Doom Patrol: Difference between revisions

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[[File:11340_20051122042316_large.jpg|frame|<small>Robotman desperately attempts to make sense of this issue's plot.</small> ]]

 

''Doom Patrol'' vol. 2 was launched in October, 1987. Eventually, most of original team was revealed to have been resurrected in some way or alive all along, and the new book added a number of other characters which colored within the superhero lines and didn't quite set the world on fire. Then came [[Grant Morrison]], who dedicated them more specifically to fighting "weird" crime and disasters. His first [[Story Arc]], "Crawling from the Wreckage", built up the weirdness of the comic to extremes and delved into some adult subject matter. There were scissormen from imaginary worlds, the Brotherhood of [[True Art Is Incomprehensible|Dada]], the Men from N.O.W.H.E.R.E and a friendly "[[Genius Loci|transvestite street]]" named, well...Danny the Street. Just in case you were wondering, {{spoiler|he dresses like a boulevard}}. No, really. And then it got even weirder. He left and, with the switchover of the book to [[Vertigo Comics]], Rachel Pollack, more well known as a tarot expert and prose fiction writer, took over. She had much the same approach, but the book did not retain its popularity and it got cancelled. The title ended with issue #87 (February, 1995).

 

 

The team got [[A Day in the Limelight]] in ''[[Batman: The Brave And The Bold]]'', fighting Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man and General Zahl.

 

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* [[All Just a Dream]]: Used as a [[Framing Device]] during the [[Grant Morrison]] run to introduce an [[Affectionate Parody]] ([[Pastiche]], really) of '60's ''[[Fantastic Four]]''.

* [[Artificial Limbs]]: Cliff Steele

* [[Breaking the Fourth Wall]]: The final arc of the 2009 series is "resolved" when {{spoiler|[[Ambush Bug]] tells the villain of the arc that the book is being canceled to make room for [[The Flash|Flashpoint]] tie-ins.}}

* [[Captain Ersatz]]: Willoughby Kipling is one for [[John Constantine]].

* [[Cursed with Awesome]]: The whole point of the original team; each had a horrible disfigurement, or some other way in which their powers were supposedly as much a curse as a blessing. The problem is, this wasn't really true of Elasti-Girl; [[Word of God]] says this is the reason she was the only member of the original team not brought back for Morrison's run.

* [[Dark and Troubled Past]]: Subverted in Rachel Pollack's run. In #83, the False Memory gave Coagula fake memories of being joint-raped by her "husband and his friend". Kate spends the rest of the issue trying to figure out when it happened until Dorothy manages to bring her back to her senses. Kate is outraged that the False Memory believed she was giving Kate's life more "meaning" by making her think she was sexually violated when she was a teenager.

** Mento falls here, too, especially if he's in one of his less-than-sane periods.

* [[Intangible Man]]: Negative Man (later Rebis) can make their "negative spirit" leave their body and do things. Except it can't leave for more than a minute, or else they will die.

**Grant Morrison did not do this, however. Aside from the Chief, who had died already, everyone just walked into the sunset, so to speak.

* [[Knight of Cerebus]]: The Candlemaker, who, even in light of the many instances of [[Kill'Em All|mass character death]] and a truly wild [[Rogues Gallery]], remains one of series' most horrific villains ''ever''.

* [[Rubber Man]]: Elasti-Girl. Also their enemy, Madame Rouge.

* [[Serial Escalation]]: Especially Grant Morrison's run.

* [[Shout-Out]]: Danny the Street is named for Danny laRue (Rue is French for "street"), a well known British drag queen.

** Crazy Jane's "manager" personality is named Driver 8, after the [[REM]] song.

* [[Split Personality]]: Crazy Jane has ''64'' of them.

** And yeah, Larry, Eleanor and the Negative Spirit do go through a bit of the same when they turn into Rebis. One scene shows him reading ''[[When Rabbit Howls]]''.

* [[Stepford Smiler]]: Elasti-Girl is given this trait in a team-up story with [[The Flash]]. We're told that since she used to be a glamorous movie star, being turned into a "super-powered freak" was especially hard on her, and she smiles constantly in order to "look pretty" and keep others from being afraid of her. She has no idea that it actually has the complete opposite effect.

** This isn't brought up again in any other DP story; [[Word of God]] says that it took place during the team's early days (post-Byrne reboot) when Rita was still getting used to her new life.

** Roughly played with in the Giffen series, which reveals Larry * has* been dead since the accident that turned him into Negative Man. Since then, it's been the N-Man entity in a variety of clones. But the N-Man isn't sure he's not Larry sometimes. Or something. The whole thing is sorta fuzzy for now.

* [[Took a Level in Jerkass]]: The False Memory in Pollack's run. She started out as just one of the many personas belonging to the chameleon-like Identity Addict. When she came back in #83, she spends her time walking around giving people fake memories, eventually trying to insert herself in the Doom Patrol by manipulating their memories to her favor, such as making Coagula think she was raped as a teenager by her husband. Only Dorothy rejects the fake memories immediately and manages to snap her teammates back to their senses.

* [[Transvestite]]: Danny the Street has male geared stores (like gun shops) covered in pink lance and the like.

* [[Two Guys and a Girl]]: The original team, with Robotman and Negative Man as the two guys and Elasti-Girl as the girl

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Better Than It Sounds/Comic Books]]

[[Category:DC Comics Series]]

[[Category:The DCU]]