US TV

In the US: Fridays, DC Universe
In the UK: Not yet acquired

At the start of the 90s, DC’s Vertigo imprint of adult-oriented comics was a powerhouse of creativity – one largely powered by Brits. Many of the titles took existing characters and gave them new depth. Swamp Thing had been about a relatively ordinary, second-tier character – a man turned into swampy beast – but in Alan Moore’s hands, Swamp Thing became a swampy beast that just thought it had once been a man but that was actually the embodiment of nature – a Green Man.

John Constantine had been a guest character in Swamp Thing whom Jamie Delano turned into the embodiment of British working class street cool, punk and post-punk anger, and rage against Thatcherite injustice in Hellblazer. Peter Milligan’s Shade The Changing Man saw an alien poet in a coat of madness critiquing American society, while Neil Gaiman’s Sandman gave us deities, dreams and re-examinations of magic and history.

Among this mix was Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol, which rebooted an exceedingly second-tier group of misfits and turned them into something vastly more interesting. Morrison’s embrace of dadaism transformed the comic into something extraordinary, with (literally) two-dimensional characters who can drain people’s sanity, paintings that could eat cities, a street that was actually a superhero and more.

All of which made it an odd choice to be nascent streaming service DC Universe’s second piece of original programming. To be fair, its first, Titans, with its motley collection of sidekicks, was an odd choice, too, and it turned out great. But Doom Patrol? How were they going to capture in a TV show all the things that made the comic something more than just a bunch of rubbish superheroes facing relatively rubbish challenges?

The quick answer is: they didn’t. The longer answer is: they didn’t… until the final five minutes of the first episode.

Continue reading “Review: Doom Patrol 1×1 (US: DC Universe)”