Ambush Bug doesn’t want you to read this
Doom Patrol means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. That’s the problem. DC has gone back to the well again and again with a number of their properties trying to find the alchemy that creates success. Hawkman comes to mind, Outsiders as well. Each new take leaves behind continuity and character baggage and a number of fans (never enough to actually support an ongoing series) that are stubborn about loving their favorite version and their favorite version alone. Doom Patrol‘s most recent reboot, in 2009, was spearheaded by Keith Giffen and Matthew Clark. It lasted #22 issues before being canceled to make room for Flashpoint Tie-Ins and the 52 DC Titles. It, like every single Doom Patrol iteration before it, was an off-beat title written with a lot of love and affection. It was also wildly ambitious both in aim and scope. It attempted to be new-reader friendly, to contain done-in-one storylines, to create new characters, villains, and concepts, yet it tried (and to great lengths succeeded on a critical level) to manage all that while holding true to the most perilous potential element a reboot can possibly have: the notion that everything from every other take “counts.”
Doom Patrol was created by Arnold Drake and a few co-collaborators, first appearing in 1963’s My Greatest Adventure #80. Their early stories are amongst my favorite of the era, mixing 60s DC’s weird sci-fi adventures with 60s Marvel’s strong emphasis on well-defined, tortured characters. The run was twenty years before its time and ended, definitively, with the team allowing themselves to be destroyed to save the residents of a small town. Years later, the property was revived by Paul Kupperberg with a mostly new team, anchored, as always by the just-revived Robotman.
This version of Doom Patrol appeared in various guest spots around the DCU, before finally getting an ongoing title in 1987. It was standard superhero fare of the mid-1980s DC style, though perhaps without some of the creative momentum of other titles that debuted at around the same time (like Suicide Squad).
At this point things weren’t too complicated. There were two sets of related characters, some terribly interesting rogues (including the Brian and Monsieur Mallah, two of DC’s most conceptually interesting), and the small problem of a few dead characters. Here is where things got surreal. Issue #19 of Doom Patrol vol. 2 brought with it a new writer, Grant Morrison, and the DCU would never be the same.
Within one story arc, he had deconstructed the team. Shortly thereafter, he began to deconstruct reality itself, taking weird adventures to a entirely new level. He unleashed concepts like a painting that ate Paris, Danny, a living street, and mixed dadaism and superheroes into a strange, brilliant cacophony. Rachel Pollack took over from Morrison with issue #64, Doom Patrol now rebranded as the first Vertigo title and drifting further into weirdness and away from the rest of the DCU, so far into unexplored territory that it would be very hard to find something to pull back.
After Doom Patrol v2 was canceled in 1995, the characters remained relatively dormant. In 2001, John Arcudi rebooted the book with Doom Patrol vol 3, reclaiming the property from the other side of Vertigo wall. It was an edgy book with a lot of character but had an upward road to climb. Arcudi had to figure out how to build off what had come before but integrate the weirdness with the rest of the DCU. He swept most of it under the rug, eliminating the majority of the previous team in one fell swoop and resetting the one cast member retained from vol. 2, Robotman, to a position without much continuity baggage.
There were a few callbacks here and there, and one central plot device in the form of Dorothy, a strange Morrison character who could create imaginary beings. However, much like Kupperberg’s run, it was mostly a set of new characters. Doom Patrol vol. 3 lasted just a few more issues than Paul’s vol. 2, making it til #22 before getting canceled.
Doom Patrol vol. 4 was John Byrne’s 2004 attempt to take things back to basics. The team was haphazardly restored to their original incarnation, with everything from vol. 2 on simply jettisoned to make way for this retro-reboot. Instead of attempting to make things fit, Byrne tried to highlight the elements which made the characters work in the first place, supplementing the originals with just a few new members. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t work, and after 18 issues, the book was cancelled again. Afterwards, the original members remained alive but in a more continuity integrated form. They were reset within the sphere of the Teen Titans by Geoff Johns, with a few former Titans added to the team. He used the reality-punching explanation from Infinite Crisis
to explain the incongruities away. This iteration of the team seemed primed for a new spin-off title that simply never came.
All of this brings us to Keith Giffen. He had been trying desperately to work on Doom Patrol for years as the weird adventures motif fit his own creative sensibilities like a glove. When he finally got his chance, he ran with it, respecting the innovation and originality of the Drake and Morrison runs while drawing upon everything that had come before, everything. Even Byrne‘s run, which was as far from his own mindset as possible, got more than just a nod and a wink.
Giffen‘s character choices were as inclusive as possible. He utilized the three classic members, Elasti-Woman, Negative Man, and Robotman, along with the Chief as the driving plot force, though he kept much of Morrison’s darker characterization of him. Each of these characters remembered what came before and had to cope with it as the driving force of their ongoing character development. Solo issues were provided throughout the run to flesh the main three out and to straighten out their histories. The two titans Johns introduced to the group, Bumblebee and Vox, served as part of the supporting cast.
Two of Byrne‘s new additions, Grunt and Nudge, started out as team members but were quickly removed. Within the first ten issues, Giffen reintroduced Morrison‘s Crazy Jane and a revamped version of Danny the Street. During the Blackest Night tie-in, the book’s high point in sales, he utilized three of the Kupperberg members, Tempest, Celsius, and Negative Woman, as Black Lanterns. Even old antagonists, such as the Animal-Mineral Man, or Thayer Jost, the main financial backer of the team during Arcudi’s run were utilized in offbeat, original ways.
These could have been gimmicky inclusions or just lip service but Giffen managed to derive real story value from Doom Patrol’s past. Nudge’s shocking death in issue one set the twisted tone for the entire book. Bumblebee, trapped in her smaller form, was used to heighten the “science freaks” comaradarie of the book, especially in giving Elasti-Woman a sounding board.
The Kupperberg era Black Lanterns highlighted the tragic history of the Doom Patrol and the dark, manipulative nature of the Chief. Everything that came before was used as a building block in deriving the current personalities of the central three characters; it was the ultimate expression of continuity being used as a tool and not a hindrance.
Giffen did not just build upon what came before. He made sure to introduce new or revamped villains, innovative storytelling techniques, and fresh scenarios. He was constantly including unique elements to bounce off the cast’s personalities. Doom Patrol were headquartered on 52’s mad scientist haven, Oolong Island. The island was ruled by Veronica Cale, Greg Rucka’s Wonder Woman antithesis, and an excellent foil for the Chief. Shadowy forces sent Porcelin Doll, a visually interesting new villain who could break herself apart with deadly results, to assault the island.
Ambush Bug, Giffen’s fourth-wall breaking nuisance, settled in Danny (now a hut, not a street) as a supporting player. From a storytelling perspective, much of the exposition and narration came in the form of journals, logs, and diaries, creating a noticeably dense read in an era of disposable 5-minute comics.
It was a breathtaking balancing act, a series of creative decisions that seemed as weird and off-beat as the characters of Doom Patrol. The end result was a reboot that not only managed to respect what came before, but somehow managed to integrate literally surreal stories with both the property’s own history and the DCU as a whole. A crossover with
Gail Simone’s Secret Six felt as organic and natural as the issues focusing solely on Doom Patrol characters. Unfortunately, it ultimately didn’t matter. While a definite, rooted, part of the DCU, it was a niche title off to the side. Save for the Blackest Night tie-in, it was considered unimportant to the casual fan.There were no A-List characters in the cast, no can’t miss continuity moments. In 2011, being masterful alone just doesn”t cut it.
Doom Patrol was cancelled with issue #22 and is not being restarted as part of the new DC 52. All of the story threads humorously ended in a sudden moment of eye-popping realization as Ambush Bug stepped forth and declared the title canceled, prompting the villains to shrug and go home. It was a fitting, off-the-wall ending to an excellent, off-the wall comic book. Sales should never be the sole indicator of success.
Keith Giffen managed the impossible. He gathered up the maddening threads of Doom Patrol‘s past and tied them together with new ideas and concepts, creating a cohesive, productive, coherent whole, a property that can be taken forward into new comics for years to come.