In April 1963, readers could see Marvel Comics begin to exert its gravitational influence over the DC Comics orbit.
That’s the month that My Greatest Adventure 80, featuring the debut of the Doom Patrol, went on newsstands. The issue shared newsstand space with seven superhero titles from Marvel that month — and less than two years before, Marvel hadn’t published any superhero titles.
Although it’s become fashionable to speculate that DC’s Doom Patrol inspired Marvel’s X-Men, I’ve always thought that the opposite was true — that Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s Fantastic Four suggested Arnold Drake and Bruno Premiani’s Doom Patrol.
It seemed so to me even in 1963, because the teams were conceptually so similar.
Both teams included a flying, blank-faced energy man (the Human Torch and Negative Man), a super-strong monster (the Thing and Robotman), a super-intelligent leader (Mr. Fantastic and the Chief) and a woman who could vanish (Invisible Girl and Elasti-Girl, who could shrink out of sight).
Both teams included one member who was a revamped Golden Age superhero (the Human Torch and Robotman). Both teams had members who worried about being considered freakish (the Thing and everybody on the Doom Patrol).
“Like the members of Marvel’s Fantastic Four, these characters were bitter about the grotesque transformations their bodies had undergone and hated being superheroes,” observed Reed Tucker in Slugfest: Inside the Epic 50-Year Battle Between Marvel and DC.
Moreover, the tone of the Doom Patrol wasn’t the gentlemanly team spirit of DC Comics, but the family bickering of Marvel Comics.
DC’s team even shared its name with the FF’s greatest enemy. The team’s name was a last-minute change, by the way. According to an editor’s note in My Greatest Adventure 79, the Doom Patrol was originally to be called the Legion of the Strange.
Yes, both the Doom Patrol and the X-Men were led by brainy guys in wheel chairs. But parallels between the FF and the DP are more striking and numerous.
Vincent Mariani wrote: Doom Patrol was sort of a Marvel Comic, that kind of looked like a Dell Comic, that was published by DC Comics.
ReplyDeleteBob Doncaster wrote: I always compared the DP to the X-Men, especially because of the wheelchair-confined leader but you've given a very compelling agrument for the FF. It's early, it's Saturday and you're making me think too hard already.
ReplyDeleteMichael Fraley wrote: I'd never thought of the FF / DP connection before, but it sounds convincing. Both the Thing and Robotman were orange too - a weird color for a robot, I always thought. Also, Elasti-Girl always seemed as if she should have had abilities more like Mr. Fantastic.
ReplyDeleteMichael Fraley wrote: My favorite character, I think, was Negative Man. He was also, strangely, the most vulnerable member of the team, slumped into unconsciousness over in a corner while his spirit creature battled evil. I've never found the versions which didn't have that peculiar weakness as satisfying.
ReplyDeleteMichael Fraley wrote: Negative Man also had the "two beings in one body" trope going on, along with the impending threat of death if the hero separated from his mortal shell for more than a minute at a time. The Japanese would endlessly exploit this idea just three years later with my childhood hero, Ultraman.
ReplyDeleteJohn Galligan said: I wish Rita Farr had scored for her own solo series...she was pretty emancipated for comic books in 1963....
ReplyDeleteSteve Guy said: I like that some thought went into how that crazy grabber arm would work, mechanically. Granted, it's still fantasy, but the effort shows and it puts to shame a lot of Batman or Superman covers.
ReplyDeleteRobert S. Childers said: I understand the tone Doom Patrol was going for, but they never struck me as being particularly dissimilar to any other super-team, so their specific flavor of angst always came off as a bit odd to me. I thought It read as more genuine in X-Men, as they were all mutants, an oppressed minority in the Marvel Universe.
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