Kara Patrol - Doom Patrol #13

Power and Chaos

Doom Patrol #13
Cover Date: October 1988
Released: 28th June 1988

⋅ Writers: Paul Kupperberg ⋅ Pencilers: Erik Larsen ⋅ 
⋅ Inkers: Al Gordon ⋅ Colourists: Michele Wolfman ⋅
⋅ Letterers: John Workman ⋅ Editors: Robert Greenberger ⋅

As I might have mentioned this before but the joy of a read-along like this is that it takes you places you wouldn't normally visit. Now I'm aware of the Doom Patrol, but apart from the TV show, which is amazing, and the last series, which was okay, I've not read any previous Doom Patrol.

Like its spiritual cousin X-Men, which has a complicated relationship with, basically, they started with very similar teams and whilst written to close to copy each other, maybe as they artists worked in the same studio, it's very soap opera like with may subplots running through the entire issue. And into this is thrown Power Girl!

Unlike the Power Girl issues, all of the characters here have the space to be themselves, the advantage of an ongoing compared to a four-issue mini. And with the lack of a previously on it's difficult to get a hold of what's going on and who is who. Normally I can figure out which character is which but for the first time I need to check the wiki to figure everyone out. 

So as I understand it...

Larry Trainor (Negative Man) is back and somehow free of the Negative spirit, but this upsets Valentina Vostok (Negative Woman) which causes the to come to blows. Robotman is back in a body after being a brain in a jar for a period of time. Rhea Jones (Lodestone) loves  Joshua Clay (Tempest), but he only has eyes for Valentina, still, she forgets about this in time for some rooftop sunbathing, because we obviously need some cheesecake for the issue (spoiler we do not!). Tempest who is so punk that he has very questionable underwear, which is definitely not cool now (and wasn't then) is on the run from the police and does a runner from a raid, only to bump into the Doom Patrol who is looking for them.

Meanwhile in Power Girl stops her Saturday work, probably making up for all the time away in her own series, to face a threat in SoHo, New York. A flame-haired supervillain, Pythia (2), who is apparently is a servant of the Lords of Chaos and get's more and more monstrous as the fight goes on. She eventually beats Power Girl, though unlike her own series (look he wrote both so I'm going to keep comparing them) Kara actually put up a solid fight here. once she's eventually defeated she is thrown away from the battle only to land on Doom Patrol's lap.

Phew!

I can't really comment much on the Doom Patrol bits, I can just about follow the various plots but I don't have the knowledge of previous issues to understand everything going on. All I know is the super weird Doom Patrol, which isn't really shown here. It's solid soapy superheroics, which seems to be the opinion of the lovely people on Twitter who I asked about the run as a whole.

The Power Girl parts, which is why we're here is just a single fight one that gets worse for Kara as the fight goes along. But with one fight that scattered through the issue she seems to put on a better show, yes she loses bad but with just one fight you get the feeling of how hards she's fighting.

I guess the Doom Patrol stuff seems okay and the Power Girl stuff is decent, which makes it as a whole alright. I wouldn't read it for either part, but I enjoyed it as I read along.

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