Nothing says fun like the musty smell of your favorite comic book! Mmmmmmmm...musty. Plus...what can you say about the incredible illustrations that come from Japan? OH YA!! You know what I'm talking about...Huh, Huh! No worries comic fans, we've gotcha covered! Everything Comic, Animation, Adaptation and Merchandising related will be found right here...all with the same felling just like when you watched your very first TRUE Japanese, un-rated Anime...all by yourself...cozy.

Tales from the Longbox! “Doom Patrol”

For some reason, I like weird stuff, even though I’m a normal guy: I go to church on Sundays, decorate the Christmas tree with family every year, and celebrate birthdays with candles and cake. On the flip side, I’ve traveled to the UFO festival in Roswell, purchased a Nazi dagger for 10 bucks at a swap meet, and have a massive tiki mug collection. Does this make me a weirdo? Maybe. I like to think that I’m a connoisseur of the unusual things in life. And of course, this interest spills into the comic world as well. For every five Justice Leagues and Fantastic Fours, there’s always one Doom Patrol. Ever since their conception, the Doom Patrol has always been on the stranger side, fighting out-there aliens and strange monstrosities, which makes sense because the team is made up of the odd and forgotten (a half robot-half man and a dude wrapped up in bandages). Unfortunately the group never achieved real popularity and faded away…until Grant Morrison came around.

After a mediocre 18-issue run in the 80’s, DC gave Grant Morrison, who is pretty well known for throwing his characters through the ringer (anyone read his run on Animal Man?) and targeted the Doom Patrol with his odd writing style. Morrison kept the characters he wanted, got rid of the ones he didn’t and altered the ones in the middle. Robotman was kept the same way, a new woman named Crazy Jane (a schizophrenic with 64 different personalities and 64 different superpowers) was added to the roster, and Negative Man was turned into a divine hermaphrodite, which is the most logical place to take the character. Through his run, Morrison brought the Doom Patrol back to their zany, out-of-this-world roots, with abstract villains, mind-boggling ideas, and other strange adventures, stretching them to the limits of sanity and because of it, into the Vertigo comic line.

Just a few days ago, a friend brought over the first Morrison trade. At first, I was skeptical because while I love the newest run by Keith Giffen, I’ve been burned by Grant Morrison before: Final Crisis, Batman RIP, etc. But I really liked his Animal Man run and I love those wacky weirdos, so I gave it a shot…and I tore through it in under an hour. I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t put it down… it was just so WEIRD. Robotman was wrestling with existential ideas of life while the new Negative Man/Woman tried to create some sort of closure from his/her/its/their old life/lives, while a group of people with scissors for hands tried to un-make reality. WOWZERS. And no matter how strange it got, I didn’t jump ship-because this is who these characters are, this is their life. It didn’t make sense when Superman grabbed the dream machine and sung Darkseid to death but it’s practical for a crazy Negative Man to be knee-deep in an alternate world of shadow people. Morrison’s out of control storytelling finds the perfect home with the Doom Patrol: a group too bizarre to survive on crossover events alone. So I guess in the case of weirdos, it takes one to know one. I’m excited to read the next installments, but worried about my sanity. Oh well-my brain had a good run.