Review by Win Wiacek

In 1963 the company that would be DC realised that superheroes were back in a big way. They ditched the mystery stories from venerable anthology My Greatest Adventure and dipped a toe in the waters with a radical take on the fad with thematic roots still firmly planted in the B-movie monster films of the era.

No traditional team of masked adventurers, the cast comprised a robot, a mummy and an occasional fifty-foot woman, who joined forces with and were guided by a brusque, domineering, crippled mad scientist to fight injustice in a whole new way.

Covering June 1963 to February 1966 this first quirky monochrome compilation collects the Fabulous Freaks’ earliest exploits. The dramas were especially enhanced by the drawing skills of Italian cartoonist and classicist artist Giordano Bruno Premiani whose highly detailed, subtly humanistic illustration made even the strangest situation dauntingly authentic and grittily believable. Bob Brown, though, occasionally fills in.

Premiere tale ‘The Doom Patrol’ scripted by Arnold Drake and Bob Haney, has a mysterious wheelchair bound scientist summon three outcasts to his home promising to change their miserable lives forever. Competitive car racer Cliff Steele had died in a horrific pile up, but his undamaged brain had been transplanted into a fantastic mechanical body. Test pilot Larry Trainor had been trapped in an experimental stratospheric plane and become permanently radioactive, with the dubious benefit of gaining a semi-sentient energy avatar which could escape his body to perform incredible stunts for up to a minute at a time. To pass safely amongst men Trainor had to constantly wrap himself in special radiation-proof bandages. Ex-movie star Rita Farr had been exposed to mysterious gases which gave her the unpredictable and, at first, uncontrolled ability to shrink or grow to incredible sizes.

These outcasts were brought together by brilliant but enigmatic Renaissance Man the Chief, who sought to mould the solitary misfits into a force for good and quickly proves his point when a mad bomber attempts to blow up the city docks.

From Drake on his own, more misfits follow. Enemies include The Brotherhood of Evil, an assemblage of international criminals and terrorists led by French genius-in-a-jar the Brain and his greatest creation, a super-intelligent talking gorilla dubbed Monsieur Mallah. They feature the shapeshifting Madame Rouge. General Immortus is an incredibly aged malign presence seeking eternal life, and there’s a grotesque alien invader Garguax. One story teams them all.

Steve Dayton can become Mento when wearing a psycho-kinetic helmet, and wants to deceive Rita into marrying him, and this is the series in which Beast Boy first appeared. There are also the occasional solo tales of the individual heroes, the early days of Robotman extending into Volume 2.

It’s obvious just how incredibly mature Drake and Premiani’s take on superheroes remains and these superbly engaging, frantically fun and breathtakingly beautiful tales should rightfully rank amongst the finest Fights ‘n’ Tights tales ever told.

Sadly no longer available at the intended bargain price, the material is available in other formats and in colour, most recently as Doom Patrol: The World’s Strangest Heroes Volume One. Three-quarters of the content is found in Doom Patrol: The Silver Age Volume 1, while the hardcover Doom Patrol: The Silver Age Omnibus has everything on oversized pages. Previously the content was spread across three volumes of Doom Patrol Archives.