**Warner Bros. Home Entertainment provided us with a free copy of the Blu-ray. We reviewed in this blog. The opinions we share are ours.
Let’s face it, there are way too many TV series about comic book superheroes. A few of them have been great fun; a couple of them even addictive. Most of them have been forgettable at best. (Is Cloak and Dagger even still on? Anybody?) But nothing is quite as bizarre and wonderful, in or out of the comic book ‘space,’ as the DC Universe’s Doom Patrol.
The Doom Patrol in comics form dates all the way back to 1963; it was a B- (maybe C?) level super-team created by Arnold Drake and Bob Haney (and artist Bruno Premiani) for DC Comics. They had the distinction of being one of the first set of heroes to be well and truly killed off in 1968, then brought back to life repeatedly, and ultimately transformed in 1989 by the rule-breaking comics writer Grant Morrison. And that’s when things got really weird. The hallucinatory, abstract, basically insane comic Morrison crafted with a variety of is still considered a classic, run, more than twenty-five years later…and it’s that warped vision of the DC Universe, superheroes, and comics in general that was the basis for the ongoing DC Universe TV series.
It’s insane, and it’s great. The production values are very high; the writers understand (as much as any sane person can) the stories and messages of Grant Morrison, and the actors playing the main “heroes,” and we use that term very loosely here, are excellent. Brendan Fraser, who supplies the voice of Cliff Steele (Robot Man), is foul-mouthed and hilarious, and when he is forced to make an actual appearance in the flesh presents a wonderful image of the dissipated heart-throb of decades past. April Bowlby, who plays the uncontrollably gloopy Rita Farr–known in the comics as Elasti-Girl–is both arrogant and charming. Matt Bomer, who supplies the voice and occasionally the face of Negative Man, the irradiated ex-astronaut who is inhabited by a mysterious creature made of “negative energy,” is wrapped in bandages like a Space Age mummy most of the time, but here, too–excellent voice work and in-the-flesh performances when called upon. And British actor and YouTubers Joivan Wade, as the tortured Cyborg, a high school kid who’s unexpectedly turned into half-machine, half-human by his manipulative father, provides a nice combination of classic heroism and rage that you have to admire.
But by far the stand-out in this mad mess is Diane Guerrero, playing Crazy Jane–a young woman with at least 64 personalities, each one with its own devastating super-power, and most of them literally insane. Guerrero has to slide between personalities and “looks” multiple times in every episode, but she never loses the story line or our sympathy, and she does a truly amazing job with a minimum of special effects, beyond a fair amount of wig work and contact lenses. It is the power of Guerrero’s performance that makes this absurd idea work; it’s no wonder she becomes the center of attention in the second half of that first season.
Meanwhile, Timothy Dalton plays the wheelchair-bound leader of the Doom Patrol with great aplomb and portent–it’s hard to remember the distant days when he was James Bond–and Alan Tudyk is at his absolute, off-the-wall craziest as the Patrol’s arch-nemesis Mr. Nobody, doing double duty as the angry-sarcastic narrator of the show and its chief villain.
If you ever liked comic books, or even you’ve hated comic book movies and are looking for a little delicious revenge, spend some time with the Doom Patrol, Season 1. Season 2 has been green-lighted, and though there’s a bit of a cliff-hanger in the last episode, this 15-episode series stands up all by itself. Better yet, the DVD also includes a blooper reel (that has to be classic) and some deleted scenes. Available in Blu-ray and DVD on October 1.
Hey, all of us comic book geeks have to do something until Crisis on Infinite Earths finally comes around. And you could do way worse than Doom Patrol. (IS Cloak and Dagger still on? Somebody must know…) — B.M.
