Classic Comic Compendium: DOOM PATROL – VOL. 1

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Picture this at will:

You’re a kid. You love comics. Your mind is blown by early Grant Morrison work like Doom Patrol. You want to create your own comics somehow. So during college, you eventually become an intern at DC Comics (alternately Cartoon Network, both WB ultimately, I’ve seen mention of both).

One thing leads to another, so you decide that the best path to write comics is to found one of the most beloved rock bands in the world. You become an international superstar. A black parade band leader. Even contribute a Bob Dylan cover to the Watchmen soundtrack and get Morrison to appear in a couple of your music videos. Swanky.

And you parlay that into your other dream, comics. Totally natural career progression. One of your creations, with acclaimed artist Gabriel Bá, even gets adapted to a successful, entertaining television series starring Elliot Page. Ultimately bringing you back full circle to a childhood dream, working on Doom Patrol.

That may not be entirely accurate, but it makes a good story, right?

“By my honor, scrag. I feel the sensational urge to alter your features into something more pleasing…”

Doom Patrol – Volume 1: Brick By Brick by Gerard Way, Nick Derington, Tom Fowler, Tamra Bonvillain, Marissa Louise, and Todd Klein was the series that kicked off Way’s pop-up imprint, DC’s Young Animal. It’s absolutely a gathering of the team tale, but it’s done in a way where that’s almost ancillary. Mixing in a kind of profound coming-of-age and superhero origin story.

This story introduces us to Casey Brinke, an EMT, and through her journey we pick up the different members of the Doom Patrol. It’s as much a personal story about her as it about getting the band back together. It gets kind of meta, utilizing story elements and storytelling techniques from earlier incarnations (in the form of something like the style of Robotman’s origin in Crawling From the Wreckage), or the history of Danny the Street, but it does so in ways that create something new.

Those stylistic nods perfectly executed by the stunning art team of Nick Derington and Tamra Bonvillain. Derington’s main style used here is gorgeous. He has a simplified, open style that belies all of the interesting details that he puts into the characters and surroundings. Shifting occasionally to a more impressionistic, almost charcoal approach for flashbacks or into an even simpler “comic book” style for the comic in a comic sections. Beautifully enhanced by Bonvillain’s colour work, shifting alongside it with differing colour palettes.

All topped off with Todd Klein’s perfect adaptation for those same stylistic changes and a number of uniquely voiced characters, negatively spaced or weird aliens.

Brick by Brick

“To burn against the darkness of this universe, I’d give you everything.”

You don’t have to have read any of Doom Patrol before you come to this series. In some ways, it might actually help. Or if you have hazy, fuzzy memories. The book does indeed make references and pull inspiration from Grant Morrison and Richard Case’s run. And in the Keith Giffen-penned series that came out before Flashpoint.

Because half-remembered things is part of the charm of the story in Doom Patrol – Volume 1: Brick By Brick by Way, Derington, Fowler, Bonvillain, Louise, and Klein. Kind of like that feeling of nostalgia. It gives you enough information to understand the story and a fuzzy desire to go back and re-read the older references if you want (especially if you want some more great comics tales), but you still get an offbeat adventure of a girl and her ambulance. And all of the weird friends they pick up along the way.

brick by brick