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Finally got time to work through my pile of comics acquired over the last few months.
Which means I'm finally getting round to this title, bought on the strenght of the writers past work, moer than any affection for the title. The first three issues have been read and, not literally, digested. Read my thoughts! Disagree! Write a reply telling me where I went wrong! You know you want to!
Doom Patrol has a pretty chequered history as a publication with revamp and restarts happening with increasing speed. It barely seems five minutes since the Byrne version was scrapped, and that came hot on the heels of the John Arcudi/Tan Eng Huat version. Now that version I liked. I guess for most people around here it's going to be the 'Crawling from the wreckage' version that is closest to their hearts.
And this new book? How does that stack up? It's a contemporary take on the original team, with everyone present and correct but years older. Grumpier, more cynical, more resigned to their imminent...well...doom.
If anything it's that aspect of characterisation that makes it an uncomfortable read for me. I don't need to like every character in a book to enjoy it, I don't need them to be happy and light, frankly, Captain Whitebread but some variation would help. Everyone scowls. Everyone snipes. Everyone is cynical.
It's Keith Giffen which means it's as solidly written as you'd expect and some of the ideas are perfectly odd and just the right sort of twisted but there's, so far, nothing exceptional about the way they're used. A sentient black hole who wants to experiment on humanity because it can? That sounds perfect Doom Patrol material. What we get is a case Super Hero team verses a villian that turns the humans around it into copies of itself. If you've read Giffen before you've seen this before, with the Grey man in early Justice League and again with Starro in J.L.E. before the Breakdowns. In both cases it's done better.
Matthew Clarks art is as solid and functional as you'd expect. He's a decent enough story teller and he handles the crowd scenes well. Part of me is ashamed to admit to being upset that after seeing Clark on the cover it wasn't Andy Clark drawing it. That makes me a bad person.
Of course there;s the second feature to take into account to. The J.L.I. gang are reunited again (together again for the nth time!) and the choice of material is perfect. With the Metal Men there's the sense of fun I was missing from the main title. It's silly, but well characterised. It's a sitcom take on the eharacters but that feels right. The gags feel familiar already, in a good way, and Maguire remains the king of expressions.
At this point I think I'm going to be in for the ride, but I don't think it's going to be a long one. There's at least one twist/revelation with The Chief/Mento/Rita that I'm interested in seeing play out, and the Metal Men made me laugh out loud once and smile frequently. I'd like to see the two titles feed into each other occasionally, but right now I think the tones are so different it'd be a little like a Nighty Night/Last of the Summer Wine special...
Do I think it's the definitive version of the team and one that will still be churning out issues 10 years from now? Does anyone connected with the book? |
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