Review: Doom Patrol: Brotherhood trade paperback (DC Comics)

News broke as I began writing this that Keith Giffen would be taking over the new DC Comics Relaunch Superman title with issue #7.While  I have concerns about the implications of the change, the fact that Giffen will write one of DC's flagship titles leaves me overall enthused. Though Giffen has worked for DC since the 1970s, his writing remains modern and fresh (unlike some of his contemporaries). This is apparent as recently as the latest collection of his Doom Patrol series, Brotherhood, lamentably also the final collection. Brotherhood is nothing short of brilliant, a perfect sequel to Doom Patrol: We Who are About to Die, and it makes it all the worse that DC cancelled the third collection, Doom Patrol: Fire Away, due to low pre-orders numbers.

[Contains spoilers]

Doom Patrol: We Who are About to Die overlaid the classic team with a death wish; when a new member died in the first chapter, Robotman Cliff Steele, Elasti-Woman Rita Farr, and Negative Man Larry Trainor each regretted it wasn't them. Giffen's Doom Patrol "chief" Niles Caulder, via Giffen's creative re-translation, now employs the Patrol precisely for their self-loathing; if they don't care about themselves, he reasons, they're more likely to face danger unabashed. The end of the book took the members to their lowest points -- Cliff came face-to-face with the Black Lantern-reanimated corpse of his original body, confronted with the fact he's no longer the man he was; Rita unwillingly had her mind controlled again by ex-husband Steve "Mento" Dayton; and the reader learned that Negative Man was no longer the human Larry, but solely the Negative Man entity itself.

Brotherhood offers, quite astutely, the other side of the coin. The Doom Patrol faces an old villain disguised as a former friend, and escape their adventure even more mistrusted and despised than they were before -- and yet, Giffen serves them up a moment of grace. The team comes to recognize that even if they don't care about themselves, they do care about one another, and when they make a startling discovery about Rita, they handle it together instead of retreating to separate corners to sulk. These are characters with severe emotional damage who constantly make poor choices for themselves, and when they suddenly care -- seemingly out of the blue, but built upon a series of minuscule positive steps -- the moment is all the more powerful. (This is what was wonderful too about Marc Andreyko's Manhunter series, too.)

This book is proof of the versatility of Keith Giffen's writing. There's a healthy dose of Giffen's absurdist humor in the form of a cosmic construction company that makes decisions by committee (it's almost a wonder Giffen doesn't have Cliff try to lie down in front of the bulldozers). Thankfully, however, Giffen is far more restrained here than in Booster Gold: Past Imperfect; I'd characterize the villains as "silly" rather than "stupid." Further, Giffen introduces his creation Ambush Bug to the Patrol, and aside from the Bug's apropos of nothing appearance, his antics are positively tame here (what, no Julius Schwartz jokes?). Giffen simultaneously shows he can handle serious, even dark emotionally complex stories, which is what gives me faith for Giffen's Superman -- Superman is neither the place for "dark" stories nor slapstick comedy, but the fact that Giffen has mastered both extremes suggests to me he can also produce stories somewhere in the middle.

These pages are also chock-full of references to Doom Patrol continuity (which may nor may not be all that important when Giffen takes over the post-relaunch Superman). I have only a passing familiarity with Crazy Jane, Danny the Street, Thayer Jost, and Mr. Somebody, but Giffen explains it all well enough without the backstory being overwhelming. Rita's secret, as well, is one of those perfect revelations that's shocking when it comes out but makes perfect sense in retrospect, with the truth having been there all along. Giffen demonstrates a mastery of these characters, able to bend them toward the story he wants to tell while still staying true to what came before.

I'll gush about two more aspects I rather enjoyed, both in the initial chapter of the book. First, this issue, number seven of the series, only shows the three Doom Patrol members on the last page, and yet still feels like a full issue. Giffen uses the confines of a collection the right way; Brotherhood doesn't feel decompressed, but Giffen still takes time to profile the villains, Niles Caulder, and supporting characters like Veronica Cale and Rocky Davis -- Giffen even cameos Oberon of Mister Miracle fame, for seemingly no apparent reason than it's just fun.

Second, Giffen uses some initial scenes of Brotherhood to show the aftermath of the Blackest Night crossover from the perspective of characters with only a tertiary connection to the event -- namely, the Patrol and the scientists of Oolong Island. This is mildly confusing, since the end of We Who are About to Die took place after this (and apparently out of context), but it's interesting to hear the Patrol recount being whisked away, pressed into a battle they didn't understand, and then essentially abandoned. This "alternate take" presents again some of the absurdism that Giffen is known for, but put to good use, and I found the sequence quite interesting.

I would uncharacteristically wish Doom Patrol: Brotherhood was one issue shorter, however, because the Rita Farr profile issue, as engaging as it is, ends on a cliffhanger, one not to be resolved in the standard North American version of the next book in this series, since DC cancelled it (Twitter friend Bullseye1984 points out that the Titan Books edition of Doom Patrol: Fire Away may yet see the light of day). It's a shame -- Doom Patrol was hardly a prominent DC title, but the writing and characters were complicated (not to mention, the next volume would have shown the forthcoming Secret Six crossover from the Doom Patrol's side) and as someone who was following the series, I feel I did deserve a chance to know what happened next; those issues haven't made it to DC's digital archive, either.

[Contains original and unused covers]

Coming up next week, the Secret Six meet Lex Luthor with Secret Six: The Reptile Brain and Superman: The Black Ring Vol. 2. Be there!

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Review: Doom Patrol: We Who Are about to Die trade paperback (DC Comics)

I can't help but compare Keith Giffen's Doom Patrol: We Who Are about to Die, his first trade of the series, to Bill Willingham and Matt Sturges' first Justice Society outing in The Bad Seed. Both are fresh starts for the titles, and the Justice Society story is passably good (and I hear the next volume is better). Giffen's Doom Patrol, however, is so edgy, so dynamic, and takes such great pains to acknowledge existing DC Comics history while forging new ground, as to put other such premieres completely to shame.

[Contains spoilers]

Giffen's Doom Patrol seems to me the direct descendant of Judd Winick's late Outsiders series (even though historically the former predates the latter), and not just because artist Matthew Clark drew the heck out of both. The members of Giffen's Doom Patrol are wonderfully dysfunctional, as Winick's Outsiders were; when a member of their team dies, they're barely able to feel bad about it, though they hate themselves later for their lack of emotion. Each is being obviously, even blithely manipulated by the "Chief" Niles Caulder, whose indifference to the Doom Patrol's emotional and physical well-being is simultaneously disturbing and riveting.

The real achievement of Giffen's Doom Patrol is to cut through all the chaff that's hung on this team over many years, and get right to the wheat -- the core, easily recognized group of four: Robotman, Elasti-Woman, Negative Man, and the Chief. Like the Tony Bedard/Dan Didio Outsiders series (in team, not in quality), reducing the Doom Patrol to the original members heightens the emotional quality of the story; these heroes don't care much if they live or die themselves, but they've known each other a long time and care about each other, and they becomes relatable to the reader in that way.

Of course, what's old is new again, too. Giffen only actually gets to pit the Doom Patrol against one enemy, and then an enemy that becomes an ally, before Blackest Night intrudes (well-illustrated by Justiniano); what we find in this volume, however, is that the Doom Patrol is now the police force for the mad scientist nation of Oolong Island, which became sovereign in 52 Aftermath: The Four Horsemen. Not only does this work to put the Doom Patrol just slightly on the wrong side of the law -- sometimes their goal is to save the experiment, not the scientist -- it also gives Giffen plenty of opportunity to introduce the trademark Doom Patrol weirdness, like their aforementioned fight with a human-bug hybrid and a living black hole. The moral grayness of the Doom Patrol's missions also reminds me of Winick's Outsiders, and nicely differentiates Doom Patrol from other superhero teams.

After three introductory issues and the two-part Blackest Night crossover, Giffen's piece de resistance in the book is his final one-issue focus on Negative Man. I'll admit I didn't even understand all that Giffen reveals about Negative Man in this issue, so steeped is it all in long-time Doom Patrol lore, but what Giffen does accomplish (and what an accomplishment it is) is to tie together and make valid all the disparate incarnations of the Doom Patrol over the years -- from the original Arnold Drake incarnation to Grant Morrison's Vertigo series, John Arcudi and even John Byrne's "imaginary" series (Matthew Clark does fantastic impressions in this sequence of Byrne and of artist Tan Eng Huat). If ever a team's history did not make sense, it was Doom Patrol's, and I love the way Giffen acknowledges and even makes more relevant your favorite incarnation, like Geoff Johns did with the Legion of Super-Heroes in Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds.

What this first volume of Doom Patrol accomplished for me, read right after Justice Society: The Bad Seed, was to remind me what good comics are. I liked Bad Seed, but I found the plot rather uninspired, whereas Doom Patrol had me surprised and interested and excited, rooting for the characters and cringing at their self-inflicted wounds. Giffen presents both the characters and the weirdness you'd expect from a Doom Patrol title, but with a sense of menace and moral uncertainty that raises the title well beyond just heroes fighting villains.

I'm so impressed by Doom Patrol: We Who Are about to Die, I'm willing to say this: Doom Patrol is the best series I wasn't reading, and now I am. You should be, too.

[Contains full and variant covers, Matthew Clark sketchbook]

All of this, and there's a trailer page at the end for the next Doom Patrol volume! I can't necessarily credit Giffen with that specifically, but how nice to see an advertisement for a series' next trade inside the volume before it. This is an acknowledgment, overdue I'd say, that if a reader is holding one trade in their hand, there's good reason to believe they might be looking for the next one. Rather than a publisher banking on all comics fans watching the interwebs to know when the next book comes out, it seems to me an in-volume affirmation that "yes, there will be another volume" should be standard practice; this is just one more reason this Doom Patrol volume left me very pleased with comics.

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