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darkspellmaster · 6 years ago

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Steve Dayton and Garfield Logan Relationship...or...Why I’m about to defend Mento... Part 1

So I wanted to get this out of the way due to reading a few posts about Steve Dayton, aka, Mento, aka Gar’s adopted father, and his supposed treatment of Gar on the YJ Show.

Now before I start I need to make one thing abundantly clear, Steve Dayton is not Silas Stone. Silas is a man who is obsessed with his work and most people can agree that he is an absentee father, regardless of how you may feel about Victor himself at this point. Steve on the other hand is active in Gar’s life and this is an important factor in this defense.

So okay with that out of the way, let me begin.

Gar and Steve have always had a slightly strained relationship, and that has not been helped by Rita's death, return, her manipulation by the Chief, and subsequent divorce from him even though she still loves him and he was working on getting better.

You see Steve Dayton is a genius level Intellect, I would say Below Reed Richards but around or maybe a bit higher than Tony Stark. He, like Tony, came from a rich family and was an inventor of sorts, though I don’t know if that was part of his business or not. In order to impress Rita, Steve, who was already damn good at reading people’s body language and facial expressions to “know what they were thinking” wanted to impress her more, so he built a helmet that enhanced his own latent mental/psychic abilities and allowed him to fly, become intangible, control people with his mind, telekinesis, and telepathy (showing that he already had that ability but it needed to be amplified in this case to work.

However the helmet also caused him issue, namely Paranoia and dementia, on top of some arrogant tendencies and a lot of self doubt at times. It made his own issues with Gar worse as Steve blamed Gar for Rita’s death, in the comics *Though over time this has been switched around a lot*, however, Steve genuinely loves Gar, though for him it’s hard to express those feelings to most people. Truth be told a lot of the blame issue stemmed from him going slightly insane thanks in part to John Constantine who used him to read a demon’s mind (and same said demon killed Zantanna’s daddy in the comics), so a lot of what Steve said at the time he honestly didn’t mean.

Steve actively hunted down the Doom Patrol’s killer’s after their deaths, and attempted to, for a while, do justice to the team’s memory by creating a second version of the group known as Hybrid, which eventually disbanded. Steve later created a fake identity to frame DeathStroke for murder so that Gar and the others wouldn’t have to deal with Slade again.

Raven cured him of his addiction to the helmet and helped him with the demonic brought on insanity and other issues the creature caused, causing Steve to throw away the helmet for a while. Eventually he puts it back on when he discovers that his wife and the rest of her team are alive and joined them again. During this time though he found out that the whole of Doom Patrol was created by Niles Calder, the Chief, who had set up all the accidents to turn the Doom Patrol team into “freaks” so that he could create a second set of Mystery men because...he wanted to.

Steve throws away the helmet, and calls out the chief threatening the man that he would destroy him if he ever came near his wife or son (Yes that means Gar) again. He took on the role of the leader of the team, but things fell apart when stuff went down when Rita decided to split from Steve due to him reading her mind (though it’s odd as she never had that issue before) and later when an alien attacked, Calder had him use her body to stop them, causing her to spit with him for now.

And that was roughly where the Doom patrol was left before the reboot in DC Comics.

Now about Steve and Gar...

The thing about Steve that so many people tend to forget is that he does care about Gar, and one of the reason’s he comes off as a jerk (other than his own personal issues and arrogance at time -which has been tempered over the years) is that Gar is all he has left.

When the Doom Patrol died, he and I believe Robotman, were the only ones that survived (or at least Robot man was able to be rebuilt). This meant that Steve was the sole parent to Gar, who was a very hyper and some what hard to handle kid in the first place. On top of that Steve was dealing with his own depression, something that doesn’t really get talked about a lot in comics in regard to the death of a loved one.

Even after Rita’s death Steve tried to make sure that Gar had a “Normal” life, going as far as to hire several tutors for Gar to be home schooled with, and also willingly including Terra into it. He keeps trying with Gar, even though the two can’t seem to see eye to eye, and yet Steve clearly loves his son. Even if that meant banning him from working with the Titans.

The thing is a lot of people typically see this from Gar’s perspective, and tend to see Steve as being selfish and mean to his son. Banning him from joining with his friends. But, what people forget is that he lost his wife and his friends to super villains. Again, Gar is all he has and, even though it’s hard for him to say it, Steve loves Gar and always will despite their ups and downs as a family unit.

Take for example the fact that Steve willingly works with Deathstroke, a man that hurt his son and also caused him pain as well in order to find and save Gar and his friends.

This is a moment when we see Steve showing how far he’s willing to go as a father. He’s ready to do whatever he can to bring Gar and his friends back.

Yet another moment earlier during events for Gar and his younger years, when a girl’s father is treating him like trash and he comes to the house to talk to Gar about not going to a dance with his daughter.

Steve’s reaction, using his height and blocking Gar from the man...

It’s a polite way of telling him to screw off.

Not to mention what happens during the dance and before hand in regard to Gar and the fall out.

You see Rita and Steve manage to convince Mr. Jackson to let Gar go to the dance with his daughter. And this leads to this moment.

The thing is that Steve is complimenting him, he’s pointing out that he has a good looking son, and is proud of him for going out even though there’s issues going on there. The thing is that the duo, Rita and Steve, end up going to a dance of their own to feel “Young”...

And while there word get’s to them that Gar is in trouble during another issue. Which leads them rushing in to save their son, who is in a fight with the local bully at the high school. The result...the duo, their son and his date, look worse for wear but clearly please that they were able to handle this situation.

One of the bigger issues with Gar and Steve is the fact that neither likes to face the idea of losing one another and yet they can’t seem to believe the others cares. Gar has always had a bit of a jealous streak on Steve because of the fact that he wasn’t sure about Rita caring about him after his mother’s death. And Steve has always felt that Rita preferred Gar to him, thus making him more unsure of himself as a husband.

But when it came to the point where Steve was believed to be dying, thanks in no small part to John Constantine and getting him into trouble with demons, Steve couldn’t put that burden on Gar, so he grew angry and attacked Gar over it when Gar came to talk to him. On top of that Steve thinks that Gar can’t see him as his father, and believes that the only reason Gar acts like he cares is for the memory of Rita, which isn’t true, but Gar doesn’t know how to tell him that.

Gar on the other hand is always having issues with Steve in regard to caring about him and thinks that Steve doesn’t like or even love him. That he only did what he did was for Rita.While Rita was a big part of it at first, because Steve wasn’t ready for a kid at the time, he grew to love Gar as his own, but again Steve’s not good with expressing this to him.

Even later in the Titans series Steve was still around, after Raven helped him, and wanting to help and protect Gar from the dangers out there that could take him away from him. At one point he and Pantra were talking in his mansion where Pantha was taking care of her baby. During this Steve learns that there was an emergency after asking where Gar was, and his response...

“Maybe I shoul...” indicating that he wants to go and help him. Again, Steve is not good at saying I love you, but when it comes to Gar’s safety, it’s always in his mind.

Steve also has faith in his son and his team mates, as shown in his discussion with Maxwell Lord.

Even going back farther, Steve openly defended Gar in court and with Rita’s help they were able to adopt him.

By Rita posing as Gar they were able to get the case thrown out and were able to adopt Gar as their son.

Steve eventually was able to outright spell it out for gar after a huge breakdown due to the influence of his helmet and issues with the said demons. This was during a point when Gar was trying to talk sense into a very dejected and sad Robotman who felt he’d screwed up.

It’s a legit moment between them that stuck well into the next iteration of the comics. Even after the divorce between Rita and Steve, Gar kept a close connection to Steve because by that point the two had become more like father and son than anything else.

It’s interesting to note that in Earth -1 Steve is in a relationship, or Married to, his S.T.A.R.S lab partner Richard, and Gar is his adopted son. In this iteration their relationship is far closer at the start and Gar sees Steve as his dad and vice versa.

In part 2 of this (because I think this is going on a bit long) I want to cover the Young Justice version of their story and why I honestly think that Steve isn’t the Bad guy that Gar is making him out to be.

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