They all have different ways of expressing themselves, yet everyone agrees that dolls are disturbing for some reason, from filmmakers to writers to even 2-year-old children. Hollywood has a long history of utilizing what is often a child’s best buddy to elicit such visceral horror that you can not help but be petrified by it.
It all began in 1936, when Tod Browning, one of horror cinema’s progenitors, collaborated on The Devil-Doll with Lionel Barrymore, the grandfather of Drew Barrymore, the greatest cold open scream queen of all time. It was the impetus for a wave of doll-based horror films that were responsible for several bed-wetting stories among youngsters growing up in the 1990s.
But, while Chucky’s wicked grin has allowed him to build a multi-million dollar industry, DC has managed to turn one of the only dolls that are not dangerous to children into a psychopath. The ragdoll has been around since the early 17th century, and until baseball was established, it was the principal source of pleasure for American youngsters.
This boyhood favorite was transformed by James Robinson and Gardner Fox into one of DC’s most terrifying monsters. The Rag Doll first appeared in Flash Comics #36 in 1942 and has since gone on to become one of the strangest Flash villains ever, including Gorilla Grodd. Let us have a look at why he does what he does in Ragdoll’s scary origins.
What Created The Rag Doll? His Disturbing Back Story
Today, we have so many options that we tend to think of circuses as nothing more than a violation of human and animal rights. It seems almost primitive to think that not a century ago, a tiger jumping through a flaming hoop was considered to be the height of entertainment. But no matter what you think of such acts, you gotta agree with us when we say that the freakiest circus attraction is one that involves no equipment; contortionism. A practice that originated in ancient China, some form of contortionism has been practiced since as early as 1045 BCE.
Yes; contortionism is older than the Son of God himself! It’s fascinating to think that a discipline this ancient is thriving even today. People might not pay you to watch your pet elephant ride a unicycle, but they will empty out their wallets to see you turn into a human donut. Perhaps that’s the mindset that a young Peter Merkel had when he first joined the circus.
Peter was born into the business. His father was a barker who would shout himself hoarse trying to hype up the side-show for the circus-goers while spending weeks on end starving. In an effort to help support his family and make a name for himself, Peter decided to put his natural gifts to use. While most human beings (and contortionists by extension) possess double-jointed limbs, Peter Merkel was born with the rare condition of triple-jointedness.
His rare physiology granted him extraordinary flexibility and elasticity, allowing Peter to bend his body whichever way he wished. Using this ability, he was able to become a top act in the carnival he joined as a youth. But when the carnival fell on hard times, Peter Merkel became despondent. He had spent his entire life in poverty and infamy, being ridiculed for his “affliction” and having nothing to his name.
Now that he’d finally made a name for himself, everything that defined who he was, was taken away from him. Wandering the streets penniless, Merkel despaired of ever having money and a decent life, when he chanced upon a scene that would change his entire life. He crossed a departmental store and stopped dead in his tracks when he saw what they were loading it up with; boxes upon boxes of life-sized rag dolls.
Driven by desperation as much as madness, Peter Merkel decided that he would rob the store by blending in and becoming his namesake; a Rag Doll. His logic was unassailable, to be sure; at a time when superheroes were fighting costumed villains, no one would even think to look for a literal crime-committing rag doll.
Indeed, this turned out to be the case as the Rag Doll had been active for many years and even carved a name out for himself before arriving in Keystone City. It was here that he would first go up against Jay Garrick, earning him the eternal enmity of the ultimate contortionist. Rag Doll would face off against various iterations of The Flash over the decades.
He has worked alongside Thinker to bring down both Jay Garrick and Barry Allen and was a part of the Ultra Humanite-led Secret Society of Super-Villains during the Targets of Two Worlds storyline that saw both the JLA and JSA get banished to the Limbo dimension. Rag Doll was able to fulfill his mission with uncanny ease; luring The Flash into a freight ship’s hold that was primed with an explosive set to go off as soon as the Speedster arrived.
It knocked The Flash completely out of commission and solidified Rag Doll as an insane genius. When his metahuman physiology started giving up on him, an elderly Rag Doll began ranting on the streets of Opal City, babbling on about fate, injustice, and worst of all; pain.
His ramblings attracted the city’s disenfranchised to his distorted cause, putting an army at his back. Peter’s hypnotic sermons effectively brainwashed his listeners into becoming eager and willing members of his cult. Brandishing his newfound leash, Peter whipped his cult into making Opal City’s streets run red. It took all the power from Starman’s Cosmic Rod to put an end to the rampage that had been unleashed by the mad contortionist.
His son is somehow creepier than him
The original Ragdoll was a Golden Age Flash villain who was blessed with the queer power of being triple-jointed. But while Ragdoll 1’s membership into every secret group of supervillains was contingent on his unique physiology, his son would have to put himself through literal hell to get to that level; and even then, he’s mostly treated like comic relief.
Debuting in Villains United issue #1, Ragdoll II’s real name is Peter Merkel Jr. Being born to the cult-leader-and-contortionist-extraordinaire that was Rag Doll, young Peter was expected to follow in his footsteps. Sadly, genetics failed the boy, as he was born without the triple-jointedness that made Peter Merkel Sr. such a great thief.
He faced great abuse as a child because of this, being shunned and mistreated by both his father and brother. The only solace he would ever find was with his sister, who despite being his confidante and implied lover would ultimately betray him as well. Determined to live up to the family legacy, Peter Merkel Jr. subjected his own body to hundreds of surgeries over the course of 12 years in an effort to replicate his father’s “powers”.
While it gave him the flexibility he so desired, it also completely shattered any vestiges of sanity left within him. His surgeries replaced his joints with self-lubricating and fully-rotating implants which gave him contorting capabilities that far exceeded his father’s. Additionally, his body also became nearly-indestructible thanks to the modifications it went through.
Donning a costume that closely resembled his father’s he joined Gail Simone and Dale Eaglesham’s re-imagined Secret Six and later went on to side with Joker in his DC-wide supervillain war. Unlike his predecessor, whose cruelty is measured as opposed to impulsive, Ragdoll II is insanity in a unitard and will shove you off a bridge if you dare question him; just ask the Mad Hatter.
Rag Doll 2 serves mostly as the residential wise-crack of the Secret Six and takes immense pride in being the craziest out of a bunch of lunatics. But when you take that assumed air of comedy away from him, he is easily one of the creepiest, most-tortured characters to ever exist in DC’s continuity; and that includes The Joker.
The Flash somehow managed to make Rag Doll even worse
Even though he was eliminated during the Judges’ Cut, America’s Got Talent Season 13 contestant Troy James has created quite a name for himself by becoming Hollywood’s go-to contortionist. His first few appearances were sparse, playing mongrels for The Strain and Pretzel Jack in the surrealist anthology Channel Zero. James was also a part of the 2019 Hellboy film, where he played the malicious spirit Baba Yaga.
But his biggest mainstream break to date has to be as a part of CW’s The Flash. Debuting in the Season 5 episode “All Doll’d Up”, James brought an air of unsettling reality to Rag Doll that couldn’t quite be conveyed on the pages of a comic book. Seeing a picture of a folded-up gentleman passing through a water pipe isn’t quite as chilling as watching it happen, in front of your eyes.
This version of Peter Merkel is a disillusioned African-American youth. Peter has grown up misguided, even after his mother Theresa did everything she could to provide for him. Their relationship went from strained to estrange when Peter tried to break into his mother’s house and was caught red-handed.
A dejected and directionless Peter would be crushed, broken, and snapped on the night of the Enlightenment when a piece of the S.T.A.R Labs satellite gave him the power to contort his body to inhuman degrees without feeling any pain. And when he found out his mother had passed away, Peter Merkel decided to use his newfound powers to make the world feel the pain that he now carried with him.
He took on the persona of Rag Doll and has managed to put the literal fear of God in Grant Gustin’s Barry Allen in each of his appearances. Unlike his comic book counterparts, whose costumes reflect the Rag Doll’s circus-linked origins, Troy James manages to make the character come off as a genuine menace.
Dressed in a two-piece suit with orange dreadlocks, the most distinctive feature of this Rag Doll is the fact that you can tell precisely nothing about what he’s thinking or going to do; thanks to his Jigsaw-inspired porcelain mask. The expressionless mask makes him look less like a contortionist and more like a demon-infested version of Elongated Man who has a nasty kink for sadomasochism.
Though he appears to lament his actions when Barry finally defeats him, we’ll never know for sure. What we can tell you with complete certainty is that beating Troy James’ demented portrayal of one of the most-iconic Golden Age Flash villains is not going to be topped easily, and that’s mostly thanks to James’ ungodly flexibility.
Why Rag Doll deserves more attention
Despite having a premise so comical that it even spawned an imposter arc during the events of Starman 80-Page Giant issue #1, Rag Doll is one of those rare D-list characters who got the full-180 treatment. Thanks to the many reboots and revisions that DC’s continuity has gone through, Rag Doll went from a Dollmaker rip-off to an Arkham Asylum detainee; and if that isn’t a glow-up for a criminal in comics, we don’t know what is.
As the years have progressed, so has Rag Doll’s character development. He went from being a “circus-freak-turned-criminal” to a man so unstable that even Harley Quinn and The Mad Hatter wouldn’t want to trust him; though that probably has something to do with Rag Doll trying to kill them to prove he’s the craziest prick alive on Planet Earth. Peter Merkel Sr.’s “reformed” appearance as a hypnotic cult leader in the ’90s was exactly the kind of jolt that Rag Doll’s character needed.
And thanks to the New 52, his legacy will always live on through his children; Peter Merkel Jr. and his equally scatter-brained sister Junior. Details of his abusive, controlling, and feral nature are commonplace amongst the destitute residents of Opal City, and yet he himself remains an enigma; shrouded in mystery, with no clear motivations or points of origin ever being revealed to us.
Even though we know everything about Rag Doll’s modus operandi, we’re still figuring him out; and that intrigue is what makes him such a compelling bad guy. So the next time you visit Walmart, just make sure to steer clear of the toys section, even if you don’t suffer from pediophobia. You never know which one of those life-sized rag dolls is following you with its “inanimate” eyes.