Doom Patrol

AUTHOR: Morrison, Grant

ARTIST: Rian Hughes (illustrator); Sean Phillips (illustrator); Ken Steacy (illustrator); Steve Yeowell (illustrator); Doug Braithwaite (penciller); Paris Cullins (penciller); Mike Dringenberg (penciller); Vince Giarrano (penciller); Kelley Jones (penciller); Duke Mighten (penciller); Ian Montgomery (penciller); Steve Pugh (penciller); Jamie Hewlett (penciller and cover artist); Richard Case (penciller, inker, and cover artist); Mark Badger (inker); Philip Bond (inker); Kim DeMulder (inker); Carlos Garzon (inker); Scott Hanna (inker); Doug Hazlewood (inker); Mark McKenna (inker); John Nyberg (inker); Malcolm Jones III (inker); Brad Vancata (inker); Stan Woch (inker); Daniel Vozzo (colorist); Michelle Wolfman (colorist); John Kaziesdad (letterer); Gaspar Saladino (letterer); John Workman (letterer); Simon Bisley (cover artist); Brian Bolland (cover artist); Duncan Fegredo (cover artist); Keith Giffen (cover artist); Shaky Kane (cover artist); Mike Mignola (cover artist); Mike Sekowsky (cover artist); Tom Taggart (cover artist); Gavin Wilson (cover artist)

PUBLISHER: DC Comics

FIRST SERIAL PUBLICATION: 1989-1993

FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION: 2000-2008

Publication History

Grant Morrison and Richard Case’s Doom Patrol began in 1989, continuing for forty-five issues and one parodic special, Doom Force. It continued from two earlier iterations of the same title: the original Doom Patrol, created for DC Comics in 1963 and dubbed “the world’s strangest heroes,” and the 1987 relaunch. As Morrison and Case took over the relaunched title with issue 19, they retained some characters (such as the robotic Cliff Steele), transformed others (turning Negative Man into the hermaphroditic Rebis), and invented their own, most notably the superpowered sufferer of multiple personality disorder, Crazy Jane.

Tongue-in-cheek promotional material released by DC Comics in 1990 praised Morrison for his “crimes against reason” and for “altering DC characters beyond recognition” with his work on earlier idiosyncratic superhero titles such as Animal Man (first published in 1998); however, original Doom Patrol creator Arnold Drake was quoted as saying Morrison’s approach to Doom Patrol was the only one that captured the spirit of the original. Doom Patrol was placed under DC Comics’ mature-readers imprint, Vertigo, only after Morrison and Case’s final issue, though the collected editions have been released under the Vertigo banner.

Plot

Immediately upon taking over Doom Patrol, Morrison and Case shifted the tone from traditional superheroics to the unexpected and surreal. Cliff Steele is institutionalized for depression, where he meets Kay Challis, calling herself Crazy Jane. Meanwhile, a hospitalized Larry Trainor (the original Negative Man) is fused with his doctor, Elenore Poole, to become the new being Rebis. The first story, “Crawling from the Wreckage,” features the team battling the Scissormen from the fictional world of Orqwith. Orqwith is infecting reality until Rebus forces its rulers to confront their fictional status. In “The Butterfly Collector,” comatose Doom Patrol teammate Rhea Jones is kidnapped by Red Jack, a being who claims to be both Jack the Ripper and God. At Doom Patrol headquarters, Dorothy, a powerful young psychic, is attacked by her imaginary childhood friends.

The Painting That Ate Paris introduces the new incarnation of classic Doom Patrol villains the Brotherhood of Evil. Now under the leadership of Mister Nobody, they become the Brotherhood of Dada, focused on art and absurdity. The brotherhood steals a magical painting that absorbs Paris, and the Doom Patrol battles them through the painting’s layers of art history. Jane is left comatose, and Cliff projects his consciousness inside her as she confronts a monstrous version of her abusive father. “The World Made Flesh” introduces the magician Willoughby Kipling, who joins forces with the Doom Patrol to stop a cult from another dimension who worship the “decreator.” In an eccentric one-off story, Cliff’s robot body then achieves consciousness when his brain is temporarily removed.

In Down Paradise Way, the Doom Patrol faces Mister Jones and the Men from N.O.W.H.E.R.E., who want to destroy the world’s eccentricities. The team protects Danny the Street, a sentient, transvestite street. During the battle, one of Danny’s inhabitants remembers that he was once the legendary crime fighter Flex Mentallo. After Rhea Jones awakens, the Doom Patrol follows her into a seemingly endless war among alien races. The conflict is resolved when Rebis suggests a “potlatch”—requiring each side to give up increasingly valuable items or admit defeat. Rather than return home with the Doom Patrol, Rhea leaves to explore distant stars.

Musclebound begins with the origin of Flex Mentallo. Under the pentagon, a military conspiracy releases more powerful Men from N.O.W.H.E.R.E. to kidnap Dorothy and Flex. Flex rescues an imprisoned psychic named Wally Sage, who is revealed to have created Flex by drawing him in a comic book when Wally was a boy. Dorothy calls on a dangerous being called the Candlemaker to save her friends. After a spoof of macho vigilante comics, the Doom Patrol encounters the Shadowy Mister Evans, a bizarre dandy who is a sign of the impending apocalypse.

In Magic Bus, Mister Nobody forms a new Brotherhood of Dada to steal the bicycle of Albert Hoffman, the inventor of LSD. They use the bicycle’s hallucinogenic powers to infect the population, as Mister Nobody runs for president; government troops attack, killing Mister Nobody. Subsequent one-off stories feature a hypothetical Doom Patrol reimagined in the style of Jack Kirby and Rebis in a symbolic quest on the moon.

Jane is tormented by her memories of abuse and the personalities warring inside her and teleports back to her childhood farm to confront the memories of her father. Meanwhile, Josh is shot and killed in Doom Patrol headquarters by the Chief. When Cliff confronts him, the Chief explains that he was behind the accidents that created the original Doom Patrol. He plans to engineer a global catastrophe to force the world to change. Dorothy releases the Candlemaker, who immediately kills the Chief and destroys Cliff’s human brain.

Planet Love begins with Cliff dreaming he is a delusional man who only thinks he is a robot, until a virtual copy of his personality is loaded back into his body. Meanwhile, the Candlemaker has unleashed a “psychic apocalypse” in New York. The Candlemaker sends Jane to another dimension he calls “hell.” Cliff is torn in two, and Rebis is killed and reborn. Dorothy faces her fears and blows out the Candlemaker. Danny expands until he becomes Danny the World. The final issue of Doom Patrol focuses on Kay Challis, trapped in the “real” world. After shock treatment, Kay attempts suicide, but Cliff appears just in time to take her to Danny the World.

Volumes

•Doom Patrol: Crawling from the Wreckage (2000). Collects issues 19-25, featuring the formation of the new Doom Patrol.

•Doom Patrol: The Painting That Ate Paris (2004). Collects issues 26-34, featuring the Brotherhood of Dada and the Cult of the Unwritten Book.

•Doom Patrol: Down Paradise Way (2005). Collects issues 35-41, introducing the Men from N.O.W.H.E.R.E., Danny the Street, Flex Mentallo, and the Doom Patrol in outer space.

•Doom Patrol: Musclebound (2006). Collects issues 42-50, explaining the origin of Flex Mentallo, the battle with the Pentagon conspiracy, the Shadowy Mister Evans, and the return of Mister Nobody.

•Doom Patrol: Magic Bus (2007). Collects issues 51-57, concluding the “Mister Nobody for President” story line and exposing the Chief’s secret.

•Doom Patrol: Planet Love (2008). Collects issues 58-63 and Doom Force, issue 1, featuring Crazy Jane in the “real world” and the Doom Patrol’s battle with the Candlemaker. It also includes the Doom Force special, with a grown Dorothy Spinner in a superhero spoof.

Characters

•Cliff Steele, a.k.a. Robotman, a human brain kept alive inside a powerful robot body, is the everyman hero of the Doom Patrol. He has multiple bodies throughout the series as they are destroyed or upgraded; in later issues, his brain is also destroyed, so none of his original biology remains. He struggles with depression related to the limitations of his robot body.

•Kay Challis, a.k.a. Crazy Jane, is a young woman suffering from multiple personality disorder after a history of abuse. Each of her sixty-four personalities possesses its own distinct name and superpower. Jane is usually a normal, if eccentrically dressed, young woman, though some of her personalities also transform her physically. Her personalities eventually cooperate, giving her an identity she describes as a “kaleidoscope.”

•Rebis is a fusion of three separate entities: test pilot Larry Trainor, known as Negative Man in the original Doom Patrol; Larry’s doctor, a woman named Elenore Poole; and a being of negative energy. Together they become a new being, disconnected from human emotion and wrapped in glowing bandages. Rebis later gives birth to a new Rebis, possessing the same memories.

•Niles Caulder, a.k.a. the Chief, is the leader of the Doom Patrol, a wheelchair-bound scientist with a genius IQ and a penchant for chocolate. He gathered the original Doom Patrol and now persuades Cliff, Jane, and Rebis to form a new team. Cold and arrogant, he is revealed to have caused the accidents that crippled the Doom Patrol.

•Joshua Clay, a.k.a. Tempest, is a trained combat medic capable of firing destructive energy blasts from his hands. He retires from active superhero duty at the beginning of Morrison and Case’s run, choosing to serve as the Doom Patrol’s doctor. He is later murdered by the Chief.

•Rhea Jones, a.k.a. Lodestone, a woman with magnetic powers, is left in a coma as Morrison and Case begin on Doom Patrol. She awakens as a new creature: a flying, faceless woman with a giant eye across her chest. After leading the Doom Patrol into outer space, she decides not to return to Earth.

•Dorothy Spinner is a facially disfigured teenage girl, first introduced by writer Paul Kupperberg in Doom Patrol, issue 14. She was raised in isolation and claims to have been taught by imaginary friends. Her psychic powers allow her imaginary friends to manifest in the real world.

•Willoughby Kipling is a cowardly, hard-drinking magician and member of the Knights Templar who appears periodically to enlist the Doom Patrol’s help. He is reminiscent of John Constantine from DC Comics’ Swamp Thing and Hellblazer titles.

•Danny the Street is a sentient, transvestite street, communicating through street signs and smoke signals and capable of inserting himself into cities around the world. He comes to be the base of operations for the Doom Patrol. In the penultimate issue of Doom Patrol, he expands to become an entire parallel world.

•Flex Mentallo is a crime fighter from the 1950’s, based on the protagonist of the Charles Atlas “dynamic tension” advertisements that appeared in comic books throughout the 1940’s. Dressed as a circus strongman in an animal-print loincloth, he fights the Pentagon conspiracy with superpowers born of his amazing physique.

•Mister Nobody, a.k.a. Morden, briefly appeared as the latter in the original Brotherhood of Evil. An experiment turns him into the “spirit of the twenty-first century,” appearing as an impossible black outline. The leader of the Brotherhood of Dada, he fights the status quo with absurdity and art. He is killed as he is running for president.

•The Men from N.O.W.H.E.R.E. are strange foot soldiers of a government conspiracy to remove eccentricities from the world. The first, weaker version speak in sentences only forming the acronym of their name; the later, more powerful version speak in novelty comic book advertisements.

•The Candlemaker appears to be an imaginary friend created by Dorothy Spinner, but it is also suggested to be the personification of mankind’s fear of nuclear war. A winged monster with burning candles atop its head, it functions as the Doom Patrol’s climactic enemy.

Artistic Style

In the years since Doom Patrol’s publication, Morrison has become one of the most influential writers in comics, but his main collaborator on Doom Patrol, artist Richard Case, is less well known. Case provides Doom Patrol with a distinct visual style—stylized, simple, and with thick clean lines. He eschews realism for a flat, pop-art aesthetic, aided by Daniel Vozzo’s bright colors throughout the series. As the majority of the Doom Patrol’s antagonists and adventures are extradimensional, Case uses abstract visual designs to illustrate them, such as Mister Nobody’s impossible silhouette and the map of Crazy Jane’s interior landscape. His art approximates the same elements of collage that appear as plot points throughout Doom Patrol’s narratives. While he is not a traditional superhero artist, his work retains the classic hyperbolic aesthetic of superhero stories.

Some of Doom Patrol’s guest artists (such as Kelley Jones and Steve Yeowell) fill in during ongoing story lines, but others are used on atypical issues. Ken Stacey draws a Jack Kirby homage in issue 53; Mike Dringenberg and Doug Hazlewood illustrate the origin of Flex Mentallo, borrowing from old advertising imagery in issue 42; and multiple artists collaborate on the Doom Force one-shot to parody the stylistic excesses of the art of Rob Liefeld. Doom Patrol is also closely associated with the painted, distorted cover art of Simon Bisley.

Themes

The major theme throughout Morrison and Case’s Doom Patrol is best summed up by Cliff in issue 21: “Is this real or isn’t it?” The Doom Patrol faces threats from extradimensional or imaginary worlds, and Cliff regularly expresses confusion caused by these events, wishing for more traditional superheroic adventures. Much of Doom Patrol serves to praise imagination and creativity. As the Doom Patrol fights villains from various other realities, the group must use creative, untraditional means to defeat them, such as logic puzzles or William S. Burroughs’s cut-up technique. The hero, Flex Mentallo, comes to life from the pages of a child’s comic book, and Dorothy uses an “imaginary gun” to fight imaginary enemies.

Doom Patrol is also concerned with transformation and how it relates to personal identity. For example, Cliff wonders if his robot body means that he is no longer a man and, after his human brain is destroyed, he mourns that “there is less and less of me all the time.” Equally, is Rebis still Larry, Elenore, or something else entirely?

The Chief’s plan to initiate global catastrophe is designed to force the world to transform. The idea of traditional subjectivity is also interrogated, and Morrison is particularly interested in the possibility of multiple subjectivities. Jane’s evolution is not to integrate her personalities into a whole but to allow them to form more than the sum of their parts. Dualities appear constantly throughout Doom Patrol, including male-female, order-chaos, and (explicitly stated as Cliff Steele’s robot form rejects his human brain) mind-body. Strict dualities, however, are usually refuted throughout. The real villains of Doom Patrol are those who attempt to quash ambiguity and difference, exemplified by the Pentagon conspiracy and the Men from N.O.W.H.E.R.E. The Brotherhood of Dada are, in a sense, the true heroes because of their war against the status quo. In Doom Patrol’s final issue, it is suggested that the “real” world is “hell” because it does not contain the spectacular and absurd possibilities present in Doom Patrol.

Impact

The Doom Patrol title has been relaunched multiple times in the years since Morrison and Case’s work, usually as more traditional superhero fare, although some of their elements and characters remain. Morrison went on to write both The Invisibles (first published in 1994) and Flex Mentallo (first published in 1996) for Vertigo. Many of Morrison’s offbeat ideas from this series have since reappeared into his mainstream superhero work on DC Comics titles such as All-Star Superman (2005-2008) and Final Crisis (first published in 2008).

Further Reading

Morrison, Grant, and Frank Quietly. Flex Mentallo (1996).

Morrison, Grant, Frank Quietly, and Jamie Grant. All-Star Superman (2006-2008).

Morrison, Grant, et al. Animal Man (1988-1990).

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. The Invisibles (1994-2000).

Bibliography

Bukatman, Scott. “X-Bodies (The Torment of the Mutant Superhero).” In Matters of Gravity: Special Effects and Supermen in the Twentieth Century. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2003.

Callahan, Timothy. Grant Morrison: The Early Years. Edwardsville, Ill.: Sequart Research and Literacy Organization, 2007.

“Comics You Should Own—Doom Patrol 19-63.” Comic Book Resources, September 10, 2006. http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2006/09/10/comics-you-should-own-doom-patrol-19-63.

Pedler, Martyn. “Morrison’s Muscle Mystery Versus Everyday Reality . . . and Other Parallel Worlds!” In The Contemporary Comic Book Superhero, edited by Angela Ndalianis. New York: Routledge, 2009.

Shaviro, Steven. Doom Patrols: A Theoretical Fiction About Postmodernism. New York: High Rise Books, 1997.