doom patrol vol 1 crawling from the wreckage

Apparently he had been promised plot input, on which Kupperberg didn’t follow through. It had interior work from Steve Lightle, which was - for 1987 - kind of a big deal. It’s easy to overlook in light of everything that followed, but the relaunch didn’t start out badly. Kupperberg kept at it, and in 1987 sat at the helm of an actual revival. They stuck around, in a modified membership, to bedevil the Titans for a while. The first story of the Titans’ second year saw that team finally investigating the Patrol’s original murder, as well as the return of their arch-foes the Brotherhood of Evil. With Beast Boy’s inclusion in the 1980 New Teen Titans relaunch, the team and concept were kept from fading completely. But even if that relaunch failed to clear the pad, the concept wasn’t completely dead.

It wasn’t that memorable, truth be told, and even Kupperberg admitted that the relaunch flubbed the concept by turning them into something more along the lines of cookie-cutter superheroes. He loved the team and introduced a new version in 1977, in the pages of the company’s deathless Showcase anthology. The man responsible more than any other for the Doom Patrol’s survival in the subsequent decade was Paul Kupperberg. That didn’t happen, and the concept languished for nine years. Low sales led the team to be unceremoniously murdered on-page, leaving the creators to urge readers to write in to save them. The first run of the Patrol lasted thirty-five issues before cancelation in 1968. I could be persuaded, certainly, but the burden of proof would rest on whoever could prove that Stan ever paid close enough attention to National to ape a brand-new mid-tier launch mere months after release.) But honestly I would tend to think not, since while Stan was a thief, he was a lazy thief who preferred to grab whatever was close at hand. (As for whether Stan actually stole the idea of a group of misfit superheroes on the outskirts of society who fought to protect a world that hated and feared them at the command of a wheelchair-bound genius, we may never know at this late date.

Their powers were more curses than gifts, leaving them stuck on the outskirts of a society that would only ever tolerate their scruffy presence alongside the lantern-jawed likes of Superman and Green Lantern.

They were superheroes, yes, but explicitly positioned as outsiders and freaks. Whether or not, as co-creator Arnold Drake (alongside Bob Haney and Bruno Premiani) was wont to speculate, Stan Lee stole the basic shape of the premise for Marvel’s X-Men, the feature nevertheless tasted slightly different than the rest of the line. The Doom Patrol have always been an outlier in DC’s firmament of spandex stars.

Doom patrol vol 1 crawling from the wreckage