My Greatest Adventure: The Doom Patrol Story

An (unexpected) follow-up to my X-Men: By Chris Claremont post, today I (Ethan Stranger) will be discussing another team of Comic oddballs whom I find even more relatable within the Aspergers Community, for they are DC’s Doom Patrol (The World's Strangest Heroes).

Doom Patrol debuted in within the pages of the anthology series known as “My Greatest Adventure #80” in June of 1963, created by writer Arnold Drake & the unknown Italian Artist Bruno Premiani  (3 months before the debut of Marvel’s X-Men), in fact, there have been many suspensions (even by DP creator Arnold Drake) that X-Men co-creator Stan Lee somehow manages to rip-off  X-Men from Doom Patrol, even if they’re similarities between both teams, they’re major differences, like X-Men was created to tackle the real-life themes like racism, prejudices, and hate crimes (read more on my X-Men: By Chris Claremont post) while the Doom Patrol was a team of oddballs who went on bizarre/wacky adventures (while being outcast by society, something that everyone in the Asperger community can relate too). Speaking of  bizarre/wacky adventures, the Doom patrol’s earliest adventures were perhaps inspired by Marvel’s Fantastic Four, and speaking of the Fantastic Four, check out these pics (Left & Right Corners), for there are similarities between the 2 (notably DP Member Robotman & FF Member The Thing struggle with the fact they’re now monsters & wishing that they were human again), that’s another thing the Asperger Community can relate too (as when we grow up we often ask ourselves why are we different from others? Did we do something wrong?) Robotman & Negative Man’s pity squabbles are similar to whenever the FF members The Thing & Human Torch argue over little annoyance things    

(Also something the Asperger community can relate to whenever arguing with Neurotypical people). 

Another notable difference between the X-Men & The Doom Patrol was… The Writing, over at Marvel, Stan Lee's writing was both dramatic and occasionally humorous, his dialogue was filled with various human emotions, from the perspective of both the villains and heroes! Meanwhile, over at DC comics, they had pretty clever plots but the captions and dialogue were often flat and uninteresting; Doom Patrol was no expectation (Especially when Robotman attempted to speak in the same speech patterns as Marvel’s The Thing, but it ends up being extremely childish, as I explain in a previous post “Your Father’s Mustache” is another word for “derision or an Ancient, retro semi-insult used in annoyance”, however, I don’t know what Your Mother eats yogurt means” (also Marble season is slang for normal rational faculties to have all one's marbles; to lose one's marbles). 

I also like to point out the Artwork behind the original Doom Patrol Run (Bruno Premiani), whom I describe his artwork to be an “Amalgam of Jack Kirby & Steve Ditko’s (Marvel’s top artists at the time)”, I find his work on future Teen Titan member (Beast Boy) to be downright bizarre!!!!

 

While Doom Patrol never became as popular as Marvel's X-Men, it does have its fanbases (Especially those who are big fans of Grant Morrison's Zany Take on the World's Strangest Heroes, which Influenced much of the Doom Patrol Series). I feel like I kinda wish there was a Real Doom Patrol (as this team definitely represents something special within the Aspergers Community), for (despite being Freaks & Weirdos) these Heroes try their best to get the job done.  The big takeaway is that, no matter what job you face, how different you might be, or no matter how society views us, neurodivergent people, we still do our best to blend in & make a difference in life, not just for us, but for the people that are around us and our community.

Not Sure if either DC Comics or the Cast of the Doom Patrol is aware of how much the Doom patrol makes an impact within the Neurodivergent Community (Hopefully this post helps).

(Ethan Strangers Signs off)