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The Doom Patrol

DoomPatrol

First Appearance
My Greatest Adventure #80 (June, 1963)
Creators
Arnold Drake, Bruno Premiani, Murray Boltinoff, Bob Haney [disputed]
HQ
Dayton Manor
Members
The Chief, Robot Man, Elasti-Girl, Negative Man, Beast Boy, Mento, Vox, Bumblebee, Crazy Jane, Rebus, Dorothy Spinner
Rallying Cry
None
Alias
The World's Strangest Heroes
Gadgets and Vehicles
None

The Doom Patrol is a superhero team from the DC Universe. The team is made of up society's misfits who powers have made them outsiders from mainstream society. Though there have been a number of incarnations of the team, the one constant through all of them are the membership of founding member Robotman.

Origin

After brilliant scientist Niles Caulder was crippled by an enemy, he gathered a team of outcasts so that they may support each other and prove themselves to society.

History

The Gathering of the Doom Patrol

OriginalDoomPatrol

The Doom Patrol's original line-up

Niles Caulder, one of the world's greatest scientists, found his work funded by a mysterious benefactor who he would later discover was a madman named General Immortus. Immortus was a former Nazi who was actually centuries old and was looking to recreate an elixar that would maintain his immortality. When he learned the truth, Immortus implanted a bomb in Caulder's body to ensure that Caulder would continue working for him, but Caulder used his genius intellect to come up with a way to remove it. It worked, but at the cost of his ability to walk. Caulder, went into hiding to avoid being targetted by Immortus and even had a relationship with a Red Cross worker named Arani for a time (whom he also left the secret of immortality). Afterwards, Niles Caulder was inspired by his ability to overcome his disability by engineering accidents that created freakish, superpowered people whom he believed could also overcome their maladies.

Caulder's first attempt was to create a lab accident to leave his collegue without a body and to transfer it into a robot body (inspired by a superhero from the 40's named Robotman) but said collegue was saved by his pet gorilla, who would go on to plague Caulder as the villains The Brain and Monsiuer Mallah. Despite this problem, Caulder recruited 3 people to his cause: sports icon Cliff Steele, actress Rita Farr, and US Air Force pilot Larry Trainor. Cliff Steele was a race car driver who nearly died in an accident but his brain was saved by Caulder and placed in a robot body (though in fact the amoral Caulder was secretly responsible for the accident).

Publication History

The Doom Patrol first appeared in 1963, when the DC title My Greatest Adventure, an adventure anthology title, was being converted to a superhero format. The task assigned writer Arnold Drake was to create a team that fit both formats. With fellow writer Bob Haney and artist Bruno Premiani, he created the Doom Patrol, a team of superpowered misfits regarded as freaks by the world at large. It first appeared in My Greatest Adventure #80, June 1963. Doctor Niles Caulder motivated the original Doom Patrol, bitter from being isolated from the world, to use their powers for the greater good. The series was such a success that My Greatest Adventure was officially retitled The Doom Patrol beginning with issue #86.

The Doom Patrol's rogues gallery matched the strange, weird tone of the series. Villains included the immortality-seeking General Immortus, the shapeshifting Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man, and the Brotherhood of Evil led by the Brain, an actual brain kept alive by technology. The Brotherhood of Evil also included the intelligent gorilla Monsieur Mallah and Madame Rouge, who was given powers similar to those of Elongated Man, with the extra attribute of a malleable face, allowing her to impersonate various people.

When the popularity of the book waned and the publisher canceled it, Drake ended the series in a dramatic manner: he killed off the entire Doom Patrol. In Doom Patrol #121 (September-October 1968), the Doom Patrol sacrificed their lives to save the small fishing village of Codsville, Maine. This marked the first time in comic book history that a canceled book ended by having most of its cast of main characters die. Artist Bruno Premiani and editor Murray Boltinoff appeared at the beginning and the end of the story, asking fans to write to DC to resurrect the Doom Patrol, although the latter was supposed to have been Drake. According to the writer, he was replaced with the editor because he had just resigned over a pay dispute and moved to Marvel Comics. He finished the script only out of friendship for Boltinoff. A few years later, three more issues appeared in DC's short-lived attempt to copy Marvel's line of series reprint titles (as opposed to DC's anthology reprint titles). A Doom Patrol revival did not occur until nine years after the original's demise.

Some similarities exist between the original Doom Patrol and Marvel Comics' original X-Men. Both include misfit superheroes shunned by society and both are led by men of preternatural intelligence confined to wheelchairs. These similarities ultimately led series writer Arnold Drake to argue that the concept of the X-Men must have been based on the Doom Patrol.

Drake stated: “ ...I’ve become more and more convinced that [Stan Lee] knowingly stole The X-Men from The Doom Patrol. Over the years I learned that an awful lot of writers and artists were working surreptitiously between [Marvel and DC]. Therefore from when I first brought the idea into [DC editor] Murray Boltinoff’s office, it would’ve been easy for someone to walk over and hear that [I was] working on a story about a bunch of reluctant superheroes who are led by a man in a wheelchair. So over the years I began to feel that Stan had more lead time than I realized. He may well have had four, five or even six months.”

(X-Men #1 debuted three months after MGA #80; due to publication lag times, Lee could not have known of the Doom Patrol when he scripted the first X-Men story unless he had been told about it in advance of its publication.)

However, others have noted that the Doom Patrol shares fundamental similarities with Stan Lee's earlier title, Fantastic Four. The original lineup of both teams included four members, who did not have secret/double identities; each had a headquarters that was a public building in the middle of a major city; each team had one member with stretching powers (Rita Farr of the Doom Patrol, Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four), one member with flame or flame-like powers (Larry Trainor of the DP and Johnny Storm of the FF), a member with brute strength and a freakish body, with bitterness at being trapped in it (Cliff Steele and Ben Grimm) and a member who was invisible or stayed out of the public view (Niles Caulder and Sue Storm). Both teams quarreled amongst themselves, unlike most other teams published by DC/National. This has led to assertions that the Doom Patrol were created with the Fantastic Four in mind. One commentator has stated that “it is considered common knowledge that the Doom Patrol was inspired by The Fantastic Four”.

Paul Kupperberg's Doom Patrol

Writer Paul Kupperberg, a longtime Doom Patrol fan, and artist Joe Staton introduced a new team in Showcase #94 (August-September 1977). An Indian-born woman named Arani Desai, who called herself Celsius and claimed to be the wife of Niles Caulder, whom she believed to be still alive, led this team with the intent of finding him. This run also revealed the whereabouts of the Negative Spirit, which now possessed Russian cosmonaut Valentina Vostok, making her Negative Woman (although its presence did not render her radioactive), and she was able to transform her own body into its form rather than sending it out under control. It also revealed Robotman as the only survivor of the explosion that killed his teammates, his head, upper torso and one arm being left in one piece that could keep his brain alive and allow him to drag himself to shore. A man standing on that beach (appearing and later conceded to be Dr. Will Magnus of Metal Men fame) built him a new, futuristic robot body. This new version of the team followed its three-issue tryout with a series of guest appearances in various DC titles, such as Superman Family (in a three part arc in the Supergirl feature that was intended for the recently canceled Super-Team Family), DC Comics Presents (teaming up with Superman in a story which revealed that Vostok's powers had changed to match Larry Trainor's exactly) and Supergirl. Robotman also appeared as an occasional supporting character in the Marv Wolfman and George Pérez era of Teen Titans, where it was revealed that Changeling, formerly DP associate Beast Boy, had arranged for Dayton Industries technicians to recreate the Caulder body design for Cliff. His first storyline here had him and the Titans finally bringing the murderers of the original Doom Patrol to justice. The final member of this team was Tempest aka Joshua Clay, a Vietnam veteran/deserter. Tempest's power was energy blasts from his hands. In addition to a typical comic book blast effect, Tempest would use the blast to propel himself through the air.

Prelude to the relaunch

Eclipse Comics also printed a two-issue index (with covers drawn by John Byrne) to the Doom Patrol in 1984, which included all of their appearances from their first to their final appearance before their early 1980s return. Byrne also illustrated Secret Origins Annual #1, published in 1986, which recapped the origins of the two iterations of the Doom Patrol that had existed thus far, as a prelude to the relaunch of their self-titled book.

The relaunch

The relaunch, also written by Kupperberg but illustrated by artist Steve Lightle, later replaced by a young Erik Larsen after issue 5, showed a more superheroic version of the Doom Patrol. It included new members who were hired to the team: the magnetically-empowered strong-girl Lodestone; Karma, whose psychic power made sure that anyone trying to attack him would wind up falling over themselves; and Scott Fischer, whose body generated phenomenal quantities of heat focussed through his hands, requiring him to wear protective gloves at all times. Most were not particularly interested in a heroic life. Lodestone stayed for the sense of security; Karma stayed there because it helped him hide from the law. Only Scott Fischer wanted to be a superhero in the traditional sense, and he was rather naive about the real world. After issue 18 and the events of the Invasion miniseries, Kupperberg left the series. DC Comics gave Grant Morrison the task of writing the book.

Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol

After the first 18 issues (and various crossovers and annuals), Kupperberg was replaced by Grant Morrison, starting with issue #19. Kupperberg agreed to help Morrison by writing out characters Morrison did not want to use: Celsius and Scott Fischer died before issue #18 — Celsius was killed in an explosion in DC Comics' "Invasion!" event, and Scott Fischer (already suffering from a recurrence of childhood leukemia) was the only known active superhero casualty of the Dominators' gene-bomb (also in "Invasion!"); Karma left the team as he was still on the run from the law (he would eventually become a member of the Suicide Squad and die on his first mission with them in the "War of the Gods" crossover event); the Negative Spirit left Negative Woman's body; and Lodestone plunged into a coma, where she would remain for the first half of Morrison's run on the book. Tempest gave up fieldwork to become the team's physician. Conversely, Morrison picked up a throw-away character from DP #14, who was slipped into the art on the last page of #18 to set up Morrison's use: Dorothy Spinner was an ape-faced girl with powerful "imaginary friends." The new writer introduced some new characters to the team, including the multiple personality-afflicted Crazy Jane; and sentient roadway Danny the Street.

Morrison used DC's Invasion crossover to restart the book. He took the Doom Patrol, and superhero comic books in general, to places they had rarely been, incorporating bizarre secret societies, elements of Dada, surrealism, and the cut-up technique pioneered by William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin. He also borrowed the ideas of Jorge Luis Borges and Heinrich Hoffmann. Morrison and artist Richard Case turned the title around, and the series quickly gained a cult following, but some derided it as incomprehensible. The original creator Arnold Drake, disagreed, maintaining that Morrison's was the only subsequent run to reflect the intent of the original series.

Over the course of the series, Morrison dedicated some issues to parody and homage. Issue #53 featured a dream sequence that mimicked the Stan Lee/Jack Kirby Fantastic Four, specifically the Galactus storyline. Another special called Doom Force was released as a one-shot and was meant to mimic and parody the X-Force book by Rob Liefeld. Issue #45 parodied Marvel's Punisher in a satire called the Beard Hunter.

Morrison's approach to the book was also notable in that his villains were extremely unusual and strange, even by Doom Patrol's eccentric standards. For example:

  • Red Jack is a near-omnipotent being who thinks he is both Jack the Ripper and God. He lives in a house without windows, torturing butterflies, and cannot materialize in the world.
  • The Brotherhood of Dada are an anarchistic group who fight against reality and reason. It features members such as Sleepwalk, who can only use her tremendous powers when asleep (she takes sleeping pills and listens to Barry Manilow before battles), and The Quiz, who literally has "every superpower you hadn't thought of" and a pathological fear of dirt.
  • The Scissormen, a fictional race of beings that attack non-fictional beings in the "real world" (i.e., the world the Doom Patrol live in) with their large scissor-like hands and literally cut people out of reality.

In Morrison's final storyline, it is revealed that the Chief had caused the "accidents" which turned Cliff, Larry Trainor and Rita Farr into freaks with the express intention of creating the Doom Patrol. He then murders Josh and unleashes nanobots into the world, hoping to create a catastrophe that will make the world a stranger and more wonderful place. However, Caulder does not anticipate being decapitated by one of Dorothy's "imaginary" beings, a malign entity called the Candlemaker.

Rachel Pollack's Doom Patrol

Morrison left the book with issue #63, and Rachel Pollack took over writing the book the next issue. Pollack's first issue was also the first under the new Vertigo imprint of DC Comics (although the trade paperback edition of Morrison's work does bear the imprint, the original issues did not). Returning characters for Rachel Pollack's run included Cliff Steele, Niles Caulder (kept alive by the nanobots, but reduced to a disembodied head, usually kept on a tray filled with ice), and Dorothy Spinner. Pollack's run had Dorothy as a primary member of the Patrol; she brought her imaginary friends to her aid in combat. Overall, Pollack's run dealt with issues such as the generation gap, humanity, identity, transgenderism, bisexuality, and borrowed elements from Judaism and Kabbalah in the last few issues. The angel Akatriel is used as a major character in the last four issues.

The first story arc of her run was called Sliding In The Wreckage. Cliff's computer brain started to malfunction, and he regressed into flashbacks from previous storylines. Dorothy was haunted by African spirits while dealing with living alone in the real world. The Chief was given a new body by Will Magnus, but to atone for his sins, Caulder ripped his head off the body and was kept in cryogenic storage. Meanwhile, the entire Earth had been suffering from random outbreaks of weirdness, contributed by the arrival of something called "The Book of Ice." A government agency known as the Builders, similar to the Men from N.O.W.H.E.R.E., were trying to stop the outbreak, which was apparently linked to a race of shapeshifters known as the Teiresias. As the Chief was kept in cryogenic state, he appeared in the land of the Teiresias as a face carved in a mountain. They warned him that his arrival in this world was causing the craziness in the real world. Throughout the storyline, little people with backwards letters for heads had been seen altering people. These people were apparently older version of nanomachines, referred to as "nannos." At the DP HQ Builder agents attacked and in the craziness, two of the Teiresias approached Dorothy with a new brain for Cliff, but to insert it she needed the Chief's expertise. In the Teiresias world, nannos "repaired" the Chief so he could live as a severed head. After his awakening, the craziness seemed to stop, and Dorothy, Cliff, and the Chief each realized that they needed to be together.

The team relocated to Violet Valley's Rainbow Estates, a house haunted by ghosts of those who died in sexual accidents. There, three new members joined. The Bandage People, George and Marion, who were once two workers for the Builders but managed to escape; and the Inner Child, a manifestation of the ghosts' purity and innocence. Another later newcomer of the team was Kate Godwin, aka Coagula, one of the first transsexual superheroes. A one-time ally of the team called the Identity Addict, who could become different superheroes by shedding his/her skin like a lizard, integrated him/herself back into the team while using the False Memory identity to change the team's memories, until he/she was kicked out by Dorothy.

Villains that the team fought, besides the Builders, included the Fox and the Crow, two animal spirits whose feud Dorothy and Cliff were subsequently pulled into; the Master Cleaner, a being with a human fetus inside a bubble for a head who began "cleaning" the world by stripping it down to nothing and replacing the stolen items, including people, with a paper ticket; and a group of Hassidic healers who called themselves the False Healers and their leader, the Rabbi of Darkness.

Toward the end of the series, Cliff Steele's brain became entirely robotic, until Dorothy Spinner used her imaginary friends to "repair" it. The Chief would later die after trying to enter the Sephirot or Tree of Life.

A new artist, Ted McKeever, took over the artwork for the final 13 issues. Pollack continued writing the title until its cancellation with issue #87, in February 1995.

John Arcudi's Doom Patrol

In December 2001, writer John Arcudi and artist Tan Eng Huat launched a new Doom Patrol series. The launch of this series also saw the return of the publication of the title from the Vertigo imprint back to DC Comics. The series lasted for 22 issues.

Arcudi's storylines revealed what happened to the previous team. Dorothy Spinner had had a mental breakdown and accidentally killed most of the members still with the team at the end of the Pollack run. She fell into a coma, but subconsciously created a new Robotman, who became a part of a new Doom Patrol. This Doom Patrol was a company-owned team, owned and operated by Thayer Jost and Jost Enterprises for a while before working independently.

Apart from Robotman, the team consisted of Fast Forward, Kid Slick, Fever, and Freak.

The Robotman that Dorothy created faded away when it realized what it actually was, but the other teammates searched for Cliff Steele, who became a member of the Doom Patrol yet again. They found his brain in a desolated area of the Smokey Mountains, buried under the rubble of the campsite where Dorothy's breakdown occurred. A prosthetics expert who had defected from Russia rebuilt Cliff's body.

Jost, meanwhile, learned that he could not own the rights to the Doom Patrol, since the man who signed the rights over to him was not actually Cliff Steele. Instead, he tried to obtain guardianship of the brain-dead Dorothy. At the end of the series, Cliff pulled her life support.

A separate Doom Patrol operated for some time, working apart and with the team. This secondary group consisted of Elongated Man, Metamorpho, Doctor Light, and Beast Boy.

Fever later appeared in the six issue limited series Infinite Crisis, in a multi-hero superhero mass held for missing and dead heroes. Among the attendees were some of John Byrne's Doom Patrol members.

John Byrne's Doom Patrol

In August 2004, DC launched a new Doom Patrol series after the new team debuted in JLA. John Byrne wrote and illustrated this series, with inks by Doug Hazlewood. Touted as "Together again for the first time!", Byrne rebooted the series, eliminating the previous Doom Patrol continuity.

This also retroactively eliminated Beast Boy's origins and numerous important Doom Patrol appearances, including the reunions of Beast Boy (then called Changeling) and Robotman in the 1980s New Teen Titans and the tea

m's important role in JLA: Year One. It also angered some of Morrison's Doom Patrol fans. Three new characters (Nudge, Grunt and Vortex) were introduced and utilized throughout the series run.

DC cancelled Byrne's series with issue #18.

This reboot was both controversial and short-lived. The events in DC's Infinite Crisis crossover saw the restoration of the Doom Patrol's full continuity, with the history of all previous incarnations.

Infinite Crisis and One Year Later

DoomPatrolcurrent

DC editorial used the events of the Infinite Crisis crossover to restore the Doom Patrol's continuity. In escaping from the paradise dimension they had inhabited since the end of Crisis on Infinite Earths, Superboy-Prime and Alexander Luthor created temporal ripples, which spread throughout reality, altering certain events, such as restoring Jason Todd to life.

In the reprinted edition of Infinite Crisis, additional scenes added to the collection showed Fever, Kid Slick, Ava, Nudge, Grunt and Vortex among a two-page spread of heroes.

While assisting the Teen Titans in battling Superboy-Prime, members of the Doom Patrol had flashbacks to their original history. Robotman and Niles Caulder regained memories of the previous Doom Patrol teams with which they had worked. This battle apparently undid some of Superboy-Prime's timeline changes, and resulted in a timeline incorporating all previous incarnations of the Doom Patrol, but with Rita Farr and Larry Trainor still alive. The Chief confirmed that Rita was indeed killed by Zahl's explosion. The Chief claimed that he later found her skull and treated it with synthetic proteins until her malleable body was regrown from it.

Steve Dayton is again using the Mento helmet and he is mentally unstable; however, he remembers his time as the Crimelord. The Chief appears to be manipulating the Doom Patrol members once again; he claims to wish to return them to normal, so "maybe one day [they] won't be freaks anymore." After the Doom Patrol encountered the Titans, the Chief told them that Kid Devil should be a member of the Doom Patrol instead of the Titans, since his unique appearance and nature would always separate him from others. However, Beast Boy, Elasti-Girl and Mento all stood up to the Chief and forced him to step down as the Doom Patrol's leader, with Mento taking over that role.

Recently, while fighting the Titans and the Doom Patrol, the Brain claimed that he had been the Chief's lab assistant, that his body had been destroyed in an explosion Caulder caused, and that he was to have been the original Robotman.

Two former members of the Teen Titans were dramatically altered during the course of the Infinite Crisis. Mal Duncan, now code named Vox, and his wife (Bumblebee) now reside in the Doom Patrol castle headquarters.

The Doom Patrol later appeared in The Four Horsemen series (2007), with Caulder back in charge. However, according to Titans Issue #1, Beast Boy has recently become the Team Leader. Whether he will remain so now that the Titans have reformed has not been revealed.

In DC Universe: Decisions, Robotman has a supporting role while Mento appears in Issue #4.

On February 7, 2009, it was announced at the New York Comic Con that Keith Giffen would be spearheading a revival of Doom Patrol, a title which he has long said he wanted to write. He is joined by artist Matt Clark, who has also longed expressed a desire to work on the title.

Collections

Drake and Premiani's run is available as The Doom Patrol Archives:

  1. (collects My Greatest Adventure/Doom Patrol #80-89, from 1963-1964, 222 pages, 2002, ISBN 1-4012-0150-4)
  2. (collects Doom Patrol #90-97, from 1964-1965, 213 pages, 2004, ISBN 1-4012-0150-4)
  3. (collects Doom Patrol #98-105 and Challengers of the Unknown #48, from 1966, 237 pages, 2006, ISBN 1-4012-0766-9)
  4. (collects Doom Patrol #106-113 from 1966-1967, 207 pages, 2007, ISBN 1-4012-1646-3)
  5. (collects Doom Patrol #113-121 from 1968, 208 pages, 2008, ISBN 1-4012-1720-4)

Morrison's run has been compiled into six Vertigo trade paperback editions:

  1. Crawling from the Wreckage (collects Doom Patrol #19-25, 2000, ISBN 1-56389-034-8)
  2. The Painting That Ate Paris (collects Doom Patrol #26-34, 2004, ISBN 1-4012-0342-6)
  3. Down Paradise Way (collects Doom Patrol #35-41, 2005, ISBN 1-4012-0726-X)
  4. Musclebound (collects Doom Patrol #42-50, August 2006 ISBN 1-4012-0999-8)
  5. Magic Bus (collects Doom Patrol #51-57, January 2007, ISBN 1-4012-1202-6)
  6. Planet Love (collects Doom Patrol #58-63 and Doom Force #1, January 2008, ISBN 1-4012-1624-2)

Incarnations

The original Doom Patrol

  • The Chief (Niles Caulder)
  • Automaton/Robotman (Cliff Steele)
  • Elasti-Girl (Rita Farr)
  • Negative Man (Larry Trainor)
  • Beast Boy (Garfield Logan): Beast Boy (now known as Changeling) was only a part-time member of the team, since he was a minor and had other responsibilities.
  • Mento (Steve Dayton): Mento was never made an official member, but might as well be considered one.
  • Madame Rouge (Laura De Mille): Madame Rouge was with the Doom Patrol for a short period of time after the Chief had rehabilitated her. The other members of the team never fully trusted her, and it is doubtful that anyone besides the Chief considered her a de facto member of the Doom Patrol.

The New Doom Patrol

The 1987 Doom Patrol

  • Robotman (Cliff Steele)
  • Celsius (Arani Desai Caulder): Celsius died during the Invasion, preventing a Gil'dishpan ship from escaping at the North Pole. It was never officially established that she was the wife of Niles Caulder. The Chief, in fact, completely denied the fact on several occasions.
  • Tempest (Joshua Clay)
  • Negative Woman (Valentina Vostok): Valentina lost control of the Negative Energy Being after an attack by Reactron, which had been orchestrated by Larry Trainor. It returned to her, but later left her for good after the final attack by Garguax's Sirens.
  • Lodestone (Rhea Jones)
  • Karma (Wayne Hawkins): Wayne Hawkins was part of the Suicide Squad/Task Force X team assembled by Black Adam to attack Circe's island during the "War of the Gods". He was killed during that battle by a machine-gun barrage (and then having the island destroyed around him).
  • Scott Fischer (Blaze): Scott had been suffering a relapse of his leukemia, was one of the few actual casualties of effects of the Gene-Bomb during the Invasion.
  • Larry Trainor (Negative Man): The Negative Energy Being briefly returned to Larry after he coerced Reactron into attacking Negative Woman. The Being left, but cured him of his radioactive condition. He was later injured in the final attack by Garguax's Sirens.
  • The Chief (Niles Caulder)

The Morrison Doom Patrol

  • Cliff Steele
  • Rebis: Rebis was an amalgam of Larry Trainor, Dr. Eleanor Poole, and the Negative Energy Being.
  • Crazy Jane (Kay Challis)
  • The Chief (Niles Caulder): The Chief was decapitated by the Candlemaker, a nightmare brought to life by Dorothy Spinner.
  • Joshua Clay (Tempest): Josh was shot and killed by The Chief, who had believed Josh was trying to stop him and his plans to use his nanotechnology to reshape the world.
  • Dorothy Spinner
  • Danny the Street: Danny later broadened his horizons by becoming Danny The World.

The Pollack Doom Patrol

  • Cliff Steele
  • Dorothy Spinner
  • The Head (Niles Caulder)
  • George and Marion, The Bandage People
  • Coagula (Kate Godwin)
  • Charlie the Doll (?)

The Arcudi Doom Patrol

  • Robotman (Cliff Steele): The original Robotman with this Doom Patrol was a creation of the mind of the comatose Dorothy Spinner that ceased to exist after Metamorpho questioned what he had been doing for the past four years.
  • Cliff Steele (Robotman): The head of Cliff's body was found in the Smokey Mountains by the Doom Patrol and Gar Logan. His body was rebuilt by Dr. Kolodenko.
  • Fast Forward/Negative Man (Ted Bruder)
  • Fever (Shyleen Lao)
  • Kid Slick (Vic Darge)
  • Freak (Ava)
  • Doctor Kolodenko (sp?)

Thayer Jost's Second Doom Patrol

  • Metamorpho (Rex Mason): Rex Mason was brought back to life temporarily in JLA #52, and apparently reanimated himself completely between that issue and his appearance in Doom Patrol #4.
  • Changeling (Garfield Logan): Changeling is a member of the Titans/New Titans/New Teen Titans/Teen Titans, and worked with the Arcudi Doom Patrol briefly after he joined Thayer Jost's team, helping the team to find the real Cliff Steele.
  • The Elongated Man (Ralph Dibny): Ralph had previously been hanging around Opal City (after helping Jack Knight during the events of the "Grand Guignol" storyline in Starman. He hadn't accepted the offer from Police Commissoner O'Dare to become a hero with the city like the Black Condor had.
  • Doctor Light (Kimiyo Hoshi): Doctor Light had been a part-time member of the Justice League. She had but a single panel of dialogue during her stay with Thayer Jost's team.

Current Doom Patrol

  • Beast Boy
  • Bumblebee
  • The Chief
  • Elasti-Girl
  • Mento
  • Negative Man
  • Robotman
  • Vox

Doom Patrol friends

  • Mento (Steve Dayton)
  • Supergirl/Power Girl: The Doom Patrol's original encounters were with Supergirl, but they were later "retconned" into having been meetings with Power Girl (at least the battle with Reactron in The Daring Adventures of Supergirl is shown to have been).
  • Superman
  • Dr. Will "Doc" Magnus: Doc Magnus built Cliff's new body after the original Doom Patrol had been destroyed, and later rebuilt his original body; During the Morrison years, he created a sleek black body with many weapons systems and, more importantly, highly advanced sensory inputs for Cliff - unfortunately, that body achieved sentience and was destroyed in an encounter with The Brain and Monsieur Mallah; Doc later helped Dorothy deal with the events during and after the attack of the Candlemaker, and also tried to make a body for the Chief's decapitated head.
  • Willoughby Kipling: Kipling, was created because Grant Morrison couldn't get permission to use John Constantine in the series and had the same sort of personality.
  • Flex Mentallo, Man of Muscle Mystery

Enemies

  • General Immortus
  • Dr. Janus (Josef Kreutz): Ex-Nazi propaganda minister who developed a way to create very convincing illusions using radio waves.
  • Monsieur Duvoir, Senator Durham and Dr. Savatini (who were actually aliens masquerading as humans in order to fake an invasion and conquer the planet).
  • The Brotherhood of Evil
    • The Brain
    • Monsieur Mallah
    • Madame Rouge (Laura De Ville)
    • Mr. Morden
    • Rog the Robot
    • Giacomo
    • Videx
    • The Great Guru
  • The Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man (Dr. Sven Larsen): Larsen was a former student of Niles Caulder at Stockholm University who believed his teacher had stolen one of his inventions and wanted revenge.
  • Garguax
  • Dr. Tyme
  • Dr. John Radick
  • Mr. 103/Mr. 104
  • The Arsenal
  • Captain Zahl
  • The Land of Orqwith
  • Red Jack
  • The Brotherhood of Dada
    • Mr. Nobody
    • The Quiz
    • Frenzy
    • Sleepwalk
    • The Love Glove
    • Agent "!"
    • Alias the Blur
    • Number None
    • The Toy
  • Men From N.O.W.H.E.R.E.
  • The Shadowy Mr. Evans
  • The Candlemaker
  • Kalki
  • Kor the Conqueror
  • Volcano Man

Tangent Comics

In 1997, DC released the Tangent Comics series of books, built on the premise of a world that diverged from the mainstream following the events of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The series featured characters with the same names as mainstream DC characters but who were otherwise unrelated to them. The series included a one-shot Doom Patrol title. This Doom Patrol consisted of four heroes: Doomsday, Star Sapphire, Firehawk and Rampage. The heroes traveled back in time from 2030 to 1997 to prevent Earth's destruction. The Tangent books were later integrated into the DC Multiverse (as Earth-97) as part of the events of Infinite Crisis.

Other media

Television

On the Teen Titans animated series, the Doom Patrol made an appearance in the two-part episode "Homecoming", the fifth season premiere. Featuring Negative Man (voiced by Judge Reinhold), Robotman (Peter Onorati), Mento (Xander Berkeley), and Elasti-Girl (Tara Strong), this Doom Patrol was captured by the Brotherhood of Evil, with only Robotman free to save his comrades. After Robotman successfully sought out former Doom Patroller Beast Boy, he and the Teen Titans teamed up to rescue the Doom Patrol. In flashbacks to Beast Boy's Doom Patrol days, it is clear that Mento and Elasti-Girl play parental roles toward the young masked hero. When Beast Boy has to make the choice to defeat the Brotherhood of Evil or save his friends in both teams, he elects to save his friends, a decision denounced by Mento and lauded by the Titans.

The Chief is absent in the series. Mento acts as the team leader.

Throughout the fifth season of Teen Titans, the team faces the menace of the Brotherhood, who wish to destroy all of the world's young heroes. The Titans gather these heroes, issuing each a Titans communicator and membership on the team. Finally, in a climactic battle, the Titans all work together and defeat the Brotherhood of Evil.

Film

Variety reported on July 19, 2006 that Warner Bros. has hired Adam Turner to pen a screenplay to bring Doom Patrol to the big screen. However, as of April 2008, no director, cast, or release date has been announced.

Animation

The original Doom Patrol had one cameo appearance in the animated film Justice League: The New Frontier.

External links

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