Publisher DC Comics | Alter ego Kay Challis Abilities Various | |
 | ||
Notable aliases Various, see Personalities First appearance Doom Patrol (2nd series) #19 (February 1989) Similar Chief, Robotman, Dorothy Spinner, Danny the Street, Negative Man | ||
Crazy Jane is a fictional character created by Grant Morrison and Richard Case for their work on the Vertigo Comics version of the Doom Patrol. She first appears in Doom Patrol (2nd series) #19 (February 1989). According to the afterword in the first trade paperback collection of Morrison's Doom Patrol, she is based on Truddi Chase. Morrison was reading her autobiography, When Rabbit Howls, while constructing his Doom Patrol series.
Contents
An earlier instance of the name, and perhaps its first use in literature, occurs in the Scottish poem "The Ghost of Crazy Jane", published in 1814, by the poet William Nicholson (1782-1849). The name "Crazy Jane" is taken from a Richard Dadd painting, which is also referred to in the Crazy Jane poems of William Butler Yeats. A number of Jane's alters are named after Sylvia Plath poems. Other sources of names are song titles by R.E.M., Incredible String Band, The Jam and Siouxsie and the Banshees.
Crazy Jane, or Crazy Janey, is also the name of a charitable organization of the 1900s in Newark, New Jersey, which made clothes and donations for poor women.
Fictional character biography
Jane Morris is the dominant alternate personality of Kay Challis, who suffers from multiple personality disorder. As a result of exposure to the alien Dominators' "gene bomb", each of her 64 alternate personalities has a different super-power.
Kay Challis was molested by her father, beginning when she was five years old. The first time her father molested her, she was putting a jigsaw puzzle together; this would be an important symbol in her future. Kay eventually withdraws completely and is replaced by an alternate personality answering by the name "Miranda." One Easter Sunday, Miranda is the victim of rape in a church, triggering flashbacks to her former abuse, the destruction of the "Miranda" personality and the completion of the massive personality fragmentation. Kay is committed to a mental institution soon after.
When the gene-bomb goes off, Jane and all of her personalities are affected; each personality gains a different power (e.g. Black Annis has retractable claws, Flit can teleport, etc.). Cliff Steele is staying in the same institution as Jane when Will Magnus asks Cliff to look after her, which leads to Jane's becoming a member of Doom Patrol.
Near the end of the Grant Morrison run of Doom Patrol, Jane makes a pilgrimage back to her childhood home, facing her own traumas and overcoming them. This brings peace to her inner turmoil, and her personalities integrate into facets of a more normal, if complex, single personality.
Unfortunately, upon returning to Doom Patrol, Jane is attacked by The Candlemaker and thrown into another dimension, similar to the real world, where she is interned as a schizophrenic and treated by shock therapy. Cliff eventually rescues Jane from the other dimension and lives with her on Danny the World, formerly Danny the Street.
In Rachel Pollack's run, it is revealed that Jane's alter egos still exist, and Cliff leaves her and returns to Earth. The two separated due to constant arguments, mostly Cliff's fault, and that Cliff felt afraid of her.
Jane makes a cameo appearance in Teen Titans #36, where she is seen on Danny the World through a portal in Dayton Manor in Prague. She returns in Doom Patrol #7, written by Keith Giffen, on Oolong Island, asking for Cliff and carrying with her the remains of Danny the Street. Danny has now been reduced to a single brick, making him Danny the Brick. Jane says "If you build it, he will come", although she does not explain further.
Personalities
Crazy Jane's personalities are organized in a mental subway grid called the Underground. Each personality has its own 'station', which appears to serve as home when they are not in control. In the lower section of the Underground is a well where the personalities can go to destroy themselves. This is where Miranda was killed. The Well houses the Daddy persona of Jane's mind.
There are still other personalities in Jane who haven't yet been properly identified. They include: A nun with a chainsaw, a red-headed girl with a beauty mark in a red dress, someone in gladiator gear, one in biker gear, a red-headed school girl, a boy with short blonde hair, a person with an orange, odd-shaped head, and a woman whose face is shadowed over.