Doom Patrol #99: Beastie Boy

The story begins with the Doom Patrol putting on an exhibition at a stadium. As with the X-Men in their Battle Room, this serves to introduce us painlessly to the characters and their powers. Interestingly, we learn that Larry Trainor does not consider himself Negative Man; rather Neg Man lives inside him:

As they are leaving the stadium, they are attacked by a crook inside a giant robot dragonfly.

The Bug-Man manages to make his getaway, at least partially because Larry insists on fighting him without using Negative Man. This carries over into the second battle:

This time the crook makes off with Rita. He imprisons here in a box that is slowly reducing itself in size:

The Chief arrives in his "Battle Chair", but:

As the rest of the DP shows up, Bug-Man decides to kill Rita personally. Fortunately for her, the box had a safety pin inside and:

The Doom Patrol make short work of the villain after this.

Comments: Silly story, but as always I love the Bruno Premiani artwork. Correction: Bob Brown filled in on this issue as noted by Tom Brevoort in the comments. Dang, my readers are sharp!

The second story features the intro of Beast Boy. The DP's headquarters has been broken into by some weird animal; they find evidence of a giant cat, a bird, a tiger and an elephant. What can it be? They lie in wait he following night, hoping to trap him. And they succeed but:

He changes into a lion, and then a kangaroo, all the while battling them:

But when the fighting's over, we learn the reason for his appearing:

Of course, this calls to mind the story in Amazing Spiderman #1, where Peter attempts to join the Fantastic Four. Feeling sorry for the lad, the Doom Patrol agree to let him come along on one mission. We learn that he does have trouble fitting in because of his appearance:

A bunch of crooks are attempting to steal the crown jewels of Dusenberg from a parade. Beast Boy shows off his abilities:

They make reasonably short work of the crooks.

Comments: An interesting introduction, although I confess, the squabbling between Beast Boy and the Doom Patrol seems a bit forced. Then again, so did the fighting between Spiderman and the Fantastic Four.

Doom Patrol #98

As the story begins, the Chief summons the Doom Patrol to his office to announce that he is disbanding the team. His hope was that he could remold the three of them into a team of heroes that the world would admire and respect. But instead they are still looked upon as freaks and outcasts. When Cliff mentions the lives they've saved and the criminals they've locked up:

But the trio has no intention of disbanding no matter what the Chief decides, so they create their own hideaway, shown here:

But they don't realize that the Chief fired them because he had only ten days left to live, reasoning that their anger at him would inspire them to show him wrong. We get our first look at the villain of the piece here:

That's a pretty ugly costume. The 103 apparently refers to the number of elements in the periodic table (at the time, although apparently we're now up to 118). Mr 103 turns out to have the ability to change parts of his body into any element. As you can probably guess, this gives the opportunity for lots of chemistry information to be shoehorned into the story:

The DP goes back to the Chief to see if he can give them a lead on the identity of Mr 103, and discovers him near death. But he is able to give them a ray that will freeze the criminal no matter what element he changes into. And they force the Element Man to rescue the Chief from his fatal disease.

Comments: Entertaining story, and good artwork; the main negative is that the villain is a bit on the trite side. It also makes me wonder if we'll ever see that backup headquarters again.

The second story is about Negative Man's attempt to prevent a nuclear war. Some terrorists have hidden four nukes in the US and Russia.

But the last bomb explodes and the only hope is for the President to get on the "hot line" to the USSR. But there is a break in the cable, and only Negative Man can repair it:

Comments: Kind of a filler story, with most of the Doom Patrol sitting around doing nothing but watching. We are never told who the mysterious terrorists are or for whom they are working. It's notable mostly for featuring Bob Brown artwork, rather than the usual Bruno Premiani.

Doom Patrol #92

As covers go, that's not exactly the most dramatic. DC had numerous villains with that clock-face thing going on; Robin battled one on several occasions in the Golden Age, and Green Arrow had faced a very similar one in World's Finest only a few years earlier.

As the story begins a toddler has been locked inside a timed bank vault. There's a switch on the inside but the youngster can't operate it. Larry calls the others and is annoyed when Rita is late (she was at the hairdressers) and Cliff doesn't show up at all. Changing into Negative Man, he easily gets into the vault and flips the switch, but an electrical charge knocks him out, and for some reason the vault does not open. So Rita changes into a giantess and yanks the door open, saving Larry and the baby.

We learn that the real reason that Larry's ticked off at Rita is that she's got a new beau, who is the fifth richest man in America. Rita's apparently decided that Steve Dayton, aka Mento, is too egotistical and it looks like things are looking positive for Negative Man. But Cliff, who has noticed Rita pining for Dayton, has other ideas:

We are introduced to Dr Tyme in the second part of the story. He has invented a ray that slows down time inside the beam. In his first crime, he slows down a plane and everybody in it, then bails out with a shipment of precious gems that were on the airliner.

As Rita and Steve Dayton are ending their date, they spot Dr Tyme escaping with a payroll. Steve tries tackling the guy, but instead finds himself floating in air as time is stopped around him. Rita shrinks down and tags a ride on the crook's car, but she's caught when she accidentally brushes against one of his clocks, setting it off.

Meanwhile, the Chief has figured out that the secret to the crimes is a time-ray. Mento contacts the Doom Patrol, letting them know that Rita is missing, and begging to be allowed to help them find her. We get a look at the rather unique vehicle the Doom Patrol uses:

Sort of a cross between a rocket ship and a VW van; certainly somewhat oddball. They go to Dr Tyme's hideout, which is one of those abandoned castles that dot the supervillain landscape. He's got some defenses:

The Doom Patrol plus Mento make it through to face the villain. As they fight him the Chief radios an urgent warning: Under no circumstances should Larry release Negative Man. In the heat of battle Larry disobeys the order, and Negative Man is trapped in the beam, meaning he'll never get back to his normal body in time to survive. At the same time, Rita is incapacitated while giant-sized by gas.

Mento captures Dr Tyme and makes him slow things down for Larry's body, too, so that Negative Man will be able to get back without Larry dying first. The crook informs Robotman and Mento that there is a bomb set to go off in 15 minutes. Since Rita is too large and heavy to carry out, this means she'll die. But the Chief realizes that Mento can use his mental powers to command Rita to shrink to normal size, and everybody escapes, including Dr. Tyme. As the story ends, Larry is telling Mento not to use his powers to control Rita again.

Comments: I enjoyed the story quite a bit more than I expected. Although the Doom Patrol is clearly riffing on the Fantastic Four with all the squabbling, for whatever reason it works here, and I absolutely love the Bruno Premiani artwork. I also enjoyed the focus on the romantic triangle between Negative Man, Rita, and Steve Dayton.

Single Issue Review: Doom Patrol #86

I have previously discussed the origin of the Doom Patrol, a team of freaks and outcasts which debuted in My Greatest Adventure #80. The DP continued to be featured in MGA through #85, when DC decided to award them their own magazine, which started with issue #86.

As you can see, the cover is a classic DC 1960s "Open Me" issue, with the heroes watching the villains on a giant-screen TV. That the villains include a talking ape with a submachine gun and a bubbling vat of fluid just makes it even cooler, and you can imagine how this comic must have flown off the shelves in March 1964, when it appeared.

The splash page is even better. I'll just transcribe the dialogue to you:

Elastigirl (thinks): "The Brain, the guiding spirit of the Brotherhood of Evil, has sent a giant robot to steal the Statue of Liberty! It's the most brazen theft in history!"

I mean, a giant robot, the Statue of Liberty, and the Brotherhood of Evil... how can you go wrong for 12 cents?

The story begins with the three members of the Doom Patrol (Negative Man, Elastigirl and Robotman) preparing gifts for the Chief. Since they don't know his birthday (indeed, he refuses to tell them anything about himself), they have decided to make today his birthday and give him gifts. We also learn that Larry (Negative Man) has scarred features:



Clearly a Dr Doom swipe; as I discussed in the prior post, the Doom Patrol ripped off Marvel's Fantastic Four while arguably Marvel's X-Men ripped off the Doom Patrol. We later learn that Rita (Elastigirl) is in love with Larry (Neg Man).

The story itself does not hold together very well. The Chief designed a giant robot named Rog (as in Roger?) for work on the moon that was stolen by a crook named Morden who used it to commit senseless acts of destruction. But it turns out that Morden was really trying to get into the Brotherhood of Evil.

We learn that the BoE is run by the Brain, a disembodied brain that lives in a jar of liquid. So smart is he that he trained the gorilla shown on the cover (Monsieur Mallah) to be a genius with a 178 IQ and a criminal. Now that Morden has the giant robot under his control, the Brain decides to execute a heist of the Statue of Liberty, but Rita has other plans:



Monsieur Mallah, featured so prominently on the cover, ends up with a very minor role in the story aside from a dramatic introduction. He ends up landing one punch on Cliff (Robotman) and gets decked in the payback. He never carries a submachine gun or straps on a few hundred rounds during the story, either.

Overall: Good art, good premise for the story, but mediocre and cramped execution.

Although the name of the comic had changed to Doom Patrol, there was a backup feature with nine pages of Howard Purcell art and story. Purcell was a DC artist from the Golden Age, perhaps best known for his work on Sargon the Sorceror, but his art here actually looks more like the 1970s than anything anybody else was doing in 1964:



Note the detailed coloring; very unusual for that era. In the story, the astronaut had been exposed to radiation from an atomic bomb blast, resulting in a mutation of his body into the whirlwind form shown on the splash. But in actuality, it turned out that he was not Major Reed, but an unrepentant Japanese war criminal from World War II, who had taken his place after splashdown (and who had actually been caught in the atomic bomb blast). The Japanese war criminal is greeted as a hero in the US, but he plans to seek revenge for "his emperor" for the humiliation of their defeat in World War II.

A historical side note: There seemed to be regular reports at the the time about Japanese soldiers who had gone into the jungle on various deserted islands during World War II and continued to labor on, unaware of the war's end or unwilling to accept surrender. How true these stories were I have no idea, but it was sufficiently well-known that it inspired an episode of Gilligan's Island. Update: Wikipedia reports that two Japanese holdouts were captured on Guam in 1960 and another in 1972. See also this terrific Gunner & Sarge story on the same theme.

Major Reed escapes from where the war criminal imprisoned him and decides the only way to stop the villain is to gain similar whirling super-powers. So he drapes himself in seaweed (the Japanese had been gathering seaweed when the atomic blast transformed him), and canoes a log to near a new atomic test site. Then a waterspout gets him twirling, and presto-change-o, he's another human top.

As dueling whirlwinds, they have a battle climaxing atop the Washington Monument (yet another landmark backdrop for a fight), and eventually the Major defeats the war criminal:



Comments: Although the story is nothing special, the artwork really stands out.

Overall Doom Patrol #86 is an entertaining issue. My chief criticism is that the Doom Patrol story should have been longer, and the interesting Monsieur Mallah character given more of a role. What's the point of giving a gorilla a 178 IQ if you're not going to use him as anything more than a fighter?