Giant Box of Television: Roots of the Doom Patrol

With Season 2 of the best goddamned superhero television series of all time underway (hyperbolic, ain't I?), I thought it would be interesting to have a look at some of the specific comics that have inspired moments, or stories, in the show. I'll stick mostly to the first season, though the already pretty great (though not as great as the first season?) second season might pop up a bit. Most of these early comics are first appearances of characters who have popped up on the show. Adapted storylines are pretty much all from Morrison's run on the title, which I'll cover in the next installment.

I'm going to do this chronologically. We begin in 1963...

This has to come first, of course. The first appearance of Negative Man, Elasti-Girl, The Chief, and Automaton. Who becomes Robotman hereafter. I'm assuming that Automaton was chosen because there was already a Robotman in the DCU (such as it was at the time). I actually think I might like Automaton better, but here we are. We're given their back stories, except the Chief, and introduced to General Immortus, Niles' impetus for searching for an immortality serum in this iteration of the team. You'll note that whatever the substance was that Niles used on Rita, it was named for Immortus.

The first issue after the title switches to The Doom Patrol features a team referred to in the series but never seen, The Brotherhood of Evil. What's significant about this issue is it marks the first, and only, appearance of Mr. Morden, our erstwhile antagonist, and Rog, the giant red robot that makes such an explosive appearance in the final episode of Season 1.

Though he's not featured on the cover, this issue marks the first appearance of Steve Dayton, the superhero known as Mento. Let me be blunt: Steve Dayton in the comics is a piece of garbage. He ends up marrying Rita, and I can't for the life of me figure out why. Steve is given a much nicer treatment in the show.
Seriously. He's such a dick in the comics.

A little hop into Season 2 with the first, and one of only a few, appearance of Dr. Tyme. A more sinister version than the roller-skating madman that we met recently on TV, Dr. Tyme also shows up in the Keith Giffen-scripted version of the show as one of the mad scientists inhabiting Oolong Island.

The Doom Patrol from the television series, though based in the 1950s, took a good deal of inspiration from this version of the team that debuted in the 1970s. You could probably tell that from Tempest's collar in the picture. This marks the first appearances of both Arani Desai and Josh Clay, who are resident and doctor, respectively, at the rest home Niles sets up for the Doom Patrol. In that episode, Larry asks Josh if they know each other, and asks about military service. In the comics, it is revealed that Josh deserted his unit in Vietnam after his powers manifested. He's been on the run as a deserter for years.

The other member of the television Doom Patrol, Rhea Jones, or Lodestone, made her first appearance in the 1980s version of the team, as a younger member brought in by Arani. The problem with this run on the team is that it tries too hard to be a normal superhero comic. The Doom Patrol has never been normal.

One more for today, and my last comic before we hit Grant Morrison's run, which has provided most of the inspiration for the show. This issue marks the first appearance of Dorothy Spinner, the ape-faced girl. In this version of the series, Dorothy has no relation to Niles, and, at this point, no superpowers. She's from Kansas, and her farm happens to be at the center of a battle between the Doom Patrol, assisted by Power Girl, and a Lord of Chaos. What I will say about this issue is that, of all of Paul Kupperberg's run on the team, this is the one that I think is the most "Doom Patrol." It's weird, and not afraid to be.

Next time I'll have a look at some issues from Morrison's run. And, depending on what episode 4 of the new season brings, I might have some more comics to add.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1475: The Doom Patrol #121, October 1968

Honestly, we weren't the ones who decided. The series was cancelled, and had there been a surge of interest maybe the characters would come back, but, honestly, how often does that happen? In comics, at least?

This is a great issue. It pulls together so many threads and ends the series on a note entirely in keeping with the rest of the run. This is a very rare circumstance in comics, the suiting ending. Usually when a series ends, there are questions left and threads left unpulled. But we have a nice wrap up of the Madame Rouge story, of the Brotherhood, and of the Doom Patrol themselves, showing that outcasts from society can be every bit as noble as the super-gods that surround them.

The Patrol has a weird publishing schedule until about 1977. For some reason in 1973 there were three further issues of this series published, all reprinting older stories from the run. Then four years later the New Doom Patrol debuts in Showcase, though they're relegated to guest roles for about the next 10 years. It's been a while since I read the new DP, and I don't actually remember enjoying it that much. It's one of the times in the history of the team that the writers tried to make them more mainstream, flashier and more superheroic. It doesn't really work.

On to something different tomorrow, though I may come back to the Doom Patrol sooner rather than later. With the new show on the air, they're in my head all the time these days.

"The we're agreed -- Codsville is dead! But our renamed village, Four Heroes, Maine, is just beginning!"

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1474: The Doom Patrol #120, August 1968

Oh, Cliff. If only you knew what was coming in the next issue.

The team (well, Larry and Cliff) investigate the absence of space debris in orbit around the Earth, and Rita and Steve go dancing. Have I mentioned that this is a very weird series?

The coolest part of today's comic is that Cliff switches around through a number of different bodies when his main one is destroyed. Though no one turns away from as this cover suggests. Sometimes the covers of these old issues really have very little to do with the story inside. It's a bit of false advertising, really, though the story turns out to be pretty good anyway. Cliff goes through a number of bodies over the years, though the "heavy metal" design of Caulder's from the Morrison run seems to have become the default. I'm glad of that, though his weird spider-body from the Insect Mesh storyline (seriously, just read it) is pretty sweet too.

"There goes the Wrecker's base -- rocketing home! And I wanna meet him in my Sunday body!"

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1473: The Doom Patrol #119, June 1968

This is a weird one. Well, they're all weird ones, but this one is really weird. The team falls victim to a "guru" who hypnotizes Cliff into being kind, Larry into being scared, and Rita into an infant. For...reasons.

Well, okay, he does it to distract the Patrol away from Madame Rouge so that he can undo the Chief's cure and return her to the Brotherhood. Again, because Brain and Mallah miss her so much, I guess?

This is an interesting take on the craze for gurus that seemed to sweep the late 60s in the US in the wake of Eastern philosophies making their way into the consciousness of Vietnam-era America. There was a lot of mistrust, with good reason, though I have to believe that there were some decent individuals out there who simply believed they'd found a better way to live. I keep looking for one!

It's at this point in reading through the series that I realized that the entire plot of the Chief curing Madame Rouge is set-up for the explosive finale of the series. I have to wonder if this had already been plotted and there was meant to be a follow-up, had the series continued, but that the death issue also made for a good final issue for a book with flagging sales. I wonder if Mr. Drake had any ideas for how the Patrol would have continued had sales improved. Would Rita have spent all those years dead?

"Me very little now...me just baby girl..."

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1472: The Doom Patrol #118, April 1968

Madame Rouge shows some backbone in this issue, though I'm still not entirely certain why the Brain and Mallah want her back so badly. Especially in light of their single appearance in Morrison's run. (Just go read it.)

Once I'm done reading through these comics, I'm going to go back and have a look to see how many of the Patrol's villains only ever show up the one time. I'm pretty sure Videx, today's Brotherhood wannabe, never shows again, though I could be wrong.

I'm not sure if it's the same for other heroes, but it seems to me that their villains became more iconic than those of the Patrol. This likely has something to do with them be relegated to B-list status for much of their existence, though someone like Videx never shows up again in any of the subsequent series. Gargax only shows up in the mediocre Kupperberg years, and the Brain and Mallah become Titans villains. Well, until their finale. (Seriously, just go read it.)

I like to think that after being defeated by the Patrol these villains avoided crime again altogether because the heroes that stopped them were so much more weird and angry than they were.

"See you later, Interior Decorator Man!"

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1471: The Doom Patrol #117, February 1968

Niles lets his heart run away with him, and it costs him the Doom Patrol.

It's amazing to me how many times this "team" breaks up or dies over the course of their 4+ year run. And how many enemies Niles makes that come back to wreak havoc on his life. Perhaps we need to see a series called "Young Niles Caulder" - though given the Chief's propensities, perhaps that would be too dark a read.

I'm glad to see that Rita is getting her time to shine in the new television series. As you may well know, we're coming up on the last issue of this initial run, and poor Rita dies at the end of the issue. Ostensibly, all of them die, but Rita is the only one who stays dead, pretty much from 1968 to the early 2000s and John Byrne's reboot of the team. I'm glad she's about in the Young Animal stuff now. Well, I'm assuming she is. We'll see if we get more Young Animal.

Another thing I'm grateful to the show for is for giving Rita a character. She's much less-developed in the original series, but reading her as a haughty, though soft underneath, movie starlet makes so much more sense. Even her marriage to Steve Dayton smacks of the celebrity marriages we see nowadays. Rather than the mother figure of the Doom Patrol, Rita is the occasionally shitty, but very often right, older sister.

One last thing - this is the first time in a long while in the series that the back-up feature has been a stand alone story, separate from the Doom Patrol. "The Man with 100 Wigs" tells the story of a thief who gains the powers of historical persons by wearing facsimiles of their hair.

Oh, and then there's the Native Americans in the story. They charge in, on horseback in the middle of a city, to rescue the team from the Black Vulture and have all the hallmarks of a disgusting racial stereotype. Until Rita speaks broken English to her rescuers, only to have them reply in proper English. It's revealed that the leader of the group is a teacher at Cal Tech. So we have a terrible visual representation, but a relatively nuanced narrative representation. The tribe owes Niles a debt for helping them to keep their land from falling into the hands of the Black Vulture. I wonder if Drake and Premiani did this purposefully - one of the major themes of the Doom Patrol is not judging books, and people, by their covers.

"Man, I pulled a real Custer! I underestimated the Indians!"

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1470: The Doom Patrol #116, December 1967

Another misleading cover, in that this character shows up in the last 5 pages or so, and doesn't really get into it with the Doom Patrol. He does beat on them slightly, which is weird given who this actually is (I'm not telling!).

The three nuclear mutants end up having to dive into Halley's comet to destroy it from within, which I think means that, canonically, Halley's comet does not exist in the DC universe. Well, reboots aside, I suppose, though I tend to think of the events of the Doom Patrol series as having taken place in all versions of DC reality, just as the team themselves seem to transcend reboots.

Not much else to say about this one. It was okay. But we're nearing the end. Only 5 issues remain of the original run.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1469: The Doom Patrol #115, September 1967

I should address something: we never get Rita's story. Of the five main characters in the series (I'm including Beast Boy), we get flashback stories for all but Rita. I've always felt that to be quite unfair, and I'm glad that the television series has attempted to rectify this error. Well, hopefully it will. Again, we've seen flashbacks for all of the characters thus far, except for Rita. And the revelation that prompts her blob attack in the first episode offers an intriguing glimpse at her story. Hopefully they'll do her justice in a way that she never really was in the comic.

But that's the thing about Rita's powers in the comic - I've never really understood how it keeps her from being a film star. I suppose the idea that her first transformation happens in front of an entire crew could be her reasoning for feeling outcast. And we see, in Larry's back story, that no one wants to hire him for him, but rather for his powers. The same would have been likely with Rita, and being a Hollywood starlet, she probably understood this better than most. By adding the complication that maintaining a human form is difficult for her, we start to understand her power as damaging rather than empowering. (I do hope they have her stretch or become giant at some point in the series.)

This is a terribly dated comic. The nuclear mutants (why does radiation always give these guys powers, rather than horrible, horrible burns?) attempt to destroy the Earth by telekinetically flying Halley's comet into it. A comet that is a burning ball of flame. And the U.S. government just decides to fire scores of atomic missiles at it. It amazes me that in a scant 52 years  our understanding of the world around us increased so immensely. Today's comic reminds me more of the old EC science fiction comics and all of the things they got wrong.

Oh, and one more thing. In the back up story, a Nazi scientist tries to restart the Reich by making gorillas into Nazis.

Yep.

"Then it was raining -- pouring -- gorillas!"

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1468: The Doom Patrol #114, September 1967

This story is kind of cool in that it has shades of Crisis on Infinite Earths. The Patrol must stop a rampaging Neanderthal with a laser gun (sounds like a bad B-movie) who emerges through a gateway that is combining time periods. This kind of combination occurs in the latter issues of Crisis, so I head-cannoned that this was a ripple of that, which made an otherwise run-of -the-mill story a bit better.

Though I should clarify the term "run-of-the-mill." There is nothing normal about any of the Doom Patrol's adventures. In his text piece as he takes over the series, Morrison says that they're a team that he found scary. And they kind of are. They don't fight the usual supervillains. They fight a brain in a jar and a talking Gorilla. Or the Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man. Or a caveman with a laser gun. They fought the weird stuff that you really can't imagine Superman or Wonder Woman dealing with. If we consider the runs of the series that have been less-successful, they're the ones that forget this and treat the team like any other superhero team. But they're not a superhero team. They're a support group who, by virtue of their weirdness, get sucked into very bizarre situations.

Which is, of course, what we love about them so much.

"A genius, a man of peace -- and your caveman!"

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1467: The Doom Patrol #113, August 1967

I'm going to be a bit snarky here - the cover should read "Who cares who dares to challenge the Arsenal?" Though it's the main story, and has some nice action pieces with the team, the far more interesting story in this issue is the Chief's infatuation with Madame Rouge. And it really due to the reasons I pointed out yesterday - SPOILERS!!!! -




If you've read Morrison's and the subsequent versions of the DP, you have a different take on Niles. It's one of the things I'm finding most interesting about watching the current television series with my wife. She's never read the comics, so her take on Timothy Dalton's (masterful) interpretation of the character is different from mine. I'm suspicious, whereas she sees him as kind and benevolent. And, of course, we don't know who he is, or who he's going to be, really. But reading Niles' experiments on Madame Rouge, regardless of the excuse he makes of righting a wrong, as simply a continuation - it's chilling.

Oh, just for completion's sake, the back-up stories have been sort of "Meh" thus far. Larry's stuff was okay, and actually kind of cool read as the experiences of a gay man in denial. Note that Larry's story is happening at the same time that the original series was being produced, so it's easy to read the character as the original Larry Trainor. But the Beast Boy baby-in-the-jungle stories are just bad. I really think it's the pseudo-toddler dialogue that's given to Gar. It's almost as bad as his pseudo-hip lingo in main stories. Comic characters in the 60s talk to themselves too much. Action makes just as good an exposition.

"Thank you, Mr. King -- but me want no new Daddy! Me live here in own tree house with monkey friend!"

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1466: The Doom Patrol #112, June 1967

Can it possibly be? The Brotherhood and the Doom Patrol working together?!

Actually, this is the result of one of the more realistic moments in any Doom Patrol comic ever: an alien overlord decides to destroy the Earth. In response, the Brotherhood realize that they need to team up with the Patrol because otherwise everyone dies. And, to top it all, the Brotherhood actually sticks to the deal, and doesn't try to undermine the Patrol in some way while also saving the world. It's a nice touch, showing that regardless of the differences they have, both teams have a vested interest in saving the world they inhabit. It's just for very different reasons. This, I think, is a lesson conservatives around the world (and especially the oil-hungry pieces of garbage here in Alberta) could stand to learn. We're all in this together.

What confounds me about this story is that Zarox-13 literally does everything for himself, even though he's ostensibly got an army awakening on his ship. We see his soldiers very briefly at the beginning of the previous issue, and again at the end of this one. And they're useless, very A New Hope Stormtrooper.

As I noted yesterday, the more interesting story is Madame Rouge's story. We get an origin for her this issue, and it seems she is a victim of some evil science. A car accident victim left with two personalities, she is tricked into thinking that a new procedure will remove the evil personality. Of course, she is tricked by the Brain and Mallah, and they erase her kind personality. Or do they? Perhaps it's returning, thanks to her smittenness with the Chief.

Okay - SPOILER time. If you're not familiar with the events of Morrison's run, you should probably stop reading.



This is really a pretty great revelation, especially if we inflect the earlier stories with the events from later comics. And with the Doom Patrol, there's no reason not to. They seem to exist through revisions, maintaining their history despite universal resets. Niles' wonder at the Brain's experiment with Madame Rouge can be read very sinisterly here. The two are linked by a shared history, so it's not a stretch (ha! Madame Rouge humour!) to think that they'd have similar approaches to their experiments. This one looks an awful lot like what Niles does with the original members of the Patrol. He's a difficult character to read in these early stories. Even though there's no hint of the betrayal he perpetuates, he's not the most trustworthy character, despite what the team says.



One last thing: nothing even remotely like that cover happens in this issue. The Brain never commands the Doom Patrol to do anything, and much of the action takes place at a uranium mine. Not entirely sure where this cover image comes from, apart from the brain of Bob Brown, I suppose.

"'Dear reader' -- no, make that 'Greetings fellow swingers--' No!"

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1465: The Doom Patrol #111, May 1967

Apparently, there's no rest for the weird. Hot off the heels of their rescue of Beast Boy, the DP are faced with another (another!!) alien invasion. And it's an invasion being facilitated by the Brotherhood of Evil, so apparently they don't take any days off either.

Zarox-13 is a fairly standard world-conquering/destroying alien villain, though in some of his appearances his facial design actually makes him look like he's in a perpetual state of surprise. This could be intentional, as he does encounter the Doom Patrol as his first exposure to human beings. But you'd think he'd stop being surprised eventually.

This last run of 10 issues introduces a very interesting subplot dealing with Madame Rouge, the Brotherhood's shape-shifter, and the Chief. Rouge begins to develop romantic feelings toward Niles, seemingly out of the blue, though next issue we'll get a better idea of where all that comes from. For now, though, it's as if an aging Romeo and Juliet thread has been introduced into the series, one that, honestly, is far more interesting than the random villains of the month that menace the Patrol in each issue. And given how the whole thing ends up playing out, Romeo and Juliet isn't a bad comparison.

I was talking with my son about these old Doom Patrol comics the other day, and how, though there's definitely acknowledgment of the shared universe, it's weird that none of these alien invaders on Earth are ever dealt with by Green Lantern, who's sole purpose is to defend this sector of space from alien incursions. Perhaps he was helping another planet on those days.

More of Zarox and his crew (more Zarox than crew, actually), more romance, and a strange team-up next issue.

Pretty sure this is meant to be JFK speaking:

"Now tha's what ah call a real fahn cookie, son! An' for so worthy a cause!"

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1464: The Doom Patrol #110, March 1967

(I'm not supposed to be typing today. I'm trying to give my wrists a break from the things that usually trigger them. But, briefly, we get a happy ending, more or less, and some very interesting subplots are set up for the future. There is actually a letter complaining about the extended storylines, but the editors defend their choice by citing fan enthusiasm. Sorry for the short post.)

"The genius gorilla flies to the attack..."

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1463: The Doom Patrol #109, February 1967

What?!?
They're not dead?
Well. I was certainly fooled.

If you read enough comics from this era, you'll see the trick of yesterday's cover and story played out over and over again. And this was even before heroes were in the habit of coming back from actual death. More usually, the heroes were replaced at the last minute, or weren't quite dead (as today's issue tells us), or it was all part of an elaborate plan.

So the Doom Patrol didn't die last issue. Sorry for the 50+ year old spoiler. This is simply the latest twist in an already maze-like story. My experience is that it's relatively rare to have this prolonged a story in a superhero comic of this era. While Beast Boy's situation has been a background plot thread, over the last few issues it's jumped into the spotlight, and the tale has spilled over into multiple issues. This, I suppose, is what we'd call a story arc at the moment, a discrete adventure within the continuing uber-adventure that is the story called "Doom Patrol." And it continues next issue, as the Patrol let the world think them dead in order to trap Galtry and his allies.

Now that I've written that, I'm having a feeling of deja vu, and I really think I may have made a similar claim in one of my other Doom Patrol reviews. I'll have to read some more comics from the early to mid-sixties, and see if my hypothesis is correct. I've been thinking of reading some old Superman lately...

Garguax melts down his plastic androids and makes them into the giant blue demon-looking thing on the front cover. And Mento and the Doom Patrol get into a fight. *sigh* Again.

"ARRGH! The slimy -- sinewy -- sea thing! *Gasp* Choking me! *Gasp* Can't get hold of it! "Choke*"

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1462: The Doom Patrol #108, December 1966

It really does appear that the Doom Patrol die in this issue. And somehow Galtry, Beast Boy's guardian, is mixed up with the Brotherhood of Evil. I'll sort it all out next issue and let you know.

But what really struck me about today's comic, and what strikes me about comics from this era in general, is the amount of advertising comics that are in them. So I thought that today I'd give you some comics to read that have, almost certainly, never been reprinted. There's a PSA from the National Social Welfare Assembly, whose comics I was reproducing for a little while. I may have to get back to them as I'm stuck into some 60s comics for the next little while. And there's lots for model building. Must have been a big thing back then. Enjoy!

"Monsieur Mallah! The gorilla with eh IQ of a genius -- the one The Brain created with his mind-expanding ray!" - ahhh, exposition.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1461: The Doom Patrol #107, November 1966

Comics covers from the 1960s didn't always worry about political correctness. Nor, really, does the story within.

Can I say something about Mento? He sucks. I really, really dislike the character. I feel like he's simply in the comic to disrupt the adventures I'm really actually there to read. Though I revere Drake and Premiani for their inspired creation of these lovable characters, they never do manage to convince me that the marriage of Rita Farr to Steven Dayton is a good idea. Even when they adopt Gar Logan, to save him from being exploited by his really awful guardian, Dayton is an ass to him. And where the other members of the Patrol can be asses at time (except Rita, actually. The characterization of her in the new show is quite different from her original personality), they at least seem to care about other human beings, where Dayton's motives are, almost to a fault, selfish.

I recommended the new show to a friend of mine (and I recommend it HIGHLY to anyone who hasn't seen it yet) because she's interested in disability and how it's portrayed in our society. The show is doing a nice job of dealing with this quite explicitly, but the old comics weren't, as far as I can tell, intentionally dealing with the issue. Today's back-up chapter of "The Private Life of Negative Man" does so, in that Larry is unable to procure any employment after his accident, except for jobs that wish to exploit his new condition. Larry simply wants to be "normal." Though as Jane says many issues later, "What do normal people have?" No one's been able to answer that adequately for me as yet.

On the subject of Larry, I'm delighted to see him as a queer character in the television show. Really, as my son has often said, most iterations of the Patrol could be seen as stories of queerness, whether intentionally or simply by virtue of the team's marginal existence. But the explicit treatment we're getting now is a perfect growth for the character. The Rebis version of Negative Man remains to me one of the best portrayals of queerness in a superhero comic, if a little over-symbolic at times. For me, the conversation and consolidation of those three voices in Rebis felt a lot like my own head, and the "people" I am in there. Part woman, part man, part spirit that is both and neither. I like that.

We've got a couple of weeks of Doom Patrol on the way. I'll be wrapping this "season" with the end of the first series. And if you'd like to go back and have a look at the things I've said and read in previous seasons, here you go!

I'm going to try to sign off with a line, memorable somehow, from the day's comic. I will not, however, be giving any context ;P

"Mento -- anytime you want to go into the milkshake business, you've got a great future!"

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1114: The Doom Patrol #106, September 1966

There's a couple of things about this comic that are out of date.

First, Mr. 103, the man who can turn into any element, is 15 elements behind. It's kind of a cool reminder of how much of the science that we sort of take for granted is really not that old. The Theory of Relativity is barely 100 years old, yet we've assimilated it so fully into the collective consciousness that we walk around wearing t-shirts bearing the fabled "e=mc2."

But that's not all! Today's issue also marks the beginning of a Negative Man origin series. Two things leap out at me. The first, in correlation with Mr. 103's lagging behind the times, begins thus: "You are moving backward in time - - back to one year before The Doom Patrol was formed! No man-made satellite has yet been orbited about Earth! The cold, empty reaches of space are still an unlocked mystery!" I want to say that there's something to the idea that these characters have existed through so many technological and social revolutions, something that adds to their mythic, or iconic, status. But I'll have a think about that later.

The second thing I'd like to share is the ridiculously, beautifully hyperbolic intro Larry is given: "In all the annals of comicdom, from the birth of the king - Superman - to the countless fantabulous, funtastic characters of today, none equalis in the thrilling scope for sheer human drama the snap-crackle-pop kid himself --- Negative Man! And here, in all its pulse-pounding action and heart-clutching emotion is the story of its origin, the first chapter of...The Private World of Negative Man."

Sheer. Human. Drama.

(Also, my next band is going to be called The Private World of Negative Man.)

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1113: The Doom Patrol #105, August 1966

Y'know, I take back some of the stuff I said about Rita becoming a bit too June Cleaver-ish once she marries Mento. In today's issue she lies right to his face, says she's going shopping, and then boots off on a mission with the DP. And, finally, she discovers the truth about Beast Boy's guardian. The resolution of this story plays out over the next few issues. I know I've mentioned this before, but I'm not sure how many comics were doing multi-part stories like this back in the day of the original Doom Patrol series. Beast Boy's story has now been running through 6 issues, and continues for some time. I'm now curious to have a look at other stuff that Drake wrote to see if this is peculiar to the DP, or if it's a way he was telling stories throughout the DCU.

The other neat bit of today's comic is the conclusion of Cliff's origin story. For someone recently transferred into a robotic body, he's very comfortable ripping bits of himself off to use as tools. There's some weird, psychological body horror thing going on here that I may have to think about a bit more.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1112: The Doom Patrol #104, June 1966

Having rescued the Challengers, having beat the Challenger-Haters, and having teamed up with the Flash, what's next for our intrepid heroes?

Marriage?

Not that I mind the occasional matrimonial moment in a comic, but this one's a bit weird. It's almost as if we're seeing a story about a marriage told by a child, or with a child's understanding of marriage, at least. Rita decides to marry Mento after Cliff, Larry, and Niles appear to be too overbearing for her (though Mento does actually kidnap her early in today's issue), then changes her mind when the guys try to stop her wedding by sending a fake telegram about a new movie role, then Rita decides she really loves Mento, and then the Brotherhood of Evil stage a fight between Mento and the DP, but Rita doesn't realize and....well, it kind of goes on like this, and ends with the two being wed.

This sets up some interesting stories to be told, including some domestic moments that have a profound effect on Gar Logan. But the wedding itself is just off. Also, how do the DP know the Justice League, the Teen Titans, and Scooter (of Swing with fame), all of whom are at the wedding? Didn't they literally just meet the Flash last month?

Ah, for the days when continuity wasn't a thing.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1110: The Brave and the Bold #65, May 1966

Okay, catching up (which is ironic given the Flash's appearance here), but not a long post. It's nice to see the DP taking part in the greater universe they inhabit, and to see them work with another superhero. The Flash is put to good use here in tricking the Brotherhood of Evil, but it's an off-hand remark by Rita that really makes this comic important: she claims that her powers are killing her. Now, I know it's been a while since I read the first Doom Patrol stories, but I have absolutely no recollection of this being mentioned anywhere else. I'll have to keep a close eye out moving forward, though things are about to get weird with the least desirable wedding I can possibly imagine in the next issue of the team's own title.

More to come...