Doom Patrol, Vol. 2: The Painting That Ate Paris

Doom Patrol (1987)(Collected Editions)

by Grant Morrison, Richard Case (Illustrator), John Nyberg (Illustrator)

The long-awaited second collection of superstar writer Grant Morrison's groundbreaking run on DOOM PATROL, this volume reprints issues #26-34. This collection includes the rise of the legendary Brotherhood of Dada - the only team of super-foes ever strange enough to rival the Doom Patrol itself - as well as the menace of the Decreator and the return of Monsieur Mallah and the Brain from the original Brotherhood of Evil. In addition, THE PAINTING THAT ATE PARIS features a new cover by Brian Bolland.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Dc Comics, Fiction, Superheroes, Graphic Novels Comics, Fantasy

228 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 1, 2004

About the author

Grant Morrison has been working with DC Comics for twenty five years, after beginning their American comics career with acclaimed runs on ANIMAL MAN and DOOM PATROL. Since then they have written such best-selling series as JLA, BATMAN and New X-Men, as well as such creator-owned works as THE INVISIBLES, SEAGUY, THE FILTH, WE3 and JOE THE BARBARIAN. In addition to expanding the DC Universe through titles ranging from the Eisner Award-winning SEVEN SOLDIERS and ALL-STAR SUPERMAN to the reality-shattering epic of FINAL CRISIS, they have also reinvented the worlds of the Dark Knight Detective in BATMAN AND ROBIN and BATMAN, INCORPORATED and the Man of Steel in The New 52 ACTION COMICS.

In their secret identity, Morrison is a "counterculture" spokesperson, a musician, an award-winning playwright and a chaos magician. They are also the author of the New York Times bestseller Supergods, a groundbreaking psycho-historic mapping of the superhero as a cultural organism. They divide their time between their homes in Los Angeles and Scotland.

Reviews

[Baba · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first half of this volume continues the great work of the previous as the Brotherhood of Dada steals a painting, that goes on to eat Paris - and no, they were no typos in that sentence.

After that superb absurdist but rationally constructed tale the second half of this volume does go a bit over the top with the absurdity and also felt like Morrison was trying too hard to be different. 7 out of 12 , Three Star read overall.

2020 read

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The second volume of Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol run is when the weirdness gets dialed up to eleven and then the knob breaks off and rolls under the fridge. First up are Mr. Nobody and the Brotherhood of Dada on their mad quest for the Painting that Ate Paris, a recursive structure that traps people within. After that, Robotman goes on a journey into Crazy Jane's psyche. The Cult of the unread book are next and finally, Robotman gets a new body, only to have the body gain a consciousness of its own before being attacked by The Brain and Mallah.

I'll say this, Morrison can ladle out the weirdness. I love that Robotman is the most normal member of the Doom Patrol. The villains introduced in this volume are very surreal but would still be right at home in the Doom Patrol's silver age run. While lots of interesting things happened, my favorite would have to be the kiss between Monsieur Mallah and The Brain. Out of curiousity, is it gay if a talking male gorilla kisses a robot that houses a man's brain?

Great stuff from Morrison. I'm looking forward to the next volume.

[Sud666 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Grant Morrison is a great writer. Even though, on occasion, the scope of his creativity leads to muddled or confusing tales this tale does not suffer from that. Is this for everyone? No I don't think so. The story is indeed out there but this IS a Doom Patrol story.

The Doom Patrol is called into action. Mr. Nobody has stolen a magic painting that "eats" the viewer and uses it to "eat" the city of Paris. What follows is a bizarre, twisted and funny metaphysical adventure against the Brotherhood of Dada. The Doom Patrol goes inside the painting to fight them. But the Brotherhood of Dada has inadvertently awakened the Fifth Horseman :
"And his name that sat on him was Extinction. And Oblivion. He bringeth the end of all time, all space, all life. The end of all gods." This twisted Horseman is the Anti-God, created as the shadow when God created light. In a brilliant turn, the 5th Horseman makes things disappear..like words and so on. Also fascinating is GM's concept of the 5th Horseman drawing power from the different styles of Art. The use of Dada as anti-form art is brilliant and the entire story is a very metaphysical and completely original. I truly enjoyed the mind-bending take.

The remainder of the book is no shrinking violet either. The madness continues in "Going Underground" an excellent tale about multiple personalities, schizophrenia and child abuse. It is a grim and dark tale but still has some weighty metaphysical concepts. The child abuse undercurrent and how it has scarred Jane is something I appreciated. GM doesn't shy away from uncomfortable issues and I admire that. Thus the following story is truly a powerful piece of work. Well Done GM!

We end with a great supernatural story where a bad John Constantine rip-off named Willoughby Kipling helps the Doom Patrol fight against the Cult of the Unwritten Book. I'm not saying W. Kipling is a bad character-he is NOT. In fact in terms of attitude, drinking and smoking habits, cursing, his cavalier snarky attitude-he IS John Constantine. That is rather annoying, but the story makes up for it. It is a truly dark and twisted look at a Cult who is trying to bring back the Anti-God and hunting for a boy with the word of God tattooed onto his flesh. Again, a great metaphysical story will astral projection, imagery, the power of words all stuck inside a comic story. It is an amazing imagination at its best.

The final story has to do with whether it is the mind or the body that rules. Strange characters, both heroes and villains, deep metaphysical concepts, odd stories and a great overall prose style make this Doom Patrol volume one of the weirdest, strangest, brilliantly original comics I've read in awhile. This volume was Neil Gaiman worthy. That is high praise.

Again the utter weirdness of the story, concepts like art styles, metaphysical concepts and a VERY twisted story about child abuse means this is not for a casual reader or fan. But if you like your stories original and out there- Doom Patrol is for you. This is Grant Morrison at his weirdest best. I am impressed. If you like deep concepts, even in your comics, then I highly recommend this volume. I am glad I took the time to explore the Doom Patrol.

[Ray · Rating 5 out of 5]

Classic 80s-era Grant Morrison with punk and art school aesthetics wrapped up in countercultural weird superhero genre, this is when it gets very good indeed!

[Chad · Rating 5 out of 5]

Morrison really dials up the weirdness as the Doom Patrol battles the Brotherhood of Dada. They unleash a painting that eats Paris and is a series of endless images like two mirrors facing one another. I loved the Fifth Horseman and how it was dealt with. Then Cliff takes a trip within Crazy Jane's psyche, meeting a lot of Jane's personalities along the way. After that the team tackles a cult trying to bring back the Anti-God with all these creepy analogs to Catholic sects. It's strange and weird in all the best ways. The only odd thing is why there's a John Constantine knock-off instead of John Constantine in the arc. Finally Cliff's brain and body are at odds as The Brain and Monsieur Mallah make an appearance while turning a corner in their relationship.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The superhero comic often positions protagonists as misfits ... think x-men, new mutants, spiderman, batman, etc. If you go through the list of titles, superman is one of the few superheroes that was a "normal", "well-adjusted" everyman. But did we ever buy the misfit idea? I mean, bruce wayne is a billionaire. The x-men all have bad ass powers, they're all attractive, they live in a fucking mansion and jet around saving the world from one unimaginable peril after another. What if the characters were really misfits? Schizophrenic? Transgendered? Had vague, difficult to comprehend powers such as "every power you haven't thought of"? What if the plots were largely absurd ... like the fifth horseman of the apocalypse attempting to escape from a voracious, recursive painting where each level is a different artistic style (fauvism, futurism, etc) and the horseman absorbs new powers from the arts artistic merits (e.g. the aggression of fauvism, the speed and dynamism of futurism, etc)? That's what you've got here.

[Wing Kee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Subversive and just simply so so out there.

Oh man, I'm falling in love with the Doom Patrol all over again. I remember them when I was a kid but I did not get the chance to read them sequentially but now...holy wow.

World: The art is great, I don't usually like the art of the 80s and going back to it I find it hideous but I love the art here. The style, the colors the facial expressions. It's not the most kinetic of panels but it is very good. The world building is absolutely nuts. It's very contained to the arcs with only little bits and pieces that carry over but during those arcs it's nuts. The amount of creativity and unexpectedness is insane. I can't stress how insane it is, Mr. Nobody and his origins, the Cult of the Unwritten Word and it's origins so much insanity and creativity. Amazing!

Story: The two arcs here are bonkers. It's so out there and so crazy I can't even express house awesome it is. It also has depth and is paced well. I will say that the usage of Crazy Jane as a plot solver is starting to annoy but because she is so well realized you can't help but enjoy it. The places we go and the things that happen is just perfect. I love, I can't say anything lest I ruin it, just read it.

Characters: So much creativity, all of them are amazing, the Patrol and all the villains and the side characters are all absolutely amazing. I can't express it, my head is about to explode. The highlight has got to be Mr. Nobody. Who thinks of that? Who?! It's inspired and insane and absolutely wonderful.

Just read this series, give yourself a break and don't think about the art and throw away your expectations and you will be blown away.

Onward to the next book!

[Tom Ewing · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have had favourite comics before and since, but no comic was ever as fiercely and personally my favourite as Doom Patrol was at the start of the 90s. I read it to pieces: it became one of those comics that hardly needs re-reading. But I decided to re-read it anyway. Does it retain any of its beauty and mystery?

Yes. These days it's easier to see how some of Morrison's casting choices err on the side of stereotype - especially as the characterisation of bit parts tends to mean a solitary trait, so a Japanese clean-freak and a semi-literate black dude get nothing to define them beyond that. But the strengths of the comic are as obvious as they ever were.

First is artist Richard Case - Doom Patrol was the only extended run Case ever did, perhaps because when you've found a comic you're as perfectly suited to as this, nothing else quite fits? Case's elegant, angular lines are the cool modernist counterbalance to the post-modernist pot-pourri of Morrison's writing: how can these ideas be 'weirdness for weirdness' sake' when they all look so perfectly chic?

Second, of course, is Morrison himself. Doom Patrol shows two of his recurring traits as a writer working in tandem and well: he has a nostalgic, conservative streak a mile wide, and he's a passionate autodidact. Doom Patrol is Grant Morrison's bookshelf alchemised into story - awkwardly and brilliantly at the same time: the Cliff in the Underground story is the best example, though the art history lessons in the Painting story and the Baphomet stuff in the Decreator one qualify too. In the just pre Internet, this stuff opened wild imaginative doors like great pop or novels did - Doom Patrol was a thrilling education, and I can still make contact with that crackle of discovery.

Perhaps these days its data dumps look as quaint as Aquaman's facts about the friendly puffer fish. It would be appropriate, since that's basically what they are. For all its giddy reveling in its inspirations and for all its style, the Painting storyline is at heart a very old school DC Comics story: a set of bizarre villains creating puzzles for our heroes, and a solution to the ultimate menace that arises logically from the very educational elements the comic introduces to its readers. Gardiner Fox would have been proud! The entertaining cameo of the 'straight' superheroes is pitched as a confrontation of the everyday and the avant-garde. But this is not the whole truth: it's also a portrait of DC's humanly sensible post-Crisis characters unable to cope in the face of a Silver Age type of plot.

[Malum · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another spectacularly insane Doom Patrol volume. The Doom Patrol bungle and fail forward in their struggles against art movements and philosophical concepts.

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Volume 2 of Morrison's run on this title has both its good points and bad. In the good, Case's art is starting to look a bit less amateur. The previous volume looked like it was drawn by Al Milgrom, and that's no compliment. Also the characters are starting to work more as a team. Although they are so messed up, this is difficult to understand. The storylines are bit more interesting now, the painting story was actually interesting when it got going and the story about Steele's armor coming to life was funny.

On the negative side, we are already starting to see the same plot repeated. The villians always want to destroy all existence. The heroes always get beat at the beginning, only to magically come back from the dead near the climax. Also, it feels to me like Morrison is just throwing as many strange ideas as possible at a wall to see which of them stick. Hopefully, by volume three, we will see more well planned out stories.

[Zec · Rating 2 out of 5]

The trippiest and most confusing book I’ve read. While I enjoyed the first doom patrol volume, this one is a mess. A lot of random events happen and not much makes sense. The fascinating characters are barely explored. Instead we see more weird characters and situations and various end-of-the-world plots. I was hoping that this series would be like Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing: extreme weirdness held together by characters, relationships, emotions and actual themes. Unfortunately it’s a rollercoaster of weirdness and some fantastic ideas, but the lack of focus on any emotional grounding makes this hard to get through.

[Sesana · Rating 4 out of 5]

It must have been exciting to read Morrison's Doom Patrol when it was first coming out, never knowing from one month to the next if you'd be encountering a woman with every super power you've never thought of, or traveling through the psyche of Crazy Jane, or exploring the relationship between Monsieur Mallah and his beloved Brain. Of course, it's still a fascinating read. It's often absurd, but it holds together surprisingly well. Maybe the shortness of the story arcs helps.

[Benji Glaab · Rating 3 out of 5]

This series isn't for me. I must be missing the Genius Grant Morrison is known for. While I do enjoy a strange cast of characters and exploring the occult and fringe sciences there seems to be a never ending spinning wheel with Morrison seemingly grabbing ideas at random. On top of that I have never been a fan of art in this Era. Maybe I should just stick to modern books and go back to re-reads when I want something older

[James DeSantis · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first half is great. The brotherhood of dada is both hilarious and somewhat scary. And the two one shots, one featuring Crazy Jane and another a certain money in love with a brain work well. The cult storyline is weird as fuck and kind of boring and sadly takes up too many issues.

[Keith · Rating 5 out of 5]

REREAD 2017: I just read this a year ago (almost exactly), and feel a little silly commenting on it again, but I'm doing a more focused reread of the entire series, and I'm also too compulsive to just skip talking about it again.

I wrote last year that the important thing about DP that I'd forgotten is that it is funny. This is sort of true -- I mean, true if you've entirely forgotten that it's funny, but misleading if you go into DP thinking it's, like, a "fun comic." I mean, unless you think superhero comics about mental illness are fun? Then, uh, sure.

The storyline I always come back to with this book, featuring the Brotherhood of Dada, is definitely the most accessible, and almost the funniest, DP story in Grant Morrison's run. There's also a one-off that brings back the main villains from Arnold Drake's Silver Age Doom Patrol, and even though it sort of leans toward being one long gay joke, it's still funny too (and I'd like to think that it's not just a gay joke, although 90's Morrison comics do have a penchant for gay/trans characters that are miscreants, wear pink boas, leather, and high heels, and say "darling" a lot).

ANYWAY. The other main story in here is one of Morrison's crazier ones (which is saying a hell of a lot for Doom Patrol), in which a trenchcoat dude who is totally-not-John-Constantine enlists DP in fighting an organization called the Cult of the Unwritten Book, who are trying to steal the Book of the Fifth Window, which is actually a full body tattoo. And the Cult is run by sentient puppets who govern from their places on the hands of non-sentient marionettes. Who sit on thrones. In a dimension that only exists in a cut on the hand of a man who lives in Barcelona.

I mean, really.

I will continue to argue that when Grant Morrison decides he is too cool for the comic he is writing, and throws narrative out the window in favor of sheer braingasming weirdness, it is still loads better than when he actually tries to be a Serious Author. Doom Patrol might be too disconcerting to be my favorite Morrison comic, but it is one of the few that I enjoy without reservation, in which I feel that he and I are on the exact same page about his intentions instead of me just rolling my eyes while he plays with his dick and pretends to be a wizard.

I feel that it's also important to point out that this book contains "Going Underground," which is the most fascinating depiction of multiple-personality disorder and psychological trauma that I've ever come across. I have no idea if it's a fair depiction, but it's one that helps me understand a lot about how feelings work, and how we compartmentalize them, even if we don't all have 60-some personalities living in subway stations in our brains.

I dunno. Doom Patrol is just fucking weird, and is occasionally and very poignantly about real feelings, and that balance is just fine with me.
--
REREAD 2016: Goodreads says I originally read this book in 2007, which sounds sort of right. When I was in my twenties, my roommate and I were unintentionally (but oddly systematically) putting together a pretty complete collection of British Invasion comics. He was a bigger Grant Morrison fan than I, so through him I read the entirety of Doom Patrol.

I remember liking the series, but the one book that really stood out for me was The Painting That Ate Paris, in which DP comes up against The Brotherhood of Dada, the closest the series ever came to genuine supervillains. So when I found a copy in a used bookstore in my neighborhood last night, I snapped it up.

It's still a really great book. To me, DP is a near-perfect balance of Morrison's two main strengths -- his encyclopedic knowledge of Silver Age comics and his ability to warp their details into a modern commentary, and his indulgence in goofy metaphysical narratives that give his stories an added zest, and occasional depth.

The blessed thing about the series, which I may only have truly understood on this rereading, is that it's really funny. That's really the saving grace. The original Doom Patrol was incredibly weird, and sort of got under your skin for its strange gestures toward nihilism and body horror, all wrapped up in the innocence of kids' comics. Morrison's DP, of course, reverses the equation -- nihilism and body horror are taken to such an extreme that the creatures and antigods that the DP saves the universe from feel like they've been born from some Clive Barkeresque hellworld, filtered through carnival glass. And when it gets excessive, which is often, the characters willfully acknowledge that nothing they're doing makes a lick of sense.

[Tony Laplume · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ever since reading his book Supergods a few months back, I kind of went into a tailspin as far as my appreciation of Grant Morrison goes.

It's not so much that the book seems to confirm the weirdest stories I heard about Morrison from his first creative peak (the best always have more than one), but that he breaks his own mystique in a far more profound way, offering his perspective on the history of comics that ends up reading far more ordinary than the extraordinary mind I've come to know from his own work would seem to suggest.

So I backed off for a while, and perhaps fittingly enough have finally come back somewhere near the beginning, at least as Morrison's mainstream career goes. Thus, The Painting That Ate Paris.

This is the second collection of his Doom Patrol work, which when paired with the Animal Man material and Arkham Asylum represents Morrison's debut on the big stage, or otherwise known as ground zero for what the majority of his fans will know about his formative development (there's earlier material, but scarcely evident in reprinted collections, which means for all intents and purposes, this is where it all began).

I've read only a drop in the bucket of his Invisibles, the saga that represents to that point in his career Morrison's most sustained creative endeavor. That was from the 90s, following this early period. In a lot of ways, though, I wonder if Painting represents a step in that direction, just as the later Filth is also in a way a condensed Invisibles.

The Doom Patrol is a lot like the X-Men, if the X-Men had never become popular. There's plenty more to be said about that, but not particularly relevant to these thoughts. Morrison's version came at a time when DC was building toward its Vertigo imprint. In fact, while these and his Animal Man tales were originally printed under the DC logo, they've since been adopted into the Vertigo family, much as Neil Gaiman's Sandman started under one house and ended in the other. It's not hard at all to see connections beyond that point. Both Doom Patrol and Animal Man are more or less traditional superhero properties, yet Morrison's approach could not be further from the mold.

The title of the collection comes from the main attraction, featuring Morrison's version of the Brotherhood of Evil, which he called the Brotherhood of Dada. In fact, the whole collection is infested with Morrison's reflections on philosophy and experimental art. It's a head trip, but surprisingly an easy one to follow. A lot of the critics who have since tried to analyze Morrison's work have suggested that he can be impenetrable, and maybe that's true sometimes, but not so much here. While he plays with plenty of arcane concepts, enough of it is recognizable that it makes plenty of sense.

In fact, there are times where you could just as easily be watching a summer blockbuster unfold on the page.

It's not so hard, then, to see where all of this became extrapolated in his later work, which is why I spent the first part of this review talking about that. This is Morrison back in his basics, when he was forming the ground on which his later material would play. In the years since these comics were originally released, Morrison's Doom Patrol became far less famous than his Animal Man. Yet perhaps this remains the superior material. These are comics all about identity, but unlike Animal Man, identity isn't stripped to metaphysical levels, but rather examined. This is the root of Morrison's Batman. You can see it in his Crazy Jane, his Cliff Steele, the two greatest beneficiaries of the material in the collection. You come away almost hoping an alternate career where Morrison spent a great deal more time with them, and I mean those two characters specifically.

If his fans still wonder whether The Matrix was stolen from The Invisibles, this is the place to start. This is where the big concepts begin, and the persons trapped in them explored so tellingly. Grant Morrison may be a lot of things, and he may provoke some of the fiercest debate in all of comics, but he's also one of the comic book medium's most creative minds. This collection sports a title that can't help but provoke curiosity, but that painting is only the starting point. There's very little gloom in this Doom.

[Shannon Appelcline · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Painting that Ate Paris (#26-29). The Brotherhood of Dada is perhaps the most iconic group of villains from Morrison's Doom Patrol, despite the fact that they're largely ciphers. The idea of the Painting that Ate Paris gains weight throughout this arc, as it becomes a rather amazing multidimensional playspace. Meanwhile, we get fun interactions with the rest of the DC universe. The only thing holding this arc back is too much verbiage: an infodump about Mr. Nobody, an infodump about the Painting, and then almost unreadable narrative by Frenzy. A pity to have that holding back an excellent story [4+/5].

Going Underground (#30). This delve into Jane's psyche is amazing, both for its making abstract concepts concrete (as a literal metro!) and for its look into Jane's characters. Another iconic story! [5+/5].

The Word Made Flesh (#31-33). The story of the Cult of the Unwritten Book and the Uncreator is perhaps the most forgettable arc in Morrison's Doom Patrol. Much of that is just that it's a laundry list of weird happenings (something that Moore already did better in "American Gothic"). Then we get weird baddies that just aren't that evocative. And for some reason we get a John Constantine knockoff. Overall, this just doesn't click [3+/5].

The Soul of a New Machine (#34). Another absolutely perfect issue of the Doom Patrol, really highlighting the strength of the singletons in this volume. The creepy animation of Cliff's body is perfect, as is the interactions between The Brain and Mallah (the latter of which was so strong that it created a long-running characterization, even if Morrison does sort of imply their death here). A wacky, funny, wonderful issue [5+/5].

[Wes Benchoff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now it starts to get truly strange and I get a feeling it's on an upward trajectory. Some key mysteries are set up and fan favorite characters are hinted at. Morrison begins to play with the net up and the villains have dialogue that challenges him to write weird little poems instead of cut ups or loose rhyme schemes which continues through much of the series.

[Dakota · Rating 5 out of 5]

A celebration of absurdity

[Vojtěch · Rating 3 out of 5]

Slabší než první knížka, za to o dost divnější. Poslední sešit je vrchol divnosti..

[Otherwyrld · Rating 4 out of 5]

This second volume of the Doom Patrol stories doesn't have any overarching stories, except maybe how many times can you cram the end of the world into one graphic novel.

The first story has the Brotherhood of Dada stealing a painting that eats people (and Paris in this case) and which has the fifth horseman of the apocalypse trapped in it to boot. It's up to the Doom Patrol to go inside the painting, stop the brotherhood and the horseman, and rescue Paris. This is actually one of the easier stories to understand, even as the team wanders through layers of Paris illustrated in different ways (such as surrealist, impressionist and symbolist). In the end the story suffers because the Doom Patrol don't really save the day, that is actually achieved by the Brotherhood of Dada. It also establishes that the Doom Patrol are part of the mainstream DC universe of the time as it also features most of the Justice League, who are equally ineffective. It's a good story for all that, though.

The second story focusses on Crazy Jane as she becomes trapped inside her own head as a result of the previous story, and it is up to Cliff Steele to rescue her by going into her mind and leading her back out. Crazy Jane is one of the most intriguing characters to have ever been created in the DC universe - a woman who has hundreds of separate personalities as a result of childhood sexual abuse, each personality now having it's own superpower after a Gene Bomb is set off that activates latent superpowers in people over the world. Though the concept of multiple personality disorder is now generally accepted by the psychiatric community to be not real (or at least a gross simplification of what happens in such cases), Crazy Jane is such a unique look at this disorder, particularly in displaying her different personalities as stations on an underground map. In the end, Jane defeats the monster in the well, the manifestation of her abusive father, but in freeing herself she leaves Cliff behind.

The third story is perhaps the weakest one because it is about something called The Cult of the Unwritten Book which is chasing a boy with the text of a book written on his body and which will lead to the end of the world if the text is read out. The Cult seems to mostly consist of a random collection of weird names and visualisations of characters that have been thrown like mud onto a wall to see what sticks and in the end none of it really does because there are just too many of these weird creatures to make much of an impact. In the meantime Cliff gets a new body, which develops a mind of its own when Cliff is decanted into a brain in a jar, then the body self destructs because another brain in a jar tries to steal it. If none of this explanation makes sense don't worry, because the story doesn't make any sense either.

Altogether a good collection, possibly let down a little bit by the author trying to cram too much in without having enough of a story framework to hang his ideas onto.

[Buddy Scalera · Rating 2 out of 5]

Off the rails, but not in a good way. In the first volume, Doom Patrol: Vol 1 "Crawling from the Wreckage," Grant Morrison and Richard Case gave a weirdly entertaining take on the Doom Patrol. It was odd and oddly satisfying, as it played with surreal themes and visions. Good stuff that's worth reading, especially as an early Vertigo experiment.

The same team dials the weirdness up to 11, but soon loses clarity and focus. Every few pages, there's a new idea or concept that can sustain an entire issue. Morrison's obscure references and creative take on concepts and mashups is impressive. It's also really, really hard to follow.

Richard Case's art seems better suited for this story arc, but he seems to struggle with certain characters. (His Superman is just...not right.) That said, his art seems at home in this surreal landscape of random characters and locations.

There are enough ideas and experiments in here to sustain a year of issues. Unfortunately, it's too dense and complex. Many of these ideas fly by so fast that you can't even enjoy the moment.

[Printable Tire · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really like Grant Morrison's run on Doom Patrol. It's just the right amount of silliness and surreality I enjoy, Zippy the Pinhead as a superhero story. The Doom Patrol themselves aren't the most well-developed characters (I got a little sick of the cliffhanger to a number of issues ending with some character on the brink of death) but this is a comic book not about character building, it's about crazy situations and building one playfully absurd idea on the other. I really like the Brotherhood of Dada and the John Constantine rippoff storyline, but the final Brain/Monsieur Mallah lovefest was a little too silly for me (What is it with Grant Morrison and man-primate love affairs?). Doom Patrol's mode of absurdity often runs the danger of being too much crazy randomness, and is probably only good in small doses, but nonetheless I once again wish I could've gotten a subscription to it when it came out, so every month I would be offered some inspiring nonsense in my mailbox.

[Gavin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good follow up to the First collection. Further character development, and another crazy plot to foil. This one a little more philosophical, which is interesting as a reader. The bad guys here are rather nihilistic, which is always a fun ride. The strongest part of this may be the further character development of Crazy Jane and her multiple personalities (which are explored literally by Cliff/Robotman) and Cliff's further issues with disconnection and alienation from being a disembodied brain. More cerebral than most collections. Interesting read with a cameo appearance by numerous JLA members.

[Nea Poulain · Rating 4 out of 5]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH estuvo muy bueno, 10/10. Crazy Jane es mi fav.

[Oneirosophos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh such pure and beautiful madness!!!

[Sydney S · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think I might've liked The Painting That Ate Paris more than any of the issues in the first volume. There's the same eerie humor that seems both out of place and much needed at the same time, but in this volume it flows a lot smoother.


As with volume one, I love the characters, good and bad guys. We finally get to learn more about Crazy Jane! And we see her underground! I've been looking forward to that since the first volume, and I'm so glad Morrison spends a good many pages down there, showing us what it's all about.


So we have some great scenes with Jane, but we're still waiting to get more of Rhea... Hopefully volume three will have an issue about her.

The cover art by Bisley is phenomenal and reminds me a little of a contemporary Egon Schiele style. I know I say this a lot, but I would love to have large prints of Bisley's DP art on my wall. His art really fits the stories in this volume too: A little surreal, beautiful, and bizarre.








Morrison's talent shines through here. Brilliant writing, concept, character development, and honestly I was consistently amazed at his imagination. Like The Invisibles, this series has a lot going on, but unlike The Invisibles, Doom Patrol masters the art of overwhelming perfection. It's like he's snapping his fingers at us to keep up, and I love it. He packs a lot of ideas into one volume, and it works here. It's easy to see that many comic writers have been influenced by Morrison's work. There are a few pages that reminded me of Mike Carey's The Unwritten series, such as making a door, The Cult of the Unwritten, and the character Kipling,

as well as a few things in The Word Made Flesh that I could see having an influence on Charles Burns.


Very happy with DP volume 2. My only complaint is the last story in this volume, and it wasn't even bad. The Soul of a New Machine felt like it didn't belong in this collection, but it was also just very short with an ambiguous ending I didn't care for. It just didn't quite measure up with the rest of the volume, and felt a little out of place. I think I would've enjoyed it more as a standalone, but it didn't take away from my enjoyment of this volume. That being said, there were a few pages that definitely worked.


Other than that, this volume is gold. I know I'll read this one over and over.

[Mike E. Mancini]

The pleasures of Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol are well trodden paths easily located by any reader of his previous works, and more fully realized in many of his later works. Secret societies; physically and/or mentally scarred characters; art as a weapon--used by the "good" and "bad" guys alike; and an all pervading sense of the weird, the disturbing, the mad outliers inhabiting a comic universe already crazy enough. Its something Morrison seems to have been born to do.

Even if the art, by one Richard Case, is unable to meet the demands of the scripts, Morrison's cleverness and ability to write cracking dialogue, both moves the story and develops character, managing to keep the reader entertained. Case does not do a bad job, not by any stretch, and I suspect the miracle of meeting a monthly schedule was appreciated by all. The art work is serviceable, even if it seems rushed and without much panache.

Truly, when the Brotherhood of DaDa have harnessed the power of a painting to eat (i.e. disappear/vanish/erase) Paris, France thereby awakening the Fifth Horseman of the apocalypse--horse and rider hundreds of feet high--to destroy all life on the planet, I myself, would not mind seeing the interpretations of another less limited artist take a shot.

That's all wishful thinking. What we have are two multi part stories, and two single character focused tales, all of a wonderfully wildly wacky bend. Occasional sections become too heavy with exposition (where a more stylistic artist would come in handy), and other parts fail at the satire attempted, due to a lack of subtlety in line work (i.e. facial expressions to convey what the dialogue cannot fully encompass).

This is all good fun, which is what I want in my superhero stuff. Or I suppose you all could watch the TV show. I hear it's pretty good.

[Janet · Rating 4 out of 5]

That was definitely weirder than the first one. I got lost a few times, but so did all the characters, so I didn't feel bad about that. Once again, the art helped clarify and amplify the wild story. And I love that Crazy Jane.

[Martin Maenza · Rating 3 out of 5]

I stopped reading this comic book back in the day around issue 30 - about halfway through the issues collected here. I am enjoying the book now, nearly three decades later. It is very weird but in a curious, oddities sort this of way. Not your typical super-hero stuff.