Doom Patrol (version five) Book Two: Brotherhood (#7-13)

"We're still here, so I guess we won.  And a crappy time was had by all" - Cliff

This is the second and final volume collecting issues from Keith Giffen's run on Doom Patrol. Despite what wikipedia has to say, sadly the third and final volume has been avaliable for pre-order only on Amazon since 2011 so I'm guessing the likelihood of it being released is zero now.  Luckily this volume does end on the completion of an arc, so it we aren't left hanging too much and I have enjoyed these two volumes enough to hunt down the rest of the run as single issues on eBay at some point. Anyway, we last left the Patrol in the middle of the DCU wide crossover Blackest Night/Brightest Day.  Elasti-woman, Negative Man and Robotman or Rita Farr, Larry Trainor and Cliff Steel as they are more commonly known had been zapped away from their base on Oolong Island fighting zombie versions of their ex-teammates, while their crippled mentor/leader Niles Caulder was left with his fate uncertain.  If you want to know how the crossover resolved itself, well, the good guys won.  What a surprise.  You can tell Giffen's wasn't totally enthralled by having to incorporate the Patrol into this crossover as he hurries through the resolution and quickly moves onto quirkier stuff. There's a real feeling that with the Patrol reintroduced, a crossover dealt with and all their history back in DCU continuity job done, Giffen finally gets to write the Patrol exactly how he wants to and this volume is very much more recognisably his work.

The story begins with a man called Thayer Jost interviewing Amanda Beckett, she of the human/botflies from volume one.   He wants to givce her a place on his new superteam we later find out he calls the "Front Men".   He is a multi-bilionaire who is "covetus of the metahuman condition" as Amanda put it.   Although later it becomes clear Thayer is being possessed by someone with his own agenda.

Back with Niles Caulder, he is recovering in hospital and Father Leslie tries to talk to him about the loss of his legs, which Caulder doesn't seem to concerned about.  Then Father Leslie is called to the isolation ward as their has been an "incident".  The action then cuts to Dayton Manor, a former Doom Patrol base, and a character called Oberon a member of Mister Miracle's cast who has started his own removal firm for metahuman resources.  They are collecting stuff to go to Oolong Island, including a Portal that appears to be on the fritz.

Crazy Jane

Back at Oolong we are introduced to the "incident", it's Kay "Crazy Jane" Challis.  She is a superhuman who was an abuse survivor, she developed sixty-four personalities to help cope with that abuse and all of them have superpowers.  She was introduced during Grant Morrison's run and became a very popular character, as well as having a lovely, tender friendship with Cliff, the only "man" not a sexual threat to her.

Elsewhere a man called Dr. Larsen is holed up in a diner, he is also known as Animal-Vegetable-Mineral man and after he transforms and breaks out, a strange, unspeaking porcelain doll like woman hands him a phone with Jost on the other end, who says if he doesn't cooperate life will become more difficult for him.  Finally we find the Doom Patrol returned from fighting the Black Lanterns, they share a moment of camaraderie then it's back to Oolong Island for them.

A rare moment of relaxation for Cliff.

Later Cliff is briefly recounting what happened to a woman called Dusty.  He says seeing his old body in action finally helped him come to terms with his condition:

Cliff: " I don't want it no more Dusty gal. I mean I want it, but..."

Dusty: "It's not you anymore?"

Cliff: "Yeah something like that."

At Oolong's airport, Oberon's delivery is being held up by the military. Suddenly there is an explosion from the plane. Larry and Cliff run to the scene, Rita does the same even though she was just on the verge of confronting Steve.  Back with Crazy Jane, she hands Father Leslie a brick and tells him "if you build it, he will come."  The brick is all that's left of Danny the Street, another character from Grant Morrison's run, he's a sentient transvestite street who travels about inserting himself into the streetplans of cities, and was where Crazy Jane went to live when she left the Doom Patrol.

Alien land grabbers.

At the airport, two blue aliens have emerged from the portal, which was a method of travelling to Danny given to the Patrol.  One of them says, "We are short one brick."  The two beings then discuss what's going on in heavily bureacratic speech and a hovering purple head appear and tells them that this area has been appropriated and all residents must vacate.  Then a giant purple dog thing appears to go looking for the brick.

Rita and Larry stay at the airport to deal with the aliens there while Ciff chases the dog alien to the hospital fighting it as they go.  When they reach the hospital, Cliff notes Father Leslie has a brick and upon the brick appear the words:

Danny The Brick: "I have always relied upon the kindness of strangers."

Cliff grab's Danny and races off, still followed by the dog alien.  At the airport Rita and Larry hold off the blue aliens.  Larry manifests a new ability where he becomes Negative Man but retains his humanoid shape and does some punching. More aliens arrive through the portal. Cliff leads the dog alien back to the airport where he finally manages to take it out. 

Danny, partially resurrected.

The aliens demand he surrender the brick, they appear to be predatory real estate agents who take areas by force before selling them on. "Pan dimenisional gentrifiers" Crazy Jane calls them. The Patrol and the aliens continue to fight, amusingly Larry drops the brick down the front of Rita's top to keep it safe.  The aliens then pause their attack and when Rita retrieves the brick from her top she is freaked out when it greets her by name.  Crazy Jane then phones Ciff and after they talk, Cliff hurls Danny back to her, she tosses it into the air where she is by the beach and it transforms into Danny The Bungalow.

The aliens decide the loss of profit in having to fight for the brick and take over the Earth is not worth it and they depart through the portal, which the Doom Patrol go to destroy.  Father Leslie asks Crazy Jane who was going to come, now Danny is a bungalow.  Crazy Jane say's she forgot to ask, but very soon Ambush Bug turns up.  He is a Keith Giffen created character with some history with the Patrol and most well known for his fourth wall breaking antics.  He becomes Danny's new resident.

Ambush Bug arrives.

Cliff and Jane do some catching up.  Jane is going to stay on Oolong Island for the time being now Danny is just a bungalow. Niles Caulder is having an argument with the President of Oolong Island who says the German government want to extradite Mr. Black Hole, which Caulder says would be "unwise" as they have an agreement.

The action then cuts to Thayer Jost, the china doll woman has teleported to Oolong Island.  Dr. Larsen (Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man) is with him and Thayer wants him to kill the Titan Gar Logan, who is Rita Farr's adoptive son.  The china doll woman appears at the Doom Patrol base and attacks Caulder.  Mr. Black Hole protects him with a forcefield.  She manages to get inside Cliff so Larry zaps them both.  She keeps reconstituting herself, so Larry enacts a plan.  He zaps her again and then Rita dumps a pile of soil and rubble on her to keep her from putting herself back together. 

Scary doll woman.

While they ponder what the woman wants, Rita vanishes. Jost calls Larsen saying he doesn't need to target Logan anymore.  Then a woman in a mask called Toy appears and says she is sorry for being late.  Jost says on the contrary, she "couldn't have arrived at a better time" and we see Rita inside Jost's base fighting off scientists.

Later she is subdued, while china doll woman is also in captivity.  She is being held by the Oolong Island scientists, much to the annoyance of Niles Caulder, who wanted him for his own experiments. Jost gives a press conference blaming the Doom Patrol for an unprovoked attack and also complicity with all the deaths in Germany, as well as condemning meta-humans as a whole for their "self righteous arrogance."  Meanwhile Larry and Cliff decide to rescue Rita now they know where she is. They grab Ambush Bug who has the ability to teleport himself and other and off they go.

The search for Rita.

At Jost's headquarters, Dr. Beckett and Dr. Larsen are in costume, Jost say's his "Front Men" will come out of fighting the Doom Patrol well when they arrive to take back Rita. We then get a montage of places Cliff, Larry and Ambush Bug are teleporting to.  Cliff finally asks why haven't they just teleported to Jost's home site.

Ambush Bug: "I was saving that for last."

Cliff: "Saving?! Last?!"

Ambush Bug: "It's always the last place you look."

Before Cliff can lamp him, Ambush Bug zaps them to the toilets in Jost's headquarters and immediately they get into a fight with Dr. Larsen. Larry finds Rita, but she's covered in Dr. Beckett's botfly people and Beckett says if they don't stop fighting the botflies will strip Rita to the bone.  Back with Jost he has Toy restrained in a chair, and goes on a two page rant about becoming a "somebody" after being a "nobody".  Then he crushes Toy's head and reveals who he really is, once Mr. Nobody, leader of the Brotherhood of Dada (antagonists during Grant Morrison's run), now Mr. Somebody in control of Thayer Jost's body and financial empire.

Mister Somebody reveals himself.

Ambush Bug the zaps back to Oolong Island and grabs china doll woman and returns her to Jost's headquarters where she is traded for Rita. The Doom Patrol have figured out "Jost" isn't who he says he is, so Mr. Somebody reveals himself to them.  Then suddenly the Doom Patrol are punched out of the building by Dr. Larsen and Dr. Beckett. Rita and Dr. Larsen battle at huge size while Larry and Cliff take on Dr. Beckett and her minions.

Mr. Somebody starts editing the fight footage he's receiving from tiny airbourne cameras in the area to make his Front Men look good.  Larry continues fighting Beckett, while Cliff takes on the china doll woman.  Suddenly Larsen slices into Rita revealing not skin and bone, but that she's made up of pink goo.

FIGHT!

Back on Oolong Island, Caulder is reviewing the footage of the battle which is indeed making the Patrol look bad.  "Thayer" contacts him and tells him that each of his Front Men's uniforms is primied to kill the wearer in a manner that will make it look like the Doom Patrol did it, if he does not call the Patrol off.  Their usefulness to him is at an end.  So the Doom Patrol do indeed run off and come back to Oolong Island.  Cliff wants them to talk things out when they get home, not all retire to their seperate corners.

Cliff: "We just got played big time.  Again!  We got played. Us."

Rita: "If you hadn't come after me..."

Cliff: "What?  The world'd still love us? Rita, the world never loved us."

They share a bonding moment, while Caulder reviews the footage of the Patrol leaving the battle and Jost's call for meta-human regulation.

The final chapter in the book spotlights Rita and gives us the background on how she became made of goo.  When she died, Caulder combed the area she was blown up at (the first time the original run of the Doom Patrol ended) and found a piece of her skull.  It was enough to pull DNA from and Caulder improvised a synthetic protoplasm to bond with the DNA and grew her from scratch.  Rita bitterly tells her friend Karen that Caulder wanted a more "durable" model Rita.

Rita: "He brought me back to life as a mass of sentinet protoplasm.  Silly putty with a sense of purpose."

Bad mornings for Rita. Squick.

This is an interesting turn of events as the reason Grant Morrison gave for not resurrecting Rita for his run on the book was that she was too normal for a team made up of freaks.  Now she's as freakish as the rest of them.  When she sleeps her sense of self receedes and she wakes up as a blobby thing and has to look at photos of herself to fine-tune her appearence.

Karen asks if Steve knows, and Rita says how could he not.  His mental image of her is crystal clear while he took her out for test drives in her sleep.  Rita then goes to Steve to confront him over the mental stalking, Cliff and Larry discuss her and how much they care for her.  Larry says she's the only reason he came back to the Patrol.

Steve returns home to find Rita waiting.  We get a short flashback covering how Rita mark one got her powers which was exposure to strange gas during fliming of a movie she was starring in.  Back with Steve she tells him that he has to stop getting in her head.  He goes to get her a drink and says he couldn't help it and only wanted her to be happy, but he'll stop.  Then Rita realises he knew she wanted a drink without asking and this sends her into a rage, she grows huge and grabs him and on that image the book ends.

Alas for the books this was the end.

This version of the Doom Patrol was, through no fault of it's own, well... Doomed.  Even if it hadn't been cancelled to make space for the slew of miniseries tying into the 2011 crossover series Flashpoint, it would have died a few months later when The New 52 universal DC reboot took hold.  The fact that far more obscure series have been resurrected (and swiftly cancelled) since then without the Patrol get a book of their own, only compounds the injustice.  The Doom Patrol do officially still exist in the new DC universe but only as guest stars in other books so far.  It's also a real shame the rest of this run was not released as a third trade paperback, it was really hitting it's stride with this volume and carving out an identity of it's own.  In fact it's a real pity that apart from the original sixties run and all of Grant Morrisons intellectually taxing but rewarding run, the rest has either not been collected fully (this run) or not collected at all (the rest of them). I hope at some point in the future this changes, I'd certainly be putting my money where my mouth is and buying up anymore Doom Patrol collections that DC sees fit to bring out, hear that DC? Until that happens, I will at least pick up the rest of this run as single issues via eBay and may come back to it at some point in the future when I have done so.

Doom Patrol (version 5) Book One: We Who Are About To Die (#1-6)

"What you've got here goes way past self pity.  They've stopped caring." - Father Leslie.

Teambook month continues with a look at a team I have a massive soft spot for as when I first started reading DC comics in the late 80's, Doom Patrol was one of my favourites even though the team line-up was quite different from the one depicted here. The very fact I've had to include a version number in my title for this first of two volumes collecting part of the Keith Giffen run on Doom Patrol probably should tell you how much they've been rebooted and retconned and relaunched over the years.   This is the last run so far that debuted in 2007 and went on for twenty-two issues before being cancelled in the run up to the reboot of the whole DCU as the New 52. The team first debuted in the 60's, a team of misfits whose powers are often more than a blessing than a curse, led by a brilliant wheelchair bound genius.  Sounds a bit like the X-Men doesn't it?  But the Doom Patrol actually debuted three months before the first X-Men comic came out, both too close together to have influenced each other.  However the most well know incarnation of Doom Patrol is Grant Morrison's seminal run when he took over the failing late 80's reboot that only I seemed to be reading.  Post Morrison, people seemed to struggle with what to do with the Patrol and what tone to take with them. The run prior to this one, by John Byrne had controversially seen him pull one of his "only I know how to write these characters" moves and had wiped out the entire history of the Patrol prior to him taking over and substituted his own history.  This went down so phenomenonally badly (Morrison's run really is very well loved, mess with it at your peril) that it was cancelled after eighteen issues and the events of DC's 2005 crossover event Infinite Crisis was used to bring the Patrol's full history back into continuity.

Grunt, Nudge, Rita, Larry and Cliff.

Anyway, let's introduce The Doom Patrol.  Here we have the core sixties team back together, it includes Rita Farr or Elasti-Woman who can change her size.  Larry Trainor the Negative Man who shares his body and soul with the "Negative Spirit" who he can release to disrupt electro-magnetic systems.  The price he pays is having to wear treated bandages all the time to prevent the radioactivity he gives off harming people. Finally there is Robotman, or Cliff Steel as he more commonly known.  The brain of a man locked in a body of metal.  There is also Niles Caulder back at their base directing them and two additions from the Byrne run that immediately preceeds this one, a young woman called Nudge and her pet gorilla, Grunt.  I don't know anything about them and it doesn't really matter as Nudge is graphically killed not long into the first issue and Grunt flees with what's left of her body (hah! Take THAT John Byrne).

For a run that basically restarted from a new issue number one, it's a surprisingly newbie unfriendly beginning.  The story begins in media res with the Patrol out on a mission, but their backgrounds and recent history are rather inelegantly supplied via small info dumps of computerised text scattered about the first volume.  Anyone new coming to the series lured in by the prospect of a fresh start would be somewhat baffled, especially as writer Keith Giffen has decided to make all of the Patrol's continuity count, especially the run by Grant Morrison which goes on to have greater significance in volume 2.  Interestingly this is fully scripted by Giffen, in the past he's tended to write the plots and have others script the dialogue such as the two Lobo miniseries I looked at a while back.  As a writer known for his comedic writing he injects a bantering aspect to the Patrol's relationships with each other that hasn't really been there in the past.  But it works for me and stamps this run with his own distinct brand of story telling. 

Nudge and Grunt, two fascinating characters we'll all enjoy getting to know...

The story starts with the Patrol on a mission to the rogue nation of Buena Suerte. They discover some nasty looking humanoid creatures in some kind of electronic nursery., apparently a bioengineered human/botfly creation made by villianous scientist Amanda Beckett.  She confronts the Patrol and turns into a more advanced version of the creatures and order them to attack.  During the battle between the botfly people and the Patrol, Larry releases the Negative Spirit and in a big difference from the way the Spirit and Larry were related in the past versions it seems Larry now IS the Negative Spirit and when it leaves his body it becomes an empty shell, whereas before he (or she, we'll be getting to that later) stayed inside his body and controlled the mindless spirit to attack.

Anyway during the fight he shorts out the electronic nursery and the Patrol decide to make their escape before reinforcements come.  Before the reach the helicopter, Nudge is annihilated in a volley of gunfire and Grunt takes of with her remains.  Rita grows to giant size and destroys the attacking helicopters then they leave, their general attitude to Nudge's death being "Oh dear.  What a shame.  Nevermind."  Back at their base on Oolong Island, Father Leslie greets them.

Leslie: "I heard"

Cliff:  "Doom Patrol, right?  It's in the name."

Leslie: "How old was she?  Eighteen? Nineteen?"

Cliff: "Old enough to know better."

... Or not.

Leslie tries talking to them about it in turn.  Rita angrily says she was jealous of Nudge's death.  Larry wisecracks and avoids the issue.  Cliff dismisses it brusquely.  Larry reports back to Niles Caulder about the poor mental shape the Patrol seem to be in.  Caulder says he doesn't care either.  The Patrol are a means to an end and as long as they keep getting results that's all that matters.  Later he is contacted by a scientist called Dr. Ackerman who somewhat hysterically says the "Collider generated a singularity" and the only reason it hasn't destroyed the planet is that "it... it wants to negociate terms."  Sounds like a job for the Doom Patrol.

Back in Germany, Ackerman is being quizzed by a man with no face but a black smear with a light in the middle.  As Ackerman talks to it, his own face distorts until it too looks the same and he becomes part of the "Black Hole's" hive mind. The Patrol arrive at the site of the Super-Collider in Germany.  They are greeted by a team of Black Hole soldiers they meet the Ackerman one and are surrounded by more soldiers who open fire on them with rubber bullets. The Patrol defend themselves but Larry is absorbed by one of the creatures, when Rita and Cliff realise he hasn't returned to his body they panic.  He can't be out of it for very long without falling into danger, the Black Hole person that holds him lets him go and he reinhabits his body safely.

Black Hole Ackerman: "A mechanical contruct.  A mass morph and an organic housing for a sentient energy form. Check. Check. Check."

Larry: "Hey! That's mister organic housing to you."

I'm still calling it Mr. Black Hole, "the Sentience" sounds daft.

This was a test of the Doom Patrols capabilities to satisfy it's curiosity.  He then takes them to the super-collider, but turns it on and they are sucked into.. somewhere.  There the Black Hole talks to them directly.  It considers itself "the first scientist".  Once it became sentient it became curious.

Black Hole: "Having no discernable purpose past existing, I took it upon myself to categorise my enviroment, life-forms, celestial events, cosmic anomalies...knowledge for the sake of knowledge."

It then says it is going to continue examaining people, and a few million should not be missed. Unfortunately the taking over process destroys the host when it is no longer of use.  Watching and listening through cameras in Cliff's eyes, Caulder ponders his next move.  He calls Steve Dayton to his office and tells him to "bring the helmet".

The Patrol are released from where they were and walk outside to find the place empty.  But there is also organic residue on the ground from where the Black Hole hosts were disintegrated after being discarded.  Using his WiFi connection and GPS Cliff determines the nearest population centre is a village called Cottbus, not far from Berlin.  Rita grows large and scoops the men up and they set off in that direction.

Steve "Pervert" Dayton.

Back with Caulder we are introduced to Steve "Mento" Dayton, a powerful psychic and Rita's dysfunctional ex-husband, who still likes to psychically stalk her without her knowing.  Caulder tells him to find Rita mentally now.  Meanwhile the Patrol arrive in Cottbus to find a takeover in progress, the Black Hole has also uncovered one who was a latent meta human who seems to have a forcefield projection ability. Caulder tells Steve he'll have to "override" Rita:

Steve: "Override!?!"

Caulder: "Nothing you haven't done before of course. This time she'll be awake."

Steve: "I..."

Caulder: "Come on Steve. How often do one's obssessions give one the opportunity to save the world?"

After the Black Hole tells the Patrol politely he won't stop his examinations of humans, they start to fight them.  Unfortunately the it uses it's newfound superpower to cut off three of Cliff's limbs. Steve links up with Rita and takes control, she grows to a huge size and this magnify's the psychic blast he sends through her which kills all the Black Hole beings bar the super one who was protected by a forcefield.  It agrees to return to Oolong Island with them and is interested in meeting the person who outwitted him.  Rita is back to normal but extremely distressed.  Before she can do anything about it though it's Crisis Crossover time!

Sucks, but still saves the day.

Blackest Night/Brightest Day was an event that saw a whole lot of killed off heroes from the history of the DCU coming back to life via "Black Lantern Rings" and one I didn't bother to read due to it's mean spirited retcons of Alan Moore's run on Swamp Thing and the continuity his successors kept to.  So ignoring the wider story, what happens in the next two chapters is several dead members of the Doom Patrol come back as Black Lanterns to make life difficult for our reluctant heroes.  What's interesting from my perspective is three of them are members from when I first started reading the comic in the 80's one of whom - Arani Desai - was killed off in another crossover (Invasion!) to make way for Grant Morrison's reboot line-up.

So on Oolong Island we meet Arani "Celsius" Desai, Joshua "Tempest" Clay and Val "Negative Woman" Vostok, all zombified and back to vex the current line Patrol because reasons. The next two chapters are pretty much one long fight scene. Firstly though Rita goes looking for Caulder to ream him out over not telling him about Steve's violations of her, and she is attacked by Joshua who she doesn't recognise because it was her turn to be dead when he was part of the line-up (ah, comics).

DC Zombies.

Meanwhile Caulder is being attacked by Arani, who always claimed to be his wife when I was reading the series, which he couldn't deny because he was off being dead at the time (ah, comics). Cliff now in a new body and Larry are attacked by Val who even has her own version of the Negative Spirit in her.  Although during her time in the Patrol, Larry wasn't dead (ah, co.. wait), just still radioactive, bandaged and weak and miserable. And then he got better, and then the Val died and the Negative Spirit came back and melded Larry with a woman and called the resultant lady-man "Rebis" and it was Grant Morrison's era so you know, it all made sense to him I guess.  Wait, sidetracked.  Back to the punchening.

It's a double negative! Ahahahaha, haha, ha. Sorry.

Joshua drops a cliff on Rita, Arani melts off Caulder's legs and you know what, just who these people are in relation to the history of the Patrol isn't really spelt out for newbs.  Considering said characters are from an incarnation of the Patrol that predates the 90's and this crossover happened in 2009-10 maybe who they were needed a little more detailing.  Just a thought. Anyway, poor Cliff doesn't have anyone to fight, so why not bring back his organic body to fight him?  Yes, his entirely without superpowers human body.  THAT makes so much sense.

Anyway, Cliff smashes it to pieces quickly, and although it can regenerate, it's really just a nuisiance.  Larry then briefly manifests "Rebis" and obliterates Val and the Black Lantern Ring keeping her unalive.  The Black Hole man saves Caulder by putting Arani in a forcefield.  Rita gets majorly pissed and knocks all the rubble off her and goes for Joshua.  So he drops a tidal wave on her, which sweeps across the island.  Caulder tells the Patrol to lead the Black Lanterns to the entrance to a "boom tube" which is a teleporter linked to a JLA distress beacon.  So they do so, and they all get zapped away from Earth. 

It's a magic door!

How do they fare?  You'll have to wait until the next volume because the next issue, is Giffen officially bringing all of the Doom Patrol's history officially back into continuity.  It would take an post about as long as this one is to cover it, so I direct you to the wikipedia page if you happen to be interested.  It's told via the history of the Negative Spirit, and how the relationship between it and Larry went from a "we" to an "I" and that "Larry" is somewhat in denial about aspects of his history and identity crisises.

I think in summary there are several problems at work in this first volume, yet a lot to like as well.  It's unfortunate that it was involved in a DCU-wide crossover event so soon into the run, with important events taking place outside the series leaving the issues involved almost incomprehensible once the crossover was done with especially if you had no interest in that crossover.  And while the continuity nerd in me appreciates the re-establishment of the Doom Patrol past history, front-loading so much of it into the first few issues might not have been the best idea for kicking his run off vis a vis attracting new or lapsed readers.

Nice arse Larry!  Hmm, and I do find it sad that it was a cold war Russian, an African-American and an Anglo-Indian who got killed off and came back as villians....

 I know quite a bit about various characters featured and even I had to resort to wikipedia a couple of times.  That said,  Giffen manages to include the kind of weirdness that characterised Morrison's run while keeping the characters more grounded and relatable through snark and world weary companionship that makes it enjoyable to read even with the narrative handicaps. Volume two will see the return of the team after helping in the fight against the Black Lantern menace and some familiar faces will also turn up as well, one of whom makes for a surprising yet amusing addition to the cast....