DP01-BA Scrawling From The Reekage

 I couldn't let the 60th anniversary go by without any acknowledgement. Young Animal is gone, but a new (albeit limited) series is here and it looks promising.

Watch this space.

Spinner Memorial Part 7: "¿Gracias, Por Nada?"

A funny thing happened after the previous post, one month ago. That same week, the release date of DOOM PATROL #11 had been moved from April 4th to 11th, as noted in the post. The following week, when all the new scheduling adjustments were announced, I was told that its date had been moved from April 18th to 25th-- without having been moved from the 11th to the 18th. The rest of the month has been been far more straightforward:

• April 4th-- SHADE THE CHANGING WOMAN #2 ships (it was delayed two weeks in my market, I'm guessing due to distributor error)
• April 11th-- ETERNITY GIRL #2 ships
• April 18th-- CAVE CARSON HAS AN INTERSTELLAR EYE #2 ships
• April 25th-- MOTHER PANIC: GOTHAM A.D. #2 ships
• April 25th-- the trade paperback collecting BUG, THE ADVENTURES OF FORAGER ships
• April 25th-- DOOM PATROL #11 ships
• The cancellation listings for May announces that the second trade of Young Animal DOOM PATROL issues ("NADA") has been cancelled for purposes of resolicitation. This is not so shocking, since it was originally meant to include issues #7-12 until the conclusion to the story was rewritten into #11. However, neither issue #12 or "NADA" are in the current catalog for comics shipping in July and trades expected for August (mostly).

Bear in mind that Free Comic Book Day is the first Saturday in May. Check now to see if your preferred retail location is planning any sales tied to it and make your want lists ahead of time. Good luck.

The Dorothy Spinner Memorial Monthly Freakout Part 6

It was almost two years ago when the rumors of a new Doom Patrol series were confirmed, with the first new issue arriving in direct comic stores on September 14th, 2016, the first release of a whole new imprint that would be gradually built into a playground for provocative creators to make the most of peripheral DCU characters. Over the next fifteen months (from October 2016 to December 2017), Young Animal released twelve issues apiece of three new titles: CAVE CARSON HAS A CYBERNETIC EYE, SHADE THE CHANGING GIRL and MOTHER PANIC, four trades to compile the first six issues apiece of DP and those other three titles, plus the six-issue mini-series BUG: THE ADVENTURES OF FORAGER and an expanded 'director's cut' of the first Doom Patrol issue. However, they only managed to produce eight more issues of their flagship title, despite it having a head start. The three other core titles maintained monthly schedules and BUG only skipped two months, but after its third issue DOOM PATROL became approximately bi-monthly.

Since New Year's Day this year, we've seen DOOM PATROL #10 on January 24th, then a "Milk Wars" crossover special on each of the five weeks after that. During that time the second trades for each of the other three core titles were released. In the last post I noted that in addition to DP #11 being rescheduled a few more times, #12 had been officially cancelled in order to resolicit it. I also speculated that the new solicitation might be imminent since all of the pending irregularities to Young Animal's roster (the BUG mini, the trades and the crossover specials) had already shipped and only the returning monthlies and a single new mini lie ahead. I was wrong about that; neither the DC solicitations following that post nor this week's offer a new date for DP #12. But there has been news since then.

• The release of DOOM PATROL #11 was changed from March 28 to April 4
• The release of the second DP trade, "NADA", was changed from May 9 to May 23
• SHADE THE CHANGING WOMAN #1 was released on March 7
• It was officially confirmed that DP #11 was the conclusion of the "NADA" storyline, not #12, which I'm guessing most readers had already assumed
• ETERNITY GIRL #1 was released on March 14
• CAVE CARSON HAS AN INTERSTELLAR EYE #1 was released on March 21
• The release of the second DP trade, "NADA", was changed from May 23 to May 30
• The release of DOOM PATROL #11 was changed from April 4 to April 11
• MOTHER PANIC: GOTHAM A.D. #1 was released on March 28
• The first full color paperback collecting Silver Age Doom Patrol stories was solicited for a July release. These stories were previously in color in pricey hardcovers and in black and white in budget paperbacks. I'll post about the specific configuration tomorrow.

This means that, in addition to the next three issues apiece of the Young Animal titles that began this month, the only other items now pending are:

• April 11- DOOM PATROL #11
• April 25- the BUG: THE ADVENTURES OF FORAGER trade paperback
• May 30- the DOOM PATROL VOL.2 "NADA" trade paperback
• July 25- the DOOM PATROL THE SILVER AGE VOL.1 trade paperback

There might be a DP#12 in July as well, but only if it's offered in next month's batch of solicitations. Cross your fingers.

Update Lowdown 20180227

The primary distributor for DC Comics in the US is Diamond and last week they announced that the next issue of DOOM PATROL (#11) will be reaching direct market stores on March 28th. Until recently, it had been moved back to the 14th and, considering that it had originally been solicited for November 22nd, the two more weeks didn't seem like that much more to wait. After all, the crossover that was intended to follow the story in #11 is set to end tomorrow with the arrival of "Milk Wars Part 5" in the DOOM PATROL/JLA SPECIAL. The intention for the story arc in DOOM PATROL #7-12 to be a springboard leading into "Milk Wars" is a boat that has already sailed. However, the two week delay did raise eyebrows for another reason. Issue #12 was still scheduled to arrive on March 21st, which didn't seem believable when #11 was due on the 14th.

At some time during the week since #11 was bumped (again), Diamond posted their March cancellations and DOOM PATROL #12 has been listed has being cancelled for the purposes of resolicitation. Since Diamond's new catalog arrives in stores tomorrow, it is possible that the new solicitation will be in it. Consider that the decision to start from scratch rather than move the date yet again might have been made after the last round of cancellations was posted a month ago but before the new catalog was prepared for printing. For the catalog to be physically shipped to stores that receive it, that would have to be shortly before #11's new date was announced last week, which explains why they didn't bother changing both their dates together; the internal ID# Diamond currently uses for that issue will likely be deleted eventually after the new solicitation arrives.

If you've been using the downtime between DP issues to catch up on past incarnations (and good luck with that, since so few of them are in trades), you might want to pass the time between #11 and #12 (which now looks like it's coming out in May or possibly June if it's not in the new catalog tomorrow) by picking up any of the other Young Animal titles tying into "Milk Wars": Cave Carson, Shade or Mother Panic each have two trades. The second of each have come out over the past month.

Update Lowdown 20180117

The crossover special event for Young Animal and the DCU is still due to go forward next month and the trade paperback collecting them has shown up on Amazon for pre-orders anticipating a June release. Pencil that date in reeeally lightly, however, because the DOOM PATROL issues completing the second arc (and taking place before the crossover) have started drifting again. All reports are that issue #10 will ship next week (Jan. 24th) as I've mentioned previously, but #11 has been moved from February (alongside the crossover) to March 14th, a week before the most recent date for #12. That strongly implies that #12 will eventually be pushed back as well and the subsequent trade to collect the second arc will be shipping very close to the "Milk War" crossover trade. None of that will matter a year later for people picking up the trades, but comic book stores near college campuses (as in, every major city in the U.S.) are going to be mighty steamed if the target audience for a pile of new trades goes home for the summer (or graduates) the week before it arrives.

It's Been That Kind Of Year, Alright

Earlier this week, between the Christmas and New Year's holidays here in the U.S., Diamond Distributors has finally given an official announcement of the cancellation "by the publisher" of the first ever trade collection of Rachel Pollack's DOOM PATROL stories. The announcement came nearly a month after it was reported by Newsarama on November 30th, shortly after Diamond posted their monthly cancellation announcements for December. That made this week's January 2018 Cancellations the earliest outlet to make it a matter of record.

Given a provisional title of "Book 4" when it was solicited last spring, it would have included #'s 64-74, plus ANNUAL #2 and the Doom Patrol story from VERTIGO JAM (1993). It would have had ISBN# [978] 14012-7451-X [or 1], but also would have had nearly 400 pages for $39.95. The page count of the Annual and the short story averages out to about two normal issues, so the remaining uncompiled issues (#75-87) would fill a hypothetical second volume (provisionally called "Book 5"?) roughly the same size and price. According to the Newsarama account, the title will not be resolicited. It's just my own speculation that the price might be intimidating. Whatever the actual reason, DC likely wasn't committed to the project since the Amazon page for the book still has the cover of Pollack's first issue (#64) complete with March 1993 cover date and $1.75 price clearly visible in the upper left hand corner standing in the place of whatever cover art the book would have had. It wouldn't have been a bad idea for the trade paperback to use the same Brian Bolland art used for the cover of #64, but DC never bothered to use a reproduction without the comic's now 25-year old trade dress.

I'm hoping that the reason it "won't be resolicited" is that the followed the reasoning I suggested eight years ago in this blog, recommending a three-volume configuration, which would likely mean each costing $29.95. Three books for $90 versus two books for $80 might, counterintuitively, get higher orders. People always pay more in installments. Call it a mortgage. See the break down here:
DP05-AA Pollack Period synopsis

History Is An Angel Being Blown Backwards Into The Future

(...with apologies to Laurie Anderson.)

There were two pieces of good news today. On the Diamond Comics Distributors website, the New Arrivals for November 22nd, 2017 included DOOM PATROL #9 and there were no Doom Patrol issues noted in the Shipping Updates. The other piece of good news is that the Young Animal/Justice League crossover annuals were included in the February 2018 solicitations. You can get the details where I got them, from the excellent My Greatest Adventure 80 blog .

In the previous post I was concerned that the current arc of DOOM PATROL wouldn't end in time for the crossover, which had earlier been announced to run in January and contain events that would introduce new conditions for both the Young Animal titles and mainstream DCU. As things stood, the last issue (#12) would be released in the middle of the crossover, raising the possibility that the crossover would reveal spoilers on the main series. I say "stood" because, having waited since April for the first three issues of the arc, I was skeptical about getting the last three issues in the remaining three months. So, ignoring their absence on the Shipping Updates, I checked their individual pages. Every item confirmed to ship has one, with the cover art (if available), capsule description, rudimentary credits and a few other specs, including the slated arrival date. Well, they all had new dates.

• #10 is now expected to ship on January 24th
• #11 is now expected to ship on February 21st
• #12 is now expected to ship on March 21st

For the record, the last issue of BUG! is still due next month.

Silver Threads Among The Gold

Casual readers could be forgiven for assuming that the current DOOM PATROL series written by Gerard Way had been cancelled. It hasn't, just to be clear on that. There are four solicited issues which have been delayed several times. Since the first story arc ended in issue #6 (in direct market locations Apr. 26th earlier this year), the trade collecting it appeared May 31st, and the next two issues followed on Jul. 26th (#7) and Sep. 6th (#8). Those two issues were in the shadow of an announcement from the San Diego Comic-Con on July 21st that once the second arcs of the various Young Animal titles end, there would be a mini event in which each of the four core titles would release an annual in January 2018, forming a four part crossover that would establish that the characters under the Young Animal imprint will interact with mainstream DC heroes. DOOM PATROL's Annual would have the Justice League co-star, for instance. This would be the opposite of the policy for characters removed from the DCU to form Vertigo, 25 years earlier. Needless to say, they're not going to make the Silver Anniversary of the Vertigo launch, which will be the first week of January.

The last issue of SHADE THE CHANGING GIRL (#12) arrived with DOOM PATROL #8 and the last issue of CAVE CARSON HAS A CYBERNETIC EYE (#12) followed two weeks later along with the most recent issue of the mini-series BUG! THE ADVENTURES OF FORAGER (#4) on Sep. 20th. Next came the final two issues of MOTHER PANIC on Sep. 27th (#11) and Oct. 25th (#12). Aside from the two remaining issues of BUG! and four of DOOM PATROL, there have been no other comics solicited under the imprint. Trades collecting those books that have been published, yes, but no new comics. Diamond Comics Distributors has announced all of the January titles and not only do the annuals not get a mention, but the JLA titles each ship twice for that month. That means that whatever the ramifications of combining the imprints were intended to be, the larger DCU isn't waiting around to see what they were.

The larger, unintended problem is that we not only have three other creative teams standing around, resentfully tapping their feet waiting for who knows how long to continue on to their third arcs, but when those issues of BUG! and DP do come out, they will be the only ones on the racks under that imprint. The whole point of having an imprint is that readers who enjoyed one title are implicitly referred to the other titles. It's a short-hand way of communicating the feel and outlook of a narrative style and other subtle and nuanced kinds of information that are difficult to convey in a blurb. This worked beautifully for Vertigo, mostly because the line was created with six existing titles that had each been published for 30+ issues and had cultivated reputations that distinguished them from most other DCU titles, but also because they added one or two titles (including ongoing, minis and one-shots) every month for a year. Facing a market that is smaller generally, Young Animal chose, wisely I think, to start with a sharper focus. It became feasible for more people to follow the entire imprint every month than it had been for Vertigo. But you don't get cross-recommendations from other titles if you've put the other titles on hiatus.

Ultimately, five years from now when these stories are only available as trades or downloads, it may seem like a moot point when the individual issues did or didn't ship. My point is, by the time the current DP arc ends and proceeds to the annual crossover, the three other titles could have completed a third arc apiece. If the point of the crossover is to bring these other titles into your own title's continuity, then these delays mean that there were three trades that could have been part of your continuity but now do not exist. More importantly, there could have been eighteen individual comics out there, any one of which could have led readers to the others and/or DP. It would have meant quadrupling the imprint's share of rack space for a six-month period. As a fan, I'm just jonesing for my DOOM PATROL. But in cold, hard business terms, it means that in comics specialty stores, which are usually small, operator owned businesses that rent their retail space and get their comics on a direct market basis (meaning unsold copies aren't returnable for credit), provide you with a little sliver of their rack/wall/floor space for each of your publications. They pay for both the space and the comic occupying it. The cover of the comic serves as an advertisement for itself, of course, but the more comics that appear under the same logo and the stronger their sense of collective identity, the more so that the cover serves as an ad for other publications under that imprint/logo. It means the retailer is not only advertising the rest of the line beyond that comic, but doing it every minute of every day they're open and paying you (at least in part) to do it. And every title on the rack at the same time doesn't just increase the visibility geometrically, but exponentially. Consequently, when you reduce the number of titles the effect diminishes logarithmically.

Anyway, the new dates for DOOM PATROL were announced this week:

• DOOMPATROL #9, originally solicited for June 28 then cancelled and resolicited for September 27, should now be arriving on November 22.
• BUG! #5, originally solicited for September 13 then cancelled and resolicited for November 8, should now be arriving November 15.
• BUG! #6, originally solicited for October 11 then cancelled and resolicited for December 13, has not yet been rescheduled further.
• DOOM PATROL #10, originally solicited for October 25, should now be arriving on December 20.
• DOOM PATROL #11, originally solicited for November 22, should now be arriving on January 17.
• DOOM PATROL #12, originally solicited for December 27, should now be arriving on February 24.

And let's not forget that while the first week of January is the Silver Anniversary of the Vertigo launch, the end of next summer is the Golden Anniversary of the death of the original Doom Patrol. Let's hope there's something out there by which to commemorate that.

News on new series delays (and a sad note)

Earlier this week Diamond Comics Distributors announced on their website, yet again, that the forthcoming solicited issues of the current DOOM PATROL series have been delayed slightly further.

• Issue #9 (originally solicited for June 28th, cancelled and resolicited for September 27th) has now been rescheduled for November 8th. Of this year, for the record.
• Issue #10 (originally solicited for October 25th) has now been rescheduled for November 29th.
• Issue #11 (originally solicited for November 22nd) has now been rescheduled for December 20th.
• Issue #12 has recently been solicited for December 27th, but obviously that will probably be addressed next week if it hasn't been already.

Before that announcement, though, was another news item that only had a tangential relationship to DOOM PATROL. On Wednesday 27th, 2017, an actress named Anne Jeffreys passed away. American audiences today might know her best, if at all, for the 20 years she spent on the soap opera "General Hospital" and its spin-off, "Port Charles". Hard core comics fans might remember her as Tess Trueheart in the first two post-WWII "Dick Tracy" feature films (which replaced the pre-war "Dick Tracy" serials). But during the 1950's she played Marion Kerby opposite her real life husband Robert Sterling playing Marion's husband George Kerby on the television series "Topper". 

The original novel "Topper" was written by Thorne Smith and published in 1926. It was followed by a sequel in 1932 ("Topper Takes A Trip"). After Smith's death in 1934, the books were adapted into feature films in 1937 and 1938 respectively. A third movie, "Topper Returns" (1941), introduced a new ghost to bedevil Topper, and a radio series followed in 1945. The TV series returned to the original concept of George and Marion and lasted two seasons (which, back then, translated to 78 episodes, or about three or three and a half seasons on broadcast network television today).

It would be a heck of a coincidence if the George and Marion of the Topper franchise weren't the inspiration for the Bandage People George and Marion who lived in a house full of SRS (Sexually Remaindered Spirits) in the Rachel Pollack run of the DOOM PATROL from 1993-1994. Although their origin would eventually reveal that they weren't technically ghosts themselves, they were after all frequently teasing the bodiless head of The Chief-- a literal 'topper'-- who moved into their house.

It's also worth mentioning that right before publishing the second "Topper" book, Thorne Smith released "Turnabout" (1931), a book in which an ancient Egyptian god causes a bickering modern American couple to switch bodies and live as each other's genders. Given that gender identity and fluidity were recurrent themes during her tenure on the book, it's reasonable to expect that she was aware of popular earlier novels such as "Turnabout" and Virginia Woolf's "Orlando" long before she began writing comics.

Happy 100th to "Waiting For Doom"!

If you haven't been listening, you should. The podcast "Waiting For Doom" has reached 100 episodes and they celebrate with an extra-long episode including special guest Richard Case, most frequent artist of the 1987-1995 version of DOOM PATROL and primary artist during the Morrison Period. All 100 episodes are available in their archive and highly recommended.

You can start with their 100th here: "Keeping the Love Alive"

Link Sausage 2016

With the new DOOM PATROL series and Young Animal imprint there's probably going to be more traffic here, so before I shake out the cobwebs I want to acknowledge some blogs who post more then once a year.

Today there was a DP appearance in the cover mash-up blog, Super-Team Family (whose previous incarnations were wish-list covers for Marvel Two-In-One and Brave And The Bold). You could spend days going through its enormous back catalog of posts featuring imagined meetings between characters often separated by publishers. A page with all the posts tagged for the Doom Patrol is here:

Super-Team Family

I've been enjoying the podcast Waiting for Doom, which had been created to have something extant while DP fans were waiting for a new series. Now that there is a new series, there was some anxiety that the podcast would founder without a purpose but it's been insightful and funny as always with the bonus of being situated better than anyone else to assess the new series. It's here (check out their archive):

Waiting For Doom

Providing graphic counterpart to Waiting For Doom is the simply called "Doom Patrol" but which is better known by its URL, "MyGreatestAdventure80":

My Greatest Adventure 80

Hosted by Doug, MGA80 was up and running before this blog started. It never really went away, but its posts became few and far between during the DP-deficient New52 period. There were some other fan sites still out there that have been inert even linger than this one. "Doompedia" hasn't posted since 2011 and the podcast "Doom Podtrol" hasn't posted since 2013. It's too early yet to know if the new series will renew the interests of their respective hosts, so I'm going to leave up any existing links on this blog to theirs but I'm unlikely to specifically refer to them in new posts.

David Bowie told us it would take five years

Today's the day.

A brand new Doom Patrol series begins.

You have been warned.

...and while you're reading...

DP on TV?

.....This evening (February 11th, 2016) on the CW network's "Legends Of Tomorrow" the character Valentina Vostok was introduced in a story that takes place in 1986. It's a two-parter and she comes across as a villain in part one so it may take until next week to know where this is going. If you want a crash course on how she was introduced in the comics, I gave a way-too wordy review of that three issue arc of Showcase #'s 94-96 a few years ago, but gave a bit more attention to Val in a post on the issue that focused on her specifically. It's here:

http://lgc01dp.blogspot.com/2010/07/dp02-03-showcase-961277-0178a.html

DP01-00c Countdown to Doom: 1955 in Detail

[Quick Note: Please click on either of the graphics below to see the right most side of either. For reasons unknown to me they were cut off when posted. Until I can circumvent this (there is one for every year through 1968 and I've done too much work to see them randomly chopped up), please take this inconvenience in stride.]

.....The graphics below are a list of DC Comics publications beginning with the introduction of the Comics Code Authority stamp, which first appeared on their titles with March and March-April 1955 cover dates. Each row shows the issue numbers of the given title released that year, each column is filled with the issues of each title for the specified month. For example, ACTION COMICS #202 had a cover date of March, 1955.

.....An important thing to understand about cover dates is that for the first half-century of comics history (including both the DOOM PATROL's Original Period and first Gypsy Period) the cover dates did not reflect the dates at which comics were released. [Note: that's still the case for the majority of comics today.] They were meant to be a guideline by which newsstand dealers could tell which unsold copies were due for removal from the racks. DC Comics, and all publishers distributed by Independent News, would strip the covers from unsold copies and return the covers (which included the distributor's mark printed directly on them) for some sort of credit towards the next shipment. The guts of the comic were meant to be destroyed, but since this was done on the honor system the were lots of coverless comics sold for pennies by some retailers. The reason behind the covers-only return system was that the distributor would have even less of a chance selling old, unwanted comics than retailers had selling them when they were new, so they would simply be destroyed by the distributor if returned whole. The gas and man-hours saved by having the retailers destroy them on site and sending a bundle of covers back with the next delivery truck instead more than compensated for any income 'cheaters' diverted to coverless contraband. By 1955, other distributors commonly used the same system as Independent News or something similar.

.....Why bother returning even the covers? Why credit the retailers? Back then, there were no comics specialty shops and newsstand dealers didn't order specific quantities or even specific titles. The onus was on the distributors to track sales and estimate how many copies of each title will sell in each location. If you sold comics, you had to take what they decided to give you. The retailers' responsibility was to maintain rack space to maximize the public's access to as much product as possible. If something didn't sell, the distributor had to be willing to share the blame (meaning the cost) or the retailer would find a different distributor.

.....Generally, DC then was in the habit of releasing comics roughly two months ahead of the cover date. For that reason I have chosen to log each year of releases by starting with March (probably released in January) and ending with February of the following year (probably released in December). This also makes it easier to compare DC's fare to that of its competitors, since, regardless of the release dates of other publishers, they would share rack visibility up until they were due for returns. On the second page below I have provided three such publishers with ties to DC history. Quality Comics would discontinue publishing in 1956, about a year before their distributor, American News Company, went out of business. DC would acquire many of  their characters and back catalog, including the only two titles (BLACK HAWK and G.I. COMBAT) that continued publishing during an otherwise gap of two or three months in 1955. Prize Comics lasted a bit longer, into the early 1960's, before being absorbed into DC. They were distributed by a member (possibly themselves; they also published a line of magazines and other non-comics titles) of the Independent Distributor's Union, whose mark/stamp was a silhouette of North America covered by the letters "ID". It was parodied on the covers of FLEX MENTALLO with a silhouette of the British Isles containing the phrase "BRIT PACK" (a phrase used to lump writer Grant Morrison and artist Frank Quitely in with British contemporaries working at DC in the 1990's). The third publisher, American Comics Group, was owned by Fred Iger (Harry Donenfeld's son-in-law), who also had a stake in DC Comics. Not surprisingly, ACG was also distributed by Independent News.

.....The three most obvious missing parts of this puzzle would be E.C., Fawcett and Charlton. E.C.'s fate was mentioned in the post: DP01-00b Countdown to 1963: 1953 to 1958 and while they were still extant at this time, they would be a distant memory by the time DOOM PATROL came to be published and wouldn't be impacting editorial decisions. It's lone surviving title, MAD MAGAZINE, would eventually become part of DC, but that's about forty years later. Fawcett closed its comics line at the end of 1953, transferred licenses and some properties to Charlton (except HOPALONG CASSIDY, which you can see below went to DC) and focused on magazines and paperbacks. When it did return a few years later it was with the license for Dennis The Menace, which eventually went to Marvel in the late 70's. Its ties to DC were already in the past. Charlton would publish characters later acquired by DC, but that would be circa CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS, thirty years after this. More relevant to the period I'm focusing on is that the publisher Mainline, a Joe Simon/Jack Kirby venture, was absorbed into Charlton in 1955 after less than a year of existence. That was the end of Simon's and Kirby's partnership and with Kirby adrift he wound up at DC to create the Challengers of the Unknown.

.....I've avoided tracking down the promotional publications from these publishers because I wanted to look at the market forces that were at play when the Doom Patrol were introduced. Likewise, I've foregone placing other formats like magazines and mass market paperbacks into the mix because it's so difficult to determine, at a distance of decades, what if any overlap in audiences they had with comics. I can't really prove that they were competing for the same dimes, however likely that is. Even if I could show that, it would only raise the question, "Why not follow movies and bubble gum? The disposable income of 1955's comics audience went in many directions." True; keeping the focus on comics is arbitrary, but necessary. Otherwise, the post, currently a year-and-a-half overdue, would take so long to research and then write, it would never be seen. And I have to save something for 1956.

Five Years (Stuck On My Eyes)

Pushing through the market square...

.....It's just a few weeks until this blog's fifth anniversary, at which point I had thought I'd be wrapping it up. Not only is life "what happens when you're making other plans", apparently it happens even after you've made them. Every time I get a notion to add something I hold off, thinking that with just a little more research I could make it more whole, more complete, closer to perfect (what the hell, let's just say "closer to fine" and make every sentence paraphrase a rock song).

.....Any of you who've bumped into me commenting elsewhere in the comics 'blogosphere' (is it a sphere or a cube? Ooh, ooh-- let's make it a dodecahedron! I think it's the largest regular polygon solid and-- bonus-- it's yet another perfectly legitimate word that triggers a Spellcheck warning. Why does that feature even exist...?) will know that I have followed many other comics besides Doom Patrol.
.....And that I go off on tangents. (I realize that I unfairly ignored it in the above digression, so my apologies to tetrahedron fans-- sonnuvabitch, I could have sworn Spellcheck would flag "tetrahedron". Huh.)

.....I've been able to find cheap reading copies that have filled holes in my collection due to a shift in the secondary market that puts a much greater distance between high and low grade copies than I've seen in my lifetime. Mint condition books go for sky high prices; low grade books go for so little that they wouldn't recoup the cost of pre-grading. 20-, 30-, even 40-year-old comics might sell for less than current comics. You sacrifice resale value, of course, but being able to finish reading story arcs I put aside decades ago has a certain gratification to it. It also has been eating up much of my spare time. It will continue to, be assured, but I am also going to recommit myself to this and, eventually, my other blogs by rationing my time, cutting back on television and being more willing to share what I've learned/found as it comes to me, perfect or not. And if I can get a handle on some basic technology I've been ignoring, oh boy, will it be imperfect.

Doom Podtrol M.I.A.?

Among the blog and website links in the left column of this blog you may have noticed the link to the podcast "The Doom Podtrol", which has offered fan commentary on DP stories for years now on an irregular schedule (not as bad as mine, but irregular). The last post was in November 2013 and I assumed it was just another lapse (the end of the year can get busy for all of us) but that link now leads to a page with their header, but no content. It can still be found through iTunes, but of course that's without the listener comments. I'm hoping that this is a temporary glitch and I won't have to modify the link to send readers to iTunes just yet. If the hosts are reading this, drop me a quick comment below. Thanks, I've always enjoyed the show.

DP01-00b Countdown to 1963: 1953 to 1958

[Before I continue the Doom Patrol's Fiftieth Anniversary observance ("celebration" just seems a little out of character for them), I just want to mention that this past weekend I edged past the 10K mark in pageviews. How much of that is due to Asian porn sites trying (unsuccessfully lately!) to embed disguised links in the comments sections, I'm not sure. I'd like to think that if I had been more diligent in posting a little something every few days instead of a multi-page essay every few months then readers might check in habitually instead of when they're weeding out infrequently used bookmarks and we'd have said goodbye to 20K some time ago. The good new is that older pages get viewed nearly as often as the current ones, which was my intention from the outset; I'm creating the blog largely as a personal reference repository and sharing it with whoever can get any practical or aesthetic use out of it. As always, critiques, corrections and additions are all welcome in the comments.]

.....In April of 1963, DC Comics published the first Doom Patrol story. The decade leading up to that point had handed DC one advantage after another over their competitors, leaving them unprepared to deal with, or even recognize, changing tides in the years that would follow.

.....In 1953 their specious lawsuit against Fawcett Publications claiming that Captain Marvel violated Superman's copyright was finally settled after over a decade of litigation back and forth. Not only did they succeed in getting Fawcett to halt publication of their most popular character (and his numerous spin-off characters and titles), but the experience had so embittered Fawcett towards the business that it ceased publishing comics generally, except for titles related to Dennis The Menace. The last issues they published were FAWCETT'S FUNNY ANIMALS #83(01/54), ROCKY LANE WESTERN #55(01/54), LASH LARUE WESTERN #46(01/54) and TEX RITTER WESTERN #20(01/54) [all of which, among other titles, were continued by Charlton] and THE MARVEL FAMILY #89(01/54). Those all would have come out in late 1953, at which time Standard Publications was licensing Dennis The Menace for comics. When Standard went under in 1955, Pines picked up the license. In the meantime, paperback reprints of the newspaper comics were handled by Avon Books, then Pocket Books and finally Crest Books, a division of Fawcett. By the end of 1958, with the newspaper reprints and original comic book stories brought under the same 'roof', Fawcett returned to publishing comics, sort of. They only published Dennis titles (and a single blink-and-you'd-miss-it MARK TRAIL comic, another newspaper strip previously adapted by Standard and then Pines) and they only published in conjunction with Hallden, a company created by Post Syndicate president Robert Hall to handle the Dennis property outside of newspapers ["Hall"+"Den-nis"].

.....The significance of DC halting such a major competitor's operations lies in the character, Captain Marvel, who became the crux of the legal dispute. The Fawcett publishing empire was founded by Wilford Fawcett, who left the army after World War I and launched a humor magazine called CAPTAIN BILLY'S WHIZ BANG. Years later (at the end of 1939) when the company prepared to enter the comics publishing market their prototype was to be called FLASH COMICS, but DC had just released a series by that name while Fawcett's was still in the planning stages. They next considered the name THRILL COMICS, but instead went for a play on the name of the central character of the premiere issue. Captain Marvel, who is secretly Billy Batson, could only appear in WHIZ COMICS. Fawcett's second title? SLAM-BANG COMICS. Captain. Billy. Whiz. Bang. Fawcett had invested a bit of their own company's mythos into the colorful original fantasy characters and titles created for their new comics line and an appeals court ruling simply told the company to stop using them. This was not the first time DC had successfully sued another publisher over copyright infringement but it may have been the first time any comics publisher had scuttled another's identity.

.....In 1954 the notorious Senate hearings on the purported influence of comic books on juvenile delinquency were held and despite the fact no federal legislation resulted (and previous state regulations had already been overturned), the news coverage had cemented in the minds of the then less-media-savvy public that comic books-- not the specific comic books cited in the hearings, but comic books generally-- were dangerous, harmful and sinister in ways and for reasons that weren't necessary to explain or understand. Sales shrank, made worse by national inflation in the post war economy (the Korean War ended in 1953 and the Allied occupation of West Germany was only then winding down, ending in 1955). DC suffered from that along with all the other publishers. In the fall of 1954, DC's 40-page comics were reduced to the 32-page standard that dominated the industry for the rest of the century. But it was smaller publishers operating with much slimmer margins who were wiped out entirely. Between the end of the Senate hearings in June and the formation of the Comics Magazine Association Of America in September three notable ones (Fiction House, Star Publications and Comic Media) shipped their final issues. An even smaller one (Youthful) went under between the April and June hearings. By the end of October the CMAA published the final version of their new Comics Code, or at least final until its first revision in 1971. To reassure the public that their comics adhered to some kind of moral standards, members would carry the white "postage stamp" motif seal of approval. An earlier, similar organization (the ACMP, with fewer participants) had used a "star badge" motif seal, but it didn't have a consistent color, often having the same color as the background of the comic cover on which it appeared, making it difficult to notice. The more prominent CMAA stamp seemed to have had the opposite effect from its intention. Perhaps by calling attention to the idea that a comic book's content might be something to be concerned about, it was more effective at raising doubts about quality than assuaging them. Over the next two years the code-compliant publishers Quality, Lev Gleason, Ace, Mainline (a year-old Simon-Kirby venture), Toby, Orbit (which had to have been in financial trouble to begin with; only the final issue of LOVE DIARY carried the stamp), Avon, Trojan, Master, Story, Key, Premier, Sterling and Argo all ceased publishing comics and most ceased to exist at all. EC Comics famously tried to comply until it became obvious that racism was poisoning the judgement of the CMAA's appointed authority overseeing the process. MAD converted from color comic to B&W magazine, but of the rest of the line only PANIC and PIRACY joined EC's New Dierection. All other publishers adopted the Code's stamp on issues cover dated January to May 1955, depending on the publisher and frequency of the title. EC's New Direction books started with the June-July issues. Given the success of MAD it made sense, by the end of the summer, to begin supplanting the color comics with a line of B&W Picto-Fiction magazines. The New Direction lasted six more months under the code and Picto-Fiction was over by the spring of 1956. The last remnant of former DC editor and All-American founder M.C. Gaines' ambitious Educational Comics, financed by repeated printings of PICTURE STORIES FROM THE BIBLE, a title he began while still at DC, was his son Bill's MAD MAGAZINE. Perhaps one other impact the publisher had was that the CMAA did not renew its Authority's director, the former Judge Charles Murphy, after those two years. They opted instead for Mrs. Guy Percy Trulock, who they retained for a decade. She adhered adamantly to the letter of the code-- but to no other unspoken objectives. Perhaps it was a coincidence, but the bleeding staunched somewhat.

.....Now it would be easy to assume that DC would be thrilled about the loss of all that competition, but in business on that scale nothing is that simple. Losing one large competitor like Fawcett is one thing, but when that much of the industry disappears so quickly it begins to threaten the infrastructure on which everyone operates. DC was owned by a partnership who had common members in the ownership of the distributor Independent News. The greater volume of magazines and comics a distributor moves, the more thinly it can spread its operating costs. Lighter trucks still have to drive the same routes and burn the same gas as full trucks. The biggest distributor of comics, the American News Company, was also the nation's biggest newsstand distributor, period. They could adjust. After Independent News, the third most significant player was probably Martin Goodman's Atlas, which was both a comics publisher and a distribution company. Aside from his own books, most of the comics publishers Goodman distributed were smaller outfits who couldn't afford being given low priority by the big two and, frankly, were nervous about their mob connections. When they began to disappear, Atlas' distribution operations began to cost more to conduct than their profit was worth. In 1957 he sold off his paperback company, Lion, to Penguin's New American Library and decided to take his comics to American News to distribute. Unbeknownst to Goodman, American News had fallen under federal scrutiny (for reasons unrelated to comics) and would liquidate its assets around June. Its real estate had been converted to other purposes, so there was no possibility of venture capital setting up a new business in its place. The only game in town became Independent News. Goodman considered getting out of the comics business and ordered his editor-in-chief, Stan Lee, to stop cutting checks by the end of the week. Lee doesn't like discussing that period, but he has described himself and receptionist Flo Steinberg feverishly scrambling to call every artist with an outstanding assignment to turn in whatever they had, finished or not. Ultimately, Goodman accepted a contract from Independent limiting them to shipping only eight comics from Atlas a month. They fulfilled that by publishing sixteen titles bi-monthly. (At the time they had about 66, mostly bi-monthly.) Unofficially, Goodman removed the name "Atlas" from the covers. In fact, apart from the tiny "IND." in capital, block letters and the 10¢ price, those early 1957-1960 pre-Marvel comics don't have any trade dress identifying their publisher. Also unofficially, this new, nameless continuation of Atlas was not to contain any super-heroes. Since the inception of the new Comics Code, DC had launched about a dozen new titles, plus four more acquired from the defunct Quality. While some had already come and gone (FRONTIER FIGHTERS, IT'S GAME TIME, and THE LEGENDS OF DANIEL BOONE) there was one that managed to circumvent the troublesome lag time between shipping a book and getting sales/returns figures back. Often by the time you find out that a book is selling badly, you've already shipped the next two or three issues. But SHOWCASE began by running a different feature in each issue for the first five issues. If an issue sold well, that feature would return or get its own title. If it did poorly, it didn't matter; it was already gone. Of the first five, only one did well: the fourth issue (09-10/56), with a revamped version of the Flash. At the time of the agreement with Goodman, the management at DC were still waiting for the sales results on the sixth and seventh issues, the debut of the Challengers of the Unknown. While Goodman would expect legal retaliation for copying specific characters, he didn't know why anyone would use extralegal methods to discourage one particular genre and at that point he didn't care. Atlas had tried to revive its 1940's super-heroes in 1954 and failed. Only SUB-MARINER COMICS lasted more than a year. With only eight slots per month he was in no hurry to try again so soon when there was so much other ground he could cover.

.....With American News gone Independent picked up one of their biggest clients, PLAYBOY, which didn't hurt revenues. Over the next year Magazine Enterprises, St. John and Ajax-Farrell stopped publishing comics, although Fawcett returned via Hallden, as mentioned above. All these publishers were carrying the Comics Code stamp. Curiously, the only publisher remaining who still consistently outsold DC was Dell, who was one of a tiny minority who didn't carry it. Apparently their reliance on familiar characters licensed from other media outweighed the recognition factor of the comics-specific stamp. The same was true of Gilberton, publisher of CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED, and other minor players such as Parents Magazine Press and various religious publishers. By the end of 1958 those in compliance were DC, Atlas/Marvel, Hallden, Charlton, Archie, Harvey, Prize, American Comics Group and the soon to collapse Al Fago company. [If readers know of any other publishers in 1959 using the code stamp, please mention them in the comments.] Ten years after Fago went under the rest were still publishing except Prize and ACG, both of which were absorbed by DC.

.....In the next post, the other, considerably less eventful half of the decade that led to the Doom Patrol. DC did relatively well under the Comics Code. Their first new title to carry the stamp was a period adventure anthology called THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD, which did okay for itself. And what was the last new title before the code? What was that last shred of the bad old days that publishers had to pretend they were ashamed of to ward off federal, McCarthy-era censorship which the Constitution should have protected them from? What title printed exactly one single issue without the stamp before adding it on the second issue? It was called MY GREATEST ADVENTURE.

DP01-00a Happy Fiftieth Anniversary Doom Patrol!

.....The first appearance of the Doom Patrol came in MY GREATEST ADVENTURE #80 (06/63), although it was announced in a tease in the previous issue as a new feature called "Legion Of The Strange". It is not so surprising for a creative effort to have a working title that undergoes changes up until the final stages. The Beatles' movie "Help!" was tentatively called "Eight Arms To Hold You" and there are numerous similar examples in film, music and literature. Stan Lee has often said that he intended to call THE X-MEN by the title THE MUTANTS until management insisted that the younger readers wouldn't understand what it meant. (One could argue that due to the later success of the title that they still don't know what it means...) It is more surprising that the working title made it into print as late as a month before the finished story's publication. You see, back in 1963 its publisher, DC Comics, had comfortably settled into a routine for publishing comics. By adhering to that routine they had stories scripted, pencilled, lettered and inked and sitting on file waiting to be published up to a year (or more) in advance of publication. [The last stage, coloring the stories, was only done shortly before printing.] The Doom Patrol was in many ways an odd duck in the DC line and a glance at a newsstand in April 1963 (the month during which MGA #80 actually shipped; cover dates on comics didn't indicate when they came out, they indicated when the newsdealer could return unsold copies for credit) only scratches the surface of what made it such an outlier within its publisher and what its place is in comics history generally.

.....I had intended to run this Fiftieth Anniversary salute in April, but events offline took over and if I'm lucky I'll finish the multi-part results before June (at which point the newsdealer will send me back!). I'm going to cut this first part short to make certain I slip in this reminder. Please drop by your local comic book dealer on Saturday, May 4th, 2013 for Free Comic Book Day. Many stores have customized promotions beyond free comics, some involving in-store appearances by creators. Bring cash and want lists and if you know your local store's phone number or website find out if there's a costume contest. Even if you don't have a costume ready, you might want to bring a camera. Remember to ask someone's permission before you snap their photo. (Snapping a young woman without asking first might get you dirty looks; snapping a child without asking their parents might get you arrested.) If there is a sale on trades being offered, be advised that I'm going to be examining the original series off and on this year and it's been compiled into five color hardcovers and (much more cheaply) two black and white paperbacks. The Morrison Period is the only other one compiled in its entirety, in six color paperbacks. Two of three projected Giffen trades have been published (the third was cancelled before it was printed) and the Flex Mentallo trade finally saw the light of day last year albeit oversized and radically recolored. Later this year I may have to go over the recoloring job panel by panel. Or not. But next week when I've finished reading whatever I find this weekend I'll put down what I've learned about comics in the spring of 1963.

DP09-M04 The Eaglemoss Negative Man (DC116)

.....The magazine accompanying the Eaglemoss Negative Man figurine has the same minimal credits as the those for Elasti-Girl and Robotman. The actual lead figurine itself is wearing the jodhpurs and suspenders from the Giffen period. To learn a little more about the figure-and-magazine series, check out the previous two posts. This figure came bagged with issue 116 and I was able to obtain it stateside (in the U.S., I mean) on date.

.....I put off providing detailed sources for the appropriated art in this issue because I've been having a heck of a time locating the art used for the inside front cover. It's Larry kneeling on the ground with his upper body upright, arms bent at the elbows and palms facing up. His face is also turned upward and he's releasing the Negative Energy Being. Often in the 1960's Original Period stories he would release the NEB while on his hands and knees, face down while it emerged from his back. The art for this definitely doesn't look like Premiani, though. It looks more like Eduardo Barreto or maybe Walt Simonson. Also, Larry isn't in uniform. He's wearing slacks, shoes or boots with a low heel and a jacket a fur trim collar and lapels. His mouth and eyes are visible through his bandages and the NEB doesn't have the Byrne Period skeleton in it. After I finish listing the rest of the details below, I'll take one last stab at detective work and see if I can at least make an educated guess based on the few appearances I don't actually own.

.....The issues cited will be preceded by the number of the period during which they were published and/or take place.

Page 01: Detail from the cover of [09] DOOM PATROL #6(03/09)
Page 02: The bone of contention (see above)
Page 03: Cover of [04] TP CRAWLING FROM THE WRECKAGE (2nd edition)(04/17/00)
Page 03: [01] DOOM PATROL #106(09/66) Back-up story page 1, panel 3; page 2, panels 4-7; and page 3, panel 3
Page 03: [01] DOOM PATROL #107(11/66) Back-up story page 1, panel 2 (detail)
Page 04: [09] DOOM PATROL #6(03/09) page 4, panel 7
Page 04: [01] DOOM PATROL #111(05/67) Back-up story page 7, panels 4-6; and page 8, panels 1-4
Page 04: [01] DOOM PATROL #107(11/67) Back-up story page 3, panel 1
Page 05: [01] DOOM PATROL #90(09/64) page 14, panels 2-4
Page 05: [01] DOOM PATROL #95(05/65) page 11 (cropped)
Page 05: Inset from cover of [01] HC THE DOOM PATROL ARCHIVES VOLUME 2 (08/04/04), newly drawn by Brian Bolland but based on [01]DOOM PATROL #90(09/64) page 18, panel 1
Page 05: [01] DOOM PATROL #110(03/67) page 5 panel 4
Page 06: [03] DOOM PATROL #1(10/87) page 2, panels 3-5; and page 4, panel 5
Page 06: [03] DOOM PATROL #1(10/87) detail from back of wraparound cover (reversed)
Page 06: Cover of [03] DOOM PATROL #3(12/87)
Page 07: [04] DOOM PATROL #19(02/89) page 11, panels 4-6
Page 07: [04] DOOM PATROL #54(04/92) page 2(detail) and page 3, panels 2-4
Page 07: [04] DOOM PATROL #61(11/92) page 22, panel 5 and page 23, panels 1-2
Page 08: [09] DOOM PATROL #6(03/10) page 9, panel 2 and page 10, panels 1-2
Page 08: Detail from the cover of [09] DOOM PATROL #7(04/10)
Page 09: [09] DOOM PATROL #5(02/10) page 3 (without title and credits) and page 5, panel 1
Page 09: [09] DOOM PATROL #6(03/10) page 17, panel 3 and page 2(detail)
Page 10: Cover of [04] TP CRAWLING FROM THE WRECKAGE (2nd edition) (04/17/00)
Page 10: [04] DOOM PATROL #19(02/89) page 16 and page 14, panels 2-3
Page 10: [04] DOOM PATROL #20(03/89) page 5, panel 1
Page 11: [09] DOOM PATROL #6(03/10) page 4, panels 1-2; page 6, panel 3; page 9, panel 3(detail); page 10, panel 4(reversed); page 11, panel 1; and cover
Page 12: (Dr. Eleanor Poole) [04] DOOM PATROL #19(02/89) page 10, panel 3
Page 12: (The Chief) [09] DOOM PATROL #14(11/10) page 16, panel 3(detail)
Page 12: (Robotman) Detail from cover of [09] DOOM PATROL #11(08/10)
Page 13: (Valentina Vostok) [09] DOOM PATROL #6(03/10) page 8, panel 2(detail)
Page 13: (Dr. Death) [01] DOOM PATROL #111(05/67) back-up story page 5, panel 4
Page 13: (Elasti-Girl) [09] DOOM PATROL #3 (12/09) page 17, panel 2(detail)
Page 14: (Watchdogs of the Universe) ?STRANGE ADVENTURES #62(11/55)
Page 14: (Superman) ?SUPERMAN #139(08/60)
Page 14: (Paul Gibson) ?STRANGE ADVENTURES #64(01/56)
Page 15: (Superwoman) ?DC COMICS PRESENTS ANNUAL #4(10/85)
Page 15: (Ray and Ray) ?from mini-series UNCLE SAM AND THE FREEDOM FIGHTERS (2007-2008)
Page 15: (Gorilla Grodd) from mini series ANGEL AND THE APE (1991)
Page 16: Preview of issue #117 of the Eaglemoss series

.....My last attempt to identify the illustration of Larry on the inside front cover involved the indicia for the Eaglemoss magazine. It includes an aggregate list of all pencillers, inkers and, for some reason, writers who worked on the stories from which the excerpted art was taken. Bear in mind that the list does not attribute the artist to the art or even to the page within this magazine. It's just an alphabetical listing with no mention of the sources. Those I found myself (or guessed in the case of pages 14 and 15, which have non-Doom Patrol stories). It occurred to me that if I cross-referenced this list and each of the source stories I had managed to identify so far, then by process of elimination I might determine the art team for the one drawing I had yet to nail down and thereby focus my search. My confidence in this approach was shaken early on when I found that the list of pencillers included two colorists (Guy Major and J.D. Smith) and an inker (Gary Martin) and long-time penciller Richard Case was misidentified as Chris Case. Forging ahead, there were a few names I couldn't otherwise account for.

.....Doug Braithwaite worked on issue #25 of the Morrison Period, but the Larry illustration in question wasn't in there. According to the Grand Comics Database (see the link in the left column), he also pencilled the mini-series JUSTICE (2006-2007) in which Negative Man appears in issues #7-10. I began looking through it but quickly concluded that I was wasting my time because the finished art was done by the distinctive Alex Ross and there was no way his painted style was used for this particular piece. I may go back and examine it more closely.

.....Cliff Richards filled in during the Giffen Period on issue #7, and again the drawing does not come from there. Turning to the GCD again I learned that he worked on the mini-series OMAC PROJECT, one of the four minis that led into INFINITE CRISIS. The last issue contains a few panels of the Doom Patrol as part of a large number of heroes assembled for the finale. The art doesn't come from there, either.

.....Inker John Nyberg wasn't accounted for either. He was a regular inker during the Morrison Period on issues #26-35, at which time the NEB inhabited Rebis (a combination of Larry and Eleanor Poole) and not Larry alone. I'll have to go back and check these more closely as well because I didn't find the illustration when I was sifting through the series to find the other panels identified above.

.....Time to put the Eaglemoss magazines behind me and move on to another project. If and when I have updates I'll leave them in the comments section.

DP09-M03 The Eaglemoss Robotman (DC109)

.....In the previous post I detailed the sources of the appropriated illustrations used for the magazine accompanying the Elasti-Girl figurine issued from Eaglemoss Collections earlier this year. Since the credits for the magazine accompanying the Robotman figurine are identical, everything from the first two paragraphs in that post are also applicable here except the character, issue number (#109) and the date I could obtain a copy stateside (July 11th, 2012). There should now be a guide at the bottom of this blog explaining the period numbers I use to distinguish between the series cited in the sources (as well as the post titles).

.....As in the previous post, each citation begins with the page of the Eaglemoss magazine followed by the title, issue number, cover date (or shipping date for trades),  page and panel (if applicable) of the illustration's original appearance.

Page 01: Detail from standard cover of [09]DOOM PATROL #18(03/11)
Page 02: Indicia, contents and detail from [04]DOOM PATROL #46(08/91) page 4(splash) reversed except for  the words.
Page 03: Standard cover of [09]DOOM PATROL #1(10/09)
Page 03: [09]DOOM PATROL #21(06/11) page 2, panel 2 and page 6 (detail)
Page 04: [01]DOOM PATROL #105(08/66) back-up story page 10, panel 1
Page 04: [01]DOOM PATROL #112(06/67) page 6, panels 1 and 4
Page 04: [09]DOOM PATROL #21(06/11) page 10
Page 05: [09]DOOM PATROL #21(06/11) page 15
Page 05: [03]DOOM PATROL #2(11/87) page 16, panels 5-7
Page 06: [03]DOOM PATROL #10(07/88) page 19, panel 3
Page 06: Detail from cover of [03]DOOM PATROL #9(06/88)
Page 06: [03]DOOM PATROL #15(12/88) page 17
Page 07: [03]DOOM PATROL #16(n.d./88) page 3, panels 1-3
Page 07: [03]DOOM PATROL #20(03/89) page 17, panel 2 and page 18, panel 1
Page 07: Detail from cover of [04]TP CRAWLING FROM THE WRECKAGE [2nd edition] (04/17/00)
Page 08: [04]DOOM PATROL #31(04/90) page 7, panel 1
Page 08: [04]DOOM PATROL #57(07/92) page 24, panel 1
Page 08: [04]DOOM PATROL #61(11/92) page 16, panels 1-5
Page 09: [06]DOOM PATROL #1(12/01) page 22
Page 09: [09]DOOM PATROL #15(12/10) page 9, panel 2; page 10, panel 5 and page 17, panel 4
Page 09: Detail from cover of [09]DOOM PATROL #20(05/11)
Page 10: Cover of [04]TP MAGIC BUS (01/31/07)
Page 10: [04]DOOM PATROL #56(06/92) page 24 (detail)
Page 10: [04]DOOM PATROL #59(09/92) page 21, panel 4
Page 10: [04]DOOM PATROL #57(07/92) page 11, panels 3-4 and page 39, panels 2-5
Page 11: [05]DOOM PATROL #74(01/94) page 3, panels 3-5; page 16, panels 5-6; page 24, panels 5-6; page 19 (detail) and cover
Page 12: (Will Magnus, w/Tin and Iron) Detail from cover [08]52 #49([04/11]/07)
Page 12: (Negative Man) [01]DOOM PATROL #121(09-10/68) page 22, panel 2
Page 12: (The Chief) Detail from cover of [04]DOOM PATROL #57(07/92)
Page 13: (Dorothy Spinner) [04]DOOM PATROL #23(06/89) page 5, panel 5
Page 13: (Crazy Jane) Detail from cover of [04]DOOM PATROL #63(01/93)
Page 13: (Elasti-Girl) [09]DOOM PATROL #12(09/10) page 16, panel 1
Page 14: (Frankenstein) Cover of [08]SEVEN SOLDIERS: FRANKENSTEIN #2(03/06)
Page 14: (Robotman/Robert Crane) [Golden Age origin story]
Page 15: (Gorilla Boss/George Dyke) [The gorilla figure was used for both the cover and story splash page of BATMAN #75 (02-03/53). The Batman and Robin figures here were drawn by Bob Kane for the splash; different versions were drawn by another artist for the cover.]
Page 15: (Superman, Union) [This panel either comes from the 1987 ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN ANNUAL or the 1989 stories reprinted in TP SUPERMAN: EXILE.]
Page 15: (scientists cloning Lex Luthor) [From ACTION COMICS #678 (06/92)?]
Page 16: Preview of issue #110 of the Eaglemoss series.

.....Obviously, I am less concerned with nailing down the sources of the non-DP characters from unrelated story lines alluded to on pages 14 and 15. They are only used by the publisher to compare the spotlighted character in each issue to what they consider others in similar situations.

.....Soon, probably next week, I should wrap this up with the Negative Man issue and get back to picking apart older stories.