The Doom Patrol, Volume One

I never knew much about the Doom Patrol except that they existed and I start liking the characters when I read some of the issues of John Byrne's run. But this Showcase is really something else. In the first place I think this resembles a lot journal strips, which I love, in the sense that it draws heavely on a clever plot, beautiful art that sometimes speaks for itself, subttle sense of humour, personality of the characters, and the fact that there is something bizzarre about everything. This is not a super-hero masquerade where the cool powers and charisma of the characters often replaces a good story. The fact that the Doom Patrol is not major league in comics doesn't equate at all to lack of quality at any level, by the contrary, the stories are extremly consistent even if strange, in fact that strangeness makes things that would not look consistent in other type of stories look pretty much natural here. A great reading.

Doom Patrol is one of the super teams that I was visually familiar with, but other than an entry in a Who's Who comic (DC's version of the Marvel Handbook) I knew little about the characters. Unlike other 60s DC books, DP has characters that display personality; compare that to the early Justice League, whose characters are almost interchangeable. Additionally, the villains are interesting and weird compared to the more well-known villains in other books. The artist Bruno Premiani has an interesting sense for drawing the weird, as their first villain, General Immortus, is rendered with interesting wrinkles and appears like an old man with his dentures missing. I enjoy clean storytelling from the 60s after so much of the highly rendered work seen today. I believe this book is an excellent primer for those looking for a little bit different superhero adventure but don't want a "deep" read. The characters are interesting enough and don't have all of the published history of comparable "freak" hero books like the FF or X-Men. It's nice to read something with a cleaner slate.

Showcase presents the Doom Patrol is a cheeper alternative to the five $50.00 archive collections with the same stories. I opted to buy this because I am a huge fan of Morrison's Doom Patrol and I wanted to read their early adventures without having to spend more than $250.00 dollars on said archives. This volume covers about half of the original run and depicts the first appearances of Larry (Negative man), Rita (Elasti-girl), the Chief, and Cliff (Robotman). The collection also includes the first appearances of other friends and enemies such as: General Immortus, the Brotherhood of Evil, the Animal-Vegetable-Mineral man, Mento, and Beastboy. I am not nuts about beastboy and some of the stories are a little Deus Ex Machina with the chief happening upon some random solution but overall it is an affordable read full of some truly enjoyable(and crazy) stories. If you like the zany stories found in the Metal Men, Metamorpho, or Challengers of the unknown get the Doom Patrol.