Doom Patrol Collecting Thread 1 1

[rlextherobot]

For the last 25 years or so, my great passion in comics has been The Doom Patrol. My obsession grew from modest beginnings (own all of the Morrison and Case run) to an all-consuming drive to acquire not only every Doom Patrol comic, but every Doom Patrol appearance, excluding only very very minor crowd scene cameos (and I have a lot of those anyway). Since the archive is always growing by a book here and a book there, I thought I'd share some of my collection here, and hope that other folks will join in with their own DP and related books.

Let's start off with some pre-history: My Greatest Adventure #79. The issue before the actual debut of Robotman (or Automaton as he was called at the time), Negative Man, Elasti-Girl and the Chief, this issue is notable for a mention of the debuting feature in the Adventurers Club letters page. While the name would change from The Legion of the Strange by the time MGA 80 saw print, Grant Morrison would use it for an alternate Fantastic Four-homaging version of the team (drawn by the eternally underrated Ken Steacy) during his run.

 

[Ken Aldred]

Good taste.

I’ve always liked the Doom Patrol, including the original books, drawn by Bruno Premiani. Outsiders, shunned by humanity, and the similarities with the X-Men, of course.

The Morrison series is a great, amazingly inventive run, beginning to end.

Edited August 31, 2023 by Ken Aldred

[themagicrobot]

You have reminded me that I only need a handful of comics to own the complete run from vol 1 to whatever the latest vol is. My Greatest Adventure 82 is mow at the top of my wants list. I actually preferred vols 3 and 4 to the later issues of vol 2 which got too weird for me. The "character" Danny the Street was inspired however. Is he still a van rather than a whole street? It amused me that the name was inspired by the UK "entertainer" Danny La Rue. 

 

[MAR1979]

Doom Patrol seems to be the one property that did not receive a a jump or at least to a spike due to a TV Show. I for one say its apropos for DOOM PATROL to buck the norm

 

Edited August 31, 2023 by MAR1979

[rlextherobot]

On 8/31/2023 at 10:38 AM, MAR1979 said:

Doom Patrol seems to be the one property that did not receive a a jump or at least to a spike due to a TV Show. I for one say its apropos for DOOM PATROL to buck the norm

 

A lot of folks on the Doom Patrol subreddit got into the comics via the show, which is nice to see, but comics values have stayed pretty much where they were. I think the show has always been kind of a cult phenomenon, not unlike the comic. 

[Ken Aldred]

On 8/31/2023 at 6:24 PM, themagicrobot said:

It amused me that the name was inspired by the UK "entertainer" Danny La Rue. 

God, I’m so slow at times.

Never realised that.

[Ken Aldred]

On 8/31/2023 at 6:38 PM, MAR1979 said:

Doom Patrol seems to be the one property that did not receive a a jump or at least to a spike due to a TV Show. I for one say its apropos for DOOM PATROL to buck the norm

 

Just got Season 1 Blu-ray set.

Very good show.

[Greengiant]

The series was good and is a shame that HBO/Max decided to cancel it. Don't know how close it follows the books since I didn't read them. But made me more interested in the books.

[jr70]

I have some back issues for sale in my thread in the modern section if anyone's interested.  Morrison's and Way's issues.

[Jaylam]

@themagicrobot Worldwide comics has 3 copies of #82 in VF+, two of them graded.

[F For Fake]

Doom Patrol is one of the all time great series. I don't have the floppies anymore, but a surprising amount of the material has been collected in omnibus form, including the silver and bronze runs, the Morrison run, Pollack's run, even Byrne's run. I'm still amazed that we not only got a tv series, but that it pulled such a large amount of material from the comics. It was its own thing, but it was also surprisingly faithful, in character and spirit, to the comics, if nothing else.

[Ian Winner]

This is a great run to complete. I pulled it together in the late 80's/early 90's and sold my last DP a couple of years ago (#99). At the time I was probably too young to appreciate the Morrison books (though I loved Animal Man). One of these days I will go through and read the whole run, as I too love the show (which feels like a greatest hits of the comics).   

[Ken Aldred]

On 9/1/2023 at 1:19 PM, F For Fake said:

Doom Patrol is one of the all time great series. I don't have the floppies anymore, but a surprising amount of the material has been collected in omnibus form, including the silver and bronze runs, the Morrison run, Pollack's run, even Byrne's run. I'm still amazed that we not only got a tv series, but that it pulled such a large amount of material from the comics. It was its own thing, but it was also surprisingly faithful, in character and spirit, to the comics, if nothing else.

Not to forget, Doom Patrol also gave us one of the most ridiculous characters ever, Codpiece.

[drmccoy74]

On 9/1/2023 at 12:16 PM, Ken Aldred said:

Not to forget, Doom Patrol also gave us one of the most ridiculous characters ever, Codpiece.

Yes. He's right up there with Snowflame!

 

[Ken Aldred]

On 9/2/2023 at 1:52 AM, drmccoy74 said:

Yes. He's right up there with Snowflame!

 

Another bad taste, classic example from the late Copper Age.

[B2D327]

As of now, this is the only issue in my collection but I have been searching for a copy of MGA 80 for quite awhile. The “right copy” has yet to come along but that may be in part to me skipping past available copies more often than not, probably because it’s still fairly affordable. 
  I thought the tv show was pretty good but have yet to see anything after the first season and I’ve got a ton of stuff queued in my kodi to keep me entertained when time permits 

[rlextherobot]

Jumping ahead a bit to August 1964, Doom Patrol 89 is a great example of the Silver Age Doom Patrol's secret weapon: Bob Brown covers. I'm mildly embarrassed to admit that it wasn't til collecting the book for a few years that I realized that practically every great cover from the run was by Brown. I love Premiani (especially the very early and super rendered style he used in the My Greatest Adventure issues) but Brown's work informs so much of the how we think of the Doom Patrol at this time, you can't leave him out of any discussion of their appeal and legacy. 

A few years ago I bought a commission from artist Alexis Zirritt and just asked for "Silver Age Doom Patrol". He did a recreation of this cover and I was well pleased by the choice.

[Ken Aldred]

On 9/4/2023 at 6:31 PM, rlextherobot said:

Jumping ahead a bit to August 1964, Doom Patrol 89 is a great example of the Silver Age Doom Patrol's secret weapon: Bob Brown covers. I'm mildly embarrassed to admit that it wasn't til collecting the book for a few years that I realized that practically every great cover from the run was by Brown. I love Premiani (especially the very early and super rendered style he used in the My Greatest Adventure issues) but Brown's work informs so much of the how we think of the Doom Patrol at this time, you can't leave him out of any discussion of their appeal and legacy. 

A few years ago I bought a commission from artist Alexis Zirritt and just asked for "Silver Age Doom Patrol". He did a recreation of this cover and I was well pleased by the choice.

I’ve always wondered if this was an influence on the Blairmonster at the end of John Carpenter’s classic, The Thing.

 

[Sal]

In late aught-six I decided that I needed to start a run to collect. I've always been a fan of things which were not super popular, so that left off most Marvel books. Started trying to gather books from DCs Silver Age series and somewhere along the line, settled with DP.  Started out with raw books but quickly got tired of trying to figure out if the eBay seller could grade or not, and so moved to slabs.

Currently from the original run of MGA 80 thru DP 121, i have slabs for each issue except MGA 82 & 85, and DP 86, 87, 98 & 115 (which, surprisingly, is exceedingly rare in HG slabs for sale. I think I've seen four or five copies at 9.4 or above in fifteen years of looking). Most of these are missing because I am cheap as a general rule and because this title is so underappreciated that slabs aren't exactly flooding the market.

MGA 80 is 8.0 white, MGA 81 is the Mound City copy and is a 9.2. MGA 83 & 84 are both 9.2 as well, the 83 is the Savannah copy and 84 is Twin Cities. 90 is the Brad Squared copy and is 9.0 as well, and 121 is also a 9.2 because, as i said before, I am cheap. The rest are 9.4 or 9.6, including five Pacific Coasts, three David Toths, another Savannah, another Twin Cities, a Bethehem and a Boston copy. The 99 is a 9.6 that I was able to wrest from october back when he still had "_fire" as part of his username and before whichever animated series that made Changeling interesting debuted. Thanks again, brother!

86 has enjoyed a rather striking increase in demand/price in the last five years, which i attribute to it being a pretty book along with, I guess, people thinking a title change is a big deal or something. I have a nice raw I got from Motor City way back in the first Obama administration.

I suppose the real takeaway I have after fifteen years of intermittent purchasing is that all of you people collecting this title need to have your head examined, since it is clearly destined to remain a lower end of  the second-tier scale, trailing such hot titles as the Atom, Hawkman, or Aquaman, and you don't see anyone starting threads about those turkeys

[themagicrobot]

Quote

all of you people collecting this title need to have your head examined, since it is clearly destined to remain a lower end of  the second-tier scale

???????????? Not everyone follows the herd and thinks that the world starts and stops with Spider-Man or Batman. The Doom Patrol have endured through the decades and are now up to volume 7 or is it volume 8. I would place them at the higher end of the second tier, whatever that is.