Doom Patrol, Vol.4: Musclebound

Frankly reviewing Morrison’s Doom Patrol run often seems redundant. The surreality of it all means it’s difficult to criticise, with seeming non-sequiturs and heroically daft ideas being thrown around at every turn. Musclebound isn’t a coherent collection, covering a few story arcs and the odd one-off, but it’s good fun, particularly after the relative tedium of the abstract alien war that ended Down Paradise Way.

The Ant Farm storyline comes across as a rehearsal for Morrison’s magnum opus, The Invisibles. Various elements, such as government conspiracy and a writer’s mind distorting reality crop up prominently in that later work. It’s a fun test run, particularly when the Charles Atlas parodying Flex Mentallo origin story show more is thrown in. The one off Beard Hunter veers towards snarkiness, particularly with the dig at comic fans but is saved by Morrison’s sharp wit. Mr Edwards, an English gentleman type who’s apparently Satan is again good value, but gets dispatched perfunctorily. And the final story, which is left hanging across collections, brings a new Brotherhood of Dada to the strip, led once again by Mr Nobody. The incomplete story makes this tough to judge, but the almost conventional structure of having an equal and opposite team to battle means it’s almost straightforward superhero fun (albeit with fun, off the wall fight scenes).

So is it an avant-garde masterpiece or freewheeling nonsense? The secret of the series, the reason why it’s composed of wild highs and incoherent lows is that it’s both. It aims for the stars, often hitting them (then probably stuffing them and mounting them on a wall) and equally being unafraid of going too far and falling flat on its face. It’s the antidote to the Ant Farm, a world of glorious unreason. And that’s why it’s so much fun. show less

No-one brings the weird shit quite like Grant Morrison. As ever, Doom Patrol veers between sharp satire and utter incomprehensibility, sometimes within a single panel. Highlights of this instalment include: the secret origins of Flex Mentallo and his attempts to flex hard enough to turn the Pentagon into a circle. A supervillain called the Beard Hunter who has some truly great lines, such as “You know where I’ve been, mom. I’ve been out on the streets, fighting my lonely war against facial hair.” and “Takes more than that to hurt me, creep. I shower in falling debris.” Some random character (possibly John Constantine?) complaining, “I don’t want to hear any more balls about the war between good and evil! You might as show more well say the war between up and down or left and right, for all the sense it makes.” A supervillain who looks like Foucault with a periscope on his head and claims to be satan - no, really. Several Withnail and I references. Ongoing disdain for the ‘normal’ superheroes that the Doom Patrol supposedly share a universe with: “So, when is the Justice League moving back in here?” “I have absolutely no interest in the activities of the Justice League, Joshua. As long as they stay away from my laboratory, they can keep doing whatever tedious and public-spirited thing it is that they do.”

Then there’s the delightful return of the League of Dada, each of whom has a singularly bizarre backstory. My favourite belonged to The Blur: ‘Some say that if there were no mirrors in the world, we would never grow old; that mirrors eat time and excrete images. The moral of the story, however, escapes me.’ Their leader Mr Nobody emerges from a painting and proceeds to locate the bicycle of Albert Hoffman, discoverer of LSD. After a baffling sequence set in psychedelic Venice, things take a sudden turn into unsettlingly relevant satire when Mr Nobody announces:

"'If you don’t like the news then go out and make some of your own' is another one of my mottos. And so… so so… so… I intend to run for president and win by fair means or foul. Oh, yes. We’re going to invite the world to a party they’ll never forget. A fiesta! A jamboree! Utopia, here we come!"

Thus the book closes on a personification of chaos draped in the American flag raising his fist to the sky. Perhaps that was surreal back in the 90s, but in 2016 it sure ain’t. show less

Starts off really strong with closure on the Pentagon/Flex Mentallo stuff from volume 3, and features the return of the Brotherhood of Dada(!) but some of the other stuff - the Beard Hunter and Mr. Evans - has...not aged that well. I think I'm going to take a break before I go looking for volume 5, especially since I've been reading some of Gerard Way's Doom Patrol, which (surprisingly) I'm enjoying more than Morrison's work.

Two of my favourite issues in this book. The Beard Hunter and the Flex Mentallo origin story. For all my heroes of the beach.

Two of my favourite issues in this book. The Beard Hunter and the Flex Mentallo origin story. For all my heroes of the beach.

LIDO!