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dkmode's review
5.0
Took me more than two years to get through this because there are more ideas in a single panel of it than most superhero comics have in their entire runs and sometimes you need a break from that. Every page there's a weird three-legged dog with a fork for a head running up to our heroes out of the shadows and telling them that the Diamond Of Langreene is overcharged and must be returned to The Subspace of Reality (which, the book will tell you, was initially conceptualized by Freud on his first LSD trip) or some shit, and there isn't anything you can do but begrudgingly accept it. This is the same reaction our main POV character, Robotman, has to this information, which is good, because most of the other Doom Patrol members are off hallucinating their imaginary friends into physical being or having sex with themselves to give birth to a new version of themself which hatches from an egg. There is just A Lot Going On, and it gives the proceedings an anarchic glee which is simultaneously chaotic, hilarious, and, often, horrific. It's a run that commits to its own weirdness, that's interested in investigating what it means to be weird, gross, and ugly in a world that demands the sanded-off edges of conformity - and that, eventually, finds a twisted, sweet beauty in it all.
coleparkinson4's review
funny
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.75
eantczak's review
adventurous
challenging
emotional
funny
hopeful
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
cerandor's review
4.0
Grant Morrison is a writer I have a love-hate relationship with. At his best, he writes intricately constructed stories that burst at the seams with imagination and weirdness. At his worst, the imagination and weirdness tip over into pretension, though the line on that will likely depend on the reader. This, one of his most notable early works, collected in a massive omnibus, probably veers more towards the latter category, but the imagination constantly rescues it, as do the sympathetic characters caught in the middle of the weirdness (and who sometimes have the weirdness caught in the middle of them). There’s better, more refined Morrison out there, but this is worth catching for fans of his or of weirdness in general.
thephantomfred's review against another edition
challenging
dark
mysterious
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
saif42's review
5.0
Instant. Favorite.
So this series is part of the "UK writers reviving dying DC series" like Alan Moore on Swamp Thing and Morrison on Animal Man. It suffers from the same issue of it basically starting sort of in the middle but just like most of the revival series, you don't need any prior knowledge of Doom Patrol to start or enjoy this series. All you need to know is one thing.
It gets weirder.
I don't want to spoil anything in this series. I believe that Morrison's writing is so insanely absurd that to tell you anything here is to take away from future readers joy when they get to it, read it, and go "Seriously? What in the actual fuck am I reading?" so I'll try and keep this spoiler free.
Doom Patrol is a superhero team like no other. Freaks and rejects that hate themselves, but somehow save the world from things weirder than themselves. How weird are these superheroes? The team in Morrisons run consists of:
Cliff: a human brain in a robot body
Rebis: a hermamphrodite ghost/alien
Crazy Jane: a woman with 70+ personalities. Some of them have superpowers.
Dorothy: a little girl with a face like an ape, also has psychic powers.
Josh: Black guy
Niles Caulder: wheelbound supergenius (The original Doom Patrol preceded the X-Men FYI)
And that's the heroes. The side characters and villains are even weirder. Its a lot of fun.
The entire run as a whole is very strong. It has a lull towards the final arc but the ending was fantastic. Its rare to maintain the such quality over 50+ issues but I felt the same sense of wonder and awe reading the first few issues as I did reading the last few issues.
If you like absurdism, surrealism, art, parodies, fun, or good things, you'll love this series. Highly highly recommended.
So this series is part of the "UK writers reviving dying DC series" like Alan Moore on Swamp Thing and Morrison on Animal Man. It suffers from the same issue of it basically starting sort of in the middle but just like most of the revival series, you don't need any prior knowledge of Doom Patrol to start or enjoy this series. All you need to know is one thing.
It gets weirder.
I don't want to spoil anything in this series. I believe that Morrison's writing is so insanely absurd that to tell you anything here is to take away from future readers joy when they get to it, read it, and go "Seriously? What in the actual fuck am I reading?" so I'll try and keep this spoiler free.
Doom Patrol is a superhero team like no other. Freaks and rejects that hate themselves, but somehow save the world from things weirder than themselves. How weird are these superheroes? The team in Morrisons run consists of:
Cliff: a human brain in a robot body
Rebis: a hermamphrodite ghost/alien
Crazy Jane: a woman with 70+ personalities. Some of them have superpowers.
Dorothy: a little girl with a face like an ape, also has psychic powers.
Josh: Black guy
Niles Caulder: wheelbound supergenius (The original Doom Patrol preceded the X-Men FYI)
And that's the heroes. The side characters and villains are even weirder. Its a lot of fun.
The entire run as a whole is very strong. It has a lull towards the final arc but the ending was fantastic. Its rare to maintain the such quality over 50+ issues but I felt the same sense of wonder and awe reading the first few issues as I did reading the last few issues.
If you like absurdism, surrealism, art, parodies, fun, or good things, you'll love this series. Highly highly recommended.
librarimans's review
5.0
Not my favorite thing by Morrison (that would be Animal Man) but still an absolute classic that no comics fan should miss.
mattquann's review against another edition
4.0
It is my opinion that if we had to appoint someone to do massive amounts of hallucinogens and produce art, Grant Morrison would be a fine candidate. Filled to the brim with mind-bending, nonsensical, and the palpably weird, Doom Patrol is a classic of the weird comic genre that lives up to its quite impressive hype.
The motley crew that makes up the Doom Patrol features the following misfit superheroes:
*A man and woman fused together by a negative spirit!
*A robot with a man's brain!
*A normal superhero scientist who refuses to use his superpowers!
*A woman with dissociative identity disorder with each personality having a different superpower!
*An ape-like girl whose thoughts are made physical!
*Their home base located on the sentient, transgender, teleporting street, Danny the Street!
Together, these loons fight the world-ending and consciousness-disrupting forces too weird for the Justice League. They do combat with the Scissormen, the Brotherhood of Dada, their own worst fears, and...the Pentagon? Truly this is a whacked-out comic that just about defies description. It is obviously heavily influenced by a mind familiar to chemical alteration. Just see the return of villain Nobody in the second leg of the run: the villain runs for president in a psychedelically decked-out bus that causes mass LSD trips, naturally, because it has Albert Hofmann's bike embedded in its engine.
I think most people who have read Grant Morrison develop strong feelings about his writing. It can be truly revelatory (All-Star Superman! New X-Men! Animal Man!) or painfully obscure and more than a little strange. Doom Patrol easily sits beside Morrison's weirder output, and it might not have the narrative thrust of those works mentioned above, but it gets tons of points in my book for being some of the strangest shit I've ever read.
If you have yet to dive into this series, I recommend it highly! As long as you go in expecting the truly strange, you'll be well and truly pleased.
The motley crew that makes up the Doom Patrol features the following misfit superheroes:
*A man and woman fused together by a negative spirit!
*A robot with a man's brain!
*A normal superhero scientist who refuses to use his superpowers!
*A woman with dissociative identity disorder with each personality having a different superpower!
*An ape-like girl whose thoughts are made physical!
*Their home base located on the sentient, transgender, teleporting street, Danny the Street!
Together, these loons fight the world-ending and consciousness-disrupting forces too weird for the Justice League. They do combat with the Scissormen, the Brotherhood of Dada, their own worst fears, and...the Pentagon? Truly this is a whacked-out comic that just about defies description. It is obviously heavily influenced by a mind familiar to chemical alteration. Just see the return of villain Nobody in the second leg of the run: the villain runs for president in a psychedelically decked-out bus that causes mass LSD trips, naturally, because it has Albert Hofmann's bike embedded in its engine.
I think most people who have read Grant Morrison develop strong feelings about his writing. It can be truly revelatory (All-Star Superman! New X-Men! Animal Man!) or painfully obscure and more than a little strange. Doom Patrol easily sits beside Morrison's weirder output, and it might not have the narrative thrust of those works mentioned above, but it gets tons of points in my book for being some of the strangest shit I've ever read.
If you have yet to dive into this series, I recommend it highly! As long as you go in expecting the truly strange, you'll be well and truly pleased.
nigellicus's review against another edition
5.0
At the one end of the Vertigo spectrum you had Sandman: brooding, gothic, sensitive, chilling, frightfully clever. At the other end you had this: brash, bawling, loud, surreal, probably deserved to be called a word with -punk added at the end but never was, thank God. Mental illness defines these characters as well as physical disabilities or deformities. Depression, dissociation, multiple personalities, schizophrenia, fugue states, mood swings - hardly the stuff of a heroic superteam, unless you're fighting, or befriending, the bizarre, irrational characters and situations Grant Morrison dreams up for the Doom Patrol. Strange and horrible, but also at times rather wonderful, their ultimate enemy is normality itself as enforced by a rigid beaueaucratic system weirder than anything it wants to destroy. The Brotherhood Of Dada! Danny The Street! The Real Men From NOWHERE! Wonders and terrors abound! (And I wonder if the TV series, which is quite good too, will also come round to the fact that Mr Nobody is actually the Good Guy in all thils.) It's all very silly and weird and melodramatic, and the last issue of the run was very first comic that ever made me cry, and hey, guess what, it did it again.
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