Ten?! Really? Wow. I know that's only two-and-a-half months, assuming I posted an Elasti-Girl Friday every Friday, but for some odd reason, TEN seems more impressive to me.
In an
earlier Elasti-Girl Friday, I cited the awesomely amazing
Justice series from Jim Krueger, Alex Ross and Doug Braithwaite. Well, here's another page.
This one bears a little more scrutiny though.
Not only does it give us a chance to breathe in some of Niles Caulder's headache-inducing line of thinking, but we get to see interaction between the Doom Patrol and some members of the Justice League. Additionally, we see Beast Boy with the DP. Note the green dog with Chief when he asks Rita to place Aquaman in the tank. Gar later becomes a bird, next to Robotman in the last panel on this page and in the page later on in this post, you'll see Gar getting catty.
The League has brought Aquaman to Caulder for medical attention beyond their perceived capacities, and no less than Martian Manhunter and Zatanna are the representatives of the League. These three Leaguers - Zatanna, J'onn and Arthur - were the three most often viewed as outcasts, discarded by League creators a little too frequently or too often.
Here, however, with the Doom Patrol, they fit. There's a certain sense of belonging that never gets stated on the printed page, but just seems right. On more than one occasion, the DP has met up with Aquaman, including the
JLA: Year One segment I posted about earlier where the DP were trying to recruit Aquaman.
Caulder reaches the deduction that Aquaman is an amphibian and therefore, well, click and read it yourself.
Makes you wonder why Aquaman ever had a hook, eh?
Maybe someday all of the stars will align and Arthur will actually join the Doom Patrol. Until then, however, I look forward to more team-ups.
Until then, I've got this book and a few of those other team-ups to go back to. The more I read and re-read this book, though, the more I'm feeling the urge to splurge for the Absolute edition.
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This one bears a little more scrutiny though.
Makes you wonder why Aquaman ever had a hook, eh?
This book has been keeping me buzzing - after all it was the impetus that sprang forth this blog - and now as we get closer, I'm more and more anxious to sit down and read the darn thing.
The image above is the version I've been providing slivers from.
Another cover sliver. . . oh, look! It features Elasti-Girl!
Louise Brooks
Diana Rigg
Rita Farr
As hard as Clark is rocking the redesigns, the action and the characters themselves, I gotta say, his design of the Negative Man - not Larry - is pretty frickin' creepy.
At the risk of being a complete jerk, I present you with the cover - and a crappy scan of it at that - to Doom Patrol (first go-round) #106, featuring a tale of the Private World of Negative Man - dun dun duuuuuuuuuun!
Astute observers of this little blog may have noticed I haven't been resplendent with my observations of Morrison's time on the DP. There's a good reason for that - it chased me away! Morrison hit the DP around the time I was doing the whole "finding girls, learning to drive" scene. I just didn't need to try to figure out Morrison's take on the Doom Patrol when I was already spending precious braintime trying to figure out the fairer sex.
With my confession out of the way, as I begin to dive into Morrison's DP, I'll be taking the lot of you with me. I've read some of the issues when they were released a few since, but I walked away from Doom Patrol for a time, destined to return when the team returned to the DC Universe proper - not necessarily by design.
