Cthulhu Patrol - Doom Patrol #14

Order and Doom

Doom Patrol #14

Cover Date: November 1988

Released: 26th July 1988

⋅ Writers: Paul Kupperberg ⋅ Pencilers: Erik Larsen ⋅ 

⋅ Inkers: Jim Sanders ⋅ Colourists: Michele Wolfman ⋅

⋅ Letterers: John Workman ⋅ Editors: Robert Greenberger ⋅

Continued from here.

We open with a lovely full-page splash of a bandaged Pee Gee telling the Patrol what a massive threat Pythia is to all reality, though spoilers she never shows up in another comic! For anyone, interested Pythia was the title of the Oracle of Delphi, which is why the name will be reused later for one of the Amazon, and by later I mean this very month which might explain why the Lord of Chaos didn't return.

Several of the Patrol seemed to be a little too wrapped up in their own subplots to take it seriously until Kara gets a little miffed about how they're not taking this as seriously as they should. Cliff (Robotman) being the champion that he is settles things down and takes Power Girl to get a cup of relaxing tea whilst she fills them in on the whole deal.

We then get Celsius, one of those wrapped up in her own stuff, checking her computer that's been hacking the NSA to get information on Niles Caulder, who's done something very bad as is the norm really. The NSA being, in the DC Universe at least, competent shut down her hack but she manages to log off before they can trace things back to the Doom Patrol's headquarters. We then cut to Niles, in Washington, DC, who's in a pretty bad way for apparently betraying and abandoning the Doom Patrol.

After an establishing shot of the protectors outside the Patrol's building, we cut to their fairly regular building where Pee Gee is explaining what happened with her combat with Pythia and how she got more monstrous as the fight went on. Apparently, when we left the fight she got even more monstrous, and that form railed on Kara and threw her away which led to her crashing through their roof. Tempest must make a really mean cuppa because Pee Gee is much calmer now she even apologizes to Lodestone, who if you remember was sunbathing on the roof, from scaring the crap out of her by landing near when she was sunbathing. Being the heroes, if sometimes reluctantly, that they are Doom Patrol volunteer to help, only for the kitchen they're in being teleported to a farm in the mid-west by Pythia herself.

Pythia arrives, mostly just mouths now and they proceed to both taunt and fight the heroes. Meanwhile, we see a mysterious figure watching from the farmhouse near where they all landed, this is later revealed to be one Dorothy Spinner and a character that will play a bigger role much later down the line. And if anyone wondering if the creators were trying to make a Wizard of Oz reference, like for her original appearance in the television show., she's dressed in a classic gingham dress, along with her hair in pigtails, and they make we're not in Oz reference almost immediately. Whilst she doesn't use any of her actual power here she does play a fair important role in figuring out how to defeat Pythia.

Talking of, a giant green hand reaches down and snatched the team up bringing them all to a dimension that seems to be up mostly from Pythia herself. To show how disorientating the whole experience is the page is printed landscape, including the speech bubbles. This makes for a very striking and evocative battleground where the Doom Patrol faces off against winged demons and Pythia herself, but they seem to fall one by one, some in a very graphic fashion until on Pee Gee, and Cliff calls her that in the comic so it's allowable, Celsius and Dorothy are the only ones left. In desperation, and a desire to help, Dorothy throws white rocks at Pythia, the only thing that seems to hurt Pythia. It almost makes her reveal that the other Doomers aren't dead only held in a forcefield.

Picking up that the rocks hurt the Lord of Chaos Power Girl and Celsius throw more of them at Pythia until she expels them back into the real world. Dorothy is made an honorary member of Doom patrol on the spot and Kara agree's that she'll carry the kitchen back to their headquarters. With all the damage she's caused hopefully they have good insurance, or Kara is feeling very generous.

There is a gem of a good idea, that alas never gets picked up, of Kara as a mystical warrior against the forces of Chaos and storyline setup in her four mini-series. This is the only place we see it through and there is a weakness in that as a powerhouse Power Girl really isn't equipped for these kinds of stories. Whilst she's smart she tends to rely on her fists to solve problems, something that we see here isn't necessarily a strength when fighting the Lords of Chaos. Her traveling through the mystical side of the DC universe could have been interesting, but we're a good few years before that became an option and Power Girl has a different future ahead of her!

As for Doom Patrol, they seem suitably soapy what with everything weaving into the story, more in the previous issue, though only a few seem to have any real character right now. I'm used to the later Doom Patrol, full of full-on weirdness and shenanigans with only a few of the characters that I recognize. Case in point there's one character, a kid called Blaze, that I've not mentioned at all because he does almost nothing to the story. They're fine, but not what I expected.

To be honest, that sums up the issue as a whole, it's a solid well-told superhero tale that entertained, but doesn't have much to make it stand out from the rest storytelling-wise. The visual flourishes, as in the pages being on their side, do raise things a little and it's well put together once you get used to the weird proportions of some of the characters. Though it mostly only happens to a few characters so I guess it is a design choice to make the very large cast of characters easy to distinguish from each other.

It's not a comic I'd never want to read again, but then again I'm not in a hurry to track down the rest of the run.