Review by Win Wiacek

Until this collection the Doom Patrol’s 1960s adventures had never been available in colour paperbacks. This material covers what was presented in hardcover as The Doom Patrol Archives Volume 1 and Volume 2, with the alternative being the whole series available as The Silver Age Omnibus. Intended as a bargain priced alternative in black and white, just try finding Showcase Presents the Doom Patrol now. The current affordable colour format is Doom Patrol: The World’s Strangest Heroes.

Co-created by writers Arnold Drake and Bob Haney, the team was like nothing previously seen in comics, people damaged both physically and mentally. Vivid, brusque, domineering, crippled mad scientist Niles Caulder summons three outcasts through the promise of changing their miserable lives forever. Competitive car racer and professional daredevil Cliff Steele died in a horrific pile up, but his undamaged brain was transplanted into a fantastic mechanical body to become Robotman. Trapped in an experimental plane, test pilot Larry Trainor absorbed stratospheric radiation with the dubious benefit of gaining a semi-sentient energy avatar which would escape his body to perform incredible feats but only for up to a minute at a time as Negative Man. To pass safely amongst men, Trainor had to constantly wrap himself in unique radiation-proof bandages. Former film beauty Rita Farr became an occasional fifty-foot woman after exposure to mysterious gases. They also caused uncontrollable shrinking for Elasti-Girl.

Even the artist’s background fitted the profile. Italian-born, Bruno Premiani had lived in Argentina since the mid-1930s after his cartoons drew the ire of Benito Mussolini’s fascist party. His highly detailed, subtly humanistic illustration made even the strangest situation dauntingly authentic and grittily believable. Veteran Bob Brown illustrates a few tales toward the end.

After an origin introducing recurring foe General Immortus, Drake became sole writer, continually conceiving original foes. The dark to Doom Patrol’s shade was The Brotherhood of Evil, an assemblage of international terrorist super-criminals led by French genius-in-a-jar The Brain. He was backed up by his greatest creation, a super-intelligent talking gorilla dubbed Monsieur Mallah, and they also featured shapeshifting Madame Rouge, who’d eventually play an enormous role.

The Doom Patrol was broadened with Mento, the occasional identity of multi-millionaire Steve Dayton. Used to getting whatever he wants, he creates a superhero persona solely to woo and wed Rita, and Beast Boy arrives in Volume 2. Drake also includes a back-up series spotlighting the cast prior to the Doom Patrol, beginning with impoverished student Niles Caulder receiving unlimited funding for his research into extending life.

Consistently strange and uncanny, the Doom Patrol remains entirely unpredictable and very readable.