New Teen Titans #15 (1982)
by Marv Wolfman & George Pérez
The Doom Patrol gets an epilogue to their original run, and so does their retrospective.
Last time Madame Rouge and General Zahl managed to capture the Teen Titans (plus Robotman), and now they’ve trapped them inside some kind of protoplasm.
Specifically, it’s something that turns you back into a more primitive species.
All while Zahl’s soldiers are massacring the fictional country of Zandia.
This is all spectacular thanks to the Pérez artwork, but it’s a bit weird for the DC Universe right?
I mean Rouge says that nobody will care if the entire country is exterminated because it’s THAT corrupt… and the series will basically prove her right.
That’s the problem of sharing a superhero universe with Superman.
Meanwhile Beast Boy meets the NEW Brotherhood of Evil, which in addition to The Brain and Monsieur Mallah now has several additions.
I’m a big fan of Pérez’s redesign for The Brain, but it’s ridiculous that he still keeps the blip-bloops.
The new villains include the shapeshifting & toxic Plasmus, the teleporting Warp, Phobia who can generate fear in others…
…and Hougan who can use techno-voodoo.
Those are some of the greatest Teen Titans villains ever, and Houngan.
Beast Boy wonders how The Brain and Monsieur Mallah survived the explosion that destroyed their original base. The solution is perhaps a bit goofy but matches the tone of the original series.
The Brain is after revenge, so his plans match with Beast Boy’s for now.
Notice Starfire doesn’t turn into a Pseudo-Neanderthal like the others, since her alien species apparently evolved from cats.
Since the Brotherhood has access to a guy who can teleport, it doesn’t take much before they attack Madame Rouge.
On one hand, Beast Boy appreciates the assist from the villains…
…but these are people who took WILLINGLY AND UNIRONICALLY the name “Brotherhood of Evil”.
The new villains are pretty powerful! Plasums can kill anyone he touches, Phobia has vaguely-defined fear powers, Warp can just teleport you into outer space…
…and Houngan is there.
Robotman frees everyone thanks to Cyborg’s White Sound Blaster, setting it for an unbelievable 50,000 decibels.
That’s FAR from the most ridiculous use of that weapon, as Cyborg routinely boasts that it fires one million decibels.
To give you an idea of how insane that is… the decibel scale is logarithmic, meaning:
-a 100 decibel sound wouldn’t be 100 times louder than a 1 decibel sound: it would be almost 8 billion times louder
-anything louder than 194 decibels is not a sound, it’s a blast wave
-the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated caused a 224 decibel blast wave
A quick calculation tells me that 50,000 decibels would have 104,977 times more energy than 224 decibels.
That number is so UTTERLY INSANE that I can’t even find an analogy to properly describe it, but giving it my best…
There are supposed to be 1080 atoms in the observable universe.
If the observable universe was entirely filled with atoms with no empty space left, you would need around 10109 atoms.
104,977 is still 4,868 orders of magnitude larger than that number.
In other words, what Robotman just unleashed should be MORE DESTRUCTIVE THAN THE LARGEST NUKE EVER BY AN UNFATHOMABLY HIGH NUMBER… and all it does is break some glass.
Sounds legit.
(writers: this is why you don’t mess with logarithmic scales)
Raven uses her powers to cure Mallah from the wounds he received in battle, and surprisingly he protects her.
This is the best character development Monsieur Mallah ever gets, since he was a stereotype in the Silver Age and will be turned into a joke by Grant Morrison.
Robotman and Beast Boy are understandably more interested in Zahl and Madame Rouge.
Zahl ends up killing himself when he tries to shoot Robotman.
As cathartic as it is to see a Nazi die, it’s a bittersweet ending for Robotman’s quest.
Beast Boy can be UTTERLY TERRIFYING when he tries.
He then shoves her against some of the machinery, which ends up electrocuting her.
This kills her, but not before allowing her “good side” to say a few words.
And the Brotherhood of Evil evacuates the flying island, with The Brain adding that he has plans for Zandia.
In exchange for the help, Beast Boy agreed to let the Brotherhood go. Which is in line with the original series, I guess, since they never really bothered capturing the villains.
In the end, Raven summarizes the moral of the story…
…Beast Boy is reunited with Mento…
…and we close off with a dedication to the Doom Patrol. Both the characters and the original creative team.
Historical significance: 6/10
All the new members of the Brotherhood of Evil… Phobia, Plasmus, Warp and a MUCH lesser extent Houngan, become regular Teen Titans villains.
Surprisingly enough, it’s not THAT important for the Doom Patrol: as we’ve already seen they all return one way or the other.
Silver Age-ness: 0/10
Waaaay too much murder.
Does it stand the test of time? 9/10
We’re still in one of the best parts of the Wolfman & Pérez run, and this is a solid issue on its own. My only minor complain is that the Teen Titans are little more than side characters in their own series; the story would have benefitted from being an adventure featuring only Beast Boy and Robotman. Maybe one additional Titan would have been fine, but here they’re mostly wasted.
As a final tribute to the Doom Patrol it’s a touching one, and it doesn’t invalidate the bittersweet ending of the original run since this is BARELY more optimistic than that.
And that was it for the Doom Patrol retrospective. I cannot recommend enough the Morrison run, as well as the Rachel Pollack one that follows it. They’re both masterpieces in their own right, but they both fall way outside of the scope of this site.
The Doom Patrol’s spot in the rotation will be taken by a Superman retrospective, looking at some of his famous (and infamous) stories over the decades.
The Silver Age quotient in this issue is actually pretty high. What could be more Silver Age (and ridiculous) then floating an entire supervillains’ city-like compound in a bubble and rocketing it thousands of miles from Uganda to the Gulf of Bothnia? I know what: getting rid of your enemies by putting them in a “devolving pit”! (Not to mention the hilariously impractical way in which the Brain and Monsieur Mallah saved themselves from Rouge and Zahl’s missile, with handy replicas of themselves hidden underneath a revolving floor of the Brain’s lab.)
Thanks for this retrospective. It helped fill in some gaps in my knowledge of DP.
I read these Titans issues in real time, but I remember so little about them. Gar was portrayed as the youngest Titan, but he clearly had a lot of adventures before this era. It’s hard to reconcile his portrayal in DP with his portrayal in NTT. You have to truly suspend your disbelief in chronology, for one.
Of the DP, I think I related the most to Larry. Not sure why. Body horror was part of him as well as Cliff. But Larry could send a “negative” form of himself to do amazing things while his physical body was incapacitated. i wished I could do that when I felt powerless.
I liked the idea that most of the Doom Patrol had died and never been resurrected–like Bucky. Their fate adds a sober reality to superhero fantasies. Alas, fictional characters never stay dead. But there was a profound truth while it lasted.
I’ve been a fan of the Doom Patrol since the ’70s when I happened upon DP #97 in a back issue bin. It was one of the most insane comics I had read at that point and I followed the group through its highs and lows since then. Thanks for the retrospective!