Doom Patrol #96

Doom Patrol #96 (1965)
by Arnold Drake & Bruno Premiani
cover by Bob Brown

I get the feeling this is not going to be a very serious issue.

We begin with a gentle genius ready to complete the greatest work of his life…

…only to go completely mad.

We also have Not Ghandi giving a speech at the United Nations.

WITH BULLETS.

With multiple famous figures going nuts at the same time, Chief asks his computer if this is just a coincidence.

That is one incredibly polite supercomputer. My answer would’ve been “No s##t Sherlock, of course it’s not a coincidence!!!”.

The people who flipped are basically catatonic…

…but Elasti-Girl discovers they have something in common: they all have a weird keychain.

That leads the Doom Patrol to the fictional country of Tajali.
Please don’t do anything racist please don’t do anything racist please don’t do anything racist…

Surprisingly nothing racist. It’s just an opportunity to be heroes.

Aaaaaand two thirds of the team are immediately captured.

Robotman doesn’t fall for this, and I wonder why they didn’t try knockout gas with him. He still needs to breathe so it should work, since it’s apparently acting very fast.
Maybe they were worried about his artificial nose filtering the gas?

This is just to make them meet a totally legitimate organization, the syndicate known as Cobra.

And their leader is… uhm… well this hasn’t aged well.

The Cobra headquarters doesn’t seem to be built to code.

Believe it or not but this IS linked to the main plot.

Where IS Tajali supposed to be? Its time zone is 9 hours away from the Doom Patrol’s city, which at this time is not identified. One of the targets went mad in New York City, but we don’t know about the others and it’s not clear whether or not the Doom Patrol is supposed to be in New York.
Let’s go to the extremes, shall we?
If the Doom Patrol is in New York, their time zone is UTC-5
If the Doom Patrol is in Los Angeles, their time zone is UTC-8.
Which means Tajali is either in UTC+3 or UTC+5. This of course can change by one time zone by 1 hour depending if Daylight Saving Time is in effect.
I think we can safely say Tajali absolutely cannot be UTC+3 (see countries in yellow).

UTC+5 sounds more like it. Nepal and western China are geographically in it, even if they follow a different time zone. The fictional Tajali could reasonably follow UTC+5 anyway.

Which means the Doom Patrol city is most likely living in the same time zone of Los Angeles, since New York City doesn’t work given these time zones.

Now, if you think it’s completely unreasonable to do all this work to check if a 1965 story has a reasonable time zone for a fictional country… hi, welcome to the site, this must be the first review you read!

The Cobra syndicate believes this entire plot is just a scheme to embarrass them.

Hmm, what would such a plan require?
A) make a diplomat go insane at the United Nations and shoot people
B) hope people realize the diplomat and the other people who went insane had the same keychain
C) know the keychain is in the shape of an old idol
D) somehow believe this is significant
E) ???
F) people blame Cobra for the incident

Sounds legit.

The Doom Patrol agrees to help Cobra find the culprit, with Elasti-Girl carrying the rest of the team through rives.
Okay scratch my suspicion that this could be Nepal.

They later find a temple dedicated to the blue monkey, and are surprised when it talks.

The Doom Patrol quickly stops the guy playing the blue monkey…

…who then sucks his thumb to death.
Which only sounds like a euphemism.

And then we jump back to the other side of the world to see a giant murderous jukebox.

So Negative Man has SIXTY SECONDS to defeat this thing.

While the jukebox is truly ridiculous, it’s not exactly a lightweight!

But turns out sixty seconds weren’t really needed.

Who keeps buying these inventions to make these people think there’s money to be made???

Negative Man can travel at the speed of light because it’s made of energy.
What’s Robotman’s and Elasti-Girl’s excuse?

Luckily Robotman is invulnerable this month, so the tank can’t hurt him.

This entire plan was to crash the companies making those inventions.

Turns out that the companies being ruined were all antagonizing a different firm, which has a chairman with an obviously fake name.

So the Doom Patrol travels to the UK, the headquarters to that company.
I don’t know what they’re so worried about, London looks fine.

General Immortus doesn’t even try preventing the Doom Patrol from getting into his office.

I know I’ve basically already done this joke, but…
Step 1: some famous people become violently crazy
Step 2: the companies collapse
Step 3: the whole world becomes violently crazy
Step 4: ???
Step 5: General Immortus rules the world

BUT WAIT, the plan is even crazier… because aliens.

Also the blue monkey statues and keychains are made of a blue rock magnet that attracts rays that make you go crazy.

Le very old monsieur vith ze beard waz Madame Rouge ze whole time for no raison.
Il est very annoying ven she talks vith ze accent, n’est pas?

But the walls are electrified, how is the Doom Patrol going to get out of this one?

Very easily! Nice job, General Immortus, I can’t believe you didn’t anticipate that super-strong superheroes WOULD BREAK STUFF.

Then the Doom Patrol has to fly all over the world (presumably thanks to Negative Man) to disable all the missiles that turn people crazy!!!

Including New York City. I don’t know why the Doom Patrol are so worried, this seems to be an improvement.

Masterful job by Premiani at truly selling the scale of Elasti-Girl’s size.

Once the day is saved, the Doom Patrol has a chat with the Brotherhood of Evil…

…which has a base on the Moon now!!!

You can tell the Doom Patrol is not fully integrated with the DC Universe yet because they just end the story here instead of calling Superman to smash that base.

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Historical significance: 1/10
General Immortus and Garguax officially join the Brotherhood of Evil. I think it was a mistake, because now all the Doom Patrol villains (with the exception of the AMV Man who never appears again) are in the same team.

Silver Age-ness: 10/10
Blue moon rocks that attract crazy rays! Gigantic lunar missiles that gently land with a parachute! Companies building building-sized juke boxes that require a supervillain plot to go bankrupt!

Does it stand the test of time? 1/10
This was dumb. If the plot was to make humanity goes insane, presumably to blackmail it, why go through the trouble of testing it on a couple of famous figures? What was the point of planting clues to bring the Doom Patrol to Cobra if you’re going to kidnap them anyway? What was the point of having Rouge replace Cobra’s leader?  If the target is world domination, what’s the point of making three companies fail?
Saved from a 0/10 only by the Premiani artwork.
Take a day off, Doom Patrol, you’re clearly drunk.

Times Robotman has been damaged: 11 

Issues when Robotman is never damaged: 8