Sunday, April 21, 2019

Doom Patrol on DC Universe

I have a new favorite TV show, and it’s the Doom Patrol. It streams on the DC Universe streaming service, which combines DC’s digital comics library, a large library of TV shows and movies based on their superheroes, and original series, both animated and live action, created specifically for the service. Doom Patrol follows the live action Titans and the animated Young Justice: Outsiders (a revived version of a show which originated on Cartoon Network), and while I’ve really enjoyed those other two, Doom Patrol is the one that has won my heart.


As a comic, Doom Patrol premiered in the 1960s, featuring a cast of “freaks”: a team of heroes made up of individuals who saw themselves as broken in some way. Those included Robotman, aka race car driver Cliff Steele whose human brain was transplanted into a robot body following an accident. Cliff is joined by Negative Man, in reality pilot Larry Trainor who shares his body with a radioactive, superpowered being made of “negative energy,” who can leave Larry’s body to perform amazing feats, but needs to return to Larry’s body within 60 seconds or both will die, and also the radioactivity requires Larry to be wrapped from head to toe in specially treated bandages to prevent radiation leakage. The two men are joined by actress Rita Farr, whose accidental inhalation of mysterious gasses allows her to grow or shrink her body at will, giving her the powers of Elasti-Girl (or Woman, later). The three are brought together and led by the Chief, Niles Caulder, a wheelchair-bound genius responsible for having saved Larry and Cliff. 

While the original series—primarily created by Arnold Drake, Bob Haney, and Bruno Premiani—is, quite frankly great, it is perhaps best known because it killed off all the characters in the final issue. Of course, comics being comics, the fondly-remembered characters were gradually brought back over the course of many years. At one point along that path, nascent superstar writer Grant Morrison did a run on the book aimed at updating the weirdness factor to the 1990s, and introduced one of the most memorable new characters to join the team: Crazy Jane, a woman with dissociative personality disorder. Crazy Jane had 64 personalities, each with their own super power. Morrison also introduced many other weird creations, including the Scissormen, the Brotherhood of Dada (an update of the old Brotherhood of Evil), and the villainous Mr Nobody.

The show has kind of mixed various eras of the comics, showcasing the characters from the original team, plus Crazy Jane, but telling the kind of weird stories more in keeping with the Grant Morrison version. There is kind of an overarching story—the Chief is missing, having been abducted by Mr Nobody—and the characters are ostensibly searching for him, in places like an other-dimensional world accessed by traveling down the throat of a donkey. But really, that’s almost just window dressing.


The real story is about these so-called “freaks” coming to terms with who they really are. It’s about Cliff learning that his daughter—thought killed in the same car accident that almost destroyed him—is actually alive, and trying to decide what to do with that knowledge. Pre-accident Cliff is played by Brendan Fraser, who also provides Robotman’s voice. Between Fraser’s voice work and Riley Shanahan’s physical performance, Robotman communicates a great deal of emotion and soul, even with an immobile, expressionless face.

The story is about Larry Trainor, a closeted gay pilot in the 1950s, who so believed that his own sexuality at the time was harmful to the people he loved, that him ultimately becoming literally radioactive was actually secondary to that. It’s about Rita Farr, who has so lost her sense of self, she can barely hold her body together. It’s about Crazy Jane, ultimately confronting a trauma so extreme that a young girl split into 64 separate personalities to carry the load. And it’s about how the world, represented here by a government agency, the Department of Normalcy, reacts to anything different, anything it see as a “misfit.”


The show has even made a couple of really smart changes from the original comics. First, they have changed Rita Farr from a beautiful actress who could change her size to a beautiful actress whose physical structure has become so malleable that she can barely keep herself from collapsing into a huge blob. The TV version works so much better with the concept of a group of people who would ostensibly be rejected by normal society; all the comics Rita would have had to do is just never change her size. This Rita has a much more believable reason for feeling like she has to hide herself away.

Second, the TV series has added the character of Cyborg to the cast. While Cyborg has been featured in more mainstream super-teams, including Teen Titans and Justice League (including the movie), his appearance and backstory suit him perfectly for the Doom Patrol. It’s an interesting choice, and one I wasn’t too sure about until I actually saw it in the show. Ultimately, it works. It gives the team a member who is actually proactive and interested in being a superhero. 

I loved the series from the first episode, when an entire town vanished into the butt of a donkey. (My wife loved it too, and she has no history with the comics.) I was already looking forward to it every week, but a couple of weeks ago, it completely won me over. The episode “Danny Patrol,” introducing Danny, the sentient genderqueer street from the comics, featured a karaoke duet between Larry Trainor and a trans woman who was a former agent of the Department of Normalcy. The whole sequence shed so much light on the character of Larry, and also breaks my heart every time I watch it.

This is a fantastic show, because it transcends the weirdness and tells believable stories about believable people. Even if one shares his body with a negative energy being. Even if one is a human brain in a robot body. Even if one collapses into a formless blob if she doesn’t focus. Even if one is a half-cyborg. Even if one has 64 different super-powered personalities. Even if they are fighting the arch-villainous Mr Nobody. This is easily the best TV show based on a DC comic.


Overall, I’ve been really impressed with the shows on the DC Universe streaming service. Titans took a few episodes to find its voice, but it really won me over by the time it reached the episode introducing the Doom Patrol (something of a backdoor pilot for the series). Young Justice, continuing the show we loved from Cartoon Network, was every bit as good as  we remembered And then there’s Doom Patrol, which continues to raise the bar.

I’m a bit worried about the future of the service; news about the Swamp Thing series, which I am eagerly anticipating, having its episode count cut from 13 to 10 is worrying. As it is, DC Universe is kind of a niche service anyway; it probably appeals to DC fans more for its digital comics library than its original series, and I’m sure they’re looking pretty closely at the costs. It would be a shame if these shows went away; so far, what DC is producing for this service has been great, and I highly recommend it to folks who love superhero TV and movies.


That’s it for this week. Lately. my weekend routine has been getting changed up a bit with Saturday voice acting classes, and that’s thrown my schedule off. However, I’m working on getting back on track, so I will optimistically say I will see you in two weeks!

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