| Comic Review | Paul Milligan |
Doom
Patrol #18
Writer/Pencils: John Byrne
Inks: Doug Hazlewood
Colors: Alex Bleyaert
Letters: Jared K. Fletcher
The final issue of Doom Patrol! I’d describe what happened
but… well, I’m not exactly sure. Some guy turns up, named
Vortex or something, fights Metamorpho (who I thought was
dead) and then fights some Korean girl and turns her into a
monkey? Then the guy gets shot by the Chief who’s supposed
to be dead or something. I think. Meanwhile the other
members of Doom Patrol do some stuff that gets undone a few
pages later. I… I really don’t know.
Honestly, this is one of the worst comics I have ever, ever
read in the whole history of my reading comics. How does
John Byrne continue to get work? Every single series he has
started in the last five years has been cancelled after
about 10 or 20 issues. Yeah, Blood of the Demon is still
going but I’m betting that one won’t last much longer. Byrne
has a habit of taking a character, or characters, and
basically ignoring everything about them before he came
along. His attitude seems to be if John Byrne’s doing it,
it’s finally being done right. With Doom Patrol, Byrne
basically chucked years and years of continuity with no
explanation and started the team from ground zero. I don’t
even like Doom Patrol (except for the John Arcudi penned
series from a few years ago) or know much about their
history but this seems like a bit of a slap in the face to
anyone who has a fondness for the characters. Who in the
world approved this book in the first place?
Impenetrable story? Check. Mind-numbingly insipid and overly
repetitive dialogue? Check. Not to mention some of the
flattest and laziest artwork (why does a guy with bandages
all over his face have facial expressions, let alone friggin’
eyebrows!?) I’ve ever seen on a major comic? Check. My real
question is how did this book make it for EIGHTEEN whole
issues? Let’s just pray to the God of comics that everyone
can forget that this book ever existed. We’ll just sweep it
under the rug with Lab Rats, Spiderman: Chapter One and,
well, pretty much everything else Byrne has done in the last
5 to 10 years. Ugh.
Special thanks go out to Jeremy Shorr, owner of Titan Comics for allowing us to use his advance preview books for review purposes.
