Doom Patrol #94 (1964)
by Arnold Drake & Bob Brown
What does Robotman think he is, one of the Metal Men?
Also, first story not penciled by Bruno Premiani.
We begin with the Doom Patrol being in a TV show, together with a guy who claims to have photographed a ghost.
The Doom Patrol is not convinced: there’s no such thing as ghosts!
Yeah, the Doom Patrol isn’t taking this seriously.
Sure enough, the ghost DOES show up and has a grudge against the team.
And no, “Stretch Girl” is not a better fitting name than “Elasti-Girl”.
Sure enough, the ghost is immune from Negative Man’s powers.
The police suspects that the guy from the debate is behind this, and for some reason Chief is present at the interrogation.
(also: “bunko squad”? Uh?)
The ghost strikes again, targeting one of those ubiquitous construction sites.
As usual, Elasti-Girl takes the most direct approach.
Negative Man, can’t YOU can basically do the same thing??? Seriously, other than the time limit, is Negative Man’s power THAT different?
Chief has a secret weapon to deal with this: continuity!
Remember that Doom Patrol #81 had a surprisingly similar plot?
This leads to the main attraction of the issue…
…full frontal Robotman nudity.
The diagram will be reprinted many times, and it does include some interesting things.
Usually, Robotman is considered to be perfectly fine as long as his head is not damaged.
But how does he breathe, exactly? There are points labeled “oxygen in” and “gas waste from brain”, but… what’s taking the place of the lungs? If you go by this diagram, it’s as if his brain takes oxygen directly and then releases “gas waste”. Perhaps there’s some unlabeled part in his head that does all the work? I’m assuming he needs MUCH less oxygen than a human with a whole body.
Notice all of his “emergency oxygen supply” is in the chest, right next to the “pump”; since it’s connected to the “brain nutrients”, is the pump there to supply the oxygen or the nutrients?
Also: “outer joints are invisible”… HOW???
It’s not a return of the villain from #81, since he died in prison. If you feel sorry for him, remember he was a literal Nazi.
It’s also NOT a repeat of #81, because Robotman DOES see the ghost like the others.
Chief is devastated at the news that his entire worldview has been shattered, while Robotman and the others keep fighting…
…even when the ghost possesses stuff to throw at them.
The mystic is caught by the guy present at the TV show (what is he doing here???) and there’s the problem of searching him.
Up to this point, the science of Doom Patrol has been RELATIVELY realistic when compared to the rest of its DC contemporaries.
And then THIS HAPPENS:
You might think that’s just a visual representation for how Negative Man can see through the X-Rays, but nope: future stories will make it clear X-Rays makes everything except bones invisible.
THAT’S NOT HOW X-RAYS WORK!!!
What kind of comic book reader would believe this???
However Chief has an idea…
…just in time for Robotman to become immune to the ghost.
Which leads to him destroying the supposedly haunted machine very easily.
There’s just enough time for Robotman to fall into a trap that flattens his body.
How does this make ANY sense given the previous diagram???
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but they should’ve used those magic X-Rays on BOTH suspects instead of leaving Robotman to just pat the second one.
Also, how the heck is Robotman in a full undamaged body in the above panel???
In the NEXT one we’re told Chief built in a new one! And we learn that yes, we DID recycle the plot of #81 after all.
We learn that Chief disrupted the illusion machine by increasing the signal to Robotman’s locator, and we close on a laugh track.
Historical significance: 0 / 
Not the ghost of a chance.
Silver Age-ness: 10 /
The Doom Patrol’s random skepticism is not as bad as Jimmy Olsen’s, considering that at this point they haven’t encountered any magic, but it’s still forced. That wouldn’t be enough to get this high, but WTF was up with that X-Ray shot???
Does it stand the test of time? 3 /
Quite literally a rehash of a previous story; the fact that they straight up tell us that’s the case, it doesn’t really help. It’s also as needlessly complicated as the previous story: you have a device that can give anyone hallucinations and THIS is how you decide to use it???
Bob Brown doesn’t have the same level of creativity of Bruno Premiani, but he does the job; of course he already has some familiarity with the characters, since he typically does the covers.
Points for the Robotman diagram though, that was cool.
Times Robotman has been damaged: 9
Issues when Robotman is never damaged: 7
Number of Robotman robot bodies: 3
You never heard of a bunko squad? Seems like I heard the term in more than a few old movies and shows. It’s (as a just checked to make sure) a unit that investigates frauds or hoaxes.
There’s a rather famous episode of the old Dragnet show (both radio and TV) where Friday is assigned to the bunco squad, which did a lot to popularize the term nationwide – it started out as mostly West Coast slang in the 1920s and 30s. It’s typically preachy but some of the advice on avoiding being defrauded is still useful today. Some cons never seem to go out of style.
So in the “nightcap time” panel: What the hell is in Cliff’s glass? Motor oil?
A bunko squad *debunks* the hoaxes perpetrated by con men.
The Doom Patrol may be able to dismiss ghosts as hoaxes in this era, but wait until the Rachel Pollack era. Sadly, Rachel herself is now among the ghostly.
That’s not where the word comes from at all, nor is the “bunko” spelling the preferred form these days – if ever. It’s an informal name for police fraud squads, with “bunco” (the correct form) coming from a dice game often used by con artists to rook players in much the same way as three card monte. The word “bunco” (by whatever spelling) became synonymous with rigged gambling and other swindles in San Francisco in the 1850s, with dodgy gambling parlors being called bunco parlors. Bunco was commonly played in Prohibition era speakeasies (illegal bars and nightclubs, often with gambling and prostitution on site as well) and the police units that raided the places are the origin of the term bunco squad. Later on the term expanded to include units that that dealt with any form of swindle, fraud, scam or confidence game rather than just fixed gambling. Not a term used much these days (they’re just called fraud squads now) but very common between the late 1930 and 1960s. The original dice game has gone through several periods of popularity as a “family parlor game” over the years and has a national organization that runs (non-fraudulent) tournaments, so it’s not entirely associated with crooks.