I’ve always liked the Doom Patrol – not as much as fellow contributor PeatMuppet, but still….. The concept is a sound one, albeit reminiscent of the X-Men (let’s not even begin the debate of which one came first): wheelchair-ridden benefactor assembles a team of misfits to combat the evils that plague a world that hates/misunderstands them. While the X-Men have continued to rise and rise in popularity, the DP has become mired in obscurity. I actually think this befits a team of misfits and freaks – shouldn’t they be forgotten and relegated to the back-issue bin of comic book history? The X-Men’s intense popularity actually works against their reputation as a band of oddballs. In fact, I doubt you’d find too many X-Men fans who would still describe the team the way they were actually intended.

Now the Doom Patrol – that’s a different matter. Throughout their multiple incarnations, their status as freaks and geeks has remained completely intact. The original team accepted and completed a suicide mission for a world that did worse than actually hate them – it ignored them. Subsequent DP teams have fared similarly, but none quite so much as Grant Morrison’s run on the title in the 90s. Never have freaks been more, well, freakish than in Morrison’s hands.

Robotman is suicidal and self-destructive, Negative Man is made even more odd by the inclusion of transgender elements, and Crazy Jane (best character name ever) is insanely (pun intended) powerful, but saddled with a seemingly endless parade of multiple personalities. This…THIS is a team of outcasts!

Unfortunately, outside of Morrison, very few creative teams have been able to handle the team very well, so the DP has come and gone over the years, and most of the time attempts to revive the team have been less than stellar – I’m looking right at you, John Byrne!

That hasn’t stopped DC Comics from trying, however, and a new DP team has recently surfaced, helmed by legendary comics Everyman Keith Giffen. I don’t know much about this team or the circumstances behind their revival. I simply read an issue because of its ties to Blackest Night.  It’s good, if a little derivative. It actually reads like a jigsaw puzzle configuration of the various incarnations of the team.  There’s even a little bit of Morrison oddity to connect to the best version of the team and to distant it from poor recent attempts/relaunches (lookin’ at you again Byrne).

I’m not ready to say that this is a good revision of the Doom Patrol, but I’ll hang around at least until the end of Blackest Night.  And that’s what good Event Comics should do, right?