Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol Volume 3

Robotman talks to Crazy Jane

Doom Patrol Vol 3 (1992-93/Collected 2017): written by Grant Morrison; illustrated by Richard Case, Scott Hanna, Stan Woch, Ken Steacy, Philip Bond, and others: Grant Morrison's great run on Doom Patrol rolls to its conclusion. Credit to primary penciller Richard Case, too, for a straightforward cartooning style that made the weirdness weirder, in the tradition of Steve Ditko on Dr. Strange.

The Brotherhood of Dada is up first, taking their Magic Bus across America in order to get Mr. Nobody elected President. Then the interlocking arc of The Doom Patrol's Real Enemy and The Candlemaker finishes Morrison's run with horror, humour, and an emotional coda that still brings manly tears from my eyes. All this and The Empire of Chairs!

A bonus here is the ridiculous Doom Force Special being reprinted here, a rare one-off that I missed at the time, and every time after until now. Morrison parodies the Marvel Mutant Madness of the early 1990's, something relevant to anyone who's seen Deadpool 2 and its use of X-Force. Morrison takes the piss on Marvel's mutants, to the extent that it's a bit shocking that he would become a writer of X-Men in 2001. What are the special powers of X-Force? THEY'RE NOT MUTANTS!!!!

As weird as Morrison can be, he wears his heart on his sleeve when it comes to Cliff 'Robotman' Steele's heroic effort to save a world that, as a doctor says to Cliff, "he doesn't believe is worth saving." 

And when it comes to Crazy Jane and Cliff's quest to find her in a multiverse of awful Earths. And when it comes to Danny the Street's efforts to create a world of magic and mystery for all the outcasts and 'losers' to live, safe from the horrors of the late Bush years. Read them all and see why I say Highly Recommended.

Review of Volume 1
Review of Volume 2

Doom Patrol

Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol Volume 2 (1990-1991/ Collected 2016): written by Grant Morrison; illustrated by Richard Case, Vince Giarrano, Malcolm Jones III, Mike Dringenberg, Doug Hazlewood, Steve Yeowell, and others: Grant Morrison's early foray into American superhero comics after about a decade writing for UK publications remains its brazen, pomo self all these years later. C-List early 1960's DC superhero team The Doom Patrol offered Morrison the chance to play fast-and-loose with superhero conventions for both comic and dramatic effect. 

Original Doom Patrol member Cliff "Robot-man" Steele remains mostly unchanged, except for his professed level of angst about being a brain in a robot body. And team leader The Chief is still here, wheelchair-bound and pre-emptory as ever. Tempest remains from the brief late-1970's revival of Doom Patrol, but he mostly confines himself to being team medic. Negative Man is now a hermaphroditic hybrid of man, woman, and negative-energy being that calls itself Rebis. Little Dorothy struggles to control her ability to make her dreams becomes true, or at least solid. And Crazy Jane juggles 64 personalities, all of them with different superpowers. But she's integrating them!

This volume introduces Charles Atlas-comic-strip-based superhero Flex Mentallo ("The Man of Muscle Mystery!"), a creation of satiric wonder invested with a poignance based on the ephemeral nature of childhood dreams and visions. A loose plot thread from Paul Kupperberg's previous run on the title is tied up in weird, space-opera fashion. 

The Sex Men, the Men from NOWHERE, the Shadowy Mr. Evans, and the Brotherhood of Dada threaten our heroes. The Chief goes solo against The Beard-Killer in Morrison's hilarious parody of macho comic-book heroes like Wolverine and the Punisher and the sadistic macho monologues of pretty much any hero written by Frank Miller. The volume ends on a bit of a cliffhanger -- the Brotherhood of Dada shows up, but the battle awaits in the first couple of issues collected in Volume 3. Onwards, Absurdist Soldiers. Highly recommended.

The Morrison Effect

Doom Patrol Book One (Collects issues 19-34 of Doom Patrol Volume 2 1989-1990, 1992, 2004/ Collected 2016): written by Grant Morrison; illustrated by Richard Case, Doug Braithwaite, Scott Hanna, John Nyberg, Carlos Garzon, Simon Bisley, and Brian Bolland: DC's Doom Patrol was weird even when it was supposed to be a straightforward superhero team book in the 1960's. Revived in the 1980's, it really did become straightforward until, facing low sales, DC elected to hand the keys to the car to Scottish writer Grant Morrison in 1989. Morrison had already invaded the U.S. with Animal Man and Arkham Asylum. But Doom Patrol would soon become his weirdest 'mainstream' superhero work.

This new reprint volume collects the first third of Morrison's writing stint. It starts with a bang. A Borgesian bang, to be exact, as Morrison riffs on Jorge Luis Borges' strange story "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius." An imaginary world is in the process of invading the Earth, and the Doom Patrol gets together to face it, reluctantly. 

While the wheelchair-bound genius The Chief, a.k.a Niles Caulder, and Cliff Steele, a human brain in the body of Robotman, remain from the first iteration of the Doom Patrol, Morrison adds new member Crazy Jane -- a survivor of childhood sexual abuse who now has at least 64 multiple personalities, all of them with superpowers -- and a modified old one, Negative Man, now renamed Rebis and consisting of an amalgam of a man, a woman, and a 'negative energy being.' Josh, a.k.a. Tempest, comes along from the second iteration of the Doom Patrol, but only if he gets to be the team's medical officer and isn't expected to play superhero on a regular basis. Dorothy Spinner, a holdover from the issues just before Morrison takes over, also functions as an occasional member of the team, with her occasionally erratic, reality-shaping powers.

Having survived the threat of the Scissormen and the invading, fictional world, the Doom Patrol moves into the Justice League's original, abandoned HQ on Rhode Island. But their work is never done. A creature calling itself Red Jack (a Star Trek: TOS reference) kidnaps a comatose former member of the Doom Patrol and takes her to his strange pocket universe. Dorothy's powers go haywire. 

There's more! The former Brotherhood of Evil reunites under the new leadership of Mr. Nobody and sucks all of Paris into a magical, reality-bending painting.  Crazy Jane retreats inside her own mind, forcing Cliff to take a telepathic voyage into the wonders and horrors of her fractured psyche. The Cult of the Unwritten Book threatens all of reality with erasure. 

And The Brain and Monsieur Mallah, charter members of the Brotherhood of Evil, invade Doom Patrol HQ in order to secure Cliff's new and improved robot body for The Brain. The Brain is an evil, disembodied brain living in a jar. Monsieur Mallah is the super-intelligent, beret-and-bandolier-wearing gorilla he trained from birth to be his evil sidekick. And those last two are holdovers from the original, 'normal' rogue's gallery of the 1960's Doom Patrol! Somewhat fittingly, the last issue reprinted here has a title taken from a Smiths song.

Hoo boy. Fractured, self-mocking, postmodern, often poignant fun for the discerning superhero fan. And this volume is as normal as Morrison's run on the title gets! Handling most of the pencilling duties, Richard Case offers a seemingly straightforward, crisp art style that makes even the weirdest moments seem (mostly) plausible. And Morrison and Case keep things straightforward when it comes to page lay-out: there's no need to push the boundaries of lay-out. The weirdness is all inside the panels, so it's best one doesn't get too lost. And remember: 'dada' is French slang for 'hobbyhorse.' Highly recommended.

Batman: Gothic (Deluxe Edition) (1990/ Collected 2015): written by Grant Morrison; illustrated by Klaus Janson: Writer Grant Morrison's second major foray into the world of Batman (after 1989's Arkham Asylum) take the Dark Knight into a literary hellscape of nods to Faustus, Don Giovanni, Lord Byron's Manfred, Fritz Lang's M., Lewis's The Monk, Melmoth the Wanderer, and a host of other horrific antecedents. There's even an exquisitely detailed, Rube Goldbergesque death trap for Batman to escape.

Batman faces an enemy from his past -- his past as a schoolboy at a private school, that is, in the days before Bruce Wayne's parents were murdered and Bruce's journey towards Batman began. But the enemy threatens Gotham's major mobsters as well, whom this old enemy hunts for revenge. Klaus Janson supplies lots of moodiness and doom as artist. It's one of Batman's most nightmarish adventures, even with the typical splash of Morrisonian postmodernism. This would make a terrific Batman movie, live-action or animated. Come on, DC! Highly recommended.

Rictus Invictus

Doom Patrol: Musclebound: written by Grant Morrison; illustrated by Richard Case, Doug Hazlewood, Mike Dringenberg, and others (1991; collected 2008): Grant Morrison's post-modern sensibilities flowered early on in American comic books of the 1980's and early 1990's with Doom Patrol and Animal Man. The Doom Patrol, a C-List superhero team created in the 1960's, had always been a bit weird. Morrison made it weirder.

Longtime foes The Brotherhood of Evil became the Brotherhood of Dada. The Doom Patrol's headquarters became Danny the Street, a sentient street capable of teleportation anywhere. Questions of identity, sexual and psychological and physical, became dominant motifs given that the heroes included a woman with 64 super-powered multiple personalities (or 'alters' as we'd say now), a human brain in a super-powered robot body that kept getting destroyed, and a strange amalgam of an alien energy being, a man, and a woman. Good times!

Here we make the acquaintance of Flex Mentallo, an odd superhero who would later show up in his own miniseries in slightly altered form. Flex can alter reality by flexing his mighty muscles -- that's why he's the man of muscle mystery, complete with an origin that's a parody of the old Charles Atlas body-building ads, and a 'hero halo' that spells out 'Hero of the Beach!' whenever he exerts himself to his utmost! But when Flex battled The Thing That Lives Under the Pentagon, he lost his memory for decades. Memory restored, he and the Doom Patrol must seek out the mystery of Flex's origins and probably save the world from some crazy thing or another.

Then it's off to a battle with a man who hates people with beards, written by Morrison as a witty parody of that tersely purple Frank Miller prose style from Daredevil and Batman. In a sequel to an obscure Jimmy Olsen story of the Silver Age of comics. Then comes the Sex Men, on patrol for abnormally elevated orgone levels and trans-dimensional sexual imvasions. Meanwhile, something stirs within The Painting That Ate Paris, where the Doom Patrol left the Brotherhood of Dada imprisoned two years earlier after the Brotherhood's attempt to summon the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse had a surprising denouement.

It's all good, clean, R-rated fun, though it ends on a bit of a cliffhanger that will require you to buy the next collected volume. A bevy of artists, including the underrated regular artist Richard Case, keep things weird and yet somehow grounded at the same time. Case's style was always closest to that of a regular superhero artist of the time, clean-lined and straightforward and traditionally heroic, which always seemed to make the things he was rendering look even weirder. Though there was something disturbing about the mouths of Case's characters, which sometimes seemed to be clenched in some rictus of over-powering horror or passion. Highly recommended.