | My Greatest Adventure #80 (June 1963) |
| Created by | Bob Haney Arnold Drake Bruno Premiani |
| In story information | |
| Alter ego | Larry Trainor |
| Team affiliations | Doom Patrol |
| Abilities | Radioactive 'soul-self' is capable of flight, intangibility and can generate minor explosions upon contact with positive energy |
Negative Man is a fictional superhero from DC Comics. He first appeared in My Greatest Adventure #80.
Contents |
[edit] Fictional character biography
[edit] Larry Trainor
The original Negative Man, Larry Trainor, is a founding member of the Doom Patrol, along with Elasti-Girl, Robotman, and The Chief. Like the rest of the Doom Patrol, Trainor sees himself as a victim as much as a hero, and his superpower as an infection rather than a blessing.
Trainor's career as a superhero begins when he is accidentally exposed to a radioactive field in the atmosphere while piloting a test plane. This experience leaves him radioactive himself, but also gives him a strange superpower: the ability to release a negatively-charged energy being from his body; the being, also referred to as Negative Man, or, later, as the Negative Spirit[citation needed], can fly at high speed, cause solid objects to explode, and pass through solid materials. It resembles a shadowy silhouette of a human being, surrounded by a bright glow. The being is under Trainor's control and appears at first to have no mind of its own. Unfortunately, Trainor is weak and defenseless while the being is separated from his body; he can only risk sending it forth for 60 seconds at a time without risking death. After his accident, Trainor resembles a costumed mummy; he is forced to wear specially-treated bandages over his entire body to protect bystanders from his radioactivity.
How Larry Trainor survived the explosion that supposedly killed all four of the Doom Patrol's core members remains unexplained. He turned up alive, permanently separated from the radio energy being, but still radioactive, bandaged, and weak in its absence. The Negative Spirit possesses a Russian cosmonaut, Colonel Valentina Vostok, who becomes Negative Woman. Initially, Vostok could transform herself into a radio-energy form, possessing the same capabilities as Trainor's "partner." Later, as with Trainor, it would emerge from her, leaving her physically weak but in control of it, and requiring her to wear special bandages, just as Trainor had.
The Negative Spirit later leaves Vostok and returns to Trainor, where it reveals itself to be amoral, intelligent, and capable of speech. Tranior pleads with it to leave him alone, but it forcefully merges itself with both Trainor, a white man, and his physician, Dr. Eleanor Poole, a black woman. Together the three entities form Rebis, a divine hermaphrodite, who, again, must wear special bandages. Rebis has all of the memories of all three beings, and is as such a compound being, frequently using "we" when speaking of itself. Rebis has a larger range of powers than those of either Trainor or Vostok; Rebis can fly, is psychic, is extraordinarily intelligent, and, most significantly, is immortal. Rebis' unique life cycle is based on an event called the Aenigma Regis, in which it throws off its old body and gives birth to a new version of itself; in describing its paradoxical existence, Rebis often likens itself to Russian dolls, and to an ouroboros.
Rebis temporarily leaves the Doom Patrol to mate with itself and complete the Aenigma Regis; part of this process involves working through the significant trauma and inner turmoil caused by the death of Trainor and Poole's separate identities. At some point during this absence, Rebis also has intercourse with Coagula, giving her superpowers. Rebis's old body is killed by the Candlemaker, but Rebis' new, presumably harmonized body soon returns to see the Candlemaker defeated. According to the DC Comics Encyclopedia, this Rebis is currently involved with Checkmate.
In 2004, the Doom Patrol was rebooted in a JLA storyline and new Doom Patrol series, both written and illustrated by John Byrne. In this version of the Doom Patrol, which ignored previous continuity, Trainor is once again Negative Man (although his negative-energy form now has the appearance of a black skeleton instead of a shadowy humanoid shape). After this series was canceled, the miniseries Infinite Crisis explained that this alteration had been caused by Superboy-Prime's attempts to escape from the extradimensional "haven" he shared with Alexander Luthor and the Superman and Lois Lane of Earth-Two. When the Doom Patrol joins other heroes in fighting Superboy-Prime, Negative Man and the other Doom Patrol members (including former member Beast Boy) begin recalling their previous lives; all previous incarnations of the Doom Patrol are now in continuity, although the exact details of what this means are not yet clear.
Larry Trainor is once again a member of the sixth and current incarnation of the Doom Patrol. It is not clear what relationship he has to Negative Man's history, as the joined entity Rebis also still exists. The negative energy being can now exist apart from Trainor's body for much longer than 60 seconds, but Trainor apparently becomes unconscious when the being leaves his body.
[edit] Ted Bruder
The fourth incarnation of the Doom Patrol included Ted Bruder, a character with the ability to see sixty seconds into the future. He took the codename Fast Forward, but his incessantly pessimistic outlook led to him being nicknamed Negative Man II by his teammates.
[edit] Other media
On the fifth season of Teen Titans, Negative Man appeared along with the other Doom Patrol members. He has a sarcastic matter-of-fact attitude similar to Raven's. His 60 second "soul separation" time limit is absent in the series. He did state that he shouldn't spend too much time separated from his body, but didn't give a specific time limit. However, it is implied that his soul has spent time, caged, outside his body for five months. His voice is performed by Judge Reinhold. Also, while the Doom Patrol was helping the Titans fight the Brotherhood of Evil, Negative Man spent "too much" time apart from his body and while trying to fly back to his body the negative spirit sank into the ground apparently against it's will, reaching for its body, leading Beast Boy to assume he was dead, or at least would never wake up from his catatonic state without the Negative Spirit.
Though it was not specifically stated how long the Negative Spirit could remain separated from his body in this appearance, Negative Man's comment upon being released, "You could have at least thawed me out first", implies that his physical body may have been frozen, or in some sort of suspended animation. This may explain how he was able to stay separated for so long without ill effect, especially since this method was occasionally employed during other incarnations of the Doom Patrol when, for whatever reason, the Negative Spirit was unable to return to Larry Trainor's body.
In Justice League: The New Frontier, a pilot in the climatic aerial fight scene has the name tag "Trainor". This is a cameo of Larry Trainor according to the commentary track.
