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The story begins with a wheelchair bound Svengali figure named Caulder discussing his plan to reform the defunct Doom Patrol. We learn the the former members are currently in various wards for both mental and physical ailments. We're introduced to Cliff Steele, Robotman, who's a human brain in an entirely robot body who is yearning for his lost humanity. In his first scene he loses his temper with a psychiatric nurse and we see him alone in his room at the intstitution, lost in despair. Caulder sends Cliff Magnus, the scientist who made Cliff's body to try and talk him round, and Magnus finds he can reconnect Cliff with his fellow man by introducing him to Kay Challis, a fellow patient who was abused by her father as a child and developed sixty-four multiple personalities. In this world a catastrophe has occurred that gave some people superpowers and she was affected, leaving her with 64 distinct sets of superpowers that manifest with the different personalities. Rounding out the team is Larry Trainor, who is hospitalised for some unspecified reason, who we see flirting with his doctor, Eleanor Poole. Trainor is visited in his hospital bed by a mysterious spectral figure who is something to do with his powers and which begins speaking to him, which it has never done before. It tells Larry that it needs the doctor and uses its powers to bind to her in the same way as it has to Larry. The issue ends with a high speed car crash on the city streets from which a burning body walks, warning of the coming of the 'scissormen'.
A reboot of a squicky and offbeat 60s comic, Grant Morrison's 80s take gets off to a fascinating start. I found the writing economical and effective, and really enjoyed the pathos of Robotman, who wakes screaming from a nightmare of dying in a racing car crash and having his brain scooped up a burning lunatic. I really enjoyed when he talks about the inadequacy of his robot senses and his unreliable memory of what it was like to experience life as a real human, summing up his predicament as like phantom limb syndrome for this entire body, lamenting that he still has bodily urges that he can't satisfy. He describes how he wants to crap sometimes and his sexual frustration. He rejects Magnus's help, who angrily tells him that he won't let him go under, won't lose even one good person, and that there are people with worse problems than his. "Show me one." Cliff demands, and is introduced to the haunted, lost Kay Challis - Crazy Jane, who is in the grounds painting in the rain. The personality she shows tells them they're 'talking to the hangman's beautiful daughter.' As Cliff looks on the painting seems to reach out to him, and Magnus tells how she's psychically active. Tears joining the rain she asks 'what do normal people have in their lives?' Cliff turns to her and is reached by her 'what happens when you just can't be strong any more? What happens if you're weak?' She stands limp in the rain. They stand silent together and Cliff invites her to come in out of the rain. The opening issue establishes promising relationships that I'm very interested in seeing develop. The friendship between the isolated mechanical man and maelstrom of powers and personalities of a broken woman, and the strange entity and the sparky Larry and his doctor and how they're forced together and their sexual tension. Plot questions arise: what is Caulder's aim for the new Doom Patrol? Who are the two mysterious self described Men in Black who take the policeman's statement at the scene of the crash, and what is the significance of the black book the burning man was carrying, and why was he so desperate to keep it away from whoever he was fleeing? Who are the scissormen? I have a theory about that last one, based on the cover of part 2. I think they're going to be some fourth-wall breaking device that cuts people right out of the very pages! It's the sort of thing that Morrison is known to do, certainly 20 years ago. It sounds quite silly, but it has a decent humanity to it, and there's something to be said for treating these things with a degree of seriousness but not losing the absurdity that will work for you on a comics page.
I'm glad I picked it up. I think it might be a fun read. As a totally awesome aside Cliff Steele was played by Henry Rollins in the Batman Brave and Bold cartoon.
A reboot of a squicky and offbeat 60s comic, Grant Morrison's 80s take gets off to a fascinating start. I found the writing economical and effective, and really enjoyed the pathos of Robotman, who wakes screaming from a nightmare of dying in a racing car crash and having his brain scooped up a burning lunatic. I really enjoyed when he talks about the inadequacy of his robot senses and his unreliable memory of what it was like to experience life as a real human, summing up his predicament as like phantom limb syndrome for this entire body, lamenting that he still has bodily urges that he can't satisfy. He describes how he wants to crap sometimes and his sexual frustration. He rejects Magnus's help, who angrily tells him that he won't let him go under, won't lose even one good person, and that there are people with worse problems than his. "Show me one." Cliff demands, and is introduced to the haunted, lost Kay Challis - Crazy Jane, who is in the grounds painting in the rain. The personality she shows tells them they're 'talking to the hangman's beautiful daughter.' As Cliff looks on the painting seems to reach out to him, and Magnus tells how she's psychically active. Tears joining the rain she asks 'what do normal people have in their lives?' Cliff turns to her and is reached by her 'what happens when you just can't be strong any more? What happens if you're weak?' She stands limp in the rain. They stand silent together and Cliff invites her to come in out of the rain. The opening issue establishes promising relationships that I'm very interested in seeing develop. The friendship between the isolated mechanical man and maelstrom of powers and personalities of a broken woman, and the strange entity and the sparky Larry and his doctor and how they're forced together and their sexual tension. Plot questions arise: what is Caulder's aim for the new Doom Patrol? Who are the two mysterious self described Men in Black who take the policeman's statement at the scene of the crash, and what is the significance of the black book the burning man was carrying, and why was he so desperate to keep it away from whoever he was fleeing? Who are the scissormen? I have a theory about that last one, based on the cover of part 2. I think they're going to be some fourth-wall breaking device that cuts people right out of the very pages! It's the sort of thing that Morrison is known to do, certainly 20 years ago. It sounds quite silly, but it has a decent humanity to it, and there's something to be said for treating these things with a degree of seriousness but not losing the absurdity that will work for you on a comics page.
I'm glad I picked it up. I think it might be a fun read. As a totally awesome aside Cliff Steele was played by Henry Rollins in the Batman Brave and Bold cartoon.
