As I noted yesterday, this cover is of the portrait variety. Though there is quite a bit of action in the comic, no scene like this ever happens, and Cliff is categorically not involved in the action. I sometimes think of such covers as glimpses of adventures that were not told in the series. The back-up feature in issue #50 offers a similar notion, with a series of pin-ups depicting adventures too weird for the regular comic. As if such a thing exists.
Erik Larsen joins the crew on pencils in today's issue, and stays with the book until the Invasion series gets things ready for Grant Morrison's run. Larsen's pencils are, to me, a little more in keeping with the style of the book, though at the time many lamented Steve Lightle's departure from the title. For me, the Doom Patrol should always look a bit skewed, rather than realistic. Their perceptions of the world are less typical, so I think the art ought to suit that. Larsen's style speaks to this.
That said, he does have a propensity to exaggerate his female characters, and for some reason most of them appear to have breasts that want to jump off the sides of their bodies. It's an odd choice, but one always has to defer to artistic license, I suppose. In an interview about his time on the book, Larsen notes that he took a lot more license than he probably should have as an artist starting out in the field, but things have one pretty well for him in the ensuing decades. It shouldn't surprise us that one of the founders of Image Comics spent some time with the scrappy underdogs of the DCU.
More to follow.
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