Even more odd than T-Rump palling with Canya SeeMe for a new stop on the Putting The Ass In Class tour. The "weirdest team in comics" got a tv series that deeply embraces that weird and brings it to live action in ways i could never have hoped for. And with a delightful attitude, too...
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3 months older than the X-Men, outcast freaks gathered together by a rich genius in a wheelchair to protect a world that shuns and fears them. They're the
Unsurprisingly, the show leans heavily on the Grant Morrison / Richard Case years. What is surprising is how much crosses over from the comics. And they've also dived deep into the Arnold Drake / Bob Haney / Giordano Bruno Premiani years. Things are definitely remixed a bit, changed both to cross mediums and for cohesion - They've only got 15 episodes in season one and over a half century of comic history to work with. Even longer on the show, actually. Rita has her transformative origin in the 1950s. Larry in the '60s, Cliff in the '80s, and Kay/Jane in the '90s, with the primary timeline being in this century. Things get changed, but in ways that work to serve the characters.
Cliff Steele is our entry character. His rebuild and awakening after the crash is how we meet the characters of the show. He's the newest member of Caulder's menagerie. Though he may have had his accident before Crazy Jane's transformation, it took years to rebuild and get him up and running.
Rita Farr, who generally was given the least character development in the old comics, has the most changes. Those changes work to make her more of a misfit - oddly to make her fit better on the team.
Larry Trainor is Negative Man, not Rebis - the gender fluid construct merging the male Trainor with the female Dr. Poole and the negative energy being binding them. Maybe later, but Rebis is a bit much to introduce in the limited framework of a single season. Instead, they found a different non-binary angle for his sexuality.
Jane, amazingly, is the least modified of the four. There's no mention of the Gene Bomb from the alien Invasion! mini-series which triggered the metagene, activating powers in all 64 of her personalities, but that's hardly surprising. Not only do we meet several of her well known personae, including some one might not expect, like Sun Daddy...
...and Silver Tongue, whose words form in the air, allowing her to use them as weapons...
That's one of those things that works so easily in comics (since the words are already there anyway) but was rather surprising, but fun, to see on vid.
And, yes - we do go into the Underground...
Besides the core team, you know who else shows up on the series?
Danny The Street!
If you haven't read the old comics, Danny The Street is just what he sounds like - a Street named Danny. Of course, he's not a 'normal' street. Aside from being sentient, he's also mobile - able to shift his location around the planet at will. Also, he's a transvestite...
Yeah, the Bureau Of Abnormality wants him bad.
Among others, we also get Flex Mentallo and the white space between the panels...
Did you ever think we'd see Animal/Vegetable/Mineral-Man, even in a minor role?
And big Cheers for casting Curtis Armstrong as Brother Ezekiel! (yes, he's a cockroach)
The most off-model character is Mr. Nobody, but that makes sense unless you wanted a fully CGI intentionally-unreal-looking character. Instead, the ever cool Alan Tudyk winds up looking like this...
And they even touch on the other versions/incarnations of the Doom Patrol. Here, for example, we see the Chief with Celsius, Mento, and Lodestone...
There's a great deal more - even mentions of The Brain and Mssr. Mallah.
The show takes its time, digging into each of the characters and building their world over the first 13 episodes with a big 2-ep final confrontation. And, yeah - it forgoes the typical conclusion to find a more appropriately odd ending to the tale.
Will there be a second season?
The show was quite well received, but the DCU streaming service itself might not last long. Now everybody is launching new streaming services to grab a slice of the pie (forgetting that what made streaming so popular in the first place was being able to go to one source for shows), and Warner Brothers wants in. They own DC and are likely to decide to kill DCU so they can make their service the home for the characters.
Only time will tell, but we got one true bit of Odd and perhaps more will follow. Maybe we'll get to see the Scissormen if there's a next time! (How does one represent the hole in reality after the scissormen have cut someone out of it? It's a lot easier on a white page, eh?) Maybe we'll even get to see the Brotherhood Of DADA (we got the Brotherhood Of DA this time, so maybe not)
We can hope.
screens from Doom Patrol season one (2019)
panel art by Richard Case and Scott Hanna for Doom Patrol #21 (1989)
NOTE: Post edited, but only to add bold face to names.
