YMMV / Doom Patrol

• Angst? What Angst?:
  • Rhea Jones upon her transformation into the Lodestone/Pupa. She barely acknowledges the fact that she has become a Humanoid Abomination.
  • Niles Caulder seems oddly chill about being reduced to a disembodied head at the beginning of the Pollack run.
  • A deliberate case with George and Marion, the Bandage People, who despite their Dark and Troubled Past remain Sickeningly Sweethearts and two of the most stable members of the team.
• Audience-Alienating Era:
  • The Paul Kupperberg run was a So Okay, It's Average attempt to cash on the X-Men popularity and introduced some very boring characters who have all been sent to Comic-Book Limbo or Put on a Bus. The only one midly relevant was Josh Clay, but only because he was in the Morrison run, where he had lost his powers and spent most of the time as the Non-Action Guy. Fortunately, issue #19 saw the arrival of a certain Scottish shaman who would go on to change the team forever.
  • The John Arcudi run is rarely talked about without bitter mention of Coagula and Dorothy Spinner being killed off and left brain dead respectively to get the series going. This only worsened as Rachel Pollack's run became Vindicated by History with Kate being better appreciated by new and old readers alike, as many find it difficult to approach Arcudi's take on the team while knowing that he sacrificed her and Dorothy to start it.
  • The John Byrne run decided to erase every preceding Doom Patrol run in favor of a revamped incarnation that was similar to but not completely like the Arnold Drake era, something even the most old-school Doom Patrol fans hated from the first minute. The stories that Byrne created to fill that gap didn't exactly inspire confidence. Notably, not even two years after it had started and a few months after it had been cancelled, Infinite Crisis essentially un-rebooted it and brought back the stuff Byrne had tried to retcon out, albeit with the implication that Byrne's run was still canon in some form.
  • The New 52 wasn't kind to the team: The Drake-era team isn't formed until after Forever Evil and is heavily Demoted to Extra and Out of Focus even by Doom Patrol standards. The Kupperberg-era team dies on its first appearence as C-List Fodder, and perhaps worst of all, the Morrison and Pollack characters are nowhere to be seen. Even weirder, Teen Titans (New 52) seem to be adapting some elements of the Morrison run, such as Danny the Street and the Men from N.O.W.H.E.R.E, but it never really ammounted to anything and they were In Name Only versions of the characters.
  • Unstoppable Doom Patrol is slowly starting to fall under this trope as well, due to Dennis Culver's poorly timed decision to keep Kate and Dorothy dead while ignoring their revival in DC Pride 2022. It doesn't help that Culver's announcement on their status was made a few days prior to Rachel Pollack herself passing away after a lengthy illness, and knowing Pollack had been sick for a while. Much like with Arcudi's run, fans have complained it's hard to get into Unstoppable Doom Patrol with it explicitly sacrificing Kate and Dorothy just so Robotman can mourn them again. Compounding the frustration was DC's Ghouls Just Wanna Have Fun featuring a Robotman story which not only featured Kate and Dorothy's ghosts, but openly acknowledged Celsius and Negative Woman having also been brought back with no explanation given as to how it happened. Other criticisms are heavily toning down the surreal elements that made the team so unique in favour of pretty generic villains and turning them into a (Funnily enough) X-Men Expy down to the school for metahuman teenagers.
  • As of right now, the only runs that haven't been hit with this are the original Arnold Drake era, Paul Kupperberg's first run in Showcase in the 70s, Grant Morrison's run, Rachel Pollack's run, Giffen's run and Gerard Way's run. And even then, Rachel Pollack's run was initially dismissed as a ripoff of Morrison's with criticisms about the absence of Rebis, Crazy Jane, and Danny the Street, until it was reevaluated years later and praised for the work Pollack did with Dorothy Spinner and Coagula.
• Badass Decay: Rita Farr. Pre-resurrection, 1960s Rita Farr could and would repeatedly go toe-to-toe with giant robots or dive into the inner mechanics of explosive devices and was always a woman with her own mind. She wouldn't for a second stand for the men in her life making her decisions for her. Post-resurrection, 21st century Rita Farr is most notable for having two major story arcs in which she was subject to somebody else's whims, either the Chief (One Year Later) or Mento (the 2010 Keith Giffen run)^note Whose new modern characterization is its own ball of wax.
• Base-Breaking Character: Charlie the Doll/Inner Child. Some see him as a Nice Guy who helps Dorothy master her powers better and offers her a friend to always trust. Others just think he is very creepy and vague.
• Breakup Breakout: Beast Boy was introduced in this comic, but it was after the original Patrol was (almost) entirely killed off that he got tied up with the Teen Titans. He has served as one of that team's most popular members.
• Broken Base:
  • Ted McKeever's art during the Pollack run. It's either a very unique art style that emphasizes the irreality and abstractness of the Doom Patrol or just ugly.
  • The Doom Patrol re-admitting The Chief. He either deserves to be forgiven because he truly repents for what he did or he was Easily Forgiven and he should be kicked out of the team.
• Common Knowledge: The Negative Spirit in modern times is frequently called "Keeg Bovo" by fans and, eventually, the comic itself. This stems from Way's run, in which that *is* the Spirit's name; however, the scene in Way's run where the Spirit is re-introduced also shows, on-panel, the backstory of a blue alien who becomes fused with the Spirit before seeking out Larry. The Spirit in Way's run takes on that alien's shape, name, and concsciousness (it can talk now); in other words, Keeg is the name of the blue alien. The Keeg name is frequently applied by fans and later comics, though, to any "classic" depiction of the Spirit, who in fact already had a name of its own in Morrison's run (Mercurius).
• Complete Monster:
  • Pre-Crisis: Captain Zahl, who later became a foe of the Teen Titans, was a Nazi U-Boat commander turned criminal mercenary who never gave up on imposing the Third Reich's vision on the world. After a confrontation with Niles "The Chief" Caulder left him down an arm and confined to a back and neck brace, Zahl took on a behind-the-scenes role, transforming Otto Von Furth into the always-burning Plasmus, and manipulating the unstable Madame Rouge into betraying the Doom Patrol and Brotherhood of Evil both, resulting in the demise of both teams. Hunted across the world by surviving Doom Patrol members and associates Gar Logan, Robotman, and Mento, Zahl battled the New Teen Titans when he and his army joined Madame Rouge's attempted conquest of Zandia. Under Zahl's direction his men massacred thousands of Zandia's expat inhabitants, and captured the Titans, subjecting them to the horrors of his Devolving Pit.
  • Post-Crisis (Vol. 2):
    • Issues #22-24: Red Jack, who claims to be God Himself, is an interdimensional sadist who lives off of the pain of others. To survive, Red Jack turns his victims into butterflies, pinning them inside his house in a perpetual state of agony to feed off of their pain, having imprisoned over millions of them. Having also been Jack the Ripper, Red Jack killed several prostitutes in an attempt to use their flesh to create a new form of life, only to toss it aside and dismiss his victims as nothing but "cheap harlots". Kidnapping a comatose Rhea Jones, Red Jack hopes to marry her and start a twisted family as a way to alleviate his boredom.
    • Issues #31-33: The Archons of Nürnheim are a duo of sapient, nihilistic puppets who harbored a hatred for all life itself after being discarded eons ago. Creating the Cult of the Unwritten Book, which worships the being known as the Unmaker, the Archons plan to summon the Unmaker in an attempt to undo all life in the universe. Raising a boy born with the markings used to summon the Unmaker, the Archons killed his parents when he was of proper age, entrusting them to two of their followers before killing them as well. Using innocents and murder victims to create macabre monsters from their flesh and souls, the Archons send them to find the boy, resulting in the ruination of Barcelona and the lives of several people.
• Crazy Is Cool: A recurring theme. Crazy Jane has a different superpower for each of her personalities, which shift continuously. Dorothy Spinner's imaginary friends aren't imaginary. And Rhea Jones' powers are greatly amplified after she goes mad.
  • To put in special context with Rhea, she literally brought down a gigantic, levitating stone city which may have been a literal angel and helped put an eons long feud between two alien races to a halt simply because she got tired of waiting for a signal. And she only waited for like ten seconds!
  • Every member of the Brotherhood of Dada wears this like a badge of honor, especially their esteemed leader Mr. Nobody. Stealing the bicycle of Albert Hofmann so he can use its LSD-powered mind-altering aura to become the President of the United States (It Makes Sense in Context, sort of) is one of his saner plans.
• Creepy Awesome: Really, we could comfortably slide "all of Morrison's run" into this docket, but for specific examples, we'd have to pick the Scissor Men, the Candlemaker, the Weeping Blades and the Telephone Avatar.
• Cult Classic: Never enormously popular or well-known, perhaps due in no small part due to how damn weird their adventures are, the Patrol is more-or-less DC's best kept and most underrated secret (although less so since the TV adaptation's release), especially Morrison's run.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • The Doom Patrol is this to the DC universe as a whole. Whenever they pop up in a comic, fans tend to squee in awe.
  • Beast Boy, who showed up way back when in 1965 as a one-chapter concept and proved so popular he ended up becoming Rita Farr's son and reserve member of the Patrol. He has been a Doom Patrol and Teen Titans regular for over fifty years, achieving more mainstream success and longevity than even the original Doom Patrol.
  • Animal-Vegetable-Mineral-Man, due to his very out-there powerset and appearance. It's likely why he appeared in Batman: The Brave and the Bold (which also gave him more exposure to general audiences), and in Doom Patrol (2019).
  • Danny the Street tends to top the rankings of people's favourite Doom Patrol members. Many find the idea of a Genius Loci Wholesome Crossdresser Gayborhood charming, weird and very appropriate for a Doom Patrol member. It helps that he is one of DC's first queer characters.
  • Mr. Nobody is by far the most popular character to have come from Grant Morrison's run, and is considered a pretty iconic representation of the insanity, ridiculousness, and horror that made up Morrison's tenure. Whenever anybody thinks of Morrison's run, they think of Mr. Nobody. And to drive this home, even though Nobody died in the Brotherhood of Dada's return, he was brought back in Giffen's run as "Mr. Somebody" before Gerard Way restored him to his original state and created the Brotherhood of Nada to accompany his return. He was even made the Arc Villain of the live-action television show's first season, and given a makeover as a Reality Warper Meta Guy.
  • Flex Mentallo was popular enough to get his own miniseries, thanks in no small part to how damn bizarre (yet ultimately good-hearted in nature) the character is, even by Doom Patrol standards.
  • Kate Godwin's popular among queer and transgender comic fans on account of possibly being the first transgender superhero and because Rachel Pollack strove to make her a likable and competent character without making her overly perfect and insufferable. Given Kate was created in an era where it was nigh impossible to find positive depictions of transgender people in comics (as in, where they weren't tortured or killed off), it's no wonder she is so well liked. Her resurrection in DC Pride 2022 after she had been killed off in John Arcudi's run was very well-received, with Unstoppable Doom Patrol writer Dennis Culver's later decision to disregard Kate being brought back to life and still establish her as deceased widely seen as a massive step in the wrong direction.
  • The Codpiece to the sheer audacity of having a villain with an arsenal penis. He's the second most beloved character in Pollack's run after Kate, despite appearing in a single issue. Coincidentally, it's the same issue in which Coagula debutes.
• Fair for Its Day: Arnold Drake's portrayal of Rita Farr in the original series is very modern and progressive for a DC comic of The '60s (even if some aspects are inevitably dated). It certainly compares favourably to Stan Lee's portrayal of Sue Storm across town at Marvel.
• Fanon Discontinuity: Fans of the team seldom speak positively of their Crossover with Secret Six in their book's "Six Degrees of Devastation" arc, where they get worfed in a Curb-Stomp Battle by the freaking Mad Hatter. This is specially jarring considering they tend to fight highly powerful near-omnipotent villains like the Candlemaker or the Decreator.
• Fashion-Victim Villain:
  • Every member of the Brotherhood of Dada, in every incarnation, with the exception of Mr. Nobody himself. It's likely intentional, given how he affectionately describes them as having "stupid names and even more stupid costumes."
  • Steve Dayton, who went from rival to honorary member to Face–Heel Revolving Door over the course of the twentieth century, but who had consistently cringe-worthy costumes. It's a wonder people didn't burst out laughing at the sight of him.
• Follow the Leader: At one time the Patrol acted as a school... for young mutants. The Doom Patrol premiered just three months before the X-Men, but too close to be a clear case of copy-catting. Besides, Arnold Drake was in no position to throw stones - there are also some very clear parallels between the original Doom Patrol and the Fantastic Four. (A team of three men and one woman, one of whom is a genius, one is stretchy, one of whom has a flight power, and one of whom is stuck in a super-strong, unwanted orange body. For bonus points, both teams feature a character who's a revamp of an unrelated Golden Age character.) They have also shared writers; Arnold Drake, Grant Morrison, and John Byrne have all written for both teams.
• Freud Was Right: The Codpiece. Lord Almighty, the Codpiece.◊
• Genius Bonus: A staple of the book. Almost every story arc post-Morrison includes obscure references to religion, occultism, psychology, physics, literature or Underground culture.
  • Morrison's run references a lot of esoterica, and additional references include things like the Utraquist heresy of the Catholic Church.
  • Almost every issue of Pollack's run references the Tarot deck. Other common topics are the Kabbalah, Jungian psychology and gender politics.
  • Gerard Way's Doom Patrol focuses more on pop culture and Metafiction but still adds references to demonology or quantum mechanics.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • In Rachel Pollack's run, it is established that Dorothy Spinner's first period resulted in other children cruelly mocking her for menstrually bleeding in front of them and her mother being appallingly uncaring by telling her daughter to her face that she should've been aborted. With John Arcudi's run later establishing that Mr. and Mrs. Spinner were Dorothy's adoptive parents, this makes what her mother said even crueler in retrospect.
  • After Dorothy Spinner and Kate Godwin were killed off in John Arcudi's run and remained deceased in spite of other members of the Doom Patrol that died coming back from the dead and the history of the DCU being rewritten at least three times since (with Elasti-Girl and Celsius even owing their resurrections to the Cosmic Retcons caused by Infinite Crisis and Rebirth respectively), their cameos in DC Pride 2022 confirming that they were back from the dead was met with much acclaim. Unfortunately, the proceeding Unstoppable Doom Patrol miniseries chose to ignore Dorothy and Kate's resurrections and establish that they were still deceased, and the conclusion of the miniseries even involved the Brotherhood of Evil digging up Dorothy's corpse for a ritual to summon the Candlemaker, an enemy she originally defeated at the end of Grant Morrison's run. To make matters worse, writer Dennis Culver publicly confirmed that he was going to keep Dorothy and Kate dead for his run mere days before Kate's creator Rachel Pollack passed away, which makes the dedication to her memory in the miniseries' third issue come off as insincere.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Early in Pollack's run, Niles Caulder explicitly denies that Dorothy is his daughter. In the TV adaptation, she is his daughter, the product of a tryst between him and a woman with powers similar to Dorothy's.
  • Grant Morrison's run had a story that reinforced the Doom Patrol's similarities to the Fantastic Four by depicting the team as more blatant Fantastic Four stand-ins and a Doom Force one-shot that lampooned X-Force (1991), which are funnier in retrospect knowing that they would later write a Fantastic Four miniseries for Marvel Knights in addition to an entire X-Men run in New X-Men.
• It Was His Sled: The Chief was Evil All Along and was the one who caused the original team's accidents in the first place. It has become his main defining trait, and serves as a Late-Arrival Spoiler in any future storyline with him in it.
  • Dorothy Spinner accidentally killed Kate Godwin and then entered a coma, and Robotman chose to unplug her life support. It has become one of the most infamous moments of Collateral Angst and Stuffed in the Fridge in the DCU.
• LGBT Fanbase: The series is very popular with queer readers, thanks in no small part to the ammount of LGBTI+ characters (Coagula, Danny the Street, more recently Larry Trainor) and its message about being weird and original resonating with many of those queer readers.
• Memetic Badass:
  • Milkman Man is commonly called the most powerful iteration of Superman. This actually has a lot of merit to it too, even compared to the likes of Cosmic Armour Superman and Superman One Million due to the fact that his milk has the power to control the plot.
  • The Codpiece too.
  • The Doom Patrol themselves tend to be portrayed as much more capable than the JLA due to how accustomed with dealing with strange Eldritch Abominations with reality-ending powers. A common meme is how villains like the Anti-Monitor, Parallax, Superboy-Prime or Darkseid would be defeated in just a two-issue arc if they were in a Doom Patrol comic (Despite them having fought both the Anti-Monitor and Prime in Infinite Crisis and Sinestro Corps War and getting pretty worfed).
• Mis-blamed: Rachel Pollack's Doom Patrol comics are often criticized because she broke up fan-favorite coupling Robotman and Crazy Jane, though Pollack has stated she was asked by Grant Morrison not to bring Jane back into the line-up. This essentially put Pollack between a rock and a hard place regarding Robotman: either she could leave Cliff with Jane and thus remove the Doom Patrol's most iconic member, or she could bring Cliff back at the expense of his relationship with Jane. The fans would have reacted poorly no matter what she did, while she was simply trying to respect Morrison's wishes.
• Moment of Awesome: Rhea Jones pre-transformation stabbing Red Jack in the back. She briefly awakens from her coma, takes the knife Jack had just stabbed into her back, and then stabs him. The scene of Rhea standing there awkwardly with a proud smile on her face, as Jack stumbles around trying to get at the knife, is awesome as it is creepy. She then lapses back into her coma.
• Moral Event Horizon: Madame Rouge and Captain Zahl crossed it when they murdered the original Doom Patrol in the finale of the Silver Age run.
• Never Live It Down: The only thing anyone talks about regarding John Arcudi's run is how Coagula was Stuffed in the Fridge and Dorothy was left brain dead so Cliff would have more to angst about. As such, it's not that Arcudi's run is particularly considered bad (it has a fair number of fans and it's far more enjoyable than Byrne's later run) but the majority of the fandom don't feel comfortable reading Arcudi's series because of how it was built off sacrificing Kate and Dorothy to get it going.
• My Real Daddy: While Paul Kupperberg didn't create the Doom Patrol and was merely the first to write for the series after Arnold Drake's original run, his tenure with the team isn't nearly as well-liked as Grant Morrison's subsequent run, that introduced basically every element that's synonimous with the team. Even DC Comics agrees with this; their "Volume 1" trade paperback begins with Grant Morrison's run of Doom Patrol, at issue 19. (Issues 1-18 were basically X-Men with a different cast: not bad, just So Okay, It's Average.)
  • On the other hand, while she was created by Kupperberg, Dorothy Spinner only became an actual character in the hands of Grant Morrison and specially Rachel Pollack, who developed her power to bring her imaginary friends to right to its logical (Sorta?) extreme, her powers being tied to her menstrual cycle and her Dark and Troubled Past.
  • Beast Boy originated in the Doom Patrol but is mostly remembered from his stint in the Teen Titans by Marv Wolfman and George Pérez.
• One-Scene Wonder: Plenty of them. Morrison's run has the Darren Jones, the fake Men from N.O.W.H.E.R.E. and the Beard Hunter, who appear only for a single issue each, but the first two are considered very creepy and memorable, while the second one is just hilarious. Pollack's run, on the other hand, has the Codpiece, one of the silliest villains ever put to paper.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Killing off Dorothy in the Arcudi run feels cruel and callous, especially when you consider how young she was and how much suffering she'd already endured in her short life. Not helping matters is that she was most likely an adult at the moment Robotman had her Taken Off Life Support (since Rachel Pollack's run stated she was 14 in the recap page included in the original printing of Kate Godwin's debut issue and John Arcudi's series said four years had passed since the incident that rendered her comatose, meaning she was most likely at least 18 at her time of death), as there would've been a lot of potential to see what she'd experience as a grown woman.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: During the Blackest Night tie-in, the team is attacked by Black Lanterns in the guise of dead Patrol members. Given that the Black Lanterns feed off of emotions, this could have been an opportunity for Rita to be confronted with Nudge, who died early in the 2009 run and whose death she envied because of her own suicidal tendencies, or it could have been an opportunity to confront Cliff with Dorothy, who was like family to him and whose death he played a role in. Instead, Rita fights Tempest, who she never met and has no reason to care about, while Cliff fights... a replica of his human body, which is very obviously not him and thus not worth getting emotional over. It's also baffling that Karma, Scott Fischer, Coagula and Fever don't appear as Black Lanterns in spite of also being Doom Patrol members who had been killed off at that point.
• Tough Act to Follow: Morrison again. The legitimately good Pollack run suffered unfairly in comparison, since Morrison's is regarded as one of the very best superhero comics of the late 80s/early 90s.
• Ugly Cute: Dorothy Spinner, Cliff Steele, the Bandage People and Inner Child.
  Cliff (to somebody in a hospital elevator): Fourth floor, pal. I'm here to complain to my plastic surgeon.
• Values Dissonance:
  • In the 1960s version the characters are all viewed as "freaks," including the Chief... because he uses a wheelchair. Fortunately, attitudes towards disabilities have changed somewhat since then.
  • When it turned out Monsieur Mallah and the Brain were in love, the reaction of most people was "OMG, they're gay! That's disgusting!". Never mind that one's a talking gorilla and the other a brain in a jar, and they're both demented murderous criminals: it's the fact that they're the same gender that they found offensive.
• Values Resonance:
  • On the other hand, Kate Godwin being not only a sympathetically represented trans woman but a trans superhero (and a lesbian to boot) who was always treated with great sympathy and respect, was huge for 1993. Even to this day, she remains one of the only transgender superheroes, not just in DC but in comics, period.
  • Pollack's run also featured the war between Foxfur and Crowdark, which was an allegory for the generational gap, and urged the need to understand each other, a theme that has become more poignant in recent years since it has only grown and grown.
• Vindicated by History: The reception of Rachel Pollack's run on the series has gradually warmed over the years, after people stopped trying to compare it to Morrison's run. There are those who point out she did more with Dorothy Spinner's development as a character and those who finally realize the significance of Kate Godwin's creation, especially in light of how DC still has barely a handful of transgender characters who aren't dead or in the background.
  • Another highlight was the issue with "The Codpiece." A supervillain whose whole shtick was Compensating for Something is odd enough. But add this issue being based around Coagula and detailing how she got her powers (Rebis was one of her "clients"), and then how she stopped Codpiece's bank robbing spree by touching his equipment and causing it to dissolve. So the Compensating for Something villain was taken down by a transgender hooker turned super-heroine after she contracted superpowers in a manner akin to an STD.
• The Woobie:
  • The whole team most of the time, really, but especially Robotman◊, who has often upset about the limitations his robotic body give him as well as the number of teammates he's outlived.
  • Dorothy Spinner is hands-down one of the more overt examples of a character who's had it very rough, as she had a very unpleasant childhood of being constantly bullied and ostracized, her parents never really cared about her to the point that her mother responded to her being mocked by the other children for getting her first period by telling her to her face that she should've been aborted (which was made even worse when John Arcudi's run retroactively established that Mr. and Mrs. Spinner were her adoptive parents), the few times she went out in public without the rest of the Doom Patrol had bystanders make insensitive statements about her ape-like appearance while she was in earshot and John Arcudi's run put her in a coma to fulfill the tradition of cleaning house for every new roster of the Doom Patrol in addition to having her Taken Off Life Support at the ending.
  • Crazy Jane was molested by her father when she was only five years old, so she's yet another character hard not to sympathize with.
  • Mercilessly parodied with Shasta the Living Mountain in Doom Force. His power is extremely limited and his teammates all hate him for being useless. When he sacrifices himself in a desperate attempt to prove his worth, the issue ends with the rest of Doom Force happy he's dead because he was "a creep."

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