BY CHRISTOPHER
BARFIELD SEBELA
- - -
Doom Patrol: Crawling from the Wreckage
By Grant Morrison and Richard Case
DC Comics
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There are certain works you read which completely
stun you with their audacity and originality; things that seemingly
come out of nowhere. The Doom Patrol is one of those things,
a comic book so vast and detailed and original that the only thing
I can compare it to is Maldoror, an 18th century surrealist
epic prose poem all about the nature of evil. Yes, it's that good,
and yes, it's that deep. This is, to be hyperbolic, the greatest
comic book I have ever read in my life. Grant Morrison took over
Doom Patrol as it was declining. After only a year and
a half, the always questionable abilities of Paul Kupperberg had
dragged the book down to the level of being a poor carbon copy
of an X-Men book, the antithesis of the original Drake/Premiani
run in the 1960's. Given a team that is both one of the most distinctive
and repulsive in comics, he ignored the possibilities inherent
in a team with both great potential and disturbing problems.
The Doom Patrol was a team of cripples; physically and mentally,
and literally and metaphorically. The members of the team were
all disfigured one way or another. A brain in a robot body; an
ape-faced adolescent girl; a bandage-covered man/woman fusion
inhabited by a negative energy spirit; a woman with 64 different
personalities; and a guy in a wheelchair: None of these guys would
have qualified for membership in any other superhero group or
society if they'd tried. Morrison took that aspect of the team
and ran with it, throwing the most dysfunctional team in the DC
Universe at a slew of villains and dangers ripped from mythology,
history, dreams and (one imagines) a large supply of hallucinogens.
Orqwith, a fictional city of bone inhabited by scissormen; Jack
the Ripper as God; long-dead imaginary friends come back for vengeance;
and that's just in this collection. This wonderful, wonderful
collection.
The heart of this book is how it completely defies mainstream
comic book ideas of what heroes are. While the X-Men are portrayed
as mutants who are shunned by society, the Doom Patrol show us
what the fringe is all about: Their headquarters is the basement
of a Kansas City train station, or a sublease on an old Justice
League headquarters in Rhode Island. The Doom Patrol is the ugliest
team on the block and their scars are what make them interesting.
They have no allegiance to anyone else, no real identities to
go back to, and no families to keep secrets from. They're trapped
in their lives and trapped with each other. As a team, they fail.
Each member of the team works on their own; they have no finesse,
no coordinated maneuvers, and no idea what they are doing. These
are spastic people thrown together and expected to divine clarity
from nonsense.
Morrison's nonsense, however, is exactly what makes this such
a great book. It's metafiction light, aware of its own nature,
playing with the boundaries of established thought and dictated
norms. It's subtle and FUN. Let's say it again. FUN! From the
wheelchair-bound Chief blowing up doors and shooting people for
information to sight of Crazy Jane's head turning into a flaming
orb, Richard Case's art makes the ridiculousness of these ideas
work, and makes them menacing as well as funny in the same way
as a car-crash.
Admittedly, this collection is the proverbial tip of the iceberg.
After it come 40 equally brilliant issues, filled with dozens
of storylines that defy description and make you constantly want
more. What makes this collection worth getting, though, is that
it's self-contained. This IS the first issue of Doom Patrol.
Everything that came before can be considered an elseworld, or
a parallel earth or hypertime or whatever DC's newest breed of
continuity is. There are three complete stories here, all of them
just brief glimpses and hints of what you can expect if you take
the leap and go get the rest of them.
Doom Patrol was brought back in a comic book world where
freaks were no longer chided, but instead comprised the best-selling
books on the market. Instead of falling in line, Doom Patrol
showed everyone what strangeness really was, and defied every
simple genre classification. It was science fiction only in that
the subjects dealt with are otherwise unidentifiable, horror only
in the shared horror of these heroes with severe problems and
the unnamable horror of whatever lurks beyond the periphery, and
used action only when necessary. Because Doom Patrol is
a book of logic, where ideas and language hold more power than
laser blasts and super-strength. Can you think of anything more
beautiful than that? I can't.
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Doom Patrol: Crawling from the Wreckage is
by Grant Morrison and Richard Case and is published by DC Comics.
If your store does not have it, or refuses to get it, you should
find a better store.
