The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 2411: Martian Manhunter Special #1, 1996

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 Publisher: DC Comics

Writer: Paul Kupperberg

Artist: Mike Collins

I fully admit I have not read a lot of the solo J'onn J'onzz material. When his solo series began back in the early 2000s, I checked it out, but it didn't resonate with me, even though the Ostrander/Mandrake creative team had done some amazing things with the Spectre. I wonder if the Manhunter is one of those characters who, because of his remarkable power set, is a difficult one to write dramatically. Much like Superman, J'onzz is virtually unstoppable. Granted, his Achilles' heel (fire) is a lot more accessible and prevalent than something like kryptonite. Having a more ubiquitous weakness allows perhaps for more drama.

But I don't know why he doesn't pull me in like some other heroes. He's cut from the same cloth as a well-done Superman, or Starman, or Wonder Woman. But, I think, some characters have yet to find their personal genre, and perhaps J'onzz is one of them. While we may have had some great stories, I don't think the character has found his great story yet.

Today's story was pretty good, some spacebound conflict in which the Manhunter gets embroiled. But, as with a lot of Paul Kupperberg's work, I found it to be a competent superhero story, but not a great one.

Onward.

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 1807: Doom Patrol #18, January 1989

As we come to the final issue of this run of Doom Patrol, it actually seems like the team might be coming to resemble something like the original. Cliff, Larry, and the Chief are back, Arani is gone (quite violently), and the newer characters are settling into the paradigm of the weird and strange. Too bad it all falls apart in the next issue of Invasion.

There are some nice character pieces in here - I truly appreciate the conversation between Josh and a funeral director who is trying to squeeze some publicity out of Arani's death. The Chief's insistence that Arani was somehow unbalanced is also excellent, and can be read in a couple of different ways if we inflect the various versions of the Chief that we get subsequent to this. There's even a wonderful scene between Scott and Rhea, in which young Mr. Fisher reveals that his leukemia has returned and is terminal. I honestly wish we'd had a chance to play that story out. The deaths of the Patrol are often sudden and violent. How would they have handled a team mate whose death was a drawn-out process? It could really have made for some very touching stories.

Another significant death occurs in this issue, though not of any of the team members. With the withdrawal of the alien forces from Earth, Garguax decides that it's time to destroy the Patrol and take over the planet. It doesn't go his way, and he is blasted from the sky, ostensibly ending forever this particular threat to the planet (though was he actually ever really a threat?). And, surprisingly, it seems that in none of the subsequent universal reboots has he been resurrected. I have to admit, I'm not that unhappy about that.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1805: Doom Patrol #17, Holiday 1988

Yes, it's true, in this issue a member of the team dies!

But let's be honest, it's Arani, and no one can fucking stand her. I will admit that I'm burning with curiosity as to how Paul Kupperberg was going to resolve the Arani story if Grant Morrison hadn't asked for her to be killed off in the Invasion. Perhaps, as Niles says before and after, she was simply wrong in the head, living in a fantasy that Niles was her husband....

....which is exactly how she's portrayed in the television series. Some smart writers there.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1803: Doom Patrol #16, Winter 1988

At this point, things are actually starting to get recognizably weird. The Chief is back, but claims to have no idea why Arani says they're married. General Immortus is using aged criminals as suicide soldiers for his schemes to retain his seemingly-constantly just about to run out immortality, and the AVM Man is going out of his tree and attacking...well...everything.

Perhaps, had Paul Kupperberg had another year, the series may have come to more resemble the original run from the 60s. But I think that's all it would have been capable of achieving, a parity with that run. To me it seems that this take on the team wants too much to dwell on its past. They are constantly wallowing in the mistakes and stories of the past, whereas the subsequent Morrison run just throws weird, weird things at the team, much like the original run did.

The next five days will comprise the "Invasion" crossover. I'm actually rewatching the Arrowverse crossover that shared the title - perhaps I'll say a few things about the similarities and differences of the two series.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1802: Doom Patrol #15, December 1988

We're nearing the end of this iteration of the team, and it's one that has only rarely been referenced since. I was pleased to see the nod to the team in the excellent DC Universe series, and there have apparently been a few glimpses here and there of this team each time the DCU reboots. Which really seems to be all the fucking time, these days.

And since we're nearing the end, taking into account the Invasion series that intersects with issues 17 and 18, it's time to bring out the big guns. We witness the return today of not one but two of the Patrol's greatest enemies (in that they were some of the few who recurred) - General Immortus and The Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man.

First, AVM Man - he's often depicted on covers as a weird, giant amalgam of his name with a human head, and sometimes a dinosaur head, on top. Indeed, this is how he shows up in the television show, and it's a wonder to behold. But in the original stories, he never took this form. His power was that he could shift from one state to another, but he was never shown to be able to hold multiple states at the same time, let alone have two heads. Which makes me feel like the inspiration for his return was more the covers of the old comics than it was the stories they contained. Regardless, this reinterpretation (perhaps his powers have evolved) sets up the excellent character who I hope returns in Doom Patrol on TV, so kudos.

And General Immortus is running a retirement home full of octogenarian criminals who have a nasty habit of dropping dead upon completing their missions. More on him tomorrow, I think, as he faces off with the man no one but Arani believed was alive, Niles Caulder!

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1801: Doom Patrol Annual #1, 1988

This is a weird comic. It almost feels like it was an afterthought, or a particular direction the series could have gone that the creative team chose not to pursue.

For a while now, there has been a subplot of a group of "concerned citizens" trying to get the team kicked out of the city. Their claim (a sometimes valid one, at that) is that the team attracts villains to the city. But, of course, in the background there is someone orchestrating the defamation of the Patrol.

Turns out it's Lex Luthor.

And he's doing it so that the Patrol will have no choice but to turn to him and become his own private superteam.

And it all gets wrapped up in this annual, featuring a villain (Maddax - like, mad ax...*sigh*) who has some of the worst dialogue. Though he is meant to be acting at a couple of points and is clearly not an actor, so perhaps the dialogue is stilted on purpose.

A second feature, with the same team as the Arani story a couple of days back, was really excellent. Rhea returns briefly to the circus, and puts to rest any qualms she might have had about being a superhero. These two stories are truly excellent, and I wish Mr. Kupperberg had followed that muse rather than the more mainstream one he did. He offers a couple of lovely character pieces in these two stories, complemented by art that is wonderfully atmospheric.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1800: Doom Patrol #14, November 1988

This.
This felt like a Doom Patrol comic. The team is sucked into a bizarre dimension by an agent of the Lords of Chaos, and shit goes insane. Oh, and Power Girl is there too.

I have to say, if this is any indication of the Power Girl series that Mr. Kupperberg wrote at the same time, I may have to track it down. It's some weird stuff, but always maintains a particular iconic superhero point of view. No matter how surreal things get, the heroes mostly tend to keep their shit together.

Which is a fair description of the team under Mr. Morrison's aegis. Mostly.

Day 1800 of my project also features the first appearance of Dorothy Spinner, the ape-faced girl. I had forgotten that Dorothy was created by Messrs. Kupperberg and Larsen. While this run is never lauded in the same ways that the original, and subsequent, runs, some of the most important through lines of the next 70 or so issues stem from this very issue. It's fitting that it is by far the weirdest one in the run.

Fans of the Doom Patrol who don't really want to invest in the whole run (collected last year, apparently), this one will give you a nice taste of what the run wasn't like, but should have been.

1800 days is a lot of days. A lot of crazy things have happened to me in the intervening years.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1799: Doom Patrol #13, October 1988

Okay, I've had a few days of making fun of the book, so back to trying to find the positives:

Val Vostock beats the hell out of Larry Trainor in this issue. Like, seriously, seriously beats him.

In the old days, Larry and Cliff would very often get into fights, but the punches rained down as if it were two baseline human beings fighting, and threats of the use of superpowers always brought either Rita or the Chief in to calm things down. Most of the time.

But Larry did some pretty dodgy things over the last few issues, and in these Dark Knight/Watchmen times (the late 80s, that is), the allowable level of violence in superhero comics was on the rise. And Val never once resorts to using her powers, instead letting all of her training as a covert government agent kick in. Even when restrained, she manages to unleash some final fury on the too-little-too-late apologies of Mr. Trainor. I kind of wonder if there's a post #MeToo analysis to be made here. Larry treats his needs as greater than the needs of Val. I don't know if Mr. Kupperberg intended it, but he's given a very blunt super-powered metaphor for rape here.

The other thing that occurs to me over the last few issues is whether or not Morrison's original intention might have been for Val and Larry to merge into Rebis - I feel like it would be a natural extension of the two characters' (three characters'?) stories. But Val continues to have a presence as an agent in her own right, having spent more of her existence in the shadows than she did in the dubious light of the Doom Patrol. Which is a far more fitting story for a character who is definitely one of the better parts of the run. Hmmm. Perhaps it's time to track down all of Val's appearances....😏

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1798: Doom Patrol #12, September 1988

Gasp! Shock!

Niles is alive?!?

More on that later.

When I reviewed the New Doom Patrol's earliest adventures, I commented on the fact that, given that Arani is from India, the choice to colour her the same colour as the Caucasian characters was just insulting. This new series seemed to have corrected that fault, until this particular issue. Once again, Arani's skin has drained of its pigment, and she's white. I have to assume that it was a mistake somewhere along the line, as her coloration has been authentic since issue #1.

The Patrol defeats Garguax, Larry gains and then loses the Neg-Man powers. Wayne is boorish, and Rhea makes some funny-ish jokes.

This particular iteration of the team only lasts another 7 issues. Whether or not I will is another question.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1797: Doom Patrol #11, August 1988

One of the running subplots of the last few issues is Larry Trainor's desire to reclaim the negative energy powers from Val Vostock. And in today's issue, he crosses into a very morally dubious area when he enlists the aid of Reactron, and old villain from the 70s era patrol. Going so far as to bust Reactron out of jail, Trainor then has the villain siphon off the negative energy powers, placing them in his own body. I'd like to put it all down to Larry having a breakdown of some kind, because it's really not in keeping with his character. I don't know that he's acted in such a malicious way before or since.

And Garguax kills Cliff!!

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1796: Superman v.2 #20, August 1988

I have always liked the way in which Cliffe Steele concretizes one of Superman's mythical names, the Man of Steel. This is actually a pretty clever premise, involving the notion that a lot of the robotic individuals in the DCU must get their replacement parts from the same suppliers. A great story would be of a robotics expert who becomes a third-party supplier to the Metal Men or Cliff.

So a three-pronged battle amongst men of steel, Cliff being controlled by Metallo via their Luthorcorp-manufactured parts. Cool.

I love Superman, and I love the Doom Patrol, so you'd think this comic would tickle me pink, but it didn't. A recent interview I read called Byrne's reboot of Superman in the 80s toothless, and it really is. I actually see the Byrne years as a direct precursor of the Henry Cavill Superman films, and toothless is a good way to describe them, despite the ultraviolence at the end. I wonder if anyone's ever done a comparison of them?

Also, Scott Fisher heats Metallo up so much that his brain starts cooking inside his metal body. Fucking ow. Fisher has potential that has never, to my knowledge, been explored.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1795: Doom Patrol #10, July 1988

It is one of the physical laws of the DC Universe that every team or character has a team-up with Superman. It's one of the things I'd have liked to think about in my dissertation. The idea of the laws of physics in fictional universes, that is.

Now, the stupid thing is that that cover up there is literally the last panel of the comic. It gives away the whole thing. I get wanting to advertise Superman's guest appearance, but is it necessary to completely give away the story at the same time?

Ugh.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1794: Doom Patrol #9, June 1988

(I'm falling behind. Shocking, right?)

And the reason I'm falling behind, if I'm to be honest about it, is because these stories are just not great. I think that each of the characters have potential, and some perhaps even as members of the Doom Patrol, but there's something missing (or perhaps not missing) from the others that just makes them hard to read.

And, to be honest, of all the old villains to bring back, Garguax is a strange choice. Of the DP's early roster of recurring antagonists, he's easily the most mainstream - an alien overlord who destroyed his own planet, and now wants Earth. And for some reason his army is made of plastic, but I'm not certain why.

I will say, Erik Larsen's Garguax is fucking phenomenal. Gross and huge and every bit as disgusting as the original incarnation should have been, if not for the 60s.

But that aside, meh.

Now the bonus book is another thing entirely. Finally, finally, we get a perspective on Arani that, in some small ways, humanizes her. It is, of course, completely ignored in the story proper. It actually puts me in mind of early Vertigo, narrative and art, a much more human tale of the superhuman - the Patrol was always meant to cling to the edge.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1793: Doom Patrol #8, May 1988

Another portrait cover that could actually be classed as a shot from the interior action, though poor Scott is left behind as the team take on Shrapnel.

I quite like that Josh is very much about getting back into the lab in this issue. It speaks to the transition his character goes through in Morrison's run, from front line to home team, serving as the team's physician and avoiding the superheroics.

Shrapnel is an okay villain, but, as with much of the run, is simply too generically supervillain. That's just not what the Doom Patrol is about. They should be standing on the ramparts before chaos and insanity, holding the line. That's what they do better than any other team of powered beings in the DCU. Instead, they're fighting a guy who blows up and then puts himself back together. *sigh*

Yes, I know I said I was going to try to be nicer to this run this time around, but you've got to cut me a little slack. Sometimes it's just so bad.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1792: Doom Patrol #7, April 1988

And while the Patrol proper are in Central America, the kids cut loose. Well, actually, they don't really - they just decide to go out for a night on the town to explore their new city.

And then Shrapnel shows up.

Fighting ensues, Karma is a dick, and Arani yells at them eventually for....stumbling randomly across a supervillain and then trying to stop him from hurting people. She really is the worst.

We get some nice characterization of Scott Fisher here, whose power might actually make him the most suitable of the new DP recruits. He's forced to wear gloves constantly because his hands produces enough heat to melt through just about anything. There's kind of a cool Rogue-vibe going on there, and I really could have seen him carrying on into the next iteration of the team. What if his power was so strong, it could melt through time?

Maybe I need to bring him back....ooooo, sorry, spoiler. Don't worry. We'll get there.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1791: Doom Patrol and Suicide Squad Special #1,1988

  

Let's just talk about Erik Larsen just for a second. He's a pretty great artist, though definitely comes from a school of comics art of which I'm not 100% a fan. As I mentioned yesterday, at least in his earlier work, I just don't get the physics of breasts that he's going for. Check out Psi's chest (she's the one in the barely-there gold) - she looks like she's just got gold suction cups pulling on the flesh of her chest.

(Actually, in the first couple of shots of that character, I wondered if Larsen was going for a more masculine appearance. It could be that I spend an awful lot of time around drag queens, but Psi definitely looks like she might be bending gender a bit.)

Now, all this said, he's a master of motion in a comics panel. That cover is fairly crackling with energy, and none of the characters have that unfortunate cardboardness to them that can sometimes happen with comics. I've referenced an interview with Steve Lightle a couple of times in the last few days, and at one point, though praising Gary Martin's inks, he notes that at times the characters seemed somewhat flat. Larsen suffers no such problems, inked here by Bob Lewis.

But on to the story - it's pretty good, though perhaps way too political for a Doom Patrol story. It's also one of those stories that simply has not aged well. In fact, the argument could be made that it hasn't aged at all. It simply could not happen in any period other than the 80s, making it difficult for us to place it into sliding continuity. That said, of course, with all of the reboots since, it's hard to say whether this version of the team even existed in the fictional history. But before simply tossing it out as a continuity anachronism, we can also consider the comic as a time capsule of sorts. Rather than seeing it in the context of a part of the Patrol's history, we can look at it as indicative of the things that were informing the writers and artists working in the field at the time. The inclusion of Ronald Reagan, an actual president rather than a fictional one, cements this position. As I read through this run, there are moments like this, but this one stands out, more so than the absence of cell phones or Internet in what is, ostensibly, only a few years removed from current continuity.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1790: Doom Patrol #6, March 1988

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.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1789: Doom Patrol #5, February 1988

There are, I think, three different kinds of covers for comic books. The first is the teaser cover, one that shows a version of a scene from the story itself, in order to show perhaps an important, or expected, moment that will draw a reader in. The second is the portrait cover (see tomorrow's comic), a cover that depicts the major players of the comic in a pose that has little or nothing to do with the story content within. The third, of which today's cover is an example, is the metaphoric cover. At the end of yesterday's issue we are left with the possibility that the characters named on that tombstone cover all die in a plane crash. In most superhero comics we might scoff at this possibility, but Doom Patrol is a series famous for having killed off its main characters, so why couldn't it happen again?

Of course, it doesn't. Nor do Cliff and Larry actually meet in this issue. I don't actually think they've met up at all in the series. The metaphoric cover can work really nicely sometimes, but other times it can be misleading, used only for shock value rather than as commentary on the events within the issue. This cover balances precariously on that line. On the one hand, it could be an interesting cover to have if it weren't revealed on the very first page that everyone survives. Had that reveal been left for the end of the issue, this cover would become more and more unnerving as pages went by and the supposedly dead characters did not appear. On the other hand, the blood-splatter text, the lightning bolt behind the shadowed characters, all smacks of sensationalism. I appreciate the cover as a call-back to the Patrol's history, but it's misleading, and immediately loses its power as one opens the comic to five very-much-alive superheroes.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1788: Doom Patrol #4, January 1988

Welcome Rhea Jones - though, honestly, if I'd had the experience with the Patrol that she has in this issue, I'm not sure I would have stuck around. Literally everyone is shitty to her, intimating that she can't possibly understand the seriousness of the Doom Patrol. This, of course, being said to a young woman who watched her father disintegrated in the very accident that powered her, who was, a la Larry in the television series, used as a guinea pig by the government, and who then ran away and grew up as a carny. That sounds pretty serious to me.

I recently read an interview with penciller Steve Lightle in which he described his dissatisfaction with this assignment, which he leaves after tomorrow's issue. Apparently he had been promised story input that never came, and was promised a 6 month lead time that never happened. And he wasn't a fan of the characters that Kupperberg had created in the 70s and who were the core of the team in this series. I'm on his side here, especially with Arani, and to a lesser extent Val. Josh is okay, but he really is filling the Colossus role on the team, agonizing over every aspect of his life through interminable soliloquies. I think I mentioned that a couple of days ago too.

But I do like Rhea, and I think she could have become an interesting addition to the team, had the team gone in a different direction. It's almost like Mr. Kupperberg was trying to set up a Doom Patrol/Titans dynamic within the Doom Patrol itself. The problem with this introduction of new characters is that the old ones, Arani, Josh, and Val, never really got a chance to develop themselves, as the team never really had a series in which to develop. I wiser idea, I think, would have been to let the New Doom Patrol become a team and then perhaps introduce a new character, or bring back an old one, for variety's sake. But I don't really know these characters the way I know the old ones. They're defined by a single trait that is highlighted, but haven't been given the time to demonstrate more rounded personalities. And as an example of how that can be done, just check out Josh in Morrison's subsequent run, in which we see that he is in fact a doctor, and acts like one, even though he's also a superhero. Perhaps that's what it is - the characters are caricatures, and you can't tell a proper story without characters.

More to follow.