Set Description
Synopsis: This collection is a work in progress with high grade copies of 36 of the 45 books in this set. As of this writing, 22 of our books are highest graded examples. Most of our books came from two 2021 auctions on Heritage. Highlights of the set are 21 books from pedigree collections, including nine books from the Pacific Coast Collection and seven single highest graded examples. That being said, while a good start, we still lack all but two of the My Greatest Adventure debut issues, so this one has a very long ways to go. If you could help us in locating high-grade copies of any of those books, please drop us a line.
Background: Doom Patrol is a superhero team, which first appeared in My Greatest Adventure #80 (June 1963). The book was created by writers Arnold Drake and Bob Haney, along with artist Bruno Premiani. Doom Patrol has appeared in different incarnations in multiple comics, and have been adapted to other media. Although not one of the most popular superhero teams, they have never been out of print for more than a few years since their introduction. The series' creator and fans have suspected that Marvel Comics copied the basic concept to create the X-Men, which debuted a few months later.
Doom Patrol are a group of super-powered misfits whose "gifts" caused them alienation and trauma. Dubbed the "world's strangest heroes", the original team included the Chief (Niles Caulder), Robotman (Cliff Steele), Elasti-Girl (Rita Farr), and Negative Man (Larry Trainor); Beast Boy (Garfield Logan) and Mento (Steve Dayton) joined soon after. The team remained the featured characters of My Greatest Adventure, which was re-titled Doom Patrol as of issue #86 (March 1964). The original series was canceled in 1968 when Drake killed the team off in issue #121, last of that series, (September–October 1968). Since then, there have been six Doom Patrol series, with Robotman as the only character to appear in all of them.
The Doom Patrol had two crossovers: one with the Challengers of the Unknown, teaming up to fight Multi-Man and Multi-Woman; and second with the Flash in The Brave and the Bold #65.
As the popularity of the book waned, the publisher cancelled it. Drake killed off the entire Doom Patrol in the final issue, Doom Patrol #121 (September–October 1968) where Doom Patrol sacrificed their lives to Madame Rouge and General Zahl to save the small fishing village of Codsville, Maine. This was the first time in comic book history that a cancelled title was concluded with the death of its cast.
In 1973, DC published three more issues, #122-#124, which were reprints of earlier issues (#89, #95 and #90). I really question the inclusion of those three issues in this set. Just as the primary X-Men set ends at Issue #66 and does not include the later reprints, this set should end with Issue #121. A proper Doom Patrol revival did not occur until 1977, nine years after the original's demise.
There are a number of similarities between the Doom Patrol and the X-Men, proving once again that there’s nothing one publisher can invent that the other can’t steal. In this case, Doom Patrol was first, although X-Men has far surpassed it in terms of popularity and the value of the books. Marvel acknowledged the similarities between the original Doom Patrol and Marvel Comics' original X-Men in its humor title Not Brand Echh. Both teams included misfit superheroes shunned by society and both are led by men of preternatural intelligence who are confined to wheelchairs. These similarities ultimately led series writer Arnold Drake to argue that the concept of the X-Men must have been based on the Doom Patrol. Drake stated:
...I've become more and more convinced that [Stan Lee] knowingly stole The X-Men from The Doom Patrol. Over the years I learned that an awful lot of writers and artists were working surreptitiously between Marvel and DC. Therefore from when I first brought the idea into [DC editor] Murray Boltinoff's office, it would've been easy for someone to walk over and hear that [I was] working on a story about a bunch of reluctant superheroes who are led by a man in a wheelchair. So over the years, I began to feel that Stan had more lead time than I realized. He may well have had four, five, or even six months.
Our Doom Patrol set is a recent addition, which we started when my friend, Rob Rong, decided to sell his books. We were fortunate enough to get a number of them, which served to jumpstart this collection.
