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 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.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1787: Doom Patrol #3, December 1987

The Kalki storyline comes to an end today, and I'm so very glad - not because it wasn't good, but because it was actually only 3 issues. I rail at the current (for the last 15 years or so) vogue to have 6-issue initial story arcs. Asking a consumer to commit to half a year on an untested title is a bit much, I think. But if you can reel readers in in half that time, or even in a single issue (a la Planetary), then that's so much the better.

The initial story of this series is, of course, used to bring the characters, if not the team, back together, and serves its purpose nicely. We also get a bit more background on Arani and Niles, an aspect of the Patrol's history that to this day sits a bit oddly. Actually, it's very hard to say how much of the narrative of this series is actually still considered canonical to the current Young Animal series, though going with my assertion yesterday that the DP are actually cross-retcon aware puts that particular question to bed. It seems to me in this story that Mr. Kupperberg is trying to assuage some of the problems he may have inadvertently introduced by inserting the Caulder marriage into the DP's history, not least of which is Niles' infatuation with Madame Rouge in the original series. Perhaps there's some underlying bigamist theory in here :D.

I think that my favourite moment of this comic was the introduction of Rhea Jones, the Lodestone. As with Dorothy Spinner, who shows up in about 10 issues, Rhea only really blossoms after Morrison takes over, though she's incapacitated and in a coma for a good portion of that blossoming. I'm also ecstatic to see her comatose in the new series, as this perhaps (perhaps) opens up the possibility of the Judge Rock and a interstellar war for an upcoming season. I really hope we see more of this older version of the Patrol. It's a lovely nod to an era of the comic that gets very little attention.

In that vein, I just checked to see which runs of the series have actually been collected and may be available to any who are interested. Everything except for Rachel Pollack's and John Arcudi's runs have been collected in some form, though the end of Keith Giffen's run is also absent from the trades. You also sort of need the 52 aftermath series The Four Horsemen to get what's going on in Giffen's run. It's a shame that the end of the second volume, and Arcudi's third volume, are not reprinted, as they're very weird, definitely more in keeping with the tone of the original, and Morrison, runs.

Nice to get back to writing, especially about the Doom Patrol.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1786: Doom Patrol #2, November 1987

The first creepy storyline is off to a pretty good start, with the slowly-coalescing Patrol investigating a weird cult in the Caribbean - and, as the cover attests, Cliff seems to get devoured by a dude who is a gateway to the Lovecraftian Old Ones. It's really pretty cool. As I say, I'm trying to approach this run more evenly, and it's certainly delivering a weird, almost-horror vibe in the first two issues.

Some of the dialogue is a bit hard to swallow. This is a similar era of comics to the Claremont/Silvestri X-Men, with it's endless soliloquies and internal monologues, and Paul Kupperberg is tapping into a bit of that. There was also far too much recap at the beginning for a second issue. If someone is reading the second one, chances are they read the first one and it's pretty fresh in their heads. But as he's blasting away at bad guys, Tempest has to give us a complete play-by-play of the previous issue. Mr. Kupperberg has said himself that he was still learning the art of writing comics, and there's definitely moments in this issue that that's apparent.

It's still the Doom Patrol, so I'm still enjoying it, but it's a bit too bright, I think. This story would be a lot more creepy and Patrol-esque if it's palette were a little darker.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1785: Doom Patrol #1, October 1987

That's the most action poor Rita Farr gets in a couple of decades, I think. From the original Patrol's last stand in 1968 to John Byrne`s reboot in 2008 (?), Rita was the ghost that haunted the Doom Patrol, much like Barry Allen's spectre in Mark Waid's The Flash.

Beyond that, the issue is actually much better than I remember. The characters are nicely delineated, we`re given a sense that time has actually passed since the last time we saw the team together, and they bicker all the time. The Doom Patrol are actually one of the few DCU teams in which we actually see the passage of time - my son and I have a theory that, due to their high weirdness, they`re actually aware of all of the various iterations of the universe through which they've passed. But that's a longer blog post.

While I do appreciate the attention to Arani's complexion that we finally get to see in this series, I still really hate her. It's no wonder to me that she's written off as insane by Morrison, and, indeed, by the writers of the television series. Arani's singular focus made her even more misanthropic than Niles, which is not an easy feat.

Despite the large action scene above, few of these characters appear in the issue, and the most action is from government agents who are, for mysterious reasons, pursuing the members of the Doom Patrol, Arani most especially. She manages to reel both Cliff and Josh back into action, just in time for Kalki, a new villain, to appear. Just what secrets he holds we'll have to see tomorrow.

I'm going to try to be kinder to this run this time around. Without it, we wouldn't have the spectacular run that follows it, but more importantly it was a labour of love for many of the people involved in its creation.

"You stubborn fool! Your Chief lives, and I have proof!"