Doom Patrol #20 – Review

By: Keith Giffen (writer), Matthew Clark & Ron Randall (pencillers), Art Thibert & John Livesay (inkers), Scott Clark with Dave Beaty, Jose Luis, Scott McDaniel (guest artists), Guy Major (colorist)

The Story: Wanted—studio space for four (one miniaturized), open access to power grid, appliances included.  Must love freaks.

The Review: With Doom Patrol’s cancellation imminent, it’s worth reflecting on the series’ possibly dooming shortcomings.  Of course, it’s a niche title, with a peculiar cast of characters.  It leans more towards comedy than drama—always risky, as comic book humor tends to be very hit or miss, as D.P. frequently is.  But the title’s biggest weakness is it has always been more interested in its character interaction than actually giving those characters things to do.

This issue serves as a good example: it’s one of the strongest of the series, yet basically involves nothing more than the Patrol looking for a place to crash after getting kicked off their base.  The interest comes from how each member’s particular brand of social awkwardness rubs off on the DCU’s more mainstream characters.  The ultimate unfruitfulness of the team’s efforts serves as a good reminder of how out of place they are in their world, and with readers in general.

You just can’t get a handle on these characters.  They’re ostensibly heroes, but as Beast Boy and Congorilla astutely point out, most of the Patrol’s endeavors to this point have come across more terrorist than heroic.  They’re more a gang of losers who can’t catch a break; most of their misadventures involve them acting out of self-preservation rather than for a good cause.

Titans #23 – Review

By: Eddie Berganza (writer), Scott Clark and Adrian Syaf (pencillers), Dave Beatty and Vicente Cifuentes (inkers)

What’s Good: This is the first time I’ve seen Eddie Berganza in the writer’s chair. He’s been editing Blackest Night, Cry for Justice, Wednesday Comics, and others up to now, but I think he did a fine job as a writer. I don’t know if this is a new direction for him or if he’s just pinch-hitting while they find a replacement for the excellent J.T. Krul who has taken over as writer of Green Arrow. Berganza takes us through the perspectives of three characters (Dick Grayson (now Batman), Wally West (now the third Flash) and Donna Troy) as they reminisce about their early adventures in the 1960 and how Speedy (now maimed and fighting for his life under medical care) touched their lives. Berganza has skillfully made all the narrators unreliable, because although they remember the same events, their individual regrets and bitterness tinge the narrative. It’s very hard to write a character that is fooling themselves or not seeing the big picture and Berganza did a good job. There’s a lot more bitterness and regret in the Titans’ history than I knew about. But, all this would be nothing if Berganza couldn’t tie this to the present and the struggles of now. Berganza does this by showing Dick, Wally and Donna struggling in their new roles (especially Dick) as some of the heavy-hitters in the DCU. Lastly, I really like how Berganza made Speedy/Red Arrow both a sympathetic and unsympathetic by showing his errors and his core humanity as a father, with the added tension that he still doesn’t know his daughter is dead. All in all, Berganza has shown that he is every bit the character writer that Krul is.

Clark, Syaf, Beatty and Cifuentes did some fine work too on the art chores. They separated the past from the present with the shadows and tones of the inking. The scenes set in the past had almost no inking on the characters, even in the dark, which made the scenes effectively moody and even a bit ghostly, which underscored the unreliability of some of the narrators.