I have been considering a comprehensive overview of the Doom Patrol, from 1963 (Drake/Premiani) through 1993 (Grant Morrison), for a long time now. I've avoided such exhaustive discussions since finishing Adam Strange, but the John Byrne series (18 issue) should be easily doable. The 2004 series flowed out of a six-issue storyline in #94-99 which reunited the creative team of John Byrne and Chris Claremont, but what was more remarkable at the time, to me anyway, was the decision to handle the team as if it had never been seen before. Today I have finally come to the conclusion that "every 'new number one' creates a different reality," but 20 years ago I was ambivalent at best. I was also certain that, someday, somehow, Byrne would explain how this "new" team actually does fit into established continuity (yet another example of how I can be so certain yet so wrong). Before moving on to the regular series, however, I suppose it behooves me to take a look at the introductory story.
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It was in the text just before the #14 cover. I may have misunderstood something.
ISSUE #15:
Rita and Cliff are out on a date. The name "Elasti-Girl" is mentioned for the first time in this series, but she prefers "Rita." She exhibits a new power, to shrink and grow other things (in addirion to her clothing) was long as she is touching them, but doing so requires some amount of concentration at this point. She uses this power to shrink herself and Cliff to ditch a crowd of fans. Meanwhile, back at Key Mordaz, Nudge is taking advantage of cliff's absence to search his room. All along, up until a certain point, she had been able to sense Cliff's pain, but lately she can't and wants to know why. Hidden in his quarters she finds the pain-relieving drugs he lifted from the robot fighting arena at the end of #6. Then, without Grunt to talk to, she goes to Vortex's quarters and makes a startling discovery.
Else where on Key Mordaz, the Chief has provided Larry with a new set of bandages which become semi-transparent when he wears them. Suddenlt, Vortex arrives carrying Nudge, saying that he found her collapsed in his quarters. Back on Cliff and Rita's date, they witness some police cars rushing somewhere with their sirens on, and Cliff picks up an A.P.B. that something is happening at Sun City Central Hospital. Growing to giant size, Rita carries Cliff there in order to arrive as quickly as possible. Once they arrive, they discover that all of the babies in the materity ward, at least seven, are dead, apparently of old age. (One is left alive but later dies.) In the delivery room, they find a mother and all of the attending staff similarly aged to death, but the newly-delivered baby, Gregory Donovan, is nowhere to be found.
Outside, two police office find a naked child crouching over a similarly aged corpse, but the boy appears to be about five years old. He touches first one cop, then the other, draining the life force from each, and he walks away as a teenager. He soon arrives at Isaac Newton High School, still naked, where he encounters four teenage girls. Before he can touch them, however, the school's coach arrives and ushers him into the locker room, covering him with a blanket. The Chief is notified and he sends Negative Man to the scene with a device which detects aberrant energy. He arrives to find Cliff and rita already on the scene. By this time, the coach and37 other people have already been killed. Gregory wanders away, now wearing shorts and a t-shirt and sporting long hair and a beard.
He enters a diner as Cliff, Rita and Neg-Man track him. They arrive just in time to witness an old man being thrown through the diner's window. He tells them that he is only 16, and we learn later that he dies. The Chief's plan is for Rita to allow herself to be touched, then grow to giant size, thus "overloading" Gregory's system. Sounds risky to me, but before she gets the chance, she enters the diner only to discover that he has absorbed so much life energy that he has aged himself to death. Later, back at Key Mordaz, the Chief theorizes that Gregory was a mutant energy vampire, just "one of the cruel tricks nature likes to play from time to time."
Just then, Nudge enters, having apparently recovered from whatever happened to her. Vortex is happy to see that she's okay, but she attacks him. then attacks Larry, throwing Negative Man out of his body. then she telekinetically picks up the Chief and hurls him through the window, off the island and into the seas. She pops Robotman's head from his body, and mentally subdues Rita as well. It is then revealed that she has been possessed by five different people, who have increased her powers fivefold.
I must have stopped reading about the time you did, Jeff, because I don't remember any of this.
Luis had some great comments:
@Jeff: It is Nudge who I felt to be too exposed and vulnerable too frequently. Not the 13 years old version of Rita, who I believe looked worse than it was.
That's who it thought we were talking about. Doesn't sound cool either way.
@Captain: While it did not last very long, there was a short period when Rita and Larry were clearly attracted to each other. It was in #86-87 (1964).
That sounds vaguely familiar. Obviously died on the vine though.
There was a very unpleasant plotline between Chief and Rita, but that was in the next volume of Doom Patrol (by Keith Giffen, Matthew Clark and Ron Randall, 2009-2011).
As I said, nobody seemed to understand what made DP work after Drake until Morrison. And he didn't ape Drake, he just went as bonkers as possible. Everybody else (Giffen, Kupperburg, Byrne) tried to make it a standard, soap-opera-y superhero team, and that isn't DP. It's also done to death elsewhere.
I agree that the original team had a nice 1950s style that gave it a charm of its own. I believe that some of it rubbed off of the circunstance of having debuted in a 1950s anthology title (albeit in 1963) under a veteran editor (Murray Boltinoff).
Or from the fact that 1950s sci-fi movies were "cutting edge" when they created the strip in 1963! Also, Boltiinoff and Premiani were both middle-aged when DP debuted, 52 and 56 respectively. Older people don't adapt quickly -- they know half of the latest trends they see won't last. Also, older people just get set in their ways -- witness Ditko drawing Korean War-era tanks in Rom, Spaceknight in the '80s. Premiani's laboratory scenes actually seemed to reference the 1940s, when he was in his 30s.
Also, adding to my own earlier comments about the Nudge's adult supervision and how her family would respond, I have to point out that the original run of Doom Patrol was rather daring when faced with a comparable situation. The way they dealt with Nicholas Galtry and Garfield Logan (starting with #100) was a lot more 1960s then the early stories (MGA #80-85, DP #86-89 or so) would make us expect.
I always assumed that Galtry was based on some literary precedent -- Uriah Heep, maybe, or Ebenezer Scrooge. He seems very Dickensian.
Oh, I get it now!
You guys were talking about Nudge and I thought you were referring to Rita.
Nevermind...
It is then revealed that she has been possessed by five different people, who have increased her powers fivefold.
These are the five teens who were present when Nudge got her powers. They all took the same drug. They’ve apparently been trapped in her head for the duration. We met them and pre-Grunt Henry in issue #10.
Also in issue #10, we met Mi-Sun’s father. He asked where she was going all “tarted-up” and gave himself a fatal heart attack as a result. To wrap up the subject of under-dressed Mi-Sun, these were and are her own choices of clothing, not the pajamas.
It is shown that somehow the drug's effect reached the teen who led them to that room despite he not having taken any of it. And to Harry (later to become Grunt) as well.
I don't think it is made clear why. Are we to believe that Mi-Sun's powers broadcast the sensations to those two people in close proximity?
These are the five teens who were present when Nudge got her powers.
Oh, yeah. I was wondering if we weres upposed to know who they were. (Guess I wasn't paying close enough attention.)
Mi-Sun’s father... asked where she was going all “tarted-up” and gave himself a fatal heart attack as a result.
I thought the implication was that Mi-Sun's powers (inadvertantly) caused her father's heart attack.
They may have; it is not very clear at all IMO. He already had a significant heart condition; we even see a previous heart attack on panel in an early issue.
Certainly her brother blames her for their father's death in any case.
He does indeed say that. And we saw school scenes that show that he is aware of her powers.
But it may be that he blames her attitude instead of (or in addition to) the powers.
Besides, he may be motivated by a need to express grief and find a guilty party right then and there. It is entirely conceivable that he repented saying that at some later time.
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