Mento
53 years ago - Steve Dayton is born, the only heir to the Daystrom fortune.
43 years ago - 10-year-old Steve's mental powers manifest, plaguing him.
25 years ago - 28-year-old Steve befriends Niles Caulder, who begins to help him gain control of his powers.
22 years ago - 31-year-old Steve meets Rita Farr & falls in love. He becomes a part-time member of the Doom Patrol as Mento.
14 years ago - 39-year-old Steve begins to slip mentally when he loses Rita Farr in the battle that seemingly destroyed the Doom Patrol.
13 years ago - 40-year-old Steve joins the reformed Doom Patrol with Gar Logan in the hopes of finding Rita Farr.
11 years ago - 42-year-old Steve suffers a mental breakdown when Niles Caulder finds evidence that Rita Farr's body was scattered across the ocean. He leaves the Doom Patrol.
2 years ago - 51-year-old Steve is reunited with Rita Farr, helping him take control of own sanity.
It took me a long time to wrap my head around Mento. I met him in the pages of the New Teen Titans, where Gar Logan lived in a palatial mansion owned by his guardian, Steve Dayton. It was understood that Dayton had previously been Mento, a member of the Doom Patrol, but all I saw was him being distant and often dismissive or even downright emotionally abusive to Gar. I just didn't see how this guy could ever have been a superhero.
But that was the point. He WAS a superhero, but a deliberate condemnation of what that even means. A character that on the surface is just a slightly weird part of the history of a deliberately weird team, Mento is actually a fascinatingly meta commentary on the very genre he exists in, and the characters that often populate it. Mento is a really unique character to include in the world.
But that was the point. He WAS a superhero, but a deliberate condemnation of what that even means. A character that on the surface is just a slightly weird part of the history of a deliberately weird team, Mento is actually a fascinatingly meta commentary on the very genre he exists in, and the characters that often populate it. Mento is a really unique character to include in the world.
Mento's Comic HistoryMento was introduced in the Doom Patrol #91, less than a year into the run of the team, in a story called "Mento - the Man who Split the Doom Patrol". He basically arrived out of nowhere, a genius billionaire playboy phlianthropist with telekinetic powers who announced, apropos of nothing, that he was into Rita and she should basically ditch these losers she was hanging out with and get with him, baby. He had all the trappings of a heroics leading man superhero, but notably sucked. He was just jerk, but also continually did the wrong thing in his effort to make himself look like the hero.
He continued to appear in the Doom Patrol periodically, slowly making a better showing of himself and eventually even winning over a begrudging Rita, but of course, eventually the Doom Patrol was killed in their final issue. Mento would continue to appear, primarily as the absentee guardian of Beast Boy, but was often depicted as slowly losing his sanity. |
Our Mento StoryMento is actually a really fun character to include in our timeline, becuase he is built as a subversion of the whole idea of the heroic main character. He has all the trappings of someone who would normally lead a super team, or even be the star of his own book, but all the insecurities and narcissim that would be inherent in a person like that were all fully on display. He's a really fantastic piece of comic book writing, created decades before most people considered that comics had the capacity to tell that sort of story.
For our purposes, we are going to stretch out his role in the timeline just a little bit. He can be a part-time member of the original Doom Patrol (now an early friend of Caulder's, which explains his association with them at all), and while she certainly wouldn't marry the guy, he can have that slightly antagonistic romantic obsession with Rita that she basically just tolerates because she knows he's a decent enough guy deep down. Then, when Rita is lost, he would become one of the main members of the new team as he clings desperately to the hope of finding her. This actually lets us include a very young Beast Boy in this iteration of the Doom Patrol, since he is Gar's legal guardian. Cannonically, Dayton takes the eventual realization that Rita really is lost pretty hard. He becomes despondant, even slowly losing his mind. This is actually a pretty important element of Gar's story, that he had to overcome yet another lost parent figure. At some point, I actually think it really isn't even about Rita, which is why it's only a small step on his journey when she is recovered. Dayton is a cautionary tale, an example of what can happen to a person who tries to fill the role of a superhero for selfish or self-serving reasons. |