12 Facts You May Not Have Known About The Doom Patrol

Everyone loves comic book trivia, but with decades of comics behind, there’s always some new obscure fact to learn. That’s why ComicsAlliance is going deep into the minutiae of your favorite names in comics in our continuing video series. You think you know comics? Well, here’s a few things you might not know!

This week we're taking a look at the world's strangest heroes, the Doom Patrol! Introduced in 1963 just a few months before Marvel's X-Men debuted, this creation of Arnold Drake and Bruno Premiani featured a team of outcasts who fight to protect a world that hates and fears them! Over the years, various creative teams have endeavored to truly live up to that "world's strangest heroes" boast that adorned the book's covers in the Silver Age, adding newer and stranger heroes and villains to the mix with each new incarnation. This video takes a look at the history of the team from its debut through various revivals and reboots, and its strangest and most notable members and foes.

Show notes:

The original Doom Patrol series is one of the best books of the Silver Age. There are not currently any collections of it in print, but if you are interested in the team, it might be worth paying the price for a used copy here.
The run on the title by Grant Morrison and Richard Case is a stone-cold classic and help cement Morrison as one of comics' best and weirdest writers. You can get the entire run in one fat book here, or you can buy a smaller, cheaper collection here.
The entire 1987 series is actually available digitally, starting here. The series featured art by a young Erik Larsen beginning here. The Morrison/Case run begins here. Rachel Pollack begins as writer here.
You can buy the first volume of the Giffen/Clark era of the title here, and the whole series digitally here.
You can pre-order the first collection of the current series by Gerard Way and Nick Derington here, or read the already existing issues digitally here.