The character of Yankee Doodle has a rather strange history. He was a Silver Age super-hero who didn't appear in print until 1992. Now as strange as that might seem, Yankee Doodle became something considerably stranger than I think his original creators could've ever envisioned.

Doom Patrol #51 (January 1992) marked the first appearance of the man known as Yankee Doodle. But he was apparently originally intended to see print back in May of 1964, in the fiftieth issue of the great DC try-out magazine Showcase. In fact, the cover of Doom Patrol #51 features a re-colored version of the Mike Sekowsky/Frank Giacoia cover for that issue.

For some strange reason, both the cover and Yankee Doodle were pulled from Showcase #50, which instead did an issue of reprints of old King Faraday adventures (under the collective title of "I-Spy"). The only information we have on the original treatment of the character can be found on the cover: Prof John Dandy used a strange spray to become the blank-faced Yankee Doodle, "master of disguise".

Now you might notice that the general look of the character was quite similar to another hero that would eventually become of DC Comics' property, The Question (created by Steve Ditko). That little item would also be addressed in the storyline that Yankee Doodle finally saw print. The concept of the character may have also influenced the creation of The Unknown Soldier in Star-Spangled War Stories.

Grant Morrison brought in Yankee Doodle during the final Brotherhood of Dada story arc he did in Doom Patrol. For those not familiar with The Doom Patrol, the team was originally a group of three "freaks" (Cliff Steele/Robotman, Larry Trainor/Negative Man, Rita Farr/Elasti-Girl) brought together by the enigmatic Niles Caulder, who was also known as the Chief. The team went through various incarnations, and started handling very strange and surrealistic menaces under the creative control of Grant Morrison (best known for his work on Animal Man).

According to Morrison's story, John Dandy worked as a special government operative attached to the Pentagon's Unusual Operatives Division. He had used his cover as an archaeologist to steal the research notes of a Professor Rodor, which helped him create a special gas (housed in a special ballpoint pen) that solidified on contact with air to produce a malleable skin. He adopted the code name of "Yankee Doodle" and was apparently very successful in his work for the government.

Longtime comics fans will recognize that Rodor was in fact the man who provided the Question with the unique technology to create the blank face masks he wears as a part of his costume. At this point, the origin of Yankee Doodle takes a leap off the diving board of the surreal.

Dandy volunteered to follow a bureaucrat into the City Under The Pentagon because the man had stolen a lot of sensitive documents. The City is a sort of other dimensional netherworld from which the Pentagon derives power, strange operatives and even policy at times. At least that is my personal interpretation of what Morrison was trying to get across to the readers. No one who goes down there is ever really the same again, and Dandy was no exception.

"There were garbled radio messages f enormous structures walking, people or things with tunnels for eyes…and then we lost all contact" was how the Major tried to explain it to Ms. Roddick as they went to see Dandy to enlist his aid. A year later, something claiming to be John Dandy came back. Something strange had happened to his face, and he told everyone that he had swapped his original face for what he had now.

Dandy was brought up out of the City to help the government in its quest to prevent Mr. Nobody (of the Brotherhood of Dada) from becoming President. Mr. Nobody had used the bicycle of Albert Hoffman to create a near-nationwide state of hallucinogenic bliss, and he was now offering the voters the opportunity to enter the Painting, the quasi-dimension that had changed him from old Doom Patrol enemy Mr. Morden into the two-dimensional and multi-faceted Mr. Nobody.

Dandy and the government forces attacked Nobody and the Brotherhood at one of their rallies. They made short work of most of the Brotherhood of Dada, and Dandy hurled one of his many faces onto Mr. Nobody's, which changed him back into Morden and allowed Dandy the opportunity to impale him on a piece of wood. The Love Glove (a Brotherhood of Dada member) and Cliff Steele prevented Dandy from finishing the job. Military snipers destroyed the only method of saving Mr. Nobody by incinerating the painting, and he eventually just faded away. Cliff tossed Dandy across the street into the roof where the snipers were located, possibly killing him in the process.

Any one who read Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol series knows he has a definite knack for making the weird out of the mundane - Cliff Steele was the only real normal character in the book after a while, and he was a human brain encased in a robot body. Yankee Doodle was another example of this, but it was much easier to take than a lot of these metamorphoses because we didn't really know the character. Dandy had a history but the readers had never met him before this single story. It wasn't like the transformation of Larry Trainor into Rebis, or even Rhea Jones' changes during the Geomancers storyline.

I enjoyed the way Dandy's "secret origin" was told to us more than anything else, and I still have to wonder why Yankee Doodle didn't get his shot at DC stardom thirty-seven years ago. But any 1990's comic that uses a Mike Sekowsky cover has got my vote of approval anyway.