Doom Patrol (the comic) classic or dud?

It's one of the best comics of the 1990s yeah.

The Rachel Pollack issues are actually pretty interesting too, though in a very different way, and really, there was no way to follow up the Morrison run, especially its final issue.

The new series = bleh so far.

Good point which leads me to ask: What would be the best way to sell an entire collection of comics?
Hawk 'em round shops?
Ebay?
Comic Fair?

I was an avid collector from like '85-'95 when I just stopped dead (cash!) - So I've got all the good Swamp things, Hellblazers, Sandmans, Shade, DP, etc, etc.
2000AD 100-onwards Loads of Warrior and Crisis and tons of other stuff (Stray Toasters anybody?)

Has anybody sold off their collection?

http://www.empireonline.com/news/story.asp?NID=19154

Strange that there's no mention of Morrison in that write up, leading one to deduce that it won't be nearly as good as it could be. DC's hopes that it will be a franchise to rival X-Men seem a bit far fetched for characters that only comic nerds have heard of.

Also annouced in Empire: Deadman and Luther Arkwright adaptations. The comic book movie bubble is going to burst pretty soon.

Blimey.

Withnail!

So tell us why you love it.

Me? I love that issue 50 has art by Jamie Hewlett *and* Rian Hughes. And it's insane.

And I'll probably regret starting this thread since I bet there's an older one in here, but I was never good at threadmancy.

Rataplan rataplan!

Apopleptic apologies. This was meant to be routed to ILC.

Continue.

Morrison really did a number on me when they started writing Doom Patrol back in 1989. Here I am, a precocious 10 year old reader who had been picking up the odd issue of the mediocre Kupperberg run because they liked the concept and Erik Larsen art more than anything else, when I encounter DPs #20 and #22 at a used bookstore that doubled as a comic book store in the back and am immediately intrigued by the obviously massive change that has overcome the book just from the covers alone. And I read them and the issues just open up a new world for me. When we get to the climax of issue #22 and Rebis the self-sufficient male/female/something-a-little-bit-extra busts through a stained glass window in the ossuary of Orqwith toward the reader like a Christ figure leaving the 2-D plane of comics and becoming fully real, and then confronts the lying dualist priests there with the question that will unmake the fiction that is consuming the real world, that was it. "Why is there something instead of nothing?"

And I followed Morrison's career faithfully for years and years after that, was influenced by the whole magic thing although never took it as overtly seriously as they did because I think it's a toolset that needs to be handled very gingerly or you start being overwhelmed by false correspondences with things and lose touch with reality. I turn out to be nonbinary too and my gender identity deeply encodes the way I experience the world and perceive reality. Like Rebis, I am my own squad; in a way, I'm constantly looking out for myself. Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol was the comic book that saved my life and I'm not sure I ever mean that only at a metaphorical level.

I’m trying to remember when I started reading it. Maybe #38 or #39? And while I was collecting some recent back issues were available too.

It was all so weird and existential and unlike any comic book I’d ever read, and even today it still remains a bit above my head. Followed the series into the Rachel Pollack run then jumped ship a few issues into that because it wasn’t for me anymore.

Many years later collected a little of the Gerald Way run but that really, really wasn’t for me.

(A fellow ILXor graciously gave me his paperback collections of the GM run a few years back!)

I had no idea Gerald Way wrote some Doom Patrol. I’ve never read any of his comics but ad a family we watched Umbrella Academy and I told them it felt extremely influenced by DP. Never read his comics because I disliked the show.

I’ve picked up some of GM’s run in the stores and flipped through it, putting it back. I think the art didn’t do much for me but reading the posts above makes me want to try it again.

An uncle gave me a bunch of his beat up old comics when I was a kid and there were some old DPs in there that I liked a lot.

Need to get that Rachel Pollack omnibus

All the original issues are still at my folks’ house.

I found Doom Patrol via DC ACTION!, a UK reprint magazine from around 1990 that reprinted the Marv Wolfman Titans run with Animal Man (!). Became obsessed with Animal Man (not just because of the scripts - Chas Truog, as with Richard Case, can’t be underestimated) and then moved to Doom Patrol. In a real way, Doom Patrol gently helped me cope with the segue between being a kid and being a teenager. That last run of issues — from the return of Mr Nobody in 51 to the final Morrison issue — was totally thrilling to read as it came out.

I don’t think Morrison’s bottled that specific magic again - emotionally I feel like Xmen comes closer than Invisibles, which is whole other thing (and I need to reread).

Reread some of the Pollack recently, I can never think of it the same way as the Morrison run, but it’s much better than I remember.

Don't think I've ever run into a Chas Truog fan before....

Truog is stunningly good casting, purely by accident, for what GMo’s Animal Man turns into. The sometimes-flat faces or the parallel planes of perspective play into the comic page / IRL dichotomy as if it were thematically intended, and his style looking like a looser, free-er version of Curt Swan on an unremarkable, abandoned superhero throwaway concept also basically the entire core premise

You make a persuasive case as always, sic. But I still would have preferred a 'better' artist (it's been a long time since I've read any of this stuff, but wasn't Duncan Fegredo working through a similar dichotomy, more successfully and attractively imho, on Milligan's Enigma?)

I agree about the Truog art serving really Animal Man really well the same way the Case art did Doom Patrol. They both might have been journeyman artists, but as sic was saying, their styles really play into the themes of the books to the point that I think their work is integral to them. The universe converged to make something special with those two teams; I don't think a "better" artist was necessary in either case.

I love the Grant Morrison Doom Patrol. This feels very true:

I don’t think Morrison’s bottled that specific magic again

I never got around to reading the Gerard Way series but I did recently watch the first ep of the TV adaptation. Not sure I'm convinced. Feels like a story that can only work as a comic. Screen can't capture the surrealism.

I’d say they were both something more than journeymen but never really bloomed on other projects. They can both do that surrealism you mention but it’s never “wacky”, or generic Dark Vertigo nonsense. They can calibrate the difference between eccentric, strange, scary and dangerous. They both do wonderful cliffhanger full-pages. And both are excellent panel-to-panel storytellers and character/environment designers. Always wanted to visit Buddy’s San Diego and Danny the Street.

Fine, I ordered Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol book 1. Will report back later.

Halfway through Doom Patrol book 2; they're investigating Danny The Street. The Insect Mesh and the Kaleidoscope Land finished warring and agreed to build a tower together after Cliff planted the flower of inspiration.

I'm into it enough to keep reading but I don't love it. I wonder if It would come across differently month-to-month as opposed to binging. The ideas are inventive and there's definitely a sense of Morrison stretching at the parameters of comic books and that's fun and exciting. What I don't like about Morrison is how restless their writing is. There is constantly stuff happening and there's not much room to breathe. Their writing reminds me a little of Alan Moore but Moore would have down-time for his characters. There would be an issue with just Swamp Thing and Abigail hanging out in the swamp or standalone issues that would develop and deepen who these people were. Morrison feels like an amped up kid with too many action figures "And then this thing happened and then this guy shows up and this thing happens and blam blam blam HE-MAN IS FIGHTING THE LAMP AND THE GUINEA PIG!"

It's a different kind of writing, the characters are more like symbols than fleshed out people. While it gives Morrison a lot of freedom it also keeps me at a distance.

Richard Case is probably the biggest obstacle for me. His work is so stiff and the proportions are often wonky. Occasionally there's a fill-in artist and they are almost always better than Case. Imagine if someone like Sienkiewicz worked on this? It would be amazing. At times Morrison's Doom Patrol reminds me of the Someplace Strange comic by Ann Nocenti and John Bolton. Nocenti is definitely coming from a different place than Morrison, but Someplace Strange was surreal and conceptual in a similar way and Bolton's art made it something special. But Case isn't a deal breaker, the writing is interesting enough that I'll at least finish the second book.

Interesting. I haven’t read much Swamp Thing but always felt like I had a good sense of Cliff, Chief, Jane and Dorothy, in both their flatness and their roundness, with Josh being the obviously underwritten character, and Rebis is… Rebis. I don’t think anyone after Morrison & Pollack have done a good job with Cliff.

As mentioned above, I really like Case, he just seems to magically fit - especially with Workman’s lettering - and I think DP works better as a “weird comic disguised as a superhero comic” than a weird comic that’s weird (like Shade, for example). There’s something so creatively interesting about pairing a square with a weirdo (Claremont/Sienkiewicz, Case/Morrison — not to underestimate Claremont’s quite different form of strangeness).

Danny The Street is my favorite thing so far in the comic.

Greatly disliked the Constantine tribute/satire. Rebis is very cool. Sorta reminds me of Snake Eyes from GI Joe.

Cliff’s giant shoulder pads bother me. He’s already a robot, they seem superfluous, like a Leifeldism that snuck in.

I just finished a great issue with Steve Yeowell handling the art. It was lovely.