DC Daily Comic Book Club: DOOM PATROL (1987) Issues 26 & 27

2 reviews so far. Maybe I’ll bring the ticker up to 3 later today.

I had wondered how Mr. Nobody would look, and they got it perfectly. I love him as the narrator, and the scary first adversary of my beloved DP.

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@oldrocker

They nailed the look imo!

That’s cool

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Doom Patrol #26

I suspect that most readers today have no idea what Dadaism was, what atonal music of around the same time was. In a time closer to when Grant Morrison was writing Doom Patrol, it hadn’t been that long since Time magazine had published its famous “Is God Dead?” issue in 1966, highlighting all the philosophical and artistic trends of the ‘60s that worked out the connotations and aftereffects of life “post” Christian. Dadaism in chaotic art, atonal music written mathematically instead of by the rules of classical music, anarchist anti-country / state credos, all this was modern culture working out how to proceed once God / rationality / reason / the rule of law are taken out of the equation and the individual becomes the authority in all things. To many of these artists and musicians, life was without inherent meaning, absurd, chaotic- so there would be “cut up” writing for example to express their view, again as shown here in Doom Patrol.

I purchased Doom Patrol during this run, and both my wife and I read it. Not long prior, I had been a “professional student” for 8 years between college and grad school, and the topics and conflicts of Morrison’s Doom Patrol were exactly the topics we all discussed and debated long into the night when I was an adult student, over many cups of coffee. Issues about sexuality and society as well were hot topics at the time, so someone like a Rebis seemed very relevant and engaging to us as well.

What to me is very different between Alan Moore and Grant Morrison as writers is this: although they both cover very very similar ground with their topics (including 4th wall, the comic character can see and talk to you the reader and to the actual writer type stuff as in Supreme and Morrison’s Animal Man), Alan Moore has a very specific world view / spiritual view that he deliberately mixes into his comics. Grant Morrison seems to keep things more up in the air, and at times I feel like he is telling us his views through the villains, other times through the heroes, and always admitting that he himself is still undecided on the Big Questions, but still feels these topics should be contemplated, meditated on and worked out through writing.

God.jpg

The Simon Bisley covers of the time were true art: the characters felt like they just popped right out of the cover at you, and the area of the picture for the cover seemed to push out beyond where such covers should be placed!

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So the Brotherhood of Dada claims to be beyond morality, beyond good and evil…so Mr. Nobody of course is frequent-murderer as a corollary. Morrison is asking us the question: if there are no absolutes, if life is only what we can measure and see and experience with our 5 senses, if you and I define our reality with no other possible standard, then where does that leave us?

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Doom Patrol #27:

What you see between Cliff and Rebis is very similar to how it goes when old school chums run into each other 30 years later. It’s also what happens in many marriages after the first 20 years: all parties have changed, and each needs to get to know and find respect for who the “new” person is.

The choice by Mr. Nobody to go to Paris to unleash the painting is a nod to the historic Dadaism movement in France, I feel. “You guys love this stuff so much, I’m sure you’ll appreciate and respect this absurd and irrational act as the art it is” he is saying in a way.

In his almost religious-sounded liturgy (see image), Mr. Nobody recites his admiration for:

Marcel Duchamp (a pioneer of Dada), Tristan Tzara (a Romanian and French Dada avant-garde poet, essayist and performance artist), Andre Breton (co-founder, leader, principal theorist and chief apologist of Surrealism) and finally Arthur Craven (who loved to shock his audiences, combining the cult of the action hero and Dadaism).

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All this reminds me of a poem I wrote in Junior High as I studied Algebra, irrational and imaginary numbers, etc:

“Nothing is nothing
And yet it is something
Though it still is nothing.

If nothing is something can it roll down a hill
Can it explode
Can it be ill?

Yet if nothing is nothing,
Why does it have a name?”

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I can’t help but rate these two comics a solid 10 out of 10, due to the compelling presentation of both the villain and hero philosophies plus the artwork and the humility of the writer.

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One final thought of where we are at in this run of Doom Patrol. The other theme that made this series compelling and a “must read” for my wife and I at the time was the theme of mental illness / “madness” and the strength that comes later once a person comes out on the other side with the ability to return to normal life after it hits. Like Cliff, you always carry the scars of the experience but you also have a new-found strength and the ability to be a good support and listener for others now dealing with similar “abyss” issues.

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Crawling from the Wreckage…

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I liked this issue a lot. I think I’ve gotten over the sharp reading curve! The concepts are wonderfully abstract and really bring out the absurdism that defines Mr. Nobody. That’s what work so well. Mister Nobody is an obscure character with an abstract grotesque look and his origin matches that. The idea that he compares himself to Buddha was really interesting, and made me do some research. Mr. Nobody in a sense reaches Nirvana through his internal turmoil when his mind and his perception explode. It’s incredibly abstract and pretty to look at thanks to Case’s Penciling and Vozzo’s use of colors. I liked how different it was from Doom Patrol with its bigger sense of the abstract, and I’m interested to see how Nobody who’s has ascended from material extended will continue to explore the use of nothingness and meaninglessness in Doom Patrol.

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Over all I don’t think he is a villain that can be compared to the others because he is not one I mean sure he still is a villain in his right but he is not planing to destroy the world sorry that a stereotype

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