Doom Patrol #22 – Review

By: Keith Giffen (writer), Ron Randall (penciller), Art Thibert (inker), Guy Major (colorist)

The Story: The Doom Patrol takes back their base, D-Day style!

The Review: Having been ignored, maligned, and mistreated not only in the DCU, but also in the real world of comics readers, it’s fitting the Doom Patrol would use their final issue to make one last, desperate attempt to gain some self-respect.  Getting kicked out of their home and turned into house-crashers (with a reputation for terrorism) overnight stung, and they’re determined to sting back for once.

That said, other than to give them a splashy mission for their last hours in print, the reasons for them retaking Oolong Island aren’t really there.  Up until their forced departure, they spent plenty of issues bemoaning how Oolong had gone to the dogs, the crazies they had to deal with regularly, and the country’s shady political alignment.  Maybe they plan to reform the place on their own terms (and recover their heroic status in so doing), but we’ll never get to see that.

We also haven’t seen enough of how Mr. Somebody (in the body of Veronica Cale)’s handled things in their absence.  I mean, how much worse can an unscrupulous, extradimensional entity run a corrupt island of mad scientists and their illegal experiments anyway?  Even by this issue, Mr. Somebody hasn’t managed to earn the respect of Oolong’s security head yet—it doesn’t look like he’s in any danger of taking over the world any time soon, as he boasts to General Immortus.

Mostly, you get a lot of action in this title’s series finale, though only parts of it offer much excitement: Cliff diving into Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man’s head and pulling a root to short him out is pretty good times).  But by and large, the blandness of the battle reminds you what little firepower the Patrol really has.  If not for Danny the Island’s (a big promotion from his “the Street” days) interference, the Patrol probably would never have pulled this off.

Doom Patrol #21 – Review

By: Keith Giffen (writer), Matthew Clark & Ron Randall (pencillers), Art Thibert (inker), Guy Major (colorist)

The Story: Robotman reflects on the many incarnations—literally, it turns out—of the Doom Patrol.

The Review: With cancellation imminent and the last two issues to go, it’s no wonder Giffen wants to take the opportunity to wax nostalgic about the Doom Patrol’s history.  It’s very smart of him to write this retrospective in the penultimate issue rather than the final one.  The Patrol, after all, is not a team of thinkers.  For them, the most fitting way to go out is to go with a bang, which leaves this issue as the calm before the storm.

This issue also acts as a much-needed character piece on Cliff, who’s always been the most centered member and as such the one you have the least handle on.  Rita’s the self-loathing one and Larry’s the smart-alec, but as it turns out, Cliff has more internal conflict than perhaps any of us believed.  His oft-repeated phrase says everything about why he’s the Patrol’s acting leader: “What’s important here?”  Giffen cleverly uses this mantra to analyze Cliff’s loyalty to the team.

Since the Patrol got revamped by Geoff Johns after Infinite Crisis, and even more so under Giffen’s work on this ongoing, the team has steadily lost more and more of their humanity.  Rita went from your usual size-changer to a protoplasmic shapeshifter; there’s no telling what’s underneath Larry’s bandages; and now Cliff reveals he’s almost purely robot—even Cyborg has more organics than that.

Yet despite losing the things that makes them biologically human, the Patrol remains the most human of all the superhero teams because they are also the most fallible.  They have no agenda other than to try to make the best of the lot life has given them, and they suffer constantly from feelings of insecurity and inferiority, especially compared to their more beloved peers.  They’re the X-Men of the DCU—the heroes most likely to be called freaks and criminals.  As Cliff realizes, they need each other because they only have each other; no one else can really relate.

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.

Doom Patrol #19 – Review

By: Keith Giffen (writer), Matthew Clark & Ron Randall (pencillers), Art Thibert & Sean Parsons (inkers), Guy Major (colorist)

The Story: A mercenary group of ne’er-do-wells facing off a team of super-freaks on the beautiful shores of Oolong Island as a volcano explodes?  Can someone say reality show?

The Review: Given the outcast nature of the Doom Patrol, it’s no wonder team-ups are a rarity for them.  On one side, they’re pretty much outmatched in number and power by almost every other team in the DCU—even the Outsiders.  On the other side, their specific dynamic doesn’t mesh well with conventional superheroes.  The Patrol serves best when left to their own devices, and not mixed up with characters that call attention to the small scale of their doings.

The one exception may be the Secret Six, who are nearly as weird and antisocial as their Oolong opponents in this issue.  Besides creator of the Secret Six, Gail Simone, one of the few writers capable of delivering the special chemistry of the Six is probably Giffen.  He doesn’t have the subtlety of Simone, being broader and leaning more toward slapstick, but he gets in a pretty good joke here and there (upon being beset by the Science Squad, Scandal remarks, “I think we’re about to be attacked by the chess club.”).

Still, despite having few dull moments between the two teams’ battle royale, some noticeable flaws keep the story from achieving the quality it should have, given the promising premise.  Being a crossover plot, if you happen to not be a Secret Six reader (though, on that note, why wouldn’t you be—it’s only totally awesome), you’d be hard-pressed to get exactly what’s happening here.

And if you did read the first part of the story, you’ll notice how truncated that story seems in this issue.  After all, S.M.A.S.H., the Six’s current employers, basically come to annex Oolong Island as their own, then end up fleeing with their tails between their legs in the course of four pages.  It just feels like the story never gets to build up before it winds down.  There’s little hope the next issue of Secret Six will continue the story, as the Six aren’t likely to work again with people who abandon them to the mercy of their enemies.

Detective Comics #863 – Review

by Greg Rucka (writer), Jock & Scott Kolins (art), David Baron (colors), and Todd Klein (letters)

The Story: Kate hunts down Cutter in an effort to save her cousin Bette.

What’s Good: Much like the rest of the “Cutter” arc, this issue is all about mood and atmosphere.  Everything feels dark, gritty, and generally unpleasant.  It’s an effective mixture of noir and horror that is both brooding and slick.  Everything feels smooth and modern, yet definitely nasty.   The book’s tone is definitely heavy and the atmosphere is thick.  As an experience, this issue is a job well done.

A lot of this has to do with the artwork, which is generally well-done by Jock and Kolins, though a lot of this success is owed to David Baron’s colors.  The dichotomy of blue and red is still flawlessly employed and only aids that sense of moody tension.  Both sides feel menacing, but distinct.  The layouts are also brilliant, echoing this color opposition.  There are a couple of times that opposite pages are divided between Batman and Batwoman, with images of both down the centre.  It’s really fun stuff and works well with what Baron is doing.  It also gives Rucka’s narrative structure some real life, realizing it in a very literal way.

The last scene of the book also sets up Batwoman’s future quite nicely.  The dialogue sort of encompasses much of what Rucka has been trying to get across regarding the character. Furthermore, this issue’s cliffhanger will have you salivating for what Rucka has ongoing.

Doom Patrol #1 – Review

By Keith Giffen (writer), Matthew Clark (artist), Livesay (inker), Guy Major (colorist)

So is everything old new again, or is everything new old again?  Either way, Doom Patrol is back, and nothing will ever be the same.  Or maybe everything will stay the same.  I don’t know.  I’ll admit that I’m a bit confused as to why DC chose to reactivate this title, but you need to understand that I first read Doom Patrol during Grant Morrison’s run on the title and thought he had done a stellar job telling their story and resolving it.  Then again, with all of the earth-shattering, continuity-raping big event stories DC’s been birthing over the years, maybe Morrison’s Doom Patrol continuity has been erased and rewritten and become obsolete.

In this latest iteration, Keith Giffen uses the traditional team roster, consisting of Elasti-Woman, Negative Man, Robot Man, and team leader Niles Caulder.  There were a few more in there, but they were all as disposable as the guys in Star Trek who wear the red shirts and die as soon as they touch down on that alien planet.  The issue opens with the team already in the middle of a case involving purple, leech-faced humanoids that ends too quickly before it’s ever fully explained.  The other half of the story sees the Doom Patrol returning to Oolong Island, a sovereign, tropical island nation that serves as their new headquarters.  Here amidst the palm trees, the team unwinds and we come to better understand them through the most annoying new character of 2009: Father Leslie, the team’s de facto therapist who seems to have been dumped into the story by Giffen solely for the purpose of trying to make them talk about their feelings.  The pathos that Leslie pushes on each member was incredibly irritating, and my biggest fear is that we’re only going to see more of this tool as the title progresses.

Fortunately, Matthew Clark turns in some solid art, and if there’s any reason to continue reading this, it’s to see more of what he can do.  On a final note, this is the first issue of DC’s new pricing plan that I’ve picked up, and my first impression is that this can really work.  Basically, even though this is Doom Patrol #1, you’re paying $3.99 for 20 pages of Doom Patrol (2 pages less than a typical 22 page comic retailing for $2.99) and 10 pages of a second feature story.  This issue featyred the Metal Men as the backup, which I thought was a ridiculous waste of time as I hate everything about them, but I nonetheless can appreciate that DC is at least offering me more content to justify their price, which is a hell of a lot more than I can say for Marvel.  Based on this first issue, I don’t think I’ll stick around to pick up the second, but I may come back to try the graphic novel if and when it’s released.  Buy at your own risk.

Grade:  D

-Tony Rakittke