Doom Patrol #87 (Part 1)

Doom Patrol #87 (1964)
by Arnold Drake & Bruno Premiani

The Brotherhood of Evil quickly established itself as the Doom Patrol’s nemesis, attacking twice in a row.

We begin with the guys helping a plane that is about to crash.

But as usual, Elasti-Girl is the most impressive one.
Note the attention to detail: she’s NOT just catching it at full speed, in order to avoid just creating more damages.

Zis was an effort to rescue a Franch woman who will talk like zis ze entire time.
Zat iz not going to annoying zoon, n’est pas?

Zis effort to gain ze trust of Ze Negative Man est un success because zis guy iz, how do you say, zinking vith hiz Tour Eiffel?

Zis iz… uhm… this is Madame Rouge, a member of the Brotherhood of Evil and the Brain’s most trusted spy. She’s not yet a shapeshifter.

I don’t know, Negative Man… you do have it pretty rough, I admit, but I’m sure Robotman would switch places with you in a second!!!

Normally, the Doom Patrol romances are very one-sided: everyone is in love with Elasti-Girl but she only considers them friends.
Interesting to see that she’s definitely jealous of Negative Man.

The disguised Madame Rouge convinces Negative Man to retrieve pictures of a time capsule, under the pretense that her dead father left stuff there.
Hey she’s actually wearing red for once! For someone with the name Madame Rouge, it’s surprisingly rare.

The plan is so serious that both The Brain and Monsieur Mallah travel to America.
You’d think it would be more difficult for A LITERAL GORILLA to travel incognito.

It’s a reunion of the entire Brotherhood of Evil:
The Brain
Monsieur Mallah
Madame Rouge
Giacomo The Midget

Yeah, uhm, one of those is not like the others.
Giacomo The Midget is so obscure that even the DC Database doesn’t list him, and they list everybody!!!

Thanks to Negative Man, the Brotherhood now has its hands on a ray that can enlarge metal objects.

As much as I praise Elasti-Girl, she sucks at being a spy: she’s caught almost immediately.

In a surprising twist, Negative Man wasn’t tricked by Madame Rouge: he was actually the one preparing a trap for her!

Now that they have an army and two Doom Patrol hostages, the Brotherhood enacts its master plan: ROBBING THE FEDERAL RESERVE.

I’m beginning to think that constantly hiding your plans from most of your team is not working out, Chief.

The situation is so dire that Negative Man decides to remove his bandages.
And the Brotherhood didn’t kill him when they had the chance because… I’ve got nothing.

And beneath the bandages, turns out that Negative Man is A RADIOACTIVE SKULL-FACE.

He is SO radioactive, in fact, that he can disrupt the Brain’s technology at a distance!
But apparently not radioactive enough to give cancer to the whole block.

Robotman shows up to help…

…and to get himself damaged.

Turns out that both The Brain and The Chief are not as smart as they thought.

Madame Rouge will be back in 3 issues, while Giacomo The Midget ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

There’s a second Doom Patrol story that I’ll cover separately.

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Historical significance: 0/10
Assuming Giacomo The Midget never shows up again.
If he returns… it’s still a 0/10.

Silver Age-ness: 10/10
That is QUITE the invention to be forgotten, plus the casual use of radiation.

Does it stand the test of time? 3/10
Premiani’s artwork is as solid as usual, but honestly this one is pretty dated. There’s a lot that could be done with Negative Man’s situation, and while the series WILL address it interestingly, it’s not really here.
Plus it’s very hard to take the villains seriously, ezpecially ven zhat voman talks vith zuch a riziculous fonetic aczent, non?

 Times Robotman has been damaged: 4