Sunday, May 30, 2021

Sunday Splash Page #168

 
"Up From the Sewers," in Doom Patrol (vol. 3) #10, by John Arcudi (writer), Tan Eng Huat (artist), Dave Stewart (colorist), Bob Lappan (letterer)

Arcudi and Tan Eng Huat explore a bit into the "superheroes as commodities" notion with this run, as your typical CEO type is trying to create his own superhero team he can merchandise. It's not really working out, she approaches Robotman to license the Doom Patrol name for merchandise and even a TV show. Sure, a TV show about the Doom Patrol is ludicrous - that would never happen, obviously - but it's fiction so we'll roll with it. Cliff agrees because he can use the cash, and reluctantly sticks around to help the kids. Huat doesn't draw them with the stereotypical superhero physiques or faces. For the most part, I'd say they look fairly normal, in that they look weird in the way regular people can look weird. They hardly ever wear uniforms or costumes, the closest probably being Ted (the redhead up above) and most of the crime they fight they sort of stumble into.

So while the team is tangled up in a mess about ancient Chinese artifacts, or a demon trapped on Earth trying to gather souls to empower himself, Jost is trying to turn a profit while polls tell him people want the original Doom Patrol members back. Who are, as mentioned, dead. Arcudi does get a good "Negative Man" gag out of the cast of characters he's made, though.

Or when the team walks away, he simply gets a new team of pre-existing characters (Elongated Man, Metamorpho, the good Doctor Light, and Beast Boy.) There's even an issue where Jost argues with a TV executive and a fanboy writer about what they can do to make the TV show more popular, with the writer being outraged at how out of character they are proposing to make people.

There's also a lot about what Cliff really is, at this point. He's been dead multiple times now. Rebuilt endlessly. His "brain" isn't even an actual flesh-and-blood organ any longer. You'd think after all the weird crap he's been through that might not be so daunting, but Cliff mostly just seems tired of it all. Then the Cliff we see for the first 7-8 issues isn't the Cliff we see for the rest of the series, and that raises its own questions. Huat also gives the Cliff from later on a less streamlined, more clunky, more, well robotic appearance to reflect the difference. Later Issues Robotman can't be nearly as expressive with his face as Early Issues Robotman.

Being part of a team doesn't seem to do any of them any good. Fever at one point decides the best thing for her to do is nothing. Freak flat out hates her power and would love to be rid of it. Fast Forward tries to improve his power, push it further, and about drives himself insane. Ends up on medication to cope with it. Kid Slick's the only one that seems to avoid all that, and it's his getting hospitalized by Fever that prompts her to embrace apathy as a lifestyle. You can't make someone be a superhero. They either want to be, or they don't.

The series ended at 22 issues in Fall 2003. I think it's one of those series often overlooked, but well-loved by the people who find it. A year later, we got the John Byrne Doom Patrol, spinning out of a storyline I think he and Claremont did together in JLA, which did in fact bring back a lot of the original team.

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