Unca Cheeks the Toy Wonder's Silver Age Comics Web Site!
THE DOOM
PATROL
(This section of the Silver Age Shrine is dedicated
-- with love and gratitude -- to Mike, Mia and Steve:
the online equivalents, respectively, of "Larry Trainor," "Rita Farr" and
"Cliff Steele.") 
It never was one of DC Comics' "big sellers," back during its ground-breaking heyday in the mid-to-late 1960's.
Neither its sole writer of record (the oft-overlooked Arnold Drake) nor its penciler of distinction (the criminally under-appreciated Bruno Premiani) ever became "fan favorites," due to their monthly efforts on behalf of the title in question.
And DC has never even hinted at any itch or inclination to honor the series by way of hawking it to the audience of today in one of their ridiculously over-priced ARCHIVES editions.
And yet: for the greater portion of their initial five year (give or take) run --- first as the lead feature in the long-since defunct MY GREATEST ADVENTURE, and then in their own ongoing namesake monthly -- DOOM PATROL was, quite simply, the most relentlessly innovative and jaw-dropping comic book being ever to be proffered by DC, to that point... and (quite possibly) by any mainstream American comics publisher, as well. It took practically every given concretized convention and codicil of adventure comics going... and stood 'em on their respective heads.
While such things are commonplace to the point of cliché, nowadays... it was within the pages of THE DOOM PATROL that the following fillips and filigree were first tossed up onto the branches of the comics storytelling "tree," with any sort of creative success and/or consistency:
1.) "HEROES" WHO WERE MORE NIGHTMARISH AND UNSETTLING, FREQUENTLY, THAN THE BAD GUYS WITH WHOM THEY BATTLED -- the standard super-hero "model," at this point, was still the lantern- jawed, movie marquee Superman/Flash/Green Lantern stripe: so antiseptically good-looking, it almost hurt to look at 'em.
The DP,by way of comparison, often referred to themselves (in morbidly aware self-appraisal) as "fabulous freaks"; anything but the sorts who might be found chatting amiably around a Justice League meeting table with the toothpaste ad likes of an Aquaman, or a Wonder Woman.
One of them ("Robot Man") was nothing more than a giant, ambulatory prosthetic with a terminal case of smartmouth, and a worldview as unrelievedly black and mordant as anyone this side of Sylvia Plath. Another member ("Negative Man") was forced to spend the remaining allotment of his existence perpetually swaddled in Karloff-as-the-Mummy -style bandages, head to toe... lest he inadvertently visit slow and agonizing death upon everyone he met. The team's irascible founder and ramrod ("The Chief") was the first ongoing physically challenged hero in mainstream comics (i.e., he was wheelchair-bound). And so on, and so forth.
(There had been -- to be sure -- two heroes prior to the Chief, with physical infirmities of their own: DC's "Dr. Mid-Nite," and Marvel's "Daredevil"; both sightless. But: both of these were gifted either with gimmickry (Mid-Nite) or out-and-out super powers (Daredevil) which, ultimately, rendered said "handicaps" all but irrelevant. The Chief and Company were -- to use the ugly and out-moded vernacular -- actual cripples, of one stripe or another.)
Take the aforementioned Cliff Steele (a.k.a., Robot Man), for example: a professional race car driver and daredevil who -- following aruinous race track accident -- regained consciousness months afterwards, only to discover that he was no longer a human being. His still-living brain -- the only part of him still salvageable, after the crash -- had been permanently encased within a crude and clanking metal exo-skeleton. [See panels, accompanying]
He had (initially) no more control over his own limbs than did a newborn infant. His senses of sight and hearing --filtered mechanical analogues of "the real things" -- were gross, distorted and unreliable. And he had been left with no tactile awareness at all; as the character was later to scream, to the uncaring heavens above: "I. CAN'T. FEEL. ANYTHING -- !!!"
This was no "rocketed to Earth from the doomed planet Krypton" adolescent wish-fulfillment character, here. This was -- not to put too fine a point to it -- the legitimate stuff of nightmares.
Cliff Steele's first conscious decision, upon finding himself so "gifted" by the Fates, was not (as was the standard comics convention, at the time) to become a world-saving "super-hero."
Instead: he resolved to find the man who had "rescued" him from Death's languorous embrace... and murder him.
Meanwhile: test pilot Larry Trainor was having his own equivalent of the comic book "bad hair day." An unexpected encounter with a concentrated mega-dosage of radiation had left him with one of those classic "Good News/Bad News" scenarios:
The good news: Larry could now actually separate a sliver of his own consciousness into a second, virtually self-aware entity unto itself: the mute creature known as "Negative Man" -- composed entirely of electro-magnetic energy, and one of the most devastatingly powerful individuals upon the face of the planet.
The bad news, however... : Larry was now (quite literally) a walking, talking radioactive isotope; an atomic pile with a Social Security number. Unless he kept those energies safely shackled, by dint of specially-treated "bandages" with which he was obliged to sheathe himself, from top to bottom... he was nothing less than Death On Two Legs for every man, woman and child he might happen to encounter, ambling down to the corner drug store and back again.
Also: it didn't do his complexion much good, either. [See accompanying
panels]
Even the beautiful Rita Farr -- anything but a grotesquerie, upon initial assessment -- was, in the final analysis, a "freak" in good standing. A drop-dead Hollywood actress, with thespic abilities fully the equal of her looks... until a tragic accident on the set of her last film left her with the ability of to enlarge, extend or diminute any portion of her shapely anatomy. Shunned and blacklisted by a film community now horrified by this... thing in their oh-so-beautiful midst -- doll-sized, onemoment; a looming giantess, the next -- Rita found herself bereft of community and livelihood, both in one fell and unexpected swoop.
[It is interesting to note, at this juncture, that writer Drake consistently portrayed Rita -- of the three "action"-oriented members of the team -- as being, far and away, the most level-headed and mature of the lot, frequently called upon (as evidenced in the page, accompanying) to act as combination authority figure and second-in-command, after The Chief himself. This flew directly into the face of accepted comic book credo of the day, which dictated that the distaff member[s] of any super-hero team play either Moonstruck Love Interest [Sue Richards; THE FANTASTIC FOUR] or Perpetual Kidnapping Victim [Janet Van Dyne; THE AVENGERS]. This, too, was a remarkably far-sighted view, for its time.)
Now: back to Mr. Steele, who -- as you may recall -- was attempting to track down "that no-good mad scientist-wannabe" who had alchemized him into an automaton.
After breaking free of the hospital (once he'd regained sufficient command of his own newly-minted arms and legs) -- and anent an increasingly violent series of clashes with both the police and the United States Army, both of whom were (understandably) anxious to keep him from leveling half the city in his single-minded pursuit of Violent Retribution upon his unwanted "benefactor" -- Cliff Steele finally cornered his erstwhile "creator"... only to discover that said gentleman was anything but whom (or what) he might otherwise have expected. [See page, accompanying]
The surgeon in question had been none other than Dr. Niles Caulder: the blunt, wheelchair-bound genius whom a grudgingly respectful Cliff Steele would soon come to nickname "The Chief"... and the man who first brainstormed the strategm of gathering together such "freaks, outcasts and misfits" as these to form an outfit the world would later come to know as... the Doom Patrol.
MONSTERS, HEROES AND GOOD/BAD MEN
PAGE TWO (The Silver Age DOOM PATROL)
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