Doom Patrol #11 – Gerard Way, Writer; Nick Derington, Penciller; Tom Fowler, Inker; Tamra Bonvillain, Colorist
Rating: Ray – 8/10
After an extended delay and an event comic that was supposed to take place after the events of this issue (and a canceled twelfth issue), the initial run of Gerard Way’s Doom Patrol comes to a close in Doom Patrol #11.
So was it worth the wait?
That depends on your tolerance for strangeness. This take on Doom Patrol has always been heavily inspired by a combination of Grant Morrison’s work on the property and Way’s own weird, often psychedelic comics. I found it to be mostly entertaining, if at times impenetrable in its metatextual nature. Beginning with a strange segment that shows how the world was created, in a parable involving balls and juggling clowns, the story then heads to the fortress of The Disappointment, a mysterious villain who is constantly under a copyright censorship bar. He’s kidnapped Rita Farr and plans to marry her in a pastiche of a fantasy comic book wedding.
His origins are actually quite clever – he was a superhero once, created for a toy line, but he was essentially scrubbed from history when his toy product turned out to be contaminated and sickened a host of kids. This is a unique twist that gives some humanity to a very odd villain, although it does remind me a bit of the twist regarding the Toy Kingdom in Fables a few years back.
The dialogue is a little too odd to work at times – this is a comic where the line “Didn’t you have sex with your cat?” is not only spoken but is a perfectly reasonable rejoinder to the main character. And her response is, essentially, “Yes I did and there’s nothing wrong with that”. But amid the weirdness, there’s some moments of greatness, particularly anything involving Terry None and her disturbing relationship with her villain father. It’s a bit hard to read this story now that so much of it has already played out, but it stands on its own decently. I don’t know if we’ll ever get a volume two, but I’d be intrigued to see where it goes.
To find reviews of all the DC issues, visit DC This Week.
Disclaimer: GeekDad received this comic for review purposes.
