Review by Win Wiacek

‘The Death of the Doom Patrol’ is a startlingly foreboding title to continue Arnold Drake and Bruno Premiani’s adventures of the world’s strangest superheroes. It’s a grievous over-exaggeration on behalf of transmutational foe Mr. 103 who’s actually compelled to save Niles Caulder from radiation poisoning. Bob Brown then draws solo-thriller ’60 Sinister Seconds’, in which Negative Man must find and make safe four atomic bombs in different countries… all within one minute!

Brown handles the following two tales, starting with an old-fashioned battle against a deranged entomologist whose mechanical insects deliver ‘The Deadly Sting of the Bug Man’. Thereafter we have the groundbreaking first appearance of shapeshifting juvenile delinquent ‘The Beast-Boy’. The green kid burgles, then saves the team with his incredible ability to become any animal he can imagine.

An extended storyline begins with ‘The Fantastic Origin of Beast-Boy’ (limned by Premiani) wherein the obnoxious kid is revealed as orphan Gar Logan: a child being slowly swindled out of his inheritance by his ruthless guardian Nicholas Galtry. The conniving accountant even leases his emerald-hued charge to scientist Dr. Weir for assorted evil experiments, but when the Doom Patrol later tackle rampaging dinosaurs, the trail leads unerringly to Gar, who at last explains his uncanny powers.

Whilst a toddler in Africa, Logan contracted a rare disease. His scientist father tried an experimental cure which left him the colour of cabbage but with the ability to change shape at will. Now it appears Weir has used the lad’s altered biology to unlock the secrets of evolution – or has he? Despite foiling the scheme, the team have no choice but to return the boy to his guardian. Rita, however, is not prepared to leave the matter unresolved.

We also have the start of an extended multi-part thriller exploring Cliff Steele’s early days after his racing car accident and subsequent resurrection, beginning with ‘Robotman… Wanted Dead or Alive’. Following Caulder’s implantation of Cliff’s brain into a mechanical body, the shock drove the patient crazy and Steele went on a city-wide rampage.

‘I, Kranus, Robot Emperor!’, sees an apparently alien mechanoid exposed with a far more terrestrial and terrifying origin. The tale ends on a pensive cliffhanger as the Patrol then dash off to rescue fellow adventurers The Challengers of the Unknown. Scripted by Drake and limned by Brown, ‘Twilight of the Challengers’ opens with the death-cheaters’ apparent corpses, and the DP desperately hunting whoever killed them. The drama explosively concludes with ‘8 Against Eternity’, battling murderous shape-shifting maniac Multi-Man and his robotic allies.

What follows astounds as Rita abruptly stops refusing the loathed Steve Dayton (see Volume 2) and becomes ‘The Bride of the Doom Patrol’. However, the guest star-stuffed wedding is almost spoiled when Garguax and the Brotherhood of Evil crash the party to murder the groom.

Even whilst indulging in her new bride status, Rita can’t abandon the team, joining them to tackle old elemental enemy Mr. 103 during a ‘Honeymoon of Terror’, before back-up yarn ‘The Robot-Maker Must Die’ concludes the origin of Cliff Steele. It’s all wonderful.

More great adventure follows in Volume 4, although the material from both is now more readily available in thick paperback as either Doom Patrol: The Silver Age Volume 2, or Doom Patrol: The World’s Strangest Heroes. In oversized hardback the entire 1960 series is found in Doom Patrol: The Silver Age Omnibus. If you can track it down, the stories are reprinted in crisp black and white in the first Showcase Presents The Doom Patrol.