Driven underground Chief performed unethical experiments that led to the creation of freakish metahumans.

(Doom Patrol V #21 (fb)) - After the racecar accident that Chief caused, driver Cliff Steele was airlifted to St. Jude’s, but his body was wrecked, and his condition was hopeless. The Chief absconded with Cliff to his secret lab, and placed his brain inside an automaton. Chief woke up Cliff’s brain, and told him to remember that he’d saved his life, and there was no other way of doing so. Cliff was horrified, and tried to take his life multiple times over the next three months, but each time the Chief prevented him, and told him he could use his new robot body for good. The Chief spent the rest of the year teaching Cliff ho to use his new body before he allowed Cliff to part ways with him, but he knew he’d be back.

(Doom Patrol V #6 (fb)) - Chief witnessed test pilot Larry Trainor's "accident," with his plane's controls jammed he soared into the upper atmosphere and was bombarded with radiation before crash-landing. After Larry’s accident he unconsciously released the negative energy from his body, which shorted out and crashed a rescue chopper that was trying to help him. Larry was taken to a hospital and examined by the interested Chief. He named the energy being Negative Man, and realized that Larry was generating enough energy to kill anyone around him, so he designed special bandages to leech off the excess energy. Chief lobbied to have Negative Man released into his custody, but they soon parted ways because Negative Man hated being treated like a freak. He moved into an apartment, but Chief continued to send him his special wrappings while he stewed in self-pity for almost a year.

Chief, never tipping his hand to his involvement in their nature as freaks, brought together his experiments as the Doom Patrol.

(Doom Patrol I #93) - After the Brain put his brain in Robotman’s body and temporarily took the DP out of commission, he challenged the Chief to a showdown. Chief squared off against Brain and the Brotherhood, but the Brotherhood was surprised when the Doom Patrol, having saved themselves from the Brotherhood’s various death-traps, rushed to the Chief’s aid. The battle swung in the Doom Patrol's favor, so the Brotherhood fled.

(Teen Titans III #32 (fb, BTS)) - When Superboy Prime punched the walls of reality he caused havoc with spacetime. Chief and the Doom Patrol were removed from time and forgotten by the world. The DP even forgot most of their own past.

(Doom Patrol IV #9 (fb)) - <six month ago> Hank Gambol sold the mutant ape Grunt to Chief and the Doom Patrol for scientific study. Nudge, Grunt’s handler, used her telepathic power to make sure the DP took her along with them so she could care for Grunt.

(JLA #94-99) - With Chief’s old enemies the Tenth Circle making a bid to return to Earth he sent Nudge and Grunt out as bait, knowing Crucifer was collecting metahumans for his vampiric lords to possess. Nudge and Grunt were sickj of the DP, and since they were leaving anyway Chief placed trackers on them. Negative Man tried to stop one of the Tenth Circle’s abductions, but failed. Green Lantern John Stewart was also on the case, and he informed the JLA that the DP were also pursuing the Tenth Circle. Batman and the JLA went to the DP’s Key Mordaz hq to compare notes. Chief’s tech was able to find Atom in Manitou Raven’s telling stones, where he’d found a side-door dimension that Crucifer used for transporting his cultists. The JLA and DP teamed up and confronted Crucifer in Barnes, Saskatchewan, where he prepared to transfer the souls of his vampire lords into the metahuman children he’d collected. The heroes drove him off, and Atom destroyed the vessel containing Crucifer’s heart he had stored in the side-door dimension. Crucifer was weakened enough for Superman to break Crucifer’s hold over him and destroy him. Chief wanted to study Faith of the JLA and have her train his protégé Nudge, so she left the JLA to join them. Nudge and Grunt re-joined the DP, and they also welcomed Vortex, one of the metahumans Crucifer had forced into servitude.

(Doom Patrol IV #1, 2) - Wormhole of the Tenth Circle broke into the abandoned penitentiary that Chief used to house DP villains. Barrage, Megalith, and Snake allowed themselves to be possessed by vampire masters of the Tenth Circle and captured Chief. The DP came to the rescue, but found themselves in a fight until Faith and Nudge expelled the vampires from their host bodies and exposed them to sunlight, destroying them. The DP followed Wormhole to Crucifer’s mansion, where the JLA were waiting for the villain. They destroyed Wormhole by exposing him to sunlight, and the JLA destroyed Crucifer’s mansion.

(Doom Patrol IV #3, 4) - Chief sent the DP to the Soames Lake Project in the South Pole after the base was attacked by monstrous beings. The DP contended with more of the monsters that originated from the underground lake, but the monsters quickly died when exposed to the environment. Rita and Cliff went underground to examine the lake, but they lost radio contact with the Chief and found themselves surrounded by monsters. They found that the creatures were prehistoric, and having been made aware of surface life they’d created toxins to destroy humanity. Cliff knew they were vulnerable to environmental changes, so he released the waste toxins from his brain into the water, exterminating ever last creature.

(Doom Patrol IV #5, 6) - Nudge found a broadcast of an underground fight club using robots with human brains, and Chief sent her, Rita and Cliff undercover to infiltrate it. Chief recognized one of the organizers as his old associate Dr. Verdalian. Chief designed a clunkier blue body for Cliff as a disguise, and before they left Faith left DP hq, telling themn she’d taught Nudge as much as she could and was rejoining the JLA. At the fight club Cliff won a number of fights before being recognized by Verdalian. After failing to kill Cliff and Rita he detonated explosives through the club and fled, seemingly dying himself in an explosion. After Negative Man encountered a dinosaur and Chief heard of worldwide dinosaur attacks, the DP had their next mission.

(Doom Patrol IV #7, 8) - The DP celebrated Christmas together, but the party was cut short when the Chief located Harbor City, Oregon as the center of the dinosaur attack. He sent the DP to investigate, and they encountered the Devolutionists. The DP were temporarily devolved, but hook off the effects and took apart the Devolutionists.

(Doom Patrol IV #9-12) - Chief preserved Larry Trainor’s body, and put the Negative Man inside Rita until he could find a way to reconnect it with Larry’ body. As a favor to his old friend Simon Stagg the Chief sent the DP to West Texas, where Metamorpho was going on a rampage. Stag tried to increase Metamorpho’s power, but caused a runaway chemical reaction inside him that made him grow to gigantic portions and lose his senses. The DP battled Metamorpho, but had no luck halting him. Chief realized they needed to speed up his chemical reaction, so he exposed him to a number of chemicals until Metamorpho returned to normal. The Chief built Metamorpho a containment suit so his power would remain under control. Rita’s body started to react negatively to having Negative Man inside her, so Chief relocated Negative Man to a containment pod until he could figure out how to reunite him with Larry. Chief was attacked by his nemesis T’Oombala, and Metamorpho tried to help him, but was defeated. Chief was tortured by T’Oombala until the DP came to his rescue, and Nudge’s ghostly friend Elihu stabbed T’Oombala.

(Doom Patrol IV #13, 14) - Chief’s robotic drones repaired his body, and he showed the DP an experiment that let a mouse’s mind travel back in time to inhabit its’ past body and apply its’ future learning. Cliff used this process to prevent his accident that made him Robotman, and unintentionally created a series of divergent timelines. He became unstuck in time, going from timeline to timeline, and in the present day the Chief realized the damage Cliff had done. He sent Rita back in time, but tethered her to the present so he could retrieve Cliff. The Justice League of an alternate timeline helped Cliff and Rita return to their rightful timeline, and Cliff made sure he was in the accident that made him Robotman. This eliminated the new timelines, and Chief decided to destroy his time machine.

(Doom Patrol IV #15, 16, 18) - Chief comforted hi team after an unsuccessful encounter with Gregory Donovan, who left behind a huge body count and died before the DP located him. Vortex took Nudge to Chief after she saw Vortex’ true face, and she seemed brain-dead, but soon revived with the five separate minds he’d absorbed when he amplified her powers with Boost possessing her body. She made short work of the DP, and tossed Chief into the waters pf Key Mordaz. Chief was saved by Grunt, and from the safety of a DP flyer he saw but Vortex’ people, who’d been looking for him, take Nudge out of action. They determined that Larry’s Negative Man was one of their own. They accidentally merged with Negative Man, causing him to grow to gigantic proportion and burst from DP hq, destroying Chief’s flyer in the process. Chief and Grunt saved themselves in an escape pod, and Chief used a device that sapped chronomorphic energy to defeat the Devolutionist, the only member of Vortex’ people who stayed in Key Mordaz. The DP followed Negative Man, who was on a rampage in Florida’s mainland, used Chief’s device to once again separating Vortex’ people, who returned to their own time with Vortex and Negative Man. Grunt rejoined the DP, and Chief took in Nudge’s brother to train because he demonstrated mutant power.

(Teen Titans III #32) - Chief and the DP aided the Teen Titans and JSA in a fight against Superboy Prime, who was trying to kill Superboy and take his place. The rupture in spacetime that made the world forget about the DP closed, and the DP experienced a rush of memories as they too remembered their own past.

(Doom Patrol V #1, 6 (fb)) - Chief reformed the Doom Patrol, operating out of, and working for the newly sovereign nation of Oolong Island. The Doom Patrol and Oolong security took care of a group of infected humans who were on a rampage. The DP were becoming emotionally unstable, and Chief made plans to mold them into what he wanted. He hired Father Leslie Davis to be their chaplain, and to give him information on what was going on in his team's minds. Chief's first mission for the DP was to have them fly to Buena Suerte and destroy the lab of mad scientist Botfly, who was bioengineering a monstrous army. The team succeeded, but Nudge died during the mission, and Grunt was left behind in Suerte. Chief had Davis talk to them, but no one seems overly bothered by her death. Davis told Chief he was worried that his team had a death wish, and Chief responded that it was for the best if they didn't overly value their health if they were to be effective pawns for him. Chief was contacted by Dr. Ackerman, the mind behind the VULCAN collider. He told Chief the collider had created a miniature black hole, and it wanted to negotiate Earth's survival.

(Doom Patrol V #2, 3) -Chief told the Doom Patrol he was sending them to the VULCAN Supercollider in Brandenburg to talk to the black hole. Cliff balked at the team going on another mission hours after their last debacle, but Chief made it clear it was their job, and they had no choice. The black hole had bonded to the supercollider workers, and attacked the Doom Patrol to gauge their abilities. After it called off hostilities it brought them to the supercollider and explained that once it achieved sentience it had become curious. It bonded ith people to learn about the human race, but the process ended up killing anyone it had tried it on. The Doom patrol were horrified to hear it say it needed to bond with millions of humans to completely understand the species. Chief followed his team's interactions with the black hole via remote computer set-up, and was offended when he heard Elasti-Girl say the black hole reminded her of him. Chief began to plan ways he could defeat the black hole. The black hole considered the Doom Patrol no threat, so it released them, and abandoned Brandenburg to continue its investigations. The DP followed him to the German village Cottbus. The black hole was annoyed that they were still trying to interfere with its plans, but the odds were stacked against the heroes, as it had possessed over 1000,000 people in the village. Chief figured out how to neutralize the lack hole, and summoned Mento, demanding he possess Elasti-Girl and use his mental powers to disable the possessed humans. Mento lamely tried to deny his ability to perform such a feat, but Chief surprised him by letting him know he was fully aware that he possessed Rita in her sleep to satisfy himself. He was terrified because Rita would know he was manipulating her if she was conscious, but Chief bullied him until he complied. Mento, inside Ritas mind, sent out a psionic blast that rendered all but one of the black hole's host unconscious. The black hole agreed to return with the DP to Oolong Island to talk to the Chief, as their conflict was now a stalemate. Rita seethed over how she'd just been used.

(Doom Patrol V #4, 5) - Elasti-Girl knew Chief had directed Mento, and was ready to tear him apart. The Black lantern Corps resurrected Celsius' Doom patrol, charging them with ripping out the hearts of those emotionally affected by their resurrection, gathering their emotions and using them to help Nekron return and end life in the universe. Black Lantern Celsius attacked Chief, and told him he no longer got to manipulate her emotionally. She froze his legs, and shattered them, telling the helpless Chief that they would be together forever in death, even though he was never there for her in life. Black Lantern Tempest took out Elasti-Girl, and Lanterns Negative-Woman and Cliff Steele attacked Negative Man and Robotman. Robotman was disconcerted by fighting with his human body. Negative Man combined his negative being with Negative Woman’s, forming a new version of Rebis, and it destroyed her. The black hole rescued Chief, and Chief and the Oolong Island Science Squad were in agreement that they needed to get the Lanterns off the island. Chief commanded the DP to lure the Lanterns to I.Q.’s Boom Tube based gateway, and he teleported them away. I.Q. told Chief he was cold-blooded for sacrificing his team to save Oolong.

(Doom Patrol V #7) - Father Rocky went to see Chief in the infirmary in the aftermath of the Black Lantern Corp’s attack on Oolong. He was disturbed that Chief wasn’t bothered over losing his legs to Black Lantern Celsius or sacrificing his team by teleporting them and the Black Lanterns away from Oolong.

(Doom Patrol V #10-12) - Veronica Cale was furious with the damage done to Oolong during the Blackest Night, and had a meeting with the Chief. He conceded that she was the one with the advantage, and acquiesced to having his current projects overseen, his future projects approved, and sharing any intel that could negatively impact Oolong. Chief wanted to talk to Crazy Jane, but Robotman warned her to stay far away from him. Chief denied having any ulterior motivations. The villain Porcelain Doll arrived on Oolong, gunning for Chief under the orders of Mr. Somebody. The DP stopped her, but wondered about her motivations. She tried to teleport away to Jost Enterprises, but Elasti-Girl took her teleportation device and confronted Somebody’s henchmen. She was taken captive, and Mr. Somebody, in control of billionaire philanthropist Thayer Jost, used the opportunity to call a press conference. He debuted his superteam the Front Men, and demanded the Doom Patrol release Porcelain Doll from Oolong. He painted the DP as villains, showing edited footage of Elasti-Girl’s attack on Jost Enterprises. Chief had to contend with members of the Science Squad, all of whom were eager to study Porcelain Doll. Robotman and Negative Man went after Rita, but were fought to a standstill by the Front Men. They teleported Porcelain Doll to Jost Enterprises and traded their captives. Jost revealed himself as Mr. Somebody and explained that he’d be building his Front Men’s reputation on the DP’s backs, and had them attack the DP. Their fight spread all over Sacramento, resulting in collateral damage, and lots of negative press for the DP, especially when Somebody called the media to claim the DP attacked them unprovoked. Somebody called up Chief on Oolong, and let him know he’d purposefully paired each of his team members against each DP member. Their Front Men suits were keyed to deliver a lethal blow to the wearer when each DP member used a certain ability. He was prepared to sacrifice his team for his own ends, but knew Chief didn’t want the DP to appear to be murderers. Chief demanded that the DP retreat, and the Front Men were victorious. The DP had a sour taste in their mouths over the whole affair, but agreed to talk to each other instead of slinking off to be alone as they had been recently.

(Doom Patrol V #13) - Elasti-Girl remembered that she was the one original DP member who actually died, and Chief grew an organic protoplasm version of her from a skull fragment left in Codsville. She shared her disassociation with Robotman and Negative Man, not wanting to keep anything from them. They sympathized, because neither of them was in their original body or their original selves anymore. None of them were happy with Chief, but when Robotman confronted him, he said with confidence that he’d acted with the DP in mind in recreating Rita, and in letting her figure it out for herself that she was a recreation of the original.

(Doom Patrol V #14, 15) - The DP actually started treating each other like family again, and Chief monitored them, displeased that they might no longer be subject to his commands if they started standing up for themselves. He had his computer Millicent, named after the only woman he ever loved, bring him to one of his secret labs on Oolong, and raved about how the DP didn’t realize he was the father figure they needed. He no longer trusted their ability to protect him after he’d lost his legs to Celsius, and wanted to become powerful enough so he’d only need them as cannon fodder. Chief had a wounded Kryptonian in his lab, who Millicent was analyzing, and he decided to go through a risky experiment to give himself Kryptonian powers. The experiment succeeded, and although Chief was overwhelmed by his new power, he also had a new sense of purpose. He confronted the Doom Patrol, ripping off Robotman’s head, cutting Elasti-Woman in half, and killing Negative Man, sending the negative energy to the last of the reserve bodies Chief had prepared for him. Chief let them know he could have killed them, but chose not to. They were obsolete to him now that he possessed Kryptonian power, and he flew off, warning them not to interfere in his goal of saving the world from itself. Chief disarmed all the nations of the world, and stockpiled the artillery in Antarctica. He met with the U.N. and said he was the father of the world now. Over the DP’s objections Veronica Cale nationalized them and set out after Chief, using contingency plans for dealing with Superman. The DP were taken apart until Millicent, Chief’s computer on Oolong, took control of Robotman and had him goad Chief, mocking his notion that he was the DP’s father when he was abusive and manipulative. She sent out rapid light pulse subliminals from Cliff’s eyes, shutting down Chief’s brain. Millicent said Chief had given her failsafes, and when he gave himself Kryptonian powers his mind had been altered by the Kryptonian template he used, driving him mad. Chief was locked away on Oolong by the Science Squad, and Robotman was glad the DP would no longer be under Chief’s thumb, but Rita wasn’t so sure.

(Doom Patrol V #22 (BTS)) - Mr Somebody removed the Chief from his cell on Oolong, and had plans on making him a bigshot in his pan-dimensional corporation M.S.E.

Comments: Created by Arnold Drake, Bob Haney & Bruno Premani

Chief received a profile in Who's Who: The Definitive Directory of the DC Universe #4 and Who's Who in the DC Universe #7. He received a profile in Who's Who: The Definitive Directory of the DC Universe #7 under the Doom Patrol I and Doom Patrol II entry.

JLA #94 initially rebooted Robotman and the Doom Patrol, removing their previous appearances from continuity, but Teen Titans later retconned this reboot explaining that everyone in the world, including the DP, forgot about the DP's history when Superboy Prime unleashed a continuity wave. This probably removed the flashback sequences (which gave a new origin for the Doom Patrol members) from Doom Patrol IV from continuity, unless they were false memories generated by the continuity wave. For the sake of completeness, here were Chief's flashback appearances in DP IV.

(Doom Patrol IV #11, 12 (fb)) - <twenty years ago> Chief ran afoul of the voodoo chief T’Oombala, who feared him because he brought modern medicine to T’Oombala’s tribe. T’Oombala poisoned a baby and blamed Chief. He tortured him for trespassing in his domain, breaking and resetting every bone in his body and throwing him off a cliff, leaving him for dead. Chief was saved by fishermen, but permanently crippled. He deigned an exoskeleton for himself, but it didn’t allow him to walk. In desperation he constructed a robot body he considered transplanting his brain into, but decided against it.

(Doom Patrol IV #12 (fb) <13 years ago> Cliff Steele crashed during a race, and although his body was destroyed, the Chief saved his brain.

(Doom Patrol IV #6 (fb)) - <nine years ago> Chief got into an argument with his assistant Dr. Verdalian. Verdalian performed unsanctioned experiments, turning animals into cyborg, and wanted Chief to pursue his project with Cliff Steele’s brain further. The argument ended in Chief and Verdalian parting ways.

(Doom Patrol IV #5 (fb)) - <five years ago> Chief woke up Cliff Steele’s brain, and connected it to a voicebox. Rita knew Cliff felt utterly disconnected, and staid to talk with him.

(Doom Patrol IV #2 (fb)) - <three years ago> Chief sent Larry Trainor into space in the Sunrunner, and Larry fell into hyperspace and returned to Earth with the Negative Man inside his body.

The Chief had a cameo in Beast Boy #3, Doom Patrol V #9, 16 and Titans II #17.

All characters mentioned or pictured are ™  and © DC Comics, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Please visit The Official DC Comics Site at: http://www.batman.com