Page 45 Review by Jonathan
"Exceptional! Make some room! It's time to take things to their next logical conclusion!
"Engage neurotic pain amplifier! Bypass settings one through four and begin at "Disorientating Agony"!
"Yesss! Yesss! Release your fluids!
"Level six! Level seven! You will open up and let us in! We will obtain the meat!"
There are those who will inevitably find reading this disorientating agony, I suspect, much like Grant Morrison's DOOM PATROL run, but sometimes, you just need to let it all wash over you and be transported along for the ride, even if that is in a stolen ambulance barrelling through dimensions unknown whilst reality falls apart spectacularly around you. Which is exactly what Gerard Way espouses in his interesting afterword, referencing a bemused reviewer who felt this wasn't a comic that could be reviewed, only experienced. He has a point.
Still, I suppose I'd better try...
The Doom Patrol as we know it appears to be extant, though improbably disparate, scattered and utterly dysfunctional, both individually and more certainly collective. Okay, they were always exactly like that, but the gang is most empathetically not together. Neither individually nor collectively...
Cue Casey Brinke, EMT technician and who "only wants to do good things." When she was a little girl, her mother told her... "Be a bright light in a black hole... just before she flew into the sun."
Okay! Whether Casey, or parties with a guiding hand hidden behind the scenes know it, her mission seems to be to get the Patrol back together, apparently in as chaotic and messy a fashion as possible. Several of your old favourites will reappear one by one, such as Cliff Steele, Larry Trainor, Crazy Jane, Danny The Street, and my personal favourite Flex Mentallo. My absolute top moment in this volume, actually, is the Man Of Muscle Mystery suicidally riding a bomb, Dr. Strangelove style, to the rescue. The Hero Of The Beach doesn't worry about trivial matters like getting blown to smithereens!!
I am presuming Casey is going to stick around, hazardous to her own health as that will no doubt be. And then there is a new Patrol member Terry None, which might be a wee nod to Morrison's Number None of the Brotherhood Of Dada. Doom Patrol fanatics, as Way avowedly is, will probably notice all manner of Easter eggs inserted meltingly into the proceedings.
It's gloriously daft writing from Way, I'll give him that! There is an immensely engaging and even moderately coherent story slipped in there amongst all the froth and frolics, which is just enough to hold this emergency call of a comic on the proverbial road, tyres screeching, blue lights-a-flashing and the psychic sirens wailing and Dopplering away merrily. Lovely, friendly, frisky pop art from Nick Derington and Tom Fowler. Very clean, clear and consistent too, to say there is so much madness occurring on every page. Just one question remains then...
What's Going On With Niles Caulder? No, really, what is going on with Niles Caulder? You'll find out, as he also has a mini-story within the story told one-popping-up-apparently-but-definitely-not-so-randomly-page-at-a-time, with enigmatic titles like "What Are You Doing, Niles Caulder?", "Niles Caulder: Habitual Snoop" and "Meanwhile, In Larry Trainor's Innermost Parallel Lifetime." It will all make sense in the end, trust me. And The Chief. You should always trust The Chief. Plus, it would seem, Gerard Way.
