Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Number One Comics Podcast. This is the only podcast dedicated exclusively to first issues of comic books. I like the name implies. I'm your host, Jonah, and with me is Bill. How you doing? Bill, how you doing? Not too bad. Excellent. I want to give a special thanks to everyone that helps make this podcast possible. All the folks at the Field of Geeks Network, which we are part of that family and honored to be so. I also want to give a thanks to Raven X for the awesome intro music that we've got currently going. Be sure to check out his stuff as well.
The topic tonight is Ragman number one from 1991. I was very excited to do this issue. In fact, I picked up this entire run, this limited series, which there's eight issues in it. I picked up this entire run just to talk about it on a show like this. I've always liked Ragman, and I have a distinct memory of going into a comic shop. I couldn't tell you the name of the comic shop that I went into. After we'd moved into a different neighborhood, I'd found this comic shop that was just a couple miles away, went in there, and they had this cover.
I can't remember if it was it wasn't the comic because I remember being bigger than that. So I think it was a poster. Yeah, but this image on a poster and I was immediately intrigued as to who this guy was and what he was about. I think his uniform is one of the coolest ever designed. Yeah, absolutely. In terms of comics. Well, I didn't realize this was a remake. Yes. So originally the date on this cover is October 1991. Correct. Correct. This was a remake of a 1976 comic book series. Yep. They remade it and we they.
sort of rebooted it, so to speak. Not just a remake, because they updated quite a bit. We'll talk a little bit about that, because yeah, there were some changes that they made. I think they were probably changes for the better. I think it made the character kind of a better, more well-rounded character, in my opinion. But yeah, as you mentioned, it did premiere October of 1991, published by DC Comics. Had a cover price of $1.50. The art and breakdowns were by the legendary Keith Giffen.
It was scripted by Robert Lauren Fleming, and the art was by Pat Broderick. So as you mentioned, Ragman had first appeared back in 1976. He was created by Robert... I'm going to mispronounce this. Canifer? Canifer? And Joe Cooper. That first series, it only lasted five issues, so it was also a miniseries. That miniseries was... This miniseries, rather, as you said, was a reboot. New origin. They changed the character's descent from being of Irish descent. He's now of Jewish descent. I think he's probably one of the first...
Jewish superheroes that I'm aware of. I'm sure there's probably more out there, but he's the first one that I had become aware of. It was this miniseries that also establishes his costume as a suit of souls, which was created during the 16th century by the same people who created the Golem of Pregg. That was a creature that was created out of clay to defend the ghetto from anti-Semitic attacks. Anyway, the Golem was deemed too dangerous, and so they decided they needed a human champion.
that should be empowered instead, and that's kind of where the mythology of Ragman comes from. His powers include superhuman strength, speed, stamina, he can glide on air currents, and he can mentally manipulate his cloak to ensnare others, kind of like what you saw with Spawn, shortly thereafter probably. He can also sense demons and magical forces. And as we talked about a few episodes ago, I'm a huge fan of DC's magical characters. And he's part of that. He's a big reason why I'm such a fan of those characters. These powers come from the corrupt souls that are within the suit. The corrupt souls are those that different ragmen over the centuries, you know, had encountered. So yeah, that's a little bit about his history. Again, he's got one of the coolest designs, in my opinion. I love that costume. Let's go ahead and do a quick synopsis. Again, spoilers are ahead. We're going to dive into this, though. We start out with a mind-bending nightmare in which...
The back alleys of Gotham and the jungles of Vietnam sort of blend or are mashed together. A frightened and alone Rory Regan is surrounded by invisible enemies. He then awakes in a sweat, unsure if the nightmare is over or if he's still inside of it. We do learn that he's a Vietnam vet now working with his father, Jerry, in their pawn shop called Rags and Tatters. A couple of local ne'er-do-wells have plans to turn the pawn shop into a front for dealing drugs. There's a local homeless gal that we're introduced to named Betty.
She talks like an old Dick Tracy villain, which I thought was really funny. So we're introduced to Betty. She warns Rory's father of the bad guy's intent, which he's not concerned with it. He's encountered these types of people before he knows how to deal with them. Rory's inside the pawn shop working. The bad guys, they beat up his father. This happens off panel. Word of the father's resistance to the bad guy's demands gets to an unknown boss, and he orders a hit on Jerry.
Rory gets his wounded father into bed. He knows that he needs to get some sleep himself. He still probably didn't have the best night's sleep due to that nightmare that he'd had. He is totally unaware of any of the danger that's lurking just outside their home at this point in time. While Rory finds himself back in his reoccurring dream, his father is shot and killed in his own bed. Rory wakes to find two thugs that are looming over him. Well, sort of. One of them looks to be about five feet tall. They assault him, and they leave him for dead in an alleyway.
As Rory fades into unconsciousness, a voice calls out Emmett. Between flashes of Vietnam, a sea of bones, an eyeball, there's nothing but blackness. Rory finds himself trapped in this dream again, but this time it's a little bit different. He's in the Warsaw Ghetto, and there he sees a motionless clay figure. Realizing he's been stabbed, he calls out for help. The name Emmett appears on the clay figure and on his own helmet.
Panicking, he calls out that that's not him. He's not Emmett. There's torn cloth and rags that begin to swirl around him and they begin to envelop him. And he says, I'm not the rag man. That's the last word that he cries out before fades to complete blackness. The next thing Rory sees is Betty's face and then a doctor that has tended to his wounds. It's been four weeks since he was assaulted. The doctor's amazed that Rory hadn't bled out and that we can see he's been slashed nearly to pieces. Rory learns his father had been killed.
He goes to visit his father's grave. And then shortly thereafter, he learns that someone else has taken control of the family business. It's someone who's made false claim to be an aunt and uncle of the family. And they've essentially set it up as that drug front that the bad guys have wanted to do. Inside that shop, there's a junkie. He's trying to score some drugs. Rory watches us from the street. Following that, we cut to Rory on a run and trying to make sense of his dreams slash visions. The golem, the rags, carrying his own dead body, defending his neighborhood, the bones of the defenseless.
He dons a ski mask and he plans to infiltrate that pawn shop and find out who the fake aunt and uncle are and how they've managed to take control. As he's in the process of breaking in, he trips an alarm. Now, before he can make his next move, he spots a glimmer of light. And from under a pile of junk, he digs out a small attache case. Inside, he's shocked to see rags. He then gasps at the revelation and the inevitable transformation from Rory Regan into the rag man. And in fact, I'm going to grab this. I'm going to read this second to the last page because I really liked this.
This is Rory speaking in thought. This is not Vietnam. This is not the Warsaw ghetto. Not a dream or a premonition. This is what I've been waiting for. What my father didn't tell me about. What my dreams have been warning me of. Velvet and felt. Flannel and chintz. Corduroy and cotton. Herringbone and tweed. Banlin and Orlin. Plaid and Kashim. Satin. Paisley. Suede. Gabardine. Rags.
There are fights a man can walk away from, and then there are the other kind. Pop was trying to save me from this. He left the old country for me. And in the end, he knew that he'd failed. The violence wasn't over. It was only beginning. What we own needs protecting, and those we care for need defending. And for the defenseless, there must always rise a champion. I leave Rory Regan behind for the moment. I tell myself that it is finally time to defend my neighborhood against the inevitable enemies moving in from all sides. I am no longer scared, no longer alone. I am the Ragman.
The end. Well, to be continued, the end of that issue. The end of that issue. What were your thoughts on this? I loved it. Before we started recording, we kind of talked about this, how the comic has kind of like the nine panel pages on there. It kind of reminded us of The Watchmen and stuff like that. I like it because it's like, you know, this is very dark and kind of gritty. You know, they're kind of like down in the slums, basically. And it's like kind of about taking, you know, trash and turning it into treasure.
in a very literal sense you know um even his dad i mean he's you know owner of a junk store and he's like one of the happiest guys on the planet you know he's perfectly happy being where he is because he's yeah it's also cool that you know the nine panel grid definitely caught my attention when i was reading it um because it's not something that you see a lot like we talked about in the last episode with the kind of the the splashy two big two page spreads and and i've got to go back and look at it more than once to even figure out which direction i'm supposed to follow and yeah and this is so concise it's so easy to read it's like the old you know, comic strips that you see in the newspaper, right? But just more of it. And I think that that's, it's really cool. And I think that there's, there are still some that use this type of storytelling method, but I think they're becoming more few and far between. And when it's used right, it can be used to really good effect. I think it was used right here. They did a really good job of showing us what they wanted to show us, even with the, you know, kind of the more...
the more out there dream slash nightmare sequence, which it was part nightmare, part premonition of things to come and sort of a calling as to who he really is. But yeah, it was done very well. The art was, like you said, grim, gritty, very cool. And I also like, too, that... It's a stark contrast to the decompressed cinematic splash pages and storytelling that we're so used to now. Pat Broderick's art and Anthony Toland's colors, they're pretty great in this, and they go together so well. Broderick's line work is excellent. I can't say enough good things about that. But they both do a really good job of creating the overall mood for this. Very much so. And it's a really cool side of Gotham that you don't really see in the Batman stories, because so much of the Batman stuff, it takes place on the verge of the fantastical. And while this has...
those sort of fantastical elements, it's done so in a way that's very grim, very gritty, very down to earth. And I really like that. As an origin story, we are given glimpses into our hero's world. We meet some of the supporting characters. We meet the driving force behind the motivation. And it sets up some antagonists as well. Despite the character having appeared previously, we're treated as if this is a brand new character. And I think that goes back to it being sort of a reboot of sorts.
with some of the differences that we have, the original story, and I never read the original Ragman, but from what I gathered, it was him, his father, like a circus strongman, and somebody else, and they all got electrocuted together, and they all died except for him. And so the powers that he got, he got from them. So it was like that strongman's strength, that sort of thing. And so this is just a much different take on it. And again, I actually prefer this just over what I'd read of the original, I prefer this over that.
I do wish we'd have seen him in costume before the last page. I know it's done for dramatic effect because the last page is really the only full page where it's not a little panel. But I've always got the same grape, like Daredevil season one, when you don't really see him in his costume until the very end. I want to see him in their costume right away. That's just me as a comic fan. And it's such a cool costume. I can't get enough of it. Anything else that you want to say about the issue before we run things down or we talk a little bit about what came next? I think that was about it, man. I really enjoy...
like you said, like showing the different side of Gotham, like Batman, he's always like up in the, you know, on the rooftops and the skyscrapers and stuff like that. And this is like very much down in the alleys. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's such a cool dichotomy. Yeah. As far as what came next, this particular series, as I mentioned, it did run for eight issues. Between this series and his first, he had a few minor cameo appearances like in Crisis on Infinite Earths, but he didn't really appear or do much otherwise. In fact, it does make sense as well for this to be a reboot because this is sort of the post-crisis.
character, which is easily separated from a pre-crisis character when it comes to DC lore. At the end of this miniseries, he actually relocates from Gotham City to New Orleans. Oh, wow. And then a year after this series, there was a third volume in the form of a six-issue miniseries called Ragman City of the Dead, and that took place in New Orleans, and it revolved around voodoo magic. He appeared in a few Batman issues in the late 90s, as well as in the Day of Judgment miniseries, which I mentioned that to you earlier. I think that's a fantastic miniseries that was kind of leading up to the Infinite Crisis series that DC had done. During the Day of Vengeance mini in 2005, like I said, that was a tie-in. He joins a team called Shadowpact, which included characters like Blue Devil and Bobo the Detective Chimp, that sort of thing. And then Shadowpact actually had a series themselves following Infinite Crisis, I believe, that ran for 25 issues. Oh, wow. Now, seven years following, there was a one-shot called Suit of Souls.
And then he had another six-issue miniseries. In that series, he had a whole new look. I didn't dig it. I don't know if you know the look. We'll throw a picture of it up. I didn't care for it as much as I like this look for Ragman. So I have no real interest in that last miniseries. I am interested in going back and collecting or reading Shadow Pact. That entire series is available. It's been collected into like four volumes. It's like four trades. So I'm probably going to go back and pick that up. There was a live-action version of Ragman that appeared in the Arrow CW series. I think it might have just been towards the very end. Oh, okay.
and then um you know one last note i don't think he doesn't really have a rogues gallery or an arc enemy um and again i think that that's something that and i get he's a man of the people but i think that like we talked about with characters like wolverine really any character they're only as interesting to me as they're bad guys right um i do make exception with this guy i think because when the magical attributes again he's not an a-list character he's you know tertiary at best but um i would love to see him get a more fleshed out rogues gallery at some point i think that would really elevate him from being you know c-list to you know b plus almost a-list yeah well i mean you look at You look at other characters, too, and, you know, Spider-Man, his first enemy was just a random burglar that killed Uncle Ben. The, you know, same concept can apply to Ragman. Imagine if Batman only fought thugs every episode or every issue or every movie. If every episode he was stopping a bank robbery or, you know, a convenience store from getting stuck. Yeah, it only gets you so far, right? Yeah. So I'd love to see more villains for our good buddy Ragman. I would, too. But overall, I love this issue. I like this whole miniseries. If you are interested, be sure to check it out.
And as always, thanks for joining us today. We really appreciate it. We'll be back. We've got more stuff to talk about, as always. So we'll be back next week with a new issue. And as always, be sure to like and subscribe if you're watching this on the YouTube. Follow us on Facebook at The Number One Comics Podcast. Send us an email at thenumberonecomicpodcast at gmail.com. Again, special thanks to Field of Geeks, Raven X. Appreciate you guys. And we'll see you next time. Take care. See ya.