Beast Boy
| Beast Boy | |
|---|---|
| File:BeastboyOYL.jpg From promotional art for Teen Titans vol. 3, #36 (July 2006). Art by Tony Daniel | |
| Publication information | |
| Publisher | DC Comics |
| First appearance | as Beast Boy: The Doom Patrol #99 (November 1965) as Changeling: DC Comics Presents #26 (October 1980) |
| Created by | Arnold Drake Bob Brown |
| In-story information | |
| Alter ego | Garfield Mark Logan |
| Team affiliations | Doom Patrol Teen Titans Titans West |
| Notable aliases | Changeling, Animal Man |
| Abilities | Metamorphic ability to transform into any animal. |
Beast Boy (real name Garfield Mark "Gar" Logan) is a fictional character in the DC Comics universe, a shapeshifting superhero who is a former member of the Doom Patrol and member of the Teen Titans. Created by Arnold Drake and Bob Brown, he first appeared in The Doom Patrol #99 (November 1965). DC had an earlier character of the same code name and powers who appeared in the 30th Century-based Legion of Super-Heroes feature in Adventure Comics. He was one of the young super-heroes of the planet Lallor, introduced in #324, September 1964. He turned villain and was killed off in #339, December 1965, just after the arrival of Gar Logan. This character was allowed a last-minute reformation and heroic death.
Fictional character biography
Origins
As a child, Garfield contracted a rare illness called Sakutia and was cured by a serum extracted from a green monkey. This serum had the unintended effect of turning his skin and hair green and gave him the ability to morph into any animal of his choice. The colors and appearance of these animals changed depending on the artist using the character at the time.
Before becoming a Teen Titan or part of the Doom Patrol, Garfield was placed in custody of Nicholas Galtry, the attorney for his parents' estate. While the young Logan was in Africa, Galtry had embezzled funds from Gar's inheritance. When Gar was found, Galtry plotted to kill the boy and have all the wealth for himself.
Originally and currently known as Beast Boy, he was adopted by Elasti-Girl and Mento, members of the Doom Patrol. He later joined the West Coast team of the Teen Titans (known as Titans West), and was part of the New Teen Titans assembled by Raven. It was at this time that he took the name Changeling. He remained with various incarnations of the team, forming a close friendship with Cyborg.
He later began using the name Beast Boy again, under which he got his own miniseries Beast Boy. Following a failed attempt to recreate "Titans West" as "Titans L.A.,", as recounted in Titans Secret Files #2 (October 2000), he rejoined the main team.
He has also worked as an actor, playing the role of an alien in the TV series Space Trek 2022 (which, even in the fictional setting, was a thinly disguised pastiche of Star Trek and Space: 1999, and was cancelled following threats of legal action on the grounds of plagiarism).
Beast Boy's character is often used as comic relief. However, this is only a facade, he uses humor to hide a deep inner pain. Beast Boy has suffered many hardships in his life (both his real parents have died, and his foster mother, whom Garfield became very close to, died in battle along with virtually all of the other Doom Patrol members with whom he was part of the team and his foster father was driven mad by a helmet he used to fight enemies). During his time with The New Teen Titans, Gar fell in love with Terra, a young girl with earth-manipulating powers and fellow Teen Titans member, who turned out to be a spy working for Deathstroke or Slade. Despite all his hardships, Garfield is friendly and upbeat.
His best friend is Cyborg (also a member of the Teen Titans). He is also close to Bette Kane, a former Titan who helped clear his name from the crimes committed by an impostor on an adventure in Los Angeles.
"One Year Later"
While the events of Infinite Crisis unfolds, details of Beast Boy's life "One Year Later" are revealed in the current Teen Titans comic book.
Teen Titans vol. 3, #34 (May 2006) shows us scenes from the year between the conclusion of Infinite Crisis and One Year Later, from the damaged Cyborg's POV. Garfield led the Teen Titans, before quitting the team following the break-up of himself and Raven. He then joined his original team, the Doom Patrol, citing that the team needed his help and that Robin could handle leadership. He was also feeling uneasy about remaining in a team without his best friend Cyborg.
Soon after Cyborg awoke, Beast Boy and the rest of the Doom Patrol helped the Titans fight off the Brotherhood of Evil, who had managed to clone Brain. The clone was a failure, and Mallah ended up tearing Brain's head off so that he could preserve his master's brain.
After returning, Beast Boy was infuriated to discover that the Chief had been manipulating them and trying to do the same to Kid Devil. Gar and his parents stood up to the Chief and made him step down as the Doom Patrol's leader. Gar stayed on his old team saying that they still needed him. However, he did answer a call from Raven to help the Titans combat Titans East.
During World War III, Black Adam fights the Titans injuring Zatara, Hawk, Dove, Red Talon and Offspring and killing Young Frankenstein and Terra, all in front of Gar who was leading the team at that time.
Personal life
Garfield Logan's life has been shaped by tragedy. His parents died in a boating accident when he was no more than 10 years old. To this day, he still believes he could have prevented this event. After he was saved from two kidnappers that tried to use his powers to help them in their crimes, he was left under the care of his despised guardian, Nicholas Galtry.
Galtry was unhappy that Garfield was alive and plotted to kill the boy in order to claim his inheritance. The various villains he hired to kill young Logan were impeded by the Doom Patrol. His hopes of gaining Garfield's money were finally dashed when Rita and Steve Dayton adopted Garfield.
In his days with the Doom Patrol, Garfield held a romantic relationship with a girl from his high-school named Jillain Jackson. After he saved her from Galtry (who was using the alias "Arsenal"), the relationship dissolved. Beast Boy was the only survivor of the Doom Patrol, a loss which deeply affected him. Since then, they have all returned to life, but this began his habit of making jokes to cover up his fear that those he cares about will die.
Garfield felt insecure and inadequate as a Teen Titan. He hid his insecurity by constantly cracking jokes which even he described as "stale" and humorously flirting with the female members of the team. He even suggested that Raven reformed the Titans just to meet him (something none of the other Titans would ever believe). However, it is a mystery exactly why Raven chose to recruit Garfield into the New Teen Titans.
Logan developed a more serious interest in Tara Markov. He was heartbroken to discover that she was a traitor working for Deathstroke and hated the Teen Titans. Even after her death, he refused to believe for a long time that she was a traitor and blamed Deathstroke for corrupting and using her. However, Logan realized her true colors when it was revealed that she killed King Tawaba. Despite this, he blamed her betrayal on Deathstroke until he disclosed the real details of his relationship with her to him. This added to his fears of losing those he is close to. However, he and Deathstroke parted on peaceful terms after this, and strangely enough over the course of time (specifically during the Titans Hunt and Total Chaos story arcs), even developed a friendship between them. After Terra's betrayal and death, Jill returned to Garfield's life to ease his pain. Unfortunately, the relationship dissolved just as it did before. Jackson's fate remains unknown. Logan also had a short-lived relationship with Flamebird when he led the also short-lived Titans L.A.
Upon returning to the Titans under Vic Stone's leadership, he began flirting with his female teammates again. His flirts became minimal, however, when Raven was revived and rejoined the team. He did, however, flirt with Raven occasionally. In Teen Titans vol. 3, #30, Raven kissed Beast Boy without explanation. It was revealed in the following issue that Raven kissed him because it was "just what she wanted to do". She had been developing feelings for him since her recent rebirth. Despite fan speculations that this affair was influenced by the Shipper fan community, writer Geoff Johns has gone on record to note that he had long been preparing these two slowly to have a relationship before the animated series even began. However, Robin revealed in Teen Titans #34 that the two have broken up, though no reason why was given, and both left the team as a result. Later events revealed that Raven had insitgated her breakup with Garfield only to protect him after discovering a secret danger posed by one of the Titans. Raven, along with Duela, and Cyborg would later recruit other Titans to help with her mission, leading Beast Boy to finally be reunited with her, though they have yet to confront their relationship's abrupt conclusion and the true reasons for it.
Powers and abilities
As a shape shifter, Beast Boy has the ability to morph into any animal that he has seen himself or has seen in an illustration (as is the case when he shapeshifts into an animal such as an extinct dinosaur). These transformations take only a second and Beast Boy has demonstrated that he is capable of rapidly changing his form with little or no effort expended.
His power enables him to completely alter his body mass, being able to take the shape of animals far larger and heavier than himself, such as an elephant, a hippopotamus, or a Tyrannosaurus Rex (though until recent stories, such larger forms would physically exhaust him), or smaller and lighter animals such as mice and insects. His power also enables him to radically alter his body structure and take forms of animals without limbs, like snakes, or those without skeletons like a jellyfish. In one notable instance, he even took the form of multiple individuals simultaneously (as a swarm of fireflies). While as an animal, he gains all the physical abilities and characteristics of said animal, such as great strength (a gorilla), speed (a cheetah), and durability (a turtle), and abilities such as flight (various birds), and aquatic breathing (various fish). He can even gain the specific poison produced by specific snakes. While in animal form, Beast Boy retains his human intellect, memories, and the ability to speak. No matter what form he takes, his skin, hair, and his eyes, will remain green, making most of his animal forms easy to distinguish from real animals of that species.
On one occasion, Gar assumed the form of a Gordonian Slaver, whose physical form was that of a reptillian humanoid.
When Raven implanted Garfield with an evil seed of her father Trigon, he began to transform into more demon-like creatures. Eventually, he found himself more comfortable in these horrific shapes rather than as a human, and stayed shifted. After becoming completely corrupted by the evil seed, he was used by Raven and Trigon, but eventually returned to normal.
Beast Boy has gained a new "Super-Animal" form made with the traits, strengths and abilities of all the animals in the world. This gives him a multitude of abilities from a falcon's vision to beyond a tyrannosaurus's strength. This animal form has a constant feral attitude, and Gar has problems controlling it's powers and mental state. This form appears in the Teen Titans animated series as stated below.
Other media
In the "Titans Tomorrow" storyline, Garfield calls himself Animal Man. In this storyline, he has the power to use more than one animal power at a time such as using an amoeba's power to spilt to create copies of himself while in the form of another creature. He also demonstrates the ability to become mythical animals.
In Kingdom Come (also set in an alternate future), Beast Boy has changed his name to "Menagerie" and, for unspecified reasons, can only transform into mythical creatures.
Teen Titans animated series
Beast Boy appears in the Teen Titans animated series. The character is voiced by Greg Cipes.
In the series, Beast Boy (nicknamed "BB", and others) plays the role of the light-hearted jokester of the group, though often the butt of many jokes himself (similar to his comics self). He wears a black and purple Doom Patrol uniform, complete with gray gloves and purple sneakers with seemingly velcro straps.[1] The costume also has a mask;[2] he discarded it after Cyborg told him it was goofy, and Raven pointed out that the mask would not hide his secret identity anyway, as since his skin is green, he does not really have one. Beast Boy also has pointy ears, which he finds to be an attractive quality of himself. His appearance is much younger than in the comics. The ears were adapted to the comics in Teen Titans vol. 3. He exhibits very feral habits as well, such as sitting with his feet on his chair and moving his ears up and down. Beast Boy's ability to speak in animal form is normally absent in the series unless taking the form of an animal that can talk, such as a parrot.[3]
Beast Boy is a vegetarian, having transformed into most of the meat-producing animals.[4] (though technically he is a Vegan) He is also prone to causing much of the mischief around Titans Tower, such as the time he kept a large mutant moth larva hidden in his bedroom, whom he named Silkie. In "Can I Keep Him?," the larva devours much of the Tower while the team is on a mission fighting Johnny Rancid. While trying to hide him from the others, Beast Boy entrusts Silkie to Starfire to hide, but she ends up adopting the creature.....
Like in the comics, Beast Boy also had a romantic relationship with a girl named Terra who had the ability to control earth and the elements in the earth. As in the comic book, Terra betrays the Teen Titans as an ally of Slade (Deathstroke). Ultimately, she receives redemption in helping the Titans defeat Slade; however, she is turned to stone in the process. In a departure from the comic book, Beast Boy retains strong feelings for Terra, as can be heard in "The End: Part 2" by "Evil Beast Boy" (an evil clone of BB created by Trigon, representing his evil side). In the final episode "Things Change", Beast Boy saw Terra, although it is unclear whether or not it was the real Terra, as he was the only Titan who saw her. Terra may have suffered amnesia when Beast Boy last saw her. The episode was designed to serve in much the way JLUs' second season finale "Epilogue" was designed to wrap up the Batman portion of the DCAU, focusing on one or two central characters and resolving unapproached issues.
In the Season 3 episode "The Beast Within", Beast Boy was seen in a his newly gained "Super-werewolf" form when he was doused with an experimental DNA compound. The Titans had assumed that he had used this form to attack Raven. However, it was in fact Adonis, who had been affected by the compound as well, who attacked her, and Beast Boy was protecting Raven from him. Beast Boy disliked this form and refrained from using it again until he and the other Titans were fighting off Slade's fire-soldier army in "The End: Part 1" when they had to use their most powerful abilities to defeat them. He never used it after then, suggesting that even with the strength and abilities it gave him, he considered it a "last resort" to be used.
Season 5 of Teen Titans focuses on Beast Boy a great deal, as it deals with his history as a member of the animated series' incarnation of the Doom Patrol. Until "Homecoming", in which his former teammates make a guest appearance, Beast Boy was the only member of the Doom Patrol to appear on the show. In the second episode of the fifth season, Beast Boy becomes the first male Titan in the series to be explicitly referred to by his real name (Garfield). In "Titans Together", Beast Boy shows a remarkable amount of leadership skills and leads Herald, Jericho, Pantha, and Más on an assault on the Brotherhood of Evil. He remains leader even after Cyborg, Starfire, Raven, and several other Titans join the fight. Beast Boy only stands down from leadership when Robin is thawed; thus fulfilling his dream (revealed in the episode "Go!") to be Robin's sidekick.
One part of Beast Boy's depiction in the animated series that has garnered attention is his effort to form a connection with his teammate, Raven, going so far as to make a decisive effort to get her to respond to his jokes. His comedic and innocent nature often plays off on Raven's more distant and harsh one, and certain episodes focus on building their friendship.[5].
Beast Boy and Raven were intentionally written by David Slack, Titans head writer, as a "married couple", hence the relationship was one of deep loyalty and affection, but also laced with conflictive personality clashes. The only clear and establshed romantic relationship Beast Boy had in the series however was with Terra, as the series stayed true to the classic Teen Titans comics such as The Judas Contract. This "tough love" relationship between Beast Boy and Raven however is continued in Titans in Tokyo, also written by Slack.
Beast Boy also has an obsession with owning a vehicle of his own, more specifically, a moped. In one episode, he acquires one and affectionately calls it the "B-Ped" and rides with a helmet, goggles and scarf that could be seen as a parody of Haruko and her Vespa from the anime FLCL (Which might be a nod to the more anime-ish aspects of the show). Ironically, after using it to save the world from killer tofu, it falls to pieces. He often has fantasies of impressing girls on a moped, dressed in a stereotypical French style: black and white striped shirt, black trousers, and a beret. Beast Boy jokes about changing his name to Beastman or Beastdude at the end of "The Beast Within" as a response to Raven calling him a man for knowing when to let out his 'Beast Within'.
His background is delved into further in Teen Titans Go #45. When he was younger, Beast Boy fell ill due to being bitten by a green monkey. To save him, his parents attempts to cure him resulted in his shape changing abilities. Later on they died in a flood, leaving Beast Boy as an orphan. Afterwards, Beast Boy determined to join Doom Patrol broke into their quarters. He was treated as an intruder, but his effort to escape capture impressed them, thus earning his membership on the team.
Notes
- ^ Although his shoes were temporarily shown as having shoelaces in the episode "Mother Mae-Eye"
- ^ Which he wore in his days with the Doom Patrol, as seen in "Homecoming: Part 1," "Homecoming: Part 2," and "Go!"
- ^ However, in episodes such as "Apprentice: Part 2", "How Long is Forever", "Date with Destiny", "Haunted", and "Crash", he has been shown as talking or making "human" sounds in animal form.
- ^ He stated as such in "Final Exam".
- ^ "Spellbound" and "The Beast Within"
External links
- DCDP: Beast Boy - DC Database Project
- Titans Tower Biography
- Beast Boy's description on the animated series