JOHN ROZUM
What most people remember about Grant Morrison’s run on Doom Patrol is how deliriously weird it was. It was completely unlike any other superhero comic published at the time, and unlike most being published now. It had a lot of wild concepts in it, but no matter how outrageous they were, the concepts succeeded because the characters were engaging and relatable. This series had some very unusual characters, too. Made up of a group of variously challenged people with strange powers, Doom Patrol under Grant Morrison’s care was made up of Cliff Steele, a.k.a. Robotman, a human brain contained in a robot body with a big chip on his shoulder; Rebis, a white man and a black woman alchemically fused with a negative energy spirit, all wrapped in specially treated bandages; the Chief, a callous supergenius in a wheelchair; Joshua Clay, a former costumed superhero able to emit energy blasts; and Dorothy Spinner, an ugly girl who could make imaginary beings real. They were all well realized, but were often overshadowed by a succession of offbeat characters who came and went as the series progressed. Here are my four favorite characters from the run.
1 The Brotherhood of Dada. Every superhero or superhero team is best defined by its villains, and Doom Patrol is no exception. Like the nonsense-based art movement they were named after, the Brotherhood of Dada isn’t out for money or power, but to transform the world into a place open to new ideas and ways of thinking. Led by Mr. Nobody, who appears as if you’re seeing him out of the corner of your eye, the Brotherhood came in two incarnations. The first includes Frenzy, a pyromaniac who can transform into a whirling tornado; the Fog, a man who can turn into a psychedelic death cloud that absorbs people; Sleepwalk, a woman who has superstrength but only when she is asleep; and the Quiz, a Japanese woman with a pathological fear of dirt who possesses every superpower (until a person thinks of one of them, which makes her lose that power).
The second incarnation of the team is even more delightfully inventive. Joining Mr. Nobody is the Love Glove, a man who woke up from a dream about a tree with gloves for leaves to discover that his arms were gone and, in replacement, a powerful hovering glove now operates as his right “hand” of his phantom limb. Alias the Blur is a mirror that was damaged by battery acid thanks to a narcissistic actress who couldn’t stand the sight of her aging reflection. Alias is able to eat time, aging its victims. Agent “!” is a garishly dressed man with a birdcage for a torso whose power is that “he comes as no surprise,” meaning that he is always unnoticed. Number None is anybody and anything who can get in a person’s way—whether it’s a loose floorboard, or a woman with a shopping cart who blocks your way by moving precisely down the center of an aisle so you can’t get past.
The “crimes” they commit are equally trippy: the first incarnation of the Brotherhood of Dada sucks all of Paris into a painting whose recursive layers represent every art movement through history, and the second incarnation sets out to transform America using a psychedelic school bus, powered by the Bicycle of Albert Hofmann, for Mr. Nobody’s campaign to become the president of the United States.
2 Crazy Jane. Grant Morrison’s new addition to the team began life as Kay Challis, a girl who was sexually abused by her father. This caused her mind to fracture and disassociate, leading to the development of sixty-four different personalities, each with its own superpower. These aren’t your typical superpowers, though. Sun Daddy appears as a giant version of Crazy Jane, only with a sun for a head, which shoots out balls of fire. Scarlet Harlot is a nymphomaniac who absorbs psychosexual energy and can create ectoplasmic constructs with which to fulfill her sexual needs. Crazy Jane is a terrific character who becomes the heart of the Doom Patrol and helps Cliff Steele find his humanity.
3 Flex Mentallo. Anyone who grew up reading comic books in the 1960s and 1970s is no doubt familiar with the Charles Atlas ads featuring a comic book narrative in which a bully on the beach kicks sand on skinny Mac and his girlfriend, leading a fed-up Mac to send away for a series of fitness books that transform him into a man. Flex Mentallo is Mac. He sent away for a book on muscle mystery and built his physique so that he could accomplish all sorts of astonishing feats simply by flexing his muscles. His hero halo is the label “Hero of the Beach,” which appears above him in shimmering form when he flexes.
4 Danny the Street. The cover of Doom Patrol #42 may have declared Flex Mentallo the sensational character find of 1991, but I think Danny the Street deserves to be declared the sensational character find of all time. There’s never been anything like Danny before or since, and it’s unlikely we’ll ever see any thinly veiled knockoffs, either. Danny the Street is, in fact, a street. He’s a sentient, transvestite block of commercial real estate with the ability to travel from place to place by teleporting and pushing existing real estate aside so that he can squeeze in between a row of buildings. How do we know he’s a transvestite? Because the stores that occupy him are all manly stores that sell hardware, sporting goods, and guns but are decorated with lace curtains and floral displays, as well as the Peeping Tom’s Cabaret, which offers a revue of drag shows and campy comedy bits. Danny also has a wonderfully charming personality and communicates through smoke, typewriters, refrigerator magnets, and window signs. He’s also a welcoming home to an assortment of odd characters and street people, and during the course of this run, the Doom Patrol’s mobile headquarters.
From The X-Files to more than one hundred issues of Scooby-Doo to his creator-owned series, Midnight, Mass., John Rozum has written a lot of comic books about people investigating weird phenomena. Best known for the critically acclaimed Xombi, which has been called “the spiritual successor to Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol,” Rozum has also written for television and wrote Static Shock for DC Comics.