Doom Patrol
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The Doom Patrol is an idiosyncratic DC Comics superhero team. The original Doom Patrol first appeared in My Greatest Adventure #80 (April 1963). Writers Bob Haney and Arnold Drake and artist Bruno Premiani created the team. The Doom Patrol has since appeared in multiple incarnations.
The first Doom Patrol consisted of super-powered misfits, whose "gifts" caused them alienation and trauma. The Doom Patrol was cancelled in 1968, and Drake killed them off in the final issue, Doom Patrol #121 (September-October 1968).
In the years after this story, the team developed a cult following and several subsequent Doom Patrol series were launched. Each series tried to capture the spirit of the original team, but the only character constant to all was Robotman.
[edit] The Original Doom Patrol
The Doom Patrol first appeared in 1963, when the DC title My Greatest Adventure, a supernatural anthology title, was being converted to a superhero format. The task assigned writer Arnold Drake was to create a team that fit both formats. With fellow writer Bob Haney and artist Bruno Premiani, he created the Doom Patrol, a team of superpowered misfits regarded as freaks by the world at large. It first appeared in My Greatest Adventure #80, June 1963. Caulder motivated the original Doom Patrol, bitter from being isolated from the world, to use their powers for the greater good. The series was such a success that My Greatest Adventure was officially retitled The Doom Patrol beginning with issue #86.
There are similarities between the Doom Patrol and Marvel Comics' X-Men, who debuted months later and would go on to become the most financially successful franchise in American comic books. The publishers marketed both teams as strange, considered freaks by the world at large and mentored by a paraplegic genius (Professor X in the case of the X-Men). The writers and artists of both series consider the similarities coincidences. [citation needed]
The Doom Patrol's rogues gallery matched the strange, weird tone of the series. Villains included the immortal General Immortus, the shapeshifting Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man, and the Brotherhood of Evil led by the Brain, an actual brain kept alive by technology. The Brotherhood of Evil also included the intelligent gorilla Monsieur Mallah and Madame Rouge, a shapeshifter.
When the popularity of the book waned and the publisher canceled it, Drake ended the series in a dramatic manner: he killed off the entire Doom Patrol. In Doom Patrol #121 (September-October 1968), the Doom Patrol sacrificed their lives to save a small fishing village in Maine. This marked the first time in comics’ history that a cancelled book ended by having its entire cast of main characters die. Artist Bruno Premiani and editor Murray Boltinoff appeared at the beginning and the end of the story, asking fans to write to DC to resurrect the Doom Patrol. Despite the efforts of the creators, a Doom Patrol revival did not occur for another nine years.
[edit] X-Men and Fantastic Four similarities
Although superficially similar to the X-Men, the Doom Patrol are considered one of the most unusual superhero teams of the Silver Age. When Arnold Drake created the Doom Patrol, he saw the similarities between the X-Men and Doom Patrol as purely coincidental. Drake stated, "...I [don't] believe [that the X-Men were copies]...because the lead time was so short [Doom Patrol’s first appearance was in June 1963; X-Men #1 debuted three months later]." [1]
There also exist strong similarities between the Doom Patrol and the Fantastic Four, the Marvel Comics series, which had debuted about two years earlier. Both foursomes had characters with similar abilities. Mister Fantastic and Elasti-Girl each had stretching powers reminiscent of Plastic Man. The Human Torch and Negative Man both had similar abilities. The Thing and Robotman were strongmen with freakish bodies who felt less than human because of it. In addition, Niles Caulder was analogous to the Invisible Girl in that he always remained "invisible", that is, behind the scenes. Both groups quarreled amongst each other, a trait that distinguished the Doom Patrol from other DC superhero groups. As the series progressed, however, the Doom Patrol book developed its own style and identity. [citation needed]
[edit] Paul Kupperberg's Doom Patrol
[edit] Testing the waters
Writer Paul Kupperberg, a longtime Doom Patrol fan, and artist Joe Staton introduced a new team in Showcase #94 (August-September 1977). An Indian-born woman named Arani Desai who called herself Celsius and claimed to be the widow of Niles Caulder led this team. This run also revealed the whereabouts of the Negative Spirit, which now possessed Russian cosmonaut Valentina Vostok, making her Negative Woman. It also revealed Robotman as the only survivor of the explosion that killed his teammates. He briefly wore a new, futuristic robot body, but returned to his original look after only two issues. This new version of the team lasted only a few issues before slipping into a series of guest appearances in other DC titles, such as DC Comics Presents (teaming up with Superman) and Supergirl. Robotman also appeared as an occasional supporting character in the Marv Wolfman and George Perez era of Teen Titans, including a storyline when he and the Titans finally brought the murderers of the original Doom Patrol to justice.
[edit] Prelude to the relaunch
Eclipse Comics also printed a two-issue index (with covers drawn by John Byrne) to the Doom Patrol in 1984, which included all of their appearances from their first to their final appearance before their early 1980s return. Byrne also illustrated Secret Origins Annual #1, published in 1986, which recapped the origins of the two iterations of the Doom Patrol that had existed thus far, as a prelude to the relaunch of their self titled book.
[edit] The relaunch
The relaunch, also written by Kupperberg but illustrated by artist Steve Lightle (Lightle left after the fifth issue and a young Erik Larsen replaced him) showed a more superheroic version of the Doom Patrol. It included new members Lodestone, Karma, and Scott Fischer. After issue 18 and the events of the Invasion miniseries, Kupperberg left the series. The publisher gave Grant Morrison the task of writing the book.
[edit] Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol
After the first 18 issues (and various crossovers and annuals), Kupperberg was replaced by Grant Morrison, starting with issue #19. Kupperberg agreed to help Morrison by writing out characters Morrison did not want to use. Celsius, Scott Fischer, and Karma were killed off before issue #19; the Negative Spirit left Negative Woman's body; and Lodestone plunged into a coma that she would remain in for the first half of Morrison's run on the book. Tempest gave up fieldwork to become the team's physician. Later members of team included Dorothy Spinner, an ape-faced girl with powerful "imaginary friends," the multiple personality afflicted Crazy Jane, and sentient roadway Danny the Street.
Morrison used DC's Invasion crossover to restart the book. He took the Doom Patrol and superhero comic books in general to places they had rarely been, incorporating bizarre secret societies, elements of Dada, surrealism, and the cut-up technique pioneered by William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin. He also borrowed the ideas of Jorge Luis Borges and Heinrich Hoffmann. Morrison and artist Richard Case turned the title round and the series quickly gained a cult following, but some derided it as being incomprehensible.
Over the course of the series, Morrison dedicated some issues to parody and homage. Issue #53 featured a dream sequence that mimicked the Stan Lee/Jack Kirby Fantastic Four, specifically the Galactus storyline. Another special called Doom Force was released as a one-shot, and was meant to mimic the X-Force book by Rob Liefeld. Issue #45 parodied Marvel's Punisher in a satire called the Beard Hunter.
Morrison's approach to the book was also notable in that his villains were extremely unusual and strange, even by Doom Patrol's eccentric standards. For example:
- Red Jack is a near-omnipotent being who thinks he is both Jack the Ripper and God. He lives in a house without windows, torturing butterflies, and cannot materialize in the world.
- The Brotherhood of Dada was an anarchistic group who fights against reality and reason. It featured members such as Sleepwalk, who can only use her tremendous powers when asleep (taking sleeping pills and listening to Barry Manilow before battles), and The Quiz, who literally has "every superpower you hadn't thought of" and a pathological fear of dirt.
- The Scissormen, a fictional race of beings that attack non-fictional beings in the "real world" (i.e., the world the Doom Patrol live in) with the large scissors that they have instead of hands and literally cut people out of reality.
In Morrison's final storyline, it was revealed that the Chief had caused the "accidents" which turned Cliff, Larry Trainor, and Rita Farr into freaks with the express intention of creating the Doom Patrol. He then murders Josh, and unleashes nanobots into the world, hoping to create a catastrophe which would make the world a stranger and more wonderful place. However, Caulder did not anticipate being decapitated by one of Dorothy's "imaginary" beings, a malign entity called The Candlemaker.
A recurring theme in Morrison's work was a Wizard of Oz theme to the characters. Cliff Steele was the Tin Man, who sought out a heart, or a real body to become human. Rebis is the Scarecrow, a hollow person wanting a sense of identity. Crazy Jane is the Cowardly Lion who wants to find the courage to trust her male teammates. The Chief is the Wizard, a phony pretending to be all-powerful and knowing, and Dorothy Spinner is Dorothy Gale, who wants to find a home. In fact, Dorothy was the visible link to Wizard of Oz Morrison had made. She comes from Kansas, her name is an in-joke to the fact that Dorothy Gale came to Oz in a tornado, or by spinning, and they both wanted a home. [citation needed]
[edit] Rachel Pollack's Doom Patrol
Morrison left the book with issue #63, and Rachel Pollack took over writing the book the next issue. Pollack's first issue was also the first under the new Vertigo imprint of DC Comics. Returning characters for Rachel Pollack's run were Cliff Steele, Niles Caulder (kept alive by the nanobots, but reduced to a disembodied head, usually kept on a tray filled with ice), and Dorothy Spinner. Newcomers included Coagula (also known as Kate Godwin), a woman with the power to coagulate or dissolve any substance. The series ended after Cliff Steele's brain became all robot, until Dorothy Spinner used her imaginary friends to "repair" it. The Chief would later die after trying to enter the Sephirot or Tree of Life.
Although the run was critically well received [citation needed], a new artist, Ted McKeever, took over the artwork for the final 13 issues. Many readers complained that McKeever's artwork was poor and generally incomprehensible, and that it turned away many long-term readers. [citation needed] Pollack continued writing the title until its cancellation with issue #87, in February 1995.
[edit] John Arcudi's Doom Patrol
In December 2001, writer John Arcudi and artist Tan Eng Huat launched a new Doom Patrol series. The launch of this series also saw the reversion of the publication of the title, from the Vertigo imprint back to DC Comics. The series lasted for 22 issues.
Arcudi's storylines explain what happened to the last team. Dorothy Spinner had a mental breakdown and accidentally killed most of the members still with the team at the end of the Pollack run. She fell into a coma, but subconsciously created a new Robotman, who became a part of a new Doom Patrol. This Doom Patrol was a company-owned team by Jost Enterprises, owned and operated by Thayer Jost, for a while before working independently (again, in a fashion, Marvel had a similar theme months later with X-Statix as a commercially run team).
The Robotman that Dorothy created faded away when it realized what it actually was, but the other teammates searched for Cliff Steele, who became a member of the Doom Patrol yet again. They found his brain in a desolated area of the Smokey Mountains, buried under the rubble of the campsite where Dorothy's breakdown occurred. A prosthetics expert who defected from Russia rebuilt Cliff's body.
Jost, meanwhile, learned that he could not own the rights to the Doom Patrol since the man who signed the rights over to him was not actually Cliff Steele. So instead, he tried to obtain guardianship of the brain dead Dorothy. At the end of the series, Cliff pulled her life support.
Rounding out the four new members and Cliff were Elongated Man, Doctor Light, and Beast Boy, another former Doom Patroler.
[edit] John Byrne's Doom Patrol
In August 2004, DC launched a new Doom Patrol series after the new team debuted in JLA. John Byrne wrote and illustrated this series, with inks by Doug Hazlewood. Touted as "Together again for the first time!", Byrne rebooted the series, eliminating the continuity that dated back to the Silver Age.
This also retroactively eliminated Beast Boy's origins and numerous important Doom Patrol appearances, including the reunion of Beast Boy and Robotman in the 1980s Teen Titans and the team's important role in JLA: Year One. It also angered some of Morrison's fans, but DC editors argued that the team's classic line-up should be supported, especially since attempts to continue the current continuity were unsuccessful. [citation needed] However, DC cancelled Byrne's series with issue #18.
This reboot was both controversial and short-lived. The events in DC's Infinite Crisis crossover saw the restoration of the Doom Patrol's full continuity.
[edit] Infinite Crisis and One Year Later
DC editorial used the events of the Infinite Crisis crossover to restore the Doom Patrol's continuity. In escaping from the paradise dimension they had inhabited since the end of Crisis on Infinite Earths, Superboy-Prime and Alexander Luthor created temporal ripples, which spread throughout reality, altering certain events, such as restoring Jason Todd to life.
While assisting the Teen Titans in battling Superboy-Prime, members of the Doom Patrol had flashbacks to their original history. Robotman and Niles Caulder regained memories of the previous Doom Patrol teams they were a part of. This battle apparently undid some of Superboy-Prime's timeline changes, and resulted in a timeline incorporating all previous incarnations of the Doom Patrol, but with Rita Farr and Larry Trainor still alive. In Teen Titans vol. 3, #36, the Chief says that Rita was indeed blown up in Zahl's explosion, but was not actually killed. The Chief later found her skull and treated it with synthetic proteins until she was able to regrow her malleable body.
Steve Dayton is again using the Mento helmet and he is mentally unstable; however, he remembers his time as the Crimelord. The Chief appears to be manipulating the Doom Patrol members once again; he claims to wish to return them to normal, so "maybe one day [they] won't be freaks anymore." After the Doom Patrol encounters the Titans, the Chief tells them that Kid Devil should be a member of the Doom Patrol instead of the Titans, since his unique appearance and nature will always separate him from others. However, Beast Boy, Elasti-Girl and Mento all stood up to the Chief and forced him to step down as the Doom Patrol's leader. It seems that Mento is taking over that role.
Another twist is that while fighting the Titans and the Doom Patrol, the Brain claimed that he had been the Chief's lab assistant, his body destroyed in an explosion Caulder caused and that he was to be Robotman.
The whereabouts of Nudge, Grunt, and Vortex have yet to be revealed.
[edit] Trade paperbacks
The first part of Morrison's run has been compiled into five Vertigo trade paperback editions:
- Crawling from the Wreckage (collects Doom Patrol #19-25, 2000 ISBN 1-56389-034-8)
- The Painting That Ate Paris (collects Doom Patrol #26-34, 2004 ISBN 1-4012-0342-6)
- Down Paradise Way (collects Doom Patrol #35-41, 2005 ISBN 1-4012-0726-X)
- Musclebound (collects Doom Patrol #42-50, August 2006 ISBN 1-4012-0999-8)
- Magic Bus (collects Doom Patrol #51-57, January 2007)
[edit] Tangent Comics
In 1997, DC released the Tangent Comics series of books, which were built on the premise of a world that diverged from the mainstream following the events of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The series featured characters with the same names as mainstream DC characters but who were otherwise unrelated to them. The series included a one-shot Doom Patrol title. This Doom Patrol consisted of four heroes, Doomsday, Star Sapphire, Firehawk and Rampage, who travelled back in time from 2030 to 1997 to prevent Earth's destruction. The Tangent books were later integrated into the DC multiverse (as "Earth-97") as part of the events of Infinite Crisis.
[edit] Other media
[edit] Television
On the Teen Titans animated series, the Doom Patrol made an appearance in the two-part episode "Homecoming", the season five premiere. Featuring Negative Man (Judge Reinhold), Robotman (Peter Onarati), Mento (Xander Berkeley), and Elasti-Girl (Tara Strong), this Doom Patrol was captured by the Brotherhood of Evil, with only Robotman free to save his comrades. After Robotman successfully sought out former Doom Patroller Beast Boy, he and the Teen Titans teamed up to rescue the Doom Patrol. In flashbacks to Beast Boy's Doom Patrol days, it is clear that Mento and Elasti-Girl play parental roles toward the young masked hero. When Beast Boy has to make the choice to defeat the Brotherhood of Evil or save his friends in both teams, he elects to save his friends, a decision denounced by Mento and lauded by the Titans.
The Chief is absent in the series. Mento acts as the team leader.
Throughout the fifth season of Teen Titans, the team faces the menace of the Brotherhood, who wish to destroy all of the world's young heroes. The Titans gather these heroes, issuing each a Titans communicator and membership on the team. Finally, in a climactic battle, the Titans all work together and defeat the Brotherhood of Evil.[2]
[edit] Film
Variety reported on July 19, 2006 that Warner Bros has hired Adam Turner to pen a screenplay to bring Doom Patrol to the big screen.[3]
[edit] Trivia
[edit] Dayton Manor
Now that the team fully remembers its past, they've collected artifacts of the former Doom Patrols and their histories in the Dayton Manor, including:
- Portraits of Dorothy Spinner, Crazy Jane, Fever, and Celsius.
- The Quiz's filtered gown/gas mask.
- A portrait of Mister Nobody.
- A portal into Danny the World.
- The Painting that Ate Paris, now a mural, hides the door to the Chief's operating room.
- A statue of someone resembling Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man.
- A ballroom that exhibits odd weather patterns.
- A greenhouse with at least one talking lemon tree.
[edit] References
- ^ Epstein, Daniel Robert (2005-11-11). Talking to Arnold Drake. Newsarama. Retrieved on 2006-07-29.
- ^ *'San Diego Comicon 2005: Teen Titans Behind The Scenes', Titans Tower (July 19 2005). Retrieved July 27 2005.
- ^ Warner making room for 'Doom' Variety (July 19, 2006). Retrieved July 22 2006.
