Friday, October 21, 2016

Doom Patrol #2


Don't be so negative, man!

The Review!
Holy shit! I'm so funny! Don't be so negative, man! That's got to be in the top six billion jokes right there! Maybe if I'd made a Footloose joke, I could have upped my all-time joke ranking. I didn't realize I'd watched Footloose wrong for years. It wasn't until I heard somebody talking negatively about the adults that I realized Kevin Bacon was the hero! Shit. I thought he was the villain who destroys a small town and gets away with it! How could you not root for the people trying to stop idiots from dancing?! Go read a book or something! Express your zest for life in painting! Quietly! In your garage!

Okay fine. That caption was shit. It was lazy garbage. But you can't fault me for being lazy and/or garbage! I think you have to fault my parents. Or the town in which I grew up unable to dance.

This issue begins with Larry Trainor flying an experimental plane too high in the sky and being blasted by all the radiation that's up there. It's almost as if Gerard Way heard conspiracy theories about how radiation from the Van Allen Belt kept the United States from actually sending men to the moon and decided that there must be intense, super-hero creating radiation everywhere up there. So much so that an experimental aircraft that can only make sub-orbital flights can get high enough to be affected by it. Because that's what happens to Larry Trainor!


I don't know if anything happened to his co-pilot.

Is it possible the military actually gave a pilot's job to a Russian Babushka doll? Or is the more probable answer that Larry Trainor, three to four hours ago, ate a fuckton of psychedelic mushrooms? I don't mean he's hallucinating now! I mean, he took a bunch of mushrooms, began tripping his balls off, stole a military plane, and flew off into the sky with an old souvenir from his grandmother. He also probably doesn't hallucinate getting hit by an assload of radiation though. Although wouldn't that make for a more fascinating Negative Man? He's just some guy locked in a perpetual magic mushroom hallucination who thinks he has super powers? He probably got his name because he says "Bummer!" so much.


The tripping his balls off theory might not be so absurd!

One guy in the image above is eating a gyro. Is that going to be a standard Where's Waldo? moment in each issue? Find the jerk eating another universe!

Meanwhile in probably a different gyro than the one Larry Trainor is in, Casey finds a piece of Yoko Ono art in her mouth. It's a note hidden in her tooth (which just fell out) that says, "Good job". It's always nice to get a little encouragement during one of the worst experiences in life. Losing a tooth is horrible. It's like the Gods have descended and you're looking on in wonder and majesty before one of them shoves you hard to the ground. Then another puts a knee on your back and pulls your head up by the hair and yells in your face, Ambrosia-breath wilting eyelashes, "Say you love big dicks! SAY YOU LOVE THEM!" Whoever decided that the interpretation of the dream where you lose your teeth is feeling a sense of powerlessness in your own life should get ten Nobel Prizes. I was once shot in the neck in a dream and I knew that I was going to die and it wasn't half as stressful as dreams where my teeth fall out! Although, I suppose, if I found a note in one that read "Good job", I'd certainly think it was sarcastic.

Casey exits her bedroom to find her new roommate (whose name I can't remember but she murdered Casey's old roommate right in front of Casey's eyes and Casey didn't seem to mind. I don't think the readers minded either because Casey's roommate was given the exact personality that young animals reading this comic book would utterly despise. He was one of those no-nonsense, lacking all whimsy types. You know, the kind of person everybody who isn't in your current social circle almost certainly are) has almost completely rebuilt Robotman. She's yet to put the brain back in. It's still on the counter in a tray of melting ice which is being slurped up by Lotion. Great. Now the cat has a taste for human brains. That never ends well.

Casey's coworker, the guy who ate the first alternate universe, has come to pick her up in their ambulance that's tapped into some other worldly dispatch office. It sent them to find Robotman after he arrived in this gyro from some other gyro. Now dispatch wants them to go pick up Larry Trainor who must have gotten his ass beaten so hard in his gyro that he was knocked off of it and fell into the main gyro of this comic book.

Fine, I'll admit I was wrong about the whole Larry Trainor being from another gyro thing. He just got his ass beat in this comic's main gyro. But you can understand my confusion when Larry's gyro experience was nothing like my experience in the real gyro.


Intermission.

Larry Trainor continues to trip balls. I wouldn't be surprised if I was right about the new Negative Man because I'm usually right about everything. But I...oh wait. I said I "wouldn't" be surprised so I have nothing to add to that statement.

Larry Trainor decides to go with Casey and her coworker in their magic ambulance. Meanwhile at Casey's apartment, some gem-men have put Cliff's brain back inside his body. Now his brain can finally express itself! It's too bad more brains can't express themselves. Cliff expresses his need to kick every ass on every gem-man. It's probably a reasonable assumption, being a member of the Doom Patrol, that strange looking creatures speaking with odd speech bubbles are the antagonists.

Robotman kills a bunch of gem-men but there are always more gem-men. They eventually shoot him through the wall and out into the street. Don't worry about Lotion! This book isn't being written by Peter J. Tomasi or Patrick Gleason! It's being written by a human being.

It also turns out Larry Trainor needs to be around expressed negativity to keep the Negative Creature locked up inside of him. So why doesn't he just keep a smart phone on him so he can quickly scroll down to the comments section of any webpage ever?

Casey takes the ambulance back home because Other Worldly Dispatch wanted her to. That allows Robotman and Negative Man to be reunited. The Doom Patrol ball is almost certainly and quite very nearly about to start rolling any minute now! I think maybe the first issue should have been double sized.

Casey and her coworker (Sam! His name is Sam! The comic book finally reminded me!) wind up getting suspended from driving their ambulance because the Other Worldly Dispatch turned out to be Danny the Street. Danny has been getting the Doom Patrol together. Probably because Danny needs to be rescued from whatever gyro Danny has gotten lost in. He is, after all, about to be turned into a burger factory by intergalactic fast food franchisers.

Danny transports Casey to the Caberet. It's where she meets Flex Mentallo. It's where Flex parts the curtains and reintroduces Casey to Dannyland. It's where Casey sees a parade in her honor saying "Welcome Back!" So is that Casey's origin? Is she one of Danny's organic creations which escaped into the real gyro? I suppose those questions (and many more!) will not be answered in the next issue due to all of the space being used up for asking more questions. But that's a good thing! Asking questions in stories with no fixed ending is always a more entertaining prospect than answering them. Just look at the entertainment trajectory of The X-Files!

The Ranking!
No change. The narrative is slowly getting to the point of the Doom Patrol! So if you're willing to pay another $3.99 next month to find out who they are or why the exist, you might find out! DC sure is gambling on peoples love of the Doom Patrol keeping them interested in this comic book. Or maybe they just assume a certain amount of fans will pick up all of the Young Animal comic books simply because they were convinced by DC's punk rock literature branding of this publishing outlet of theirs. These are the comic books the cool kids read! I mean the real cools kids who all the real cool kids know are the punk rock misfits who don't actually care about being cool at all. I mean, they do care but they can't show any outside expression of their caring or else they won't be super cool.

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