Doom Patrol #1 Review

I had been waiting for two months for the new Doom Patrol series to start and really like this first issue. The first thing is that I love the cover. There were so many other variants including one from Brian Chippendale of the band Lightning Bolt but I had to get the normal cover. 

I wasn't setting my expectations too high and when I first read it, it was kind of a letdown at first. I've read random issues of DP in the past, some of Morrison's run, and some more recent and like Morrison's craziness with it but this didn't grab me at first. Some of the dialogue seemed spotty, I still can't get over the “I just blew up your roommate, do you need a new roommate?” “Yes, I do need a roommate.” That seems like just very bad one dimensional dialogue to me. Even Squirrel Girl which I like a lot would not have such silly, hollow dialogue.

A day or two later I read more about DP's back story, things about Danny and other characters. And it seems with each new series there are different characters for the most part but it helped with having more of an understanding of this group. Then I read Azzarello's #1 from a few years back and it wasn't as good as this series with how it was all over the place. I reread this issue again and did like it a lot more. Some people have complained about how it's all over the place and it is but this is the first issue about a group of people and one's in which we don't even know who is part of the group yet. And I like the way it was all over the place and showing snippets of where some of the characters are at.

Another thing I didn't care for was how there are entire worlds inside something like a gyro. It's been done to death. At the end of even the first Men In Black movie where at the end, it's as if we are just inside a marble inside some aliens board game or the world inside the jewelry of a pet, among other stories. It is believable and I do like how things can be connected in all kinds of ways which is the point and it's not bad but a little overdone.

Overall I do like the randomness of this issue, some of the characters are definitely interesting and I definitely want to see more of where this is going. The funny dialogue and randomness is probably fitting for Doom Patrol and hopefully this becomes something really great and isn't just another series of DP that gets axed within a couple years. I also liked the artwork by Nick Derington, there is a cleanness and colorfulness about it in a way that I like a lot.

There is also a video on youtube where someone breaks down the scenes of this issue which might be of interest to some.