Confessions of a Comic Book Guy is a weekly column by Steve Bennett of Super-Fly Comics and Games in Yellow Springs, Ohio. This week, Bennett looks at the current revivals of DC teams including Doom Patrol and Secret Six.
The first episode of Titans premiered October 12 on the new DC Universe streaming service and although I’m casually curious to see what can be done with the DC characters on a streaming television budget I haven’t seen it so far. That’s probably due to the fact that there appears to be a set limit of small screen live-action superheroes shows that I can watch at any one time. But, if I was going to be absolutely honest I’d have to confess that the older I get the harder it is for me to become emotionally invested in a new TV series. Though I do have a pretty big incentive to start watching Titans; in the fifth episode The Doom Patrol will be making a guest appearance (“The Doom Patrol To Appear On Titans Tv Series”). And I doubt I’ll have any trouble watching when they get their own series on DC Universe next year.
I’ve previously written how I’ve been a fan of
The Doom Patrol all the way back to when you could buy copies off of a drugstore comic book spinner (see “
Confessions of a Comic Book Guy - This Is Actually Happening”), but I’ve never explained why. Having been a strange, troubled kid who attended special education classes, I found I could easily relate to “The World’s Strangest Superheroes.” While the X-Men have made the “band of misfits” trope part of their brand, I always thought the Doom Patrol had a much better claim to the whole “feared and hated” thing. Back then, not only could most of the X-Men pass for normal, but they also went to prep school, lived in a mansion and even went out on dates. Compare that to the Doom Patrol who couldn’t “pass” and never got a day off from being what they were.
I also wrote about how amazed I was DC would do something as financially risky as turning such an odd, obscure IP into a television series*, but I’ve been even more impressed by the shows casting. Admittedly with the exception of the too-long-absent Brendan Fraser as the voice of Robotman, the cast consisted of mostly unknown-to-me actors. But then online I read the headline “‘Doom Patrol: Timothy Dalton To Star As The Chief in DC Universe TV series.” An actual former James Bond was going to be playing Dr. Niles Caulder; my inner 10-year-old could scarcely conceive it.
So it should be a great time for The Doom Patrol, the only trouble being there isn't a Doom Patrol comic book at the moment. OK, technically there is still the series written by Gerard Way and drawn by Nick Derington which I liked quite a bit. Along with benefiting from having Flex Mentallo as a supporting player, it was wild, weird, and offered an original take on the premise. But I've placed it in the past tense because the Young Animal imprint it belonged to has been shut down and after seemingly endless delays, #12, apparently the final issue, is at long last coming out in October. What this means to the long-promised new Flex Mentallo mini-series to be written by Grant Morrison, I have no idea.
Even worse, as far as I know, DC doesn’t appear to have any plans in place for there to be a new Doom Patrol series coming out when the TV series starts streaming next year. So it came as a welcome surprise when I discovered the latest issue of
Scooby-Doo Team-Up had the teens teaming up with, yes, The Doom Patrol. Even more surprising was that while Negative Man, Robotman and (The Original) Elasti-Girl were all bickering and behaving like it was still 1965, it featured an appearance by Danny the Street, a character from the comics’ 90s run. I’ve got to admit I never imagined the Scooby Gang would interact with Grant Morrison’s gay sentient street. Seeing as how this is a two-parter, I have hopes that next issue will guest star Flex Mentallo, Man of Mystery Muscle. I know it’s really, really unlikely but then, so many things are these days.
*Of course, this was before a 60s DC IP that was even odd and more obscure got a pilot order (see “CBS Orders ‘Secret Six’ Pilot”). For those unfamiliar, The Secret Six is about a team of covert operatives whose leader Mockingbird was secretly one of them, which I’ve always thought would make a good premise for a TV series. Seeing as how this is for CBS and given the demographics of their audience, I’m going to go ahead and assume it will have little if anything to do with the supervillain-centric series of the same name from the 00’s. It’s now official, nothing is too unlikely to be made real. And in a strange bit of, I’m really not sure whether this is symmetry or synchronicity, The Secret Six recently made an appearance in Scooby-Doo Team-Up #30 where Velma Dinkley finally and definitively answered the question, Who Is Mockingbird?
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
