It was strange, but also a bit dull Premiani’s storytelling was competent, but a little stiff, and his design sense didn’t seem particularly well-suited to either super-heroes or strangeness. Unusual, even for Silver Age DC, to see a villain group like the Brotherhood led by creatures such as The Brain and Monsieur Mallah - a disembodied brain and a super-intelligent gorilla.īut the whole thing was played straight, with minimal humour or self-awareness. It was unusual to see a hero like Robotman pull one of his own limbs to use as a club. The tonal distinction was real, but subtle if you didn’t know comics. But these things are relative the Patrol was still mostly a traditional super-team, fighting villains like the undying General Immortus, or groups like The Brotherhood of Evil. It’s well-regarded by many for writer Arnold Drake’s tonally odd scripts, and especially for artist Bruno Premiani’s well-rendered strangeness. I think the original Doom Patrol run fits the mold. Besides the similarity to the X-Men, the group vaguely resembled another Marvel team: the scientist leader, the orange-hued strongman (Robotman), the flying energy-controller (Negative Man), the woman who could disappear (by shrinking out of sight).ĭC books tended to be less frenetic than Marvel in the Silver Age, better plotted, more straight-faced, but goofier, and with less memorable characters.
The Patrol consisted of the Chief, the aforementioned scientific genius Cliff Steele, AKA Robotman, whose brain had been transplanted into a metal body following a terrible accident Negative Man, or Larry Trainor, a pilot wrapped in bandages who controlled a strange black ‘negative spirit’ and Elasti-Girl, Rita Farr, who could increase or decrease her size tremendously. The two groups were famously similar: both were led by wheelchair-bound geniuses, and more significantly, both were a little stranger, a little darker, than other supergroups. The Doom Patrol was a group of characters created for DC Comics in the early 60s, as the Silver Age of comics was getting underway their first appearance, in My Greatest Adventure #80, hit the stands just before the first issue of Marvel’s X-Men. And for those who may not know the comic, explaining what it came out of may help to explain what it is itself. But describing the context of the thing helps to throw into relief the accomplishment of the work. Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol needs no context to be enjoyed it is its own strange, powerful creature.
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