Frankenstein: Father Time and S.H.A.D.E.

Father Time was introduced by Morrison in Seven Soldiers: Frankenstein mini. Not much was revealed about him at the time and he was fleshed out mostly by other creators. Was anything interesting done by them?

In my Freedom Fighters post I mentioned that Father Time plays a role there. So what was it about? I guess basic idea is that in WW3 #1 Father Time gets injured by Black Adam. Due to these injuries he gets a new body. Now he is white guy and generic evil government guy. What?

So anyway, at some point he turns black again and reveals that he was just pretending that he is generic evil government guy. Why? To achieve some complicated goals that didn't make much sense in the end. And there is also JSA Classified #25 that features white Father Time.

So before New 52 there is not really much worth reading with Father Time after his introduction. Sure, he makes brief appearance in Final Crisis, but it is not like Morrison does much with him there either. But hey, here comes New 52.

Biggest change done by Lemire to Father Time was turning him into little girl. And it became his iconic look. Well as iconic as such character can really get I suppose. Anyway, so basic idea is that he changes body after certain amount of time. It also looks like his personality changes based on the current body But.. what is his true form then?

We get an answer to that in Futures End weekly. Turns out that he is small Lovecraftian alien who came to Earth after his planet was destroyed by Brainiac. So he basically traveled to Earth in order to help us defend against Brainiac. It is not the strongest motivation since Brainiac had attacked Earth earlier already without Father Time doing much to help. And technically Futures End is not in continuity, but it is not like anyone is doing anything else with Father Time... so he might as well really be that Lovecraftian alien.

So as you can see Father Time does not really have some story outside of my Frankenstein recommendations that is worth tracking down and reading. But what about some other minor SHADE characters?

In Red Hood and the Outlaws #32-35 Langstorm is introduced as working for SHADE in similar capacity to Ray Palmer. It didn't really go anywhere and I didn't really feel like Langstorm really fits in this (or Justice League Dark during Rebirth) context and I prefer him in Gotham.

Then there is Agent Kincaid. Never heard about her? Not surprising since she was a supporting character in short lived Pandora's ongoing by Ray Fawkes. In short SHADE is interested in Pandora and Kincaid gets attached to her case. Eventually turns out that, like other SHADE agents she ain't really a normal human, but can transform into a bird or half-bird. And well, stuff with her ain't bad. Plus we get some teases about Giganta and Pandora potentially joining SHADE. Honestly, probably best SHADE related stuff that wasn't written by Lemire and Morrison.

I think that Ray Fawkes did decent work on that series, but there are two problems. First, Pandora's ongoing was connected to bad crossover (Trinity War) and another crossover (Forever Evil: Blight) that wasn't as bad, but really too long. Second problem is that DC never really figured out what to do with Pandora so the series feels a bit aimless and doesn't really lead to anything concrete. Due to that it is difficult to recommend it despite Kincaid being rather fun addition.

So thats that, at the moment SHADE is not active in any comics and thats really unfortunate. But we can really only go up from here, I hope.

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