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Dec 29, 2009, 6:36pm

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Review: Doom Patrol
« Thread Started on Aug 31, 2008, 7:11am »

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DOOM PATROL by Matthias Uy @ DC ANTHOLOGY
http://dca.bhyphen.com/titledpatrol.html

I’m a huge Doom Patrol fan from way back in the day as anybody who’s read my "Doom Patrol: The Silver Age" series at DC Legends knows and I’ve faithfully followed them through all of their various incarnations. The Paul Kupperberg version was probably my least favorite as he tried to turn The Doom Patrol into DC’s version of The X-Men (and if you ever catch me in chat, remind me to tell you how I made a complete ass of myself in front of Kupperberg in reference to his Doom Patrol) and my favorite version besides The Silver Age is the Grant Morrison run.

I think few will disagree with me that the Morrison run was nothing less than deranged genius and when I read Matthias Uy’s DOOM PATROL mini-series at DC Anthology I was quietly surprised to see that he was basing his version firmly on Morrison’s. Anybody with the nerve to try and do that has to be somebody worth reading and I can safely say that while Matthias Uy is no Grant Morrison (Hell, sometimes I don’t even think Grant Morrison is Grant Morrison) he does come close to the sheer out-and-out weirdness that was the trademark of Morrison’s run.

The Doom Patrol are trying their best to pick up the pieces of their lives after their latest adventure (which I’m assuming from references Matt drops here and there during the story takes place sometime after Morrison’s Issue #63) Kay (Crazy Jane) Challis has lost her powers and Cliff Steele is trying to help her deal with it. Dorothy Spinner, the ape-faced girl with super psychic powers has lapsed into a mysterious coma. Rebis is off somewhere creating a moon as a present for Danny The Planet and The Chief is…well, being The Chief. And despite having been killed by The Chief, Joshua (Tempest) Clay is still around as a ghost and Rhea (Lodestone) Jones is also hanging out with that big funky eye on her chest and no face.

Bizarre dream creatures attack the team and they find out fairly quickly that the creatures are coming from Dorothy’s mind. A further investigation into this situation brings them up against a new enemy: God’s jealous brother.

Yeah, you read that right. Seems as if God has siblings who also create universes but theirs aren’t nearly as good as God’s so they’ve been trying since The Dawn Of Time to steal God’s Secret Universe Making Formula which God hid in Dorothy Spinner’s mind. Now I hope that after he came up with that idea that Matt sat back and poured himself a cold beer and lit up a big fat cigar because he certainly deserves if for thinking big. One of the trademarks of The Doom Patrol is weirdness and NO idea can be considered too far out in left field for this strangest of super teams.

I suppose now is the time to get into Matt’s style which I found occasionally odd in it’s sentence structure and the sometimes unusual choice of phrases and words. After contacting Matt I found that English is not his native language so when reading the story, please take that into account. I read the story again after contacting Matt and in a weird way, I found that the unusual sentence structure and phrasing somehow seemed to actually work with the story, giving it a quirky, off-center mood. But that’s The Doom Patrol for you…anything different and odd and weird always works in their favor. Matt’s unfamiliarity with English enhances the bizarre events he’s relating about whereas if he were writing a more conventional super team, I don’t think it would.

But Matt’s dead on point with characterization. Especially with the relationship between Cliff Steele and Crazy Jane, which I have always found sweet and endearing. Cliff and Jane have a terrific friendship and the best scenes in the mini-series have the two of them in it every single time. But the rest of the cast is also handled well, especially The Chief who shows in this story that he’s still in the running for Most Manipulative Bastard Of The Decade.

DOOM PATROL definitely gets an enthusiastic round of applause from me. Matthias Uy is a writer with a heaping dose of imagination and talent and he uses both with skill and style in this version of one of my favorite super teams. This is labeled as a mini-series, but Matt drops tantalizing hints of future stories he’d like to do so my suggestion is that after reading the mini, drop Matt an email and encourage him to continue the series. And do it soon, hear?

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