InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Platoon of Jadoon on the Moon."

arbre_rieur (arbre_rieur) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-10-12 10:34:00

Entry tags:

creator: arnold drake, group: doom patrol, publisher: dc comics, title: doom patrol

How the Doom Patrol died
This is from the final issue of the original Doom Patrol series. When the series was canceled, the creators opted to kill the characters off in their final story. This is the death scene.

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	icon_uk 2009-10-12 06:28 pm UTC (link)
	Fascinating, I knew this is what happened, but I've never actually read it. A powerful and daring way to end a series like that. (Reply to this) (Thread)

jaybee3
2009-10-12 06:51 pm UTC (link)

Also this was back when death in comics meant something so readers wouldn't have expected them to come back and after the Doom Patrol was brought back and it was only Cliff who survived (which did make sense) it still didn't cheapen their deaths. And I notice back then Steve wasn't a crazy stalker and the Chief wasn't such a massive bastard.

Also I liked how it pointed out that not all super-heroes lived. Sometimes they were defeated and sometimes the price of being a hero is giving up your life instead of being invulnerable like Superman

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

yaseen101
2009-10-12 07:00 pm UTC (link)

IA. These days if a superhero is about to sacrifice himself or die in battle, then it wouldn't mean anything to the readers because death has become nothing more than a trip to the sundae bar, if you are a well known hero, you will be back one day either due to the movies or nostalgic fans who become writers, or you are forgotten forever because you weren't around 20-30 years ago. With all these resurrections and constant Crisis's, death/sacrifice has pretty much lost all it's value and it means nothing to the reader if a character goes into battle throwing away his future his love, his family or his team to die for a greater cause.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	(Anonymous) 2009-10-13 04:31 am UTC (link)
	That just betrays your inherent misunderstanding of the Superman character because you're just sticking your fingers in your ears going "lalala he's too powerful lalala". (Reply to this) (Parent)

	ex_stig213 2009-10-12 06:56 pm UTC (link)
	It'd be a nice idea to set up the new Doom Patrol HQ somewhere underneath Four Heroes, Maine. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	icon_uk 2009-10-12 07:28 pm UTC (link)
	Or avoid the place like the plague so the poor sods are left in peace. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	jlroberson 2009-10-12 07:08 pm UTC (link)
	I like this. But what's with this "Charlie" stuff? (Reply to this) (Thread)

	icon_uk 2009-10-12 07:27 pm UTC (link)
	A generic name for the readership as a whole. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	jlroberson 2009-10-12 07:34 pm UTC (link)
	Yes, but why "Charlie," I wonder? (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	khamelea 2009-10-12 07:53 pm UTC (link)
	The book was popular with the Viet Cong? (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

jlroberson
2009-10-12 08:22 pm UTC (link)

Arnold Drake, abandoned by the American readership, appeals to America's enemies to save DP. Yep, actually I can see it...

(Of course, that guy at the end isn't Drake--though that is Premiani in the background--but rather the book's editor, Murray Boltinoff I think)

You know, the fact DC cancelled this is proof they were really resting on their laurels in the 60s and didn't realize the threat Marvel posed to them, as this was one of their only books that would have appealed to the Marvel audience. And if you don't believe me, consider that the X-Men were pretty much ripped off from this DP.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

alschroeder
2009-10-12 08:40 pm UTC (link)

Well, the thing was, it WAS competing with Marvel---and losing. As good as Drake and the artist were, they weren't a match for Lee and Kirby at the time, or some of the other stuff coming out of Marvel. Of course you have to remember, so was X-Men, which was cancelled near the same time. X-Men didn't become super-popular until it's revival in the early seventies and the introduction of a new group of X-Men, including Wolverine and Storm.

I was buying comics at the time (I was born in '53, and was a fairly well-known letterhack under "Al Schroeder III" in later years) and Doom Patrol often came off as a second-rate imitation of Marvel.

For all that, I loved it, and I used to love the original Chief, whose only weapon was his mind---not telepathy, not stretching power, not acrobatics, but his mind. One of the few things I hated about Grant Morrison's revision of the DP, although I loved many things about it, was the way he made the Chief yet another sinister meglomaniac scientist. Everything else in his characterization I could live with, but it didn't square with the Chief we knew.

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	jlroberson 2009-10-12 09:45 pm UTC (link)
	Well, the sinister mad scientist thing didn't come into it till the end, really. Till then he was mainly just aloof and cold. (and then there's the Beard Hunter story) For the record, I read reprints of the DP as a kid, and Morrison's was the only revival that seemed right.(Byrne's is, well, an utterly ugly abortion) I understand Drake felt much the same. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	icon_uk 2009-10-12 10:43 pm UTC (link)
	Yes, Drake was apparently a fan of Morrison's Doom Patrol, feeling Morrison, more than any other writer, had gotten the sense of "outsider-ness" that the original DP had had. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	jlroberson 2009-10-12 07:36 pm UTC (link)
	How come Rita couldn't just shrink to get out of that net? (Reply to this) (Thread)

	ex_trf58 2009-10-12 07:49 pm UTC (link)
	sticky net? (Reply to this) (Parent)

	arbre_rieur 2009-10-12 08:59 pm UTC (link)
	Plot hole, I think. Though it is made of metal, so maybe it'd crush her. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	jlroberson 2009-10-12 09:46 pm UTC (link)
	Well, speaking of holes, if she shrank she could have walked between them. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	icon_uk 2009-10-12 07:52 pm UTC (link)
	I also remember the Chief's description of this event in Morrison's run, watching Rita's body appear to grow and change to try and adapt to the blast, to see if she could survive, which is one of the most chilling things he's ever written. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	btravage.livejournal.com 2009-10-12 08:08 pm UTC (link)
	Rita wasn't revealed to be alive (iirc she was "re-grown") until the Byrne reboot, right? (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

icon_uk
2009-10-12 08:18 pm UTC (link)

The Byrne reboot undid all previous versions of the Doom Patrol, so it wasn't that she was revealed to be alive, his Rita Farr had never even been Elasti-Girl before, never mind dead. (In a breathtaking display of hubris, Byrne wiped out all previous versions of the DP, the originals, the not-terribly-good-but-not-THAT-bad, 1980's series which mutated into the Morrison run, the Pollack run, the Giffen relaunch etc)

IIRC it was Geoff Johns who revealed the regrown Elasti-Girl in the OYL Teen Titans Doom Patrol.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	yaseen101 2009-10-12 09:01 pm UTC (link)
	Didn't Byrne's run occur before Morrison's, Pollack's and Gieffen's runs? (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	icon_uk 2009-10-12 09:06 pm UTC (link)
	No, Byrne's run was launched in 2004, and was set in the present day, it superceded any previous version of the Doom patrol, and wiped out any past references to the characters, which came as something of a shock to Gar Logan of course, except it didn't, because he'd never even met the Doom Patrol now... (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	yaseen101 2009-10-12 09:13 pm UTC (link)
	Ah so it was Morrison's and Pollack's run which occurred first and them Byrne's run and then later Kieth Giffen. By the way, are you reading the current Giffen's Doom Patrol? How is it so far? (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

icon_uk
2009-10-12 09:40 pm UTC (link)

The order is

Arnold Drake 1963-68 - The Chief, Robotman, Elasti-Girl, Negative Man, Beast Boy.

Paul Kupperberg 1977, 1986-88 - Celsius, Robotman, Negative Woman, Tempest.

Grant Morrison 1989-93 - The Chief, Robotman, Crazy Jane, Rebis, Dorothy Spinner

Rachel Pollack 1993-95 - The Chief, Robotman, Dorothy Spinner, George and Marion (the Bandage People) and Coagula

John Arcudi 2001-02 - Robotman, Fast Forward, Kid Slick, Freak and Fever

John Byrne 2004-05 - The Chief, Robotman, Elasti-Girl, Negative Man, Vortex, Grunt and Nudge

Geoff Johns - The Chief, Robotman, Elasti-Girl, Negative Man, Beast Boy, Vox, Bumblebee

Keith Giffen- Back to the original team, but with other established members promised to appear later.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	jlroberson 2009-10-12 09:48 pm UTC (link)
	And I only found two of those any fun at all. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	yaseen101 2009-10-12 10:09 pm UTC (link)
	I wasn't really asking for the that, I was merely trying to confirm when Byrne's run took place. But thanks anyway. :) (Reply to this) (Parent)

	darklorelei 2009-10-12 10:00 pm UTC (link)
	The Metal Men backup is much better. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	yaseen101 2009-10-12 10:12 pm UTC (link)
	Too bad, I guess. Doom Patrol, Suicide Squad and The Outsiders have so much potential to explore and it's too bad when their potential isn't realized/or when they don't get it right. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	kamino_neko 2009-10-13 01:05 am UTC (link)
	Not really, no. The Metal Men backup is very '70s sitcom', which is a workable premise, but...not for those characters. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	kamino_neko 2009-10-13 01:00 am UTC (link)
	Giffen's run is OK, so far. Not my favourite run, so far, but OK. And, during Byrne's run, none of the others had ever happened. Since Byrne's run, the order that they happened is the one icon gives. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	leikomgwtfbbq 2009-10-12 09:30 pm UTC (link)
	This was actually one of my Trivial Pursuit questions last week, and the one that won me the little slice for the day. :D (Reply to this)

	volksjager 2009-10-12 09:33 pm UTC (link)
	For a really great retelling of this story and equally great art check out the Doom Patrol issue of "secret origins" George Perez draws it. The story is a flashback that takes place after Robotman is revived in the TeenTitans. Cliff returns to the old headquarters and ... (Reply to this)

psychop_rex
2009-10-13 06:22 am UTC (link)

That's pretty powerful stuff, all right. I'd always heard of this as an example of real heroism, and it seems to have lived up to its reputation. Is it still in continuity, or has the Byrne reboot wiped it out? It'd be a shame if it had.
You know, if this was done today, it wouldn't have half the power it does here, in my opinion - not simply because heroes get wiped out all the time nowadays, but because they're so much more SERIOUS, which kinda leads you to expect stuff like this. The original Doom Patrol, on the other hand, were by and large pretty goofy - they had reasonably bittersweet origins, of course, all of them being the victims of circumstance, but their actual adventures were fairly lighthearted. They fought enemies like 'the Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man', or Monsieur Mallah and the Brain - there was little in their history up to that point that would have led you to expect such a moment of pure self-sacrifice. Yet there they stand, that goofy bunch, and, with looks of grim defiance on their faces, prove that they are HEROES, first and foremost. The shift in tone gives the moment much more power, in my opinion.
Also, has 'Four Heroes, Maine' ever shown up again? It'd be interesting to visit there - maybe they have a commemorative plaque in the village square or something.

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icon_uk
2009-10-13 12:34 pm UTC (link)

Byrne reboot wiped it out, Infinite Crisis restored it. Elasti-Girl and the others now went through the explosion and things progressed as before Byrne intervened; Robotman survived because of his artifical body, the Chief survived because he had defences built into his chair but went straight into hiding, Negative Man was eventually revealed to have survived but in a coma (his Negative self having already found refuge inside a new, female host Valentina Vostock). The only one who died there was Rita, but she was regrown by the Cheif from a fragment of her body that was recovered from the blast site.

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	jlroberson 2009-10-13 07:15 pm UTC (link)
	Byrne's reboot was so crummy. Especially the part where Rita becomes her younger, child self and THEN realizes she's in love with Cliff and...ick. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	psychop_rex 2009-10-13 08:53 pm UTC (link)
	Oh good - that's good to know. I mean, it's kind of a shame that, in the final analysis, their grand sacrifice wasn't all THAT grand after all, since they all survived or were resurrected, but that's the practical realities of comics - at least they made it in the first place. (Reply to this) (Parent)