Doom Patrol by Drake & Premiani

Showcase Presents: Doom Patrol
Arnold Drake: Writer
Bruno Premiani: Artist

Vol. 1 – ISBN: 1401221823
Collects My Greatest Adventure/Doom Patrol #80-101
1963–1966
520 pages

Vol. 2 – ISBN: 1401227708

Collects Doom Patrol #102-121

1966–1968

512 pages

Blame Grant Morrison. Morrison is the reason that in all my years of comic reading, only recently have I read the original DP stories by Drake & Premiani. After reading Morrison’s re-imagining of the DP from the late 80’s I wasn’t overly interested in catching up on the original version of the DP. That’s not to say that Morrison’s run wasn’t very good, but personally, I’ve always found Morrison’s writing to be in the incredibly wide range of the “average” comic. So, nothing to blog about frankly.

What changed? Well, by pure chance, I read a brief article regarding the life of Bruno Premiani (I forget where, maybe an old issue of Alter-Ego, but I’m not sure.) It isn’t within the scope of this article to enlighten you, dear reader, concerning Mr. Premiani’s fascinating life, but I would encourage you read what you can about him. He has surely lead one of the most interesting lives in comics, and he seems to be fearless in the face of fascist bullies.

The article mentioned Premiani’s work on Doom Patrol, which was practically every issue of the original run, some 40 comics, with the main writer for the run being Arnold Drake. So I took the plunge and bought both volumes of Showcase Presents: Doom Patrol, and there’s no hesitation when I tell you that it was a regret free purchase.

The Showcase Presents: Doom Patrol collect every issue of the original DP run from the 1960’s. One small quibble is that the single crossover issue with Challengers of the Unknown isn’t included. For the sake of a mere 23 pages in a volume that already contains over 500, it seems churlish not to include it as a little bonus. It’s relatively common to find similar issues collected in the Marvel Essential line (the inclusion of a single issue of Dr. Strange in Essential Tomb of Dracula vol. 2 springs to mind.) so why not expect the same from DC.

The two volumes represent an absolute top line Silver-Age adventure, sci-fi and super-hero book. It’s as good as anything else that was being published in the mid to late sixties and does deserve to be read by a wider audience. So the question is, why isn’t it?

For my money, the answer is November 1961. The penultimate month of 1961 saw the release of Fantastic Four #1. A mere 18 months later Doom Patrol debuted, if you were a kid with a limited financial resource and these two books were an option, which would you go for? Both books had an aloof leader with little attachment to the mundane world, two bickering hot-heads one with great strength, the other with a flying, crackling alter-ego, and they both had a motherly, level headed female to keep the peace and remind them to eat meals between adventures.

But only one of them had Stan and Jack. Who’d get your money?

Doom Patrol is not an FF derivative. There are many original ideas employed by Arnold Drake, not least the inclusion of an outside love interest for Sue, I mean Rita, named Namor, I mean Mento. Oh well, I’ll give up with this paragraph.

Seriously, Doom Patrol is excellent, but unfortunately it wasn’t quite as fresh as it needed to be in the formative days of the Silver-Age. It was up against stiff competition. But in retrospect, it’s my favourite DC title from this period and it does attempt stories that you’ll not find elsewhere. Drake is an accomplished writer that offers us self contained issues but with over arching plot threads and character development, particularly with Rita Farr (Elasti-Girl) and Gar Logan (Beast Boy). Premiani is an excellent artist with a great deal of skill and ability at rendering figures, in dynamic but believable poses, also, he can draw a great gorilla, which is important when Monsieur Mallah appears in several story arcs.

Monsieur Mallah

As is true of any story, the heroes can only be as interesting as the villains they face, and that is where Doom Patrol really excels. With bad guys such as the Brain, Monsieur Mallah, General Immortus, Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man and the tragic Madame Rouge, the only other comic that has as colourful a rouges gallery is Batman. Batman however, built up his rogues gallery over several decades and hundreds of issues, Doom Patrol does it in considerably less than a decade and in forty issues. There’s a lot going on in these comics.

DP 89, Cover by Bob Brown

As I mentioned earlier, I read these comics in the two Showcase Presents black and white volumes, that’s the equivalent of 40 comics for less than £20. If you chose to, you could buy the hardback colour reprints in Archive Edition for considerably more money, but in terms of reading pleasure the Showcase Presents are certainly a bargain, I guarantee that any reader that enjoys Silver-Age heroics won’t be disappointed.

Mad Thinker Reads………..

More comics by Arnold Drake & Bruno Premiani.