BHOC: DOOM PATROL #102

As I mentioned last week, on my trip to Ed’s Coins and Stamps in the Sun-Vet Mall after graduating from 6th Grade, I bought not only the first part of the Doom patrol’s crossover with CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN, but also the concluding part in DOOM PATROL #102 as well. Ed’s had a broad range of DOOM PATROL back issues, no doubt a reflection of the fact that in 1979, not many fans were interested in them at all. But I was, based on my earlier encounters with the group in SUPER-TEAM FAMILY and elsewhere, and so I had taken to picking up the next chronological issue on each successive trip to the shop that I made. I can recall really loving the side panel of Beast Boy and Mento on this cover and finding it delightfully funny.

By 1966, though, DOOM PATROL had been slipping into the same spirit of Camp-inspired daffiness that was permeating the entire DC line (and much of the field beyond) in the wake of the massive success of the lie action 1966 BATMAN television show. So the emphasis in the strip had shifted away from pathos and emotional truth and more into wackiness and broad hijinks. In this, you can also see writer Arnold Drake taking notice of the Marvel books of the period and attempting to draft in some of their energy. The place where that approach was undone a bit was in the artwork of Bruno Premiani. Bruno was a fine illustrator, but he was never comfortable with the sort of forceful, action-oriented foreshortening that creators such as Jack Kirby had popularized. He drew his assignments, no matter how weird the story was, as plausibly and directly as it could. I would guess that this is why artist Bob Brown was so often called in to do covers for DOOM PATROL, as he did on this issue. Brown was perhaps less skilled as a draftsman, but he could capture a bit more of the actin and hyperbolic compositions that were helping to make comic book covers appealing and attractive to young buyers. This said, I always loved Premiani’s work–especially before the size of the original artwork was reduced and he had less space to work in.

The story this issue represented the second half of a cross-title crossover with CHALLENGERS OF THE UKNOWN. While this is an everyday occurrence today, in 1966 it had been done only rarely prior to this. Accordingly, while this story does pick up on the events of the earlier chapter, the issue is also treated like a complete story unto itself. So in the opening, the Doom Patrol are all going about their regular lives–Robotman is entertaining sick children, Elasti-Girl is hanging out with her would-be beau Steve Dayton, the billionaire who is also Mento, and Negative Man is test piloting a new version of the ship that he flew when he first became radioactive. But before long, they’re all called back to HQ where the Challengers are waiting for them–almost as though they’d been standing around with nothing to do since the first part ended in their own magazine.

A couple of quick breaks here before we continue. At around this time, DC began to intermittently run their Direct Currents checklist of other titles that were available that month. This was clearly a response to the Marvel Bullpen Bulletins page that boasted a similar checklist. But somehow, the DC version was a bit dryer and more lifeless–in part because it only covered a fraction of the DC line, and so you could never be sure if a series you were following might be included month to month.

And then comes this month’s installment of the Patrol Postscripts letters page. As was true of all of editor Murray Boltinoff’s letters page, this one did more excerpting of fans’ letters rather than printing them relatively complete. Among the many readers named on tis one is future writer, publisher and artist agent Mike Friedrich, who was only a couple of years away from writing for DC. The page also included an active back issue swap section, which made me long for such a thing to be done in the contemporary comics that I was following (not that I’d have had any more spare funds to spend on said back issues–but I still wanted it.)

And a cool and well-designed full page ad for the next issue of ACTION COMICS, which was dedicated to reprinting a string of back-up stories starring Supergirl. The Girl of Steel headlined a couple of these 80-Page Giants, and the sales of them may have contributed to her taking over the lead spot in ADVENTURE COMICS in a short while, ousting the Legion of Super-Heroes and sending them into exile in the back pages of ACTION COMICS for a while.

Meanwhile, back at the story, prof Haley start to tell the Doom Patrol members about what he fears the recently-escaped Multi-Man and his Challenger-Haters group is up to. And to confirm Prof’s suspicions, the narrative cuts to the villains who have penetrated into a lost (and unnamed) undersea Atlantean city that was preserved at the moment of its demise like Pompeii. But Kra, the alien mechanoid, has the technology to resurrect these warriors–that’s some powerful alien medicine right there–and the king of the place, Zatopa, throws in with his rescuers, sending his legions to invade the surface world for Multi-Man and friends. This is what our heroes are going to be up against this time out.

So Zatopa’s warriors come rising out of the sea in Indonesia on a march of conquest. Now, you wouldn’t think they’d be any match for modern troops with contemporary weapons, but they’ve been equipped with super-weapons by the Challs-Haters that makes their military engagements a rout. Meanwhile, the heroes race to the sunken city in a jetfoil that the Chief had invented, and wind up battling the form-changing Multi-Man as they near the place, in a manner reflective of the cover. Despite the fact that there are seven heroes present, Multi-Man is able to dance with them all, and while he eventually withdraws, he first boasts about how his purloined legions are poised to take over Japorta. Consequently, the heroes have to split their forces, with Red, Rocky, Negative Man and Robotman heading to Japorta to confound the enemy while Prof, Ace and Elasti-Girl enter the city to face the Challs-Hunters. Back at base remotely, the Chief reasons that even with this large a crew, more help may be needed, and he resolves to put out a few calls.

And sure enough, as the story moves into chapter three, we hone in on the home of Beast Boy’s miserly guardian Galtry, where Garfield Logan is summoned to enter the fray by Mento. Immediately, the two characters can’t stand one another, and they spend the rest of the issue verbally sparring with one another. Anyway, they race off in one of Mento’s hot rod ships to join the team invading the underwater city. Meanwhile, the four heroes dispatched to Japorta mop up on the invading army in almost less time than it takes to tell about it. Meanwhile, the underwater team engages the Challs-Haters, in particular Kra, Volcano Man and the robotic Multi-Woman. Robotman shows up suddenly, raced to the area by Negative Man o help out, and while he’s no physical match for Kra, he is able to trick the alien mechanoid into destroying his own leg.

Elasti-Girl, meanwhile, attains colossal size so that she can outfight the huge Multi-Woman, and Mento takes care of Volcano Man with his helmet-given telekinesis. That leaves Multi-Man, who assumes the form of a killer while intent on swallowing up his attackers. But he hasn’t reckoned with Beast Boy, who becomes a mass of barnacles, weighing Multi-Man down and allowing him to be captured. The undersea city self-destructs for really no good reason other than that the story is over and loose ends need to be tied up, and that’s pretty much a wrap for this adventure. Back at Doom Patrol headquarters, all of the assembled heroes snipe with one another about who deserves credit for the victory–you can see that Drake was thinking about the manner in which the Marvel characters would argue with one another, but his version isn’t especially well-motivated, so it feels performative rather than a reflection of genuine character. On the whole, this second part felt less satisfying to me than the first half, and at no point did it feel like any of the players were taking the events of the story all that seriously, which meant that I couldn’t invest in the outcome either.