WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Peacemaker Episode 3, “Better Goff Dead,” streaming now on HBO Max.
The Suicide Squad has always given the spotlight to the obscure DC Comics characters, both in comics and on the big screen, and its television spin-off continues that trend. Peacemaker, Judomaster and Vigilante are all DC deep cuts, but that hasn’t stopped James Gunn and Co. from touching on even stranger corners of the DC Universe. Batman’s biggest fanboy, the interdimensional imp Bat-Mite, got a shout-out along with Peacemaker’s old Suicide Squad teammate Harley Quinn in Episode 2. And come Episode 3, Gunn references an even more obscure DC Character: Doll Man.
After discovering what turns out to be a miniature spaceship in Butterfly Annie Sturphausen’s apartment, Peacemaker opens Episode 3 by talking about his distaste for homunculi, whom he suspects created the craft. Peacemaker uses Doll Man as an example, citing his one-millimeter finger as a reason for his revulsion.
Doll Man might sound like a concept Gunn created, or proof of his B-movie cred to fans of the Full Moon Features movie of the same name, to the uninitiated. But he’s actually a Golden Age hero created by the legendary Will Eisner, and like Peacemaker and Judomaster, he was originally published by another company, Quality Comics, which also published future DC characters like Plastic Man.
Real name Darrel Dane, Doll Man made his first appearance in 1939’s Feature Comics #27 and was the first superhero to use shrinking powers, predating DC’s first Atom Ray Palmer and Marvel’s Ant-Man by decades. Like his descendants, Doll Man’s powers came from science, a chemical formula he developed which allows him to shrink to six inches tall but retain his full strength.
The character starred in his own comic for f0rty-seven issues over twelve years. But after Quality went out of business in 1956, DC acquired their characters and introduced them in 1973’s Justice League of America #107, by Len Wein, Dick Dillin, and Dick Giordano. Doll Man was paired with Quality characters like Uncle Sam and the Phantom Lady as members of the Freedom Fighters, a superteam fighting Nazis on Earth X, an alternate reality where the Nazis won World War II.
Dane would be a part of World War II-era hero teams in multiple realities until 1986’s Crisis on Infinite Earths simplified DC continuity, merging his history so that he was a member of the All-Star Squadron. After Crisis, Dane sunk into limbo, only returning in 2007’s Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters #3, where he was revealed to be suffering from mental instability due to years of retaining his shrunken form.
Doll Man was a trailblazing character in superhero comics history, but he never reached the iconic status that the characters he predated did because he was published by a company that went under before the Silver Age’s second superhero boom. Being absorbed by DC meant he’d escape total obscurity, but at the cost of being in the shadow of the Atom. However, his name drop in Peacemaker opens up the possibility that he could appear in a future project, which would finally give him the shot at the spotlight he’s never really had.
To see Chris name drop Doll Man, Peacemaker is streaming now on HBO Max.
About The Author