Doom Patrol #111 (1967)
by Arnold Drake & Bruno Premiani
Last chapter of Negative Man’s serial.
We begin with Negative Man being depressed (what else is new?), and am I the only one who thinks the woman he’s walking past has a rather weird pose?
He’s trying to move out of the house, but his mother keeps finding people who want to offer him a plot.
You know what this superhero story about a man trying to cope with his disfigurement?
Cookies!
What, you think I was kidding?
That whole thing (which takes 2 pages of this 7 1/2 page story) was just the setup for Negative Man having to fly to Argentina to get “a rare spicy herb”.
This works so well that both President Johnson, Vice President Humphrey and “Congressman Sloan” are impressed.
To the best of my knowledge, there was no “Congressman Sloan” in 1967. And since they chose a fictional congressman, you just know he’s going to be relevant to the plot.
And if that was just a couple of pages of filler, it would be the end of the story.
But Negative Man goes back to the club he helped save with the cookie sale…
…only to find Doctor Death is behind this AGAIN.
We now interrupt this Doom Patrol prequel for Scooby Doo, apparently.
One of Negative Man’s weaknesses as a character in this period is that EVERYONE stops him by either locking him in a lead prison or knocking him out. That gets boring!
Doctor Death’s plan is quite something.
You might have guessed that it requires the herbs recovered by Negative Man, but probably not that he does this because they contain a lot of selenium.
Now, to be fair, there ARE plants that do this and selenium IS toxic if consumed in large quantities, and it can lead to mood changes… but I couldn’t find any reference to it causing suicidal thoughts.
Certainly not to the level suggested here!!!
And now, ladies and gentlemen, is when the story does something nuts.
Yes.
NOW.
Because Doctor Death’s plan is to make the top people in the presidential line of succession kill themselves!!!
This is why we have “Congressman Sloan” as the Speaker of the House, instead of John W. McCormack.
Doctor Death debuted with the desire to kill the entire world, so you might be thinking that he’s trying to start nuclear war.
But nope, he just wants to be President.
That’s not the weird part.
That would be the comic having the guts to show all three people trying to kill themselves!!!
Obviously they don’t because Negative Man stops them, but it’s amazing this happened at all in a comic under the Comics Code!!!
Now you might be thinking: wasn’t Negative Man supposed to be trapped inside a lead coffin?
That’s because Chief previously dropped by Doctor Death’s base, pretending to look for his keys while he was actually freeing Negative Man with a laser.
So to recap, when Chief met the Doom Patrol the first time…
He already had several adventures with Robotman, who had been trying to kill him and was hunted by the authorities for basically being a terrorist.
Negative Man had single-handedly saved the planet first and later the President.
Elasti-Girl was just there. She won’t get her own serial.
Historical significance: 0/10
This is the last appearance of Doctor Death. To the best of my knowledge he never appears in anything else, so my guess is that Chief kills him behind the scenes.
Silver Age-ness: 9/10
This is a story where the bad guy tricks the hero into picking herbs to make cookies because those herbs can make people kill themselves and he plans to make a guy who works for him become the next President because he looks like the Speaker of the House.
Slightly lowered by actually showing the suicide attempts.
Does it stand the test of time? 4/10
This had potential… there are tons of stories dealing with the Presidential line of succession… and there is SOME excitement in watching Negative Man saving people at the last possible moment.
But generally it falls flat because of the generic villain and the amount of time spent on boring scenes.
I had high hopes for the Negative Man serial, especially since the Robotman one proved to be a trainwreck… but outside of the first part, it really struggled to find ANYTHING to do for the protagonist.