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PROFILE: DOOM PATROL OVERVIEW
Doom Patrol not only changed all of that, it blew it out the water with Thomas De Quincey, Andy Warhol, Jack Kirby, the Brothers Grimm, Salvador Dali, My Bloody Valentine, T. S. Eliot and Terence McKenna all making appearances in one way or another. The run started off appearing simply enough with a new Doom Patrol coming together Cliff Steele (Robotman), Crazy Jane and a new negative being who was a hermaphrodite. They were brought together by the Chief, Niles Caulder and over the next 40 plus issues Morrison would give people eye candy like they had never had before. Unlike the rest of the overviews here, this one is not going to give too much of the story away as the run is one of the rare gems of the last 30 years of comics. Paintings that could eat cities, people getting muscles from comic-book adverts, sentient transvestite streets, the boy who was a book and many many more of Grant's mad ideas await those who take the effort to dig up these issues. It's worth noting that this is only necessary because DC has criminally neglected to collect this series in any decent trade paperback format (there is one, but it only contains the opening stories) and it is one of the best products, if not one of the most educated and literary, that they have ever put out. During Morrison's run nothing was sacred, and he would play with ideas, words, story structure, and panel set up as freely as most of us play sport. But there was one problem. As the run went on the critics started to hate Doom Patrol, saying it was full of intelligible rubbish. No doubt this didn't bother Morrison as he wasn't writing for comic book critics stuck in their ways, he was writing for people who knew exactly what he was doing and loved the stories because of it. It's worth noting that the book is so good that author Steven Shaviro dedicated the first chapter of one of his books to Morrison's run on DP. It can be found here: http://www.shaviro.com/Doom/ch01.html. If you enjoyed Morrison's run on other things like JLA or Animal Man but feel the Invisibles is out of your depth, then this is the title to grab. It's absurd and brightly coloured and fantastic, with the big ideas and manic pop thrill of the former titles but very little of the inter-connected conspiratorial terrorism of the latter. Again, here's to hoping that a collection of the series is forthcoming.
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While Morrison's run on Animal Man showed that he had a touch for forward-thinking ideas and concepts, no-one knew how good he could be with ideas mixed with a dash of art until he came on to Doom Patrol. When everyone was raving about the renaissance of comics from 1986 onwards, the one thing few people noticed was how linear it was. Yes we had realistic, grim and gritty superheroes but that was easy to do, there was no experimentation, no tapping into the arts past the occasional Shakespearean reference.
