PrettyFakes

I know what you’ve all been thinking: when is Professor Fury gonna post again? And is there any chance it will be another post about the Doom Patrol? Because there are at least two of us who care about that! Your answers are now, and yes, and I am not immune to sarcasm.

So, in my continuing quest to spend the summer reading Doom Patrol comics, I picked up the first seven issues of the 2001 John Arcudi series. I ignored this series when it came out, distracted by the Suicide Squad relaunch—a relaunch premised on the notion that what people really want in their gritty super-villains-as-spies comic is a secret immortal race of magicians, or something.

What appeals to me most about Arcudi’s take on the DP is the meta-premise. The previous attempt to launch a Doom Patrol ongoing—the Kupperberg run that began in 1987—was characterized by a kind of grimacing aimlessness. It didn’t really seem to have a good reason to exist other than the fact that DC was having considerably success with character-driven team books like Justice League and Suicide Squad, and, since they owned the name and no one was doing anything with the franchise, a new Doom Patrol seemed like a good way to expand the DCU.

Unfortunately, increasing one’s market presence might be good for business, but it doesn’t guarantee good stories. Kupperberg never seemed to have a real direction in mind for his DP. At times it seemed as though the plan was to blend the surly black-ops angst of Suicide Squad with some of the light-hearted antics of Justice League, but the approach never gelled; the team bounced around from one threat to another with no clear sense of direction. The addition of new, young characters like Karma and Lodestone, who seemed straight from a third-tier Marvel mutant book and who could just as easily have joined the Outsiders or the Team Titans or the Blasters or whomever, only seemed to confirm that this book was a price tag in search of a story.

One of these books is a fondly remembered classic. The other is not.

The book survived, I suspect, because everybody loves Robotman. And it did pick up a bit near the end of Kupperberg’s tenure, with the strikeforce composed of geriatric hitmen headquartered at a retirement home, and the senses-shattering return of the Animal-Vegetable-Mineral man—ideas that that recalled the weirdo vibe that characterized the team’s original incarnation. Morrison, of course, would amplify that vibe and take the series to . . . not to new heights, exactly, because that implies an ordinary move in three dimensions. Maybe it’s best to say that he took the team on a short hop at right angles to reality.

So, with the memory of that incarnation of the team in mind, I skipped John Arcudi’s 2001 re-launch, as I suspect most other people did. But I’ve started reading his run this summer, and it’s actually pretty great (pretty promising, anyway—I’m up to issue #7). The meta-narrative hook of the series is that this incarnation of the Doom Patrol is unabashedly corporate. There really is no reason for this team to be called “The Doom Patrol” except that the people putting the team together—in this case, a financier and CEO-type named Thayer Jost—think it will make economic sense. It’s a funny spin on the perpetual resurrection of superhero “brands” and the wildly diverse concepts marketed under those brand names. (“DC is sorry to announce the cancellation of Manhunter, the critically acclaimed series about a female prosecutor who takes the law into her own hands. Next month: don’t miss M.A.N.Hunter #1! What nefarious fiend has been pantsing the cyborgs assassins of 2059, and what does he know about Gotham City’s clown pornography underworld? What is his tenuous and obligatory connection to the Manhunter of 2006, the late ‘80s Mahunter, the Paul Kirk Manhunter, the clone of the Paul Kirk Manhunter from The Power Company, the Manhunters from Space, and the Star-Tsar? Only M.A.N.Hunter knows for sure!”).

And so we have a team of generic heroes with stock powers and stock personalities from the assholes-and-ingenues office at central casting, plus original DP’er Robotman, who would really rather be left alone but who can’t turn down the money Jost is offering to buy the Doom Patrol name. The other members of the team—Fast Forward (who gets the DP-appropriate nickname “Negative Man” for his bad attitude), Fever, Kid Slick, and Freak—are part of the problem early on in the series, since, while a team of generic superfolks makes for good meta-commentary on the state of comics publishing, it doesn’t necessarily make for compelling stories. I read seven issues within a week, and so I was able to put together some of the pieces of characterization that Arcudi mixes into the narrative, and I’ve got some faith that he’s going somewhere with it, but if I’d been reading this title month to month I would have been immensely frustrated with the apparently stock elements, clever meta or no clever meta.

Arcudi keeps the corporate vibe going in issues 4-7, where he introduces yet another new Doom Patrol—a team Jost hires when Robotman and the kids decide that for-profit superheroics just aren’t for them. Kudos to Arcudi for choosing a lineup that is almost perfect in its apparent arbitrariness: Metamorpho, Beast Boy, Elongated Man, and Dr. Light II. Of course, with original DP mascot Beast Boy and DP shoulda-been Metamorpho, this team seems more like the “real” Doom Patrol than Robotman’s crew, and Arcudi has a lot of fun with this apparent contrast.

So all’s I’m saying is, these are good comics which you can purchase for cover price or less at your local comics store or on eBay. And you should.

Also, as long as we’re comicking, I should post for the record my one theory about 52, which I’ve already expressed in the comments over at Douglas Wolk’s 52 Pickup. You know how the Question seems to be acting out of character? Making jokes and all that? It’s because it’s not really the Question. It’s Blue Beetle Ted Kord back from the dead and wearing the costume of fellow Chicago-based Charlton character the Question.

If I’m right about this, I will be insufferable.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 26th, 2006 at 4:28 pm and is filed under Comixx, Professor Fury. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.