Doom Patrol #6

And here's your starting lineup for the 2017 Doom Patrol!

The Review!
No change. This issue ends the first story arc by cementing the newest incarnation of the Doom Patrol. It's got everybody's old favorites like Cliff and Larry. It's got some sort of old favorites like Flex and Danny and Jane. And it's got some new favorites like Casey and the other ones whose names I can't remember. I'm sure eventually I'll remember them as well as I remember Dorothy and Rita who aren't fucking on the team. At least not yet! There had better fucking be plans for them, Gerard! Also that trans character whose name I can't remember and the bandage people whose names I also can't remember. You might be starting to realize I have a problem remembering names.

Also, this issue didn't have a Niles Caulder intermission! WHAT?! I know!

Doom Patrol #5

This cover was better when it was a photo of a three dimensional physical thing by Dave McKean.

The Review!
After the first issue of this series, I wasn't sure I was going to like it. It seemed pretentious and trying too hard. On the "Tess being fair side of things," I realize that my love of the Grant Morrison Doom Patrol means that I expect any new version of the Doom Patrol to be at least vaguely similar. But how do you write your own thing while paying homage to a run on this comic that was absurd and horrific while never losing the thread of what it means to be a family? And not only that, why should I expect Gerard Way to believe Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol was the version he should emulate? Obviously he's taking a lot from that run: Danny, Jane, Flex Mentallo. By that evidence alone, I can assume that Way hopes to create his own iconic run that ties back to, and celebrates, Morrison's run. I was skeptical after the first two issues. But by the third issue, I was easily falling in love with this version. The fourth confirmed that the third wasn't a fluke. And now, after the fifth issue, I'm a huge fan.

I know, I know! This issue had time travel resolving a plot issue and I almost always lose my fucking cool over that shit. But this issue also had Casey burning down Danny's comic book store which can only be read metaphorically for Gerard saying, "This is mine now. Comparisons to past series were fine and dandy and unavoidable. But now it's time to put them away and join me on my journey."

This issue also had Larry Trainor living another full life while he releases the Negative Being into the world, something which will happen every time (the lucky bastard). And even in that world, Niles Caulder is manipulating shit!

This issue had Flex Mentallo flip the Hero of the Beach out!

This issue had Cliff Steele swear at a guy kicking his ass, after which he kicks the other guy's ass. You know, just like a good working class hero should do!

This issue had an astronaut feed mashed potato flakes to Casey's cat Lotion which turn it into a humanoid creature so that it can, hopefully, join the Doom Patrol too! Or become Casey's nemesis bent on revenge for all the times she fed it tuna flavored cat food when all it wanted was chicken hearts and livers.

This issue revealed that Ricardo's super power is healing through massage. Oh boy! I hope some day he uses that time travel power to go back and massage the fuck out of Rita to keep her from dying!

This issue had this moment between Casey and Danny:

Sniff!

And best of all (not really! But since it's the last thing I'm listing, I feel like it raises the dramatic revelation to titillating heights!), Casey's new origin story doesn't stem from Daddy or Mommy Issues at all. It begins with the love and acceptance of her mother and father and the knowledge that they are proud of her and will always be watching! Holy fuck! What the hell is wrong with Gerard Way?! He does know he's writing comic books, right?!

Oh dammit! That wasn't the last item in the list nor the best one after all! I can legitimately say that this one is the best one: Crazy Jane is in New Mexico running a cult of personalities! It looks like she's gathered up a bunch of people from all over who will be giving up their individuality to integrate into Jane. I know the comic book doesn't call her Crazy Jane anymore because people who aren't reading this but hear about it from other people won't be able to resist scolding DC and Gerard Way for using the adjective "crazy." But she'll always be Crazy Jane to me, and I'll always love her a little bit in a lot of different definitions of love. The way she saved Cliff, and the way Cliff saved Jane, back in Morrison's run will forever shape the way I view these two characters. I'll never not want to hug them and lie to them that everything will be all right.

The Ranking!
+5!

Doom Patrol #4

This cover is trying too hard to be incomprehensible.

• This issue begins with a guy way too old to be sleeping in the room he grew up in sleeping in the room he grew up in. It's obvious it's his childhood room because there's a poster of a Trans-Am on the wall and a poster of Bruce Lee on the wall and a lamp made out of a baseball and bat and a globe (only a kid's room ever contains a globe (unless it's the study of an explorer of Africa who's about to tell the story of his travels in Africa and the camera zooms in on the spinning globe and suddenly there's a plane heading to Africa and then the story begins)) and a bunch of trophies and a hamper full of socks that have probably been jerked off into.

• This guy, who might be Casey's coworker (although I'm not sure because I haven't read an issue of Doom Patrol since the beginning of January and I'm not sure her coworker was even in that one), has been awoken (unless he was awakened) by somebody chanting "Come back!" backwards. He thinks it's his son Lucius so that means he's living in an even more awkward situation than I thought. He passes his mother who fell asleep watching television while sitting in a recliner in the living room.

• Look. I understand the compulsion (and probably necessity, I suppose. If I wanted to be generous) to live at home because it's easy and cheap. But you're...you know...still living at home! With your fucking parents! In the room where you learned to masturbate quickly and quietly! In the room where you fantasized about your secret crush who sat across the room in Algebra but you never had the nerve to approach! In the room where you fucking cried because that one song on Disintegration (okay, all the fucking songs on Disintegration) reminded you that the person you love just spent the previous night mouth to mouth with one of your supposed best friends! Living at home past a certain age seems to have a number of benefits but you'll never know until you leave how none of those benefits are fucking worth it!

• I have a story that I've never told on this blog. I'm telling it now but know that what you should be thinking while reading it is "this is an analogy about getting the fuck out of the house you grew up in." It will begin in the next bullet point.

• When I was about eighteen, I noted a tiny little skin tag on my back. I had no idea what a skin tag was at the time but I noticed it and it was weird and it seemed like some kind of out-of-place hangnail. So I got some clippers and I tried to clip it off. It was awkward (being nearly the center of my back) and I couldn't really do it and the thing was hardly noticeable anyway. But I guess I damaged it in a way that made it say, "You know what? I'm going to grow into the most disgusting, vile, nasty bit of barf-cancer that you've ever seen." Which it totally proceeded to do. But it didn't happen quickly! It slowly grew over time. At first, it just looked like a small mole hanging by the tiniest little bit of skin. It was gross enough that it kind of embarrassed me when I'd go swimming. But I had long hair back then and it mostly kept it covered and I just didn't pay it a lot of attention. Throughout my twenties, it just got a little bit bigger by the year. Somewhere in my early to mid-thirties, I noticed it had gotten big enough that I could feel it under my shirt. People could see it protruding from my back, a little lump of disgust pushing out the fabric of my shirt. It's rough surface would catch on my thermal shirts. It finally went from being fairly innocuous to being unendurably noticeable. Late one night, probably a few hours past midnight, I decided to do something about it. I went online and began looking into removing skin tags.

Let me pause here to explain why I thought maybe I could remove the skin tag myself. For a short time, there was a television show on Fox whose name I can't remember. It was one of those shows adapted from British television, like Coupling or one of those shows with a large cast of young friends. A woman on one of the episodes had a massively grotesque skin tag on her upper shoulder that looked like a fried shrimp. She didn't mind hers though. She may have even called it her lucky shrimp, possibly because her grandmother had one too or something. I probably shouldn't remember this much of a show that I don't even really remember watching but I could identify with this thing on her back, and so I guess my mind was cataloging the entire thing. The resolution to the skin tag plotline happened when one of the characters tripped and, as he fell, he managed to grab her skin tag and rip it from her body. I don't remember what happened after that. I'm sure the skin tag flew onto a buffet table and somebody dipped it in sauce and ate it. That's the kind of joke American television would shove into a sitcom stolen from the BBC. But what I did remember was the skin tag was removed cleanly and, practically, effortlessly.

So back to the night I finally decided to do something about it. I found an online forum where people were discussing how to remove skin tags. People would ask about it and there would be responses of how to do it (lots of suggestions of using rubber bands to kill the blood supply to it so it would just fall off, like a farm animal being castrated). Inevitably, the initial person would post again expressing their success at removing the skin tag. I don't know if those replies were as euphoric as I now remember them being or if my memory has been colored by my own experience. Anyway, I read a lot of posts getting up the courage to do it. But each successful post I read gave me a little more inspiration to go ahead with the home surgery. I nervously went into the bathroom, got the scissors for cutting hair, and promptly realized I wasn't going to be able to use scissors on a skin tag in the middle of my back while looking into a mirror. I considered waking up the Non-Certified Spouse for help but abandoned that thought almost immediately. I would do this alone or not at all. After a number of attempts at contorting my body in the right way and figuring out how to guide my hand with the scissors while looking in the mirror, I maneuvered the sharp instrument into the correct position. All I needed now was the will (and a little more strength than I was expecting) to snip the tag off of my back.

SNIP.

The little hunk of flesh fell to the ground and my back immediately began to bleed all over the fucking bathroom. I didn't care. The skin tag was gone! It was...well, it was an awful lot of blood, actually. I grabbed a towel, pressed it to the wound, and leaned up against the wall feeling the greatest sense of relief and peace of mind I've ever felt. The bleeding eventually stopped and my back was smooth again. I flushed the skin tag with barely a thought of keeping the putrid thing as evidence. And I've been better off every day of my life for taking that extraordinarily difficult step. I freed myself from a thing I didn't realize was sapping so much of my confidence and happiness. It was so easy ignoring it and not dealing with it that I never would have expected how euphoric it would make me when I finally did do something about it. It's always better to make the effort to change something that you've convinced yourself isn't really that big of a deal, simply because it's just too hard to deal with.

• This is Lucius:

Death metal bands in the Doom Patrol universe seem to have a common theme.

• Lucius is a fifteen year old sorcerer who feels like a nobody and has Daddy and Mommy Issues! Sounds perfect for the Doom Patrol!

• Meanwhile, Cliff and Larry have touched the face of N'ihil (or whatever the Lord of Negative Entity Land is called) and entered into the negative courtroom where they'll be tried for their negative crimes. Man, I would be so guilty of negative crimes!

• Double meanwhile, Casey and Fugg have found themselves in Space Jail (Casey's words...although they probably would have been mine as well if she hadn't called it that so quickly). There they meet the Niles Caulder Robot that Niles Caulder made during last issue's Intermission (there won't be an Intermission this issue because I've already skipped it. Niles met a dog or something. Also, he was watching Casey through his robot's eyes). They also meet Ricardo, the friend of Danny's who has been searching for him so he can warn Danny that he's about to be invaded by an Evil Fast Food Franchise. They easily escape Space Jail using Casey's new powers which she luckily discovers just in time to escape.

• Back at Negative Court, Larry Trainor pleads "Make me Negative Man again." And so the court is all, "Cool! Way to be a good guy! You're a true hero, unlike some ex-racecar drivers who hate to be called by their superhero alias and are constantly going on about not being able to have a normal life, one of which might be in this room and listening to me and rolling his robot eyes.

So every time he lets the Negative Spirit loose, he'll get an extra Picard lifetime?! Awesome!

• Back in Vectra Space Jail, Casey and company discover Danny the Ambulance hooked up to a meat grinder so all of the people living inside of him can instantly be turned into fast food hamburger when he expels them. Casey finally realizes that maybe she shouldn't be upset about the way Danny created her. Although I'm still upset about the way my mom and dad created me. How dare they! I could have remained nonexistent and happy! Well, maybe not happy, but ignorant of existential terror. Well, maybe not ignorant, as I would never have existed to feel anything whatsoever. My father wearing a condom on that particular Christmas morning would have been the greatest Christmas gift of all time!

• To try to bond with Casey, Danny tells her about the last time he tried to evade evil people who would exploit him and how he was destroyed then as well. All that was left that time was Danny the Brick. And that brick was saved by...oh. Oh my. I'm having the tears.

My dear, dear Crazy Jane!

• I bet they completely drop the "crazy", society being the thing full of scolds that it is today.

• Danny went on space adventures with Jane until one day, they met a person who was only a white silhouette in a red cape. That person befriended them...up to a point. Eventually the friendship ended the way all friendships tend to end: one friend bashes somebody's brains out with the other friend. After that, Danny lost touch with Jane.

• Casey accepts her role as the hero Space Case so that she can save Danny the World. But to do that, they need to do a little bit of time traveling. That's because Danny the World has already become burgers.

• After Casey drives Danny the Ambulance away through space, it is revealed that her current nemesis is Torminox! He was also created by Danny to be Space Case's archenemy. He doesn't seem to mind that Space Case is getting away and might stop the whole Evil Fast Food Franchise thing because he has some other plan up his sleeve. It's probably super complicated. It definitely involves a synthetic being!

The Ranking!
+1! This version of Doom Patrol has my full approval! Although that could change at any moment! I'm one fickle motherfucker.

Doom Patrol #3

I often read with the light in my eyes instead of on the book.

I see Simon Bisley did the variant cover. Now I want the variant cover! I at least want to see it.

Okay, I've seen it. Having the Internet at the tip of my fingers is like witchcraft. I bet every witch ever burned would be pretty pissed off to see the things I can do without any religious bastards batting an eye! "Look at me! I'm summoning porn in a separate window while I type incantations in this one!" I wouldn't even have to do any of those things in the 1600s to be burned as a witch. I would just have to say that phrase and everybody would be all, "Witch! Witch! Speaking devilish nonsense!" Then I'd pull out a laser pistol and blow them all to hell! Ah ha ha! I mean, I don't have access to a laser pistol and everything I just typed was made up in my imagination and my time machine is just a washing machine I keep in my bedroom closet. Um, which I accidentally call a time machine sometimes.

Casey the Ambulance Driver is learning that she's not actually an ambulance driver. She's a Danny the Ambulance (who is often times a street or a cabaret or a brick) driver. And inside Danny the Ambulance is a whole world of people and things and buildings soon to be turned into space hamburgers. She doesn't know about the Evil Space Fast Food Franchise yet. I'm sure Flex Mentallo will get to that soon enough.

As an aside, it was 17 years ago today that I met my best friend and greatest cat companion I could have ever hoped for, Judas Soliloquy Velociraptor. I miss him every day. I mean, almost every day. I mean, I have to actually make an effort to miss him most days. Stupid time and its ability to wear down every thing in existence.

Flex tells Casey how he came to live inside Danny.

I will forever miss Crazy Jane. All of these new perky young manic pixie girls that comic book companies portray as "women" can't hold a candle to her.

Hopefully the new Batwoman comic book will maintain Batwoman as an actual adult woman who doesn't have to be uniquely cute and peppy to attract an audience. I want to read about adult women sometimes too! I mean, don't get me wrong! I still want a lot of stories about Maps! Although I did drop Superwomans so maybe I'm lying to myself about what I really want (and, yes, I meant to pluralize that. Just look at the cover!). I just wanted to point that out before somebody else pointed that out because I know I dropped that title because I was bored of the writing. Just like Green Lanterns which also featured an adult woman. Sure, she was developmentally arrested but still more of an adult than say Burnside Batgirl. You know, I also dropped Batgirl and Batgirl and the Birds of Prey! And Aquaman! Probably because it was featuring so much of Mera! And Flash was focusing too much on Iris West! And Cyborg had that awful Sarah Charles who was so adult it made me angry! And Green Arrow which prominently features Black Canary! And Red Hood and the Outlaws had a female character in it too! Did I just cancel all of the books with strong female leads?! What kind of secret sexist monster am I?

Obviously when I just typed that I was a "secret sexist monster," I meant it was a secret from myself. I'm sure all of you dear readers already new it.

I'm also a secret sex monster. Wink!

I meant that in a sexy hot way and not in a disgusting pedophile and/or rapey way! Being sexy in writing is difficult.

Flex takes Casey to a ride in Danny World called Itty Bitty Bonsai Beach. Apparently it's going to recount Casey's origin story to her. Why doesn't she just look in the back of this issue and read her Who's Who Entry?

Meanwhile, Larry and Cliff get reacquainted back in Casey's apartment. Larry wants to find The Chief but Cliff remembers that The Chief was the architect of all of the accidents that turned them into superheroes. Plus The Chief was just a head when Cliff last saw him, wasn't he? I'm conveniently forgetting the Niles Caulder who appeared in The Ravagers. I'm even sorry I mentioned him if you never knew that Niles existed. Anyway, before they can come up with a plan, Terry None comes home with pizza. Oh, and this guy suddenly appears with no respect for the plot.

I wonder if this negative alien has ever really tried to be positive? Maybe he should get a Tony Robbins DVD?

Meanwhile, some aliens calling themselves the Vectra invade the Mercy General Hospital parking garage to smash the fuck out of Danny the Ambulance. Not cool.

Casey hops off the boat on her ride to walk around the Doomed World sets. She walks by past members of the Doom Patrol. She checks out the Scissormen and the Brotherhood of Dada and the Candlemaker. She eventually finds herself in a comic book shop and begins digging around in the back issue boxes where she finds one that looks plot relevant.

If you've ever wondered how I could spend so much time reading comic books and finding things to write about them (and mostly not about them, actually), it's because every comic book I pick up looks like this to me. Except it says "Tess" instead of "Casey".

Through the comic book, Danny tells Casey her secret origin. She was a comic book character in a comic book published by Danny to entertain the people on his street when he was merely a street and not yet a world. Her memories are the memories of her adventures in those comic books. And I'd like to point out that before this moment, I still didn't really know how much I liked this book.

Now? I love this book. I'm such a fucking easy slut.

That previous page hits me so hard directly in the nostalgia that I'm a bit dizzy at the moment. Fucking hell, I wish I still loved comics as strongly as I did back then. Remember what I said about time earlier? Well now I'm saying it again except harsher!

Meanwhile, those Vectrans I mentioned earlier? They're beginning to torture Danny the Ambulance so he'll let them in so they can harvest meat for their Evil Space Fast Food Franchise Overlords. As they do this, things start falling apart on Danny World. Casey, who is indeed having an existential crisis, does not want to be Space Case the Comic Book Superhero, so she heads back to the Cabaret and the exit to Danny World. She loses her right leg just under the knee as she heads out because her comic book version is catching up to her and, in the comic book, she has a metal leg. She's also followed by a cute little critter that's probably named Fugg since that's all the thing says. Both of them are captured by the Vectrans as they exit Danny the Ambulance.

Intermission.

Lastly, Larry and Cliff are transported to the Negative Zone so Larry Trainor can once more become a proper Negative Man. Probably.

The Ranking!
+2! This comic book actually broached my emotional shield for a few moments. It was already a bit weak due to remembering Judas on his Day of Adoption but I think even without that, the Crisis on Infinite Earths page with all the perfect little touches would have been enough. I'm totally into this comic now! I hope Shade the Changing Girl gets to this place too! I even feel like I trust Gerard Way to handle Dorothy and Crazy Jane if he'd like to bring them back. I hope he'd like to bring them back. I mean, I more than hope. I think the proper term is "I threaten him with death if he doesn't bring them back."

My lawyer Pickle Boy says I should state, in writing, that I meant that death threat hyperbolically, even if I didn't really.

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.

Doom Patrol #1

I chose this cover because the gyro cover is for hipster douchebags who calculate every move they make so they seem more intelligent than everybody else. Fuck those guys and their secret gyro universe!

The Commentary!
• I just had a thought. What if this entire Young Animal line is aimed at hipster douchebags? Oh fuck. Well, at least I'll still have my actually smart and satirical Hanna-Barbera comic books!

• I don't really care if the douchebag is a hipster or not. It's really just the people who treat their life as some kind of performance to win adulation from their peers that annoy the fuck out of me. I just threw in the hipster thing because this whole Young Animal line has hipster stink all over it. But then, so did Batgirl of Burnside and I enjoyed that comic book. So I'm not anti comic books with hipster trappings! Go ahead and base your comic book in an artsy toy store that also sells punk rock t-shirts and vinyl records as long as the characters are fun and interesting, the plots are dynamic and exciting, and the themes make me shit my pants in existential terror.

• I wonder how many people think I'm a hipster? I do have a beard and live in Portland! That does cause me a lot of angst, especially when I see a young person with a beard on the streets. I'm like, "Ugh! Beards suck! And you're too fucking young to be sick and tired of shaving! Why are you putting yourself through the misery of a beard?! I can hardly stand my beard but I can't spend any more of my life shaving every other day!" Then I tear off my shirt and scream and charge at them, throwing them to the ground with spittle bubbling up out of my mouth and snot streaming down my upper lip as I tear handfuls of their beard off of their face before disappearing into the nearest fancy-pants ice cream shop.

• Speaking of beards, I fucking need to trim this shit today. That way, I can look more like a devil crossed with a civil war general and less like a hobo who left his bindle on the train who is just looking for a quiet bush to lay down in and die.

• This issue is called "Happy Birthday, Casey Brinke". I guess it's about Casey Brinke's birthday.

• Casey Brinke drives an ambulance and has a problem with visions or daydreams or fixating on the narrative instead of on her own story. It's hard to tell being that this is a Doom Patrol comic book.

• Casey is, surprisingly, a perky young woman with lots of perk who's so perky and cute that nobody can even stand it. Awesome! I'm so excited for a writer to explore a character type hardly ever seen in today's comic books!

• Casey also might be the daughter of a god who has lived for one or two or possibly even three Yuga. Also she might be an alien just trying to be the best human being she can be. Also her ambulance might be her spaceship or her infinite cycle of birth and destruction. It's hard to tell being that this is a Doom Patrol comic book.

• Casey is probably an alien since making her some kind of god in the Hindu cycle of life and death would take research which is time consuming. Making her an alien allows Gerard Way to simply use his imagination! Much easier!

In other words, everybody is full of secrets and you can never actually get as close to any other person as you truly would like which means we're all desperately lonely and grasping at any intimate contact we can while constantly failing since all of it is as elusive as shadows cast on the wall.

• Casey and her EMT partner Sam talk gyro philosophy and my mind is blown. A universe inside of a gyro?! Gross! Everybody would be covered in cum sauce! Cum is short for cucumber!

• Sam talks about a possible universe inside of his gyro and then he eats the gyro and says, "Then you put the universe inside of you--you feel me?!" Is he trying to tell Casey that he's a cannibal?

• It turns out there actually is a secret universe inside of Sam's gyro! Can you believe it?! Cliff Steele lives there on a Phantasmesque world! That's a world like the alien world in Phantasm and not a world that's sort of phantom-like!

• Cliff blows up the gyro universe and explodes out of the gyro and back into the real world as Casey and Sam rush off to investigate a hit and run rather than investigating the exploding gyro. Some things are too weird to allow into your psyche. It's better to just pretend they never happened and live the rest of your life trying not to look too long into the eyes of the person who experienced the weirdness with you lest you both acknowledge the world is seriously fucked up.

• Meanwhile some guy named Ricardo is in an abandoned building asking every brick if it's Danny the Street. He looks like maybe he worked in Orlando and was taking to wherever he currently is by Danny and abandoned. He's grown a huge beard (so maybe he's in Portland?) so the reader understands this guy has been lost for a long time. And, apparently, so has Danny. Poor Danny. Ricardo doesn't know the kind of shit Danny's been through. He had to fucking guest star in Lobdell's Teen Titans he was so down on his luck! Poor bastard.

Intermission.

• Casey's dispatch has become a nonsense spewing voice named Em. It has led Casey and her ambulance to Cliff Steele. And even though it seemed like Em was maybe talking nonsense about a hit and run since there wasn't one when Casey arrived, she may also have just been a bit confused by time because Cliff is hit by a trash truck full of stuffed animals as he crosses the street right in front of Casey. I bet I know what Cliff is thinking! He's probably thinking, "Again?!" I don't mean "again" as in "I've been hit by a trash truck full of stuffed animals again!" I mean more like "Once again I'm appearing in yet another comic book where my body is completely destroyed!"

• It's at this point, with Casey picking up pieces of Robotman to load into the ambulance and put back together in her spare time, the evil bad villain guys are introduced. They are, of course, CEOs of intergalactic fast food restaurants. Obviously fast food is the biggest villain in the world. The best evidence is how most people would die if somebody they know ever saw them in a fast food restaurant drive thru after having spent an inordinate amount of time among their peers explaining how fast food was the worst thing in the world.

• The alien fast food moguls want to turn Danny the Street into a burger making factory since Danny can make organic matter out of nothing. They're going to call it Danny Burgers so that readers won't be confused by their plan.

Just in case the reader didn't realize just how weird and quirky and individual and perky and upbeat and pixieish Casey was, here is a scene with her down-to-Earth roommate who can't see the whimsy and beauty of life.

• Poor cats. Everybody wants to name their cats the cutest most wootest adowabowlest thingy ever! It's a feather in a person's cap to have somebody say, "That's your cat's name? So dumb."

• Casey's roommate answers the door to an intergalactic singing telegram for Casey Brinke's birthday. It ends with the roommate being blown up which is better than he deserves. What a social zombie grump jerk! He didn't appreciate life in that special way that declares to everybody around you that you're totally appreciating life way more than everybody else. I'm glad he's dead!

• Casey also points out that it's not her birthday. But what does she know?! She's just an alien princess slash Hindu goddess trapped in a human body! It's hard to tell being that this is a Doom Patrol comic book.

• The singing telegram lady is just the right kind of jolly quirky that Casey needs in her life! So she takes over the roommate spot and moves in. She also compliments Casey on her jacket and Casey doesn't say, "I stole it off of a broken robot corpse."

• Casey's new roommate is named Terry None. I guess she's a dadaist nobody. Totally the coolest person in any coffee shop.

• Meanwhile somewhere else, Danny the Brick has brained the shit out of some alien guy in a room with a lion pierced by a bunch of light arrows with statues in masks lining the walls. Danny simply says, "I'm sorry."

The Review!
Sometimes the Doom Patrol tries too hard to be the Doom Patrol and sometimes the Doom Patrol does the Doom Patrol just right. Where, you ask, does this comic book fall in that regard? It's hard to tell being that this is a Doom Patrol comic book.

Ranking: +1!