Monday, January 18, 2021

Doom Patrol: The Silver Age Omnibus

Doom Patrol: The Silver Age OmnibusDoom Patrol: The Silver Age Omnibus by Arnold Drake
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Guided by the wheelchair bound Chief, Negative Man, Robotman, and Elasti-Girl fight crime as... The Doom Patrol!

Doom Patrol: The Silver Age Omnibus collects My Greatest Adventure #80-85, Doom Patrol #86-121, Challengers of the Unknown #48, and The Brave and the Bold #65.

The Doom Patrol have been interesting to me since I first discovered them in Who's Who 30-something years ago. I had my eye on this collection for a long time and finally pounced on it when I saw it for $50.

Much like the Marvel's Fantastic Four was born out of the success of DC's Justice League of America, The Doom Patrol was begat by the Fantastic Four. Written by Arnold Drake in a style similar to the Marvel style, this was like no other book DC was putting out during the time period. Over the course of these 1000+ pages, the Doom Patrol battle their arch enemies, the Brotherhood of Evil, in addition to the aliens and monsters common to comics during the Silver Age. I'd say an easy 70% of the stories involve the Brain and his Brotherhood of Evil.

Arnold Drake was channeling aspects of Stan Lee in his writing but I think he was actually a better writer than Stan The Man. His dialogue is not nearly as cringe-inducing and Robotman's wisecracks are actually funny. The dynamic of the Fantastic Four is in full effect with The Chief as the father figure and Elastic-Girl as the mother figure, with Negative Man and Robotman as the petulant children. And it works! Adding Mento and Beast Boy to the cast later on only enhanced things.

Bruno Premiani's art is slick and doesn't resemble a lot of what was going on in American comcis at the time. Premiani got his start doing political cartoons in Argentina and his style evolved from there. I'd read years ago that Mike Allred cited Premiani as his biggest influence. It only took a few pages of this omnibus for me to see why. Premiani's style definitely lives on in Allred's work.

The plots themselves are unspectacular but the interplay of the Doom Patrol makes them work very well. They may have gone up against the Brotherhood of Evil a little too often but not any more often than the Fantastic Four fought Doctor Doom in their first few years.

There's just the right amount of Silver Age goofiness in Doom Patrol, like Robotman throwing his own leg at people and wisecracking, but Drake knew how to stop the bullshit when things got serious. Speaking of serious, it's pretty well known that the Doom Patrol die in the final issue of their series but I still wasn't completely prepared for their enemies to get the best of them like that.

Doom Patrol: The Silver Age Omnibus is 1000 pages of fun. This run is easily one of the best of the Silver Age. Five out of five stars.

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