The DC Universe has a lot of teams and a lot of team books. The amount of Justice Leagues, series, spin-offs, and event series is enough to fill most small libraries on their own. Over the decades, more teams would be added to the universe before the majority of them would slip into obscurity. But one of these teams endures in ways many others weren’t able to by carving out a niche of what their stories would be about. The Doom Patrol could deal with world-shattering cataclysms, but they weren’t the team to deal with Darkseid or the Anti-Monitor. And in The Unstoppable Doom Patrol by Dennis Culver, Chris Burnham, Brian Reber, and Pat Brosseau, the team brings people together more than breaking them apart. 

After the Lazarus Event of the previous year that activated the metagene of dozens of people around the world, there’s been an uptick in the number of metahumans who need help. But when a predatory company called Metagen starts luring these people in for quick cash and cruel experiments, the Doom Patrol steps in. Less shutting the company down and more saving the people involved, the team adds to their own ranks with new members like Beast Girl and Degenerate before crisscrossing the country to save more wayward metahumans. All the while, General Immortus and the gorilla Mallah are plotting something sinister in the background. 

And it’s here where this Doom Patrol series stands out even more. Our threat this time is completely external from the team itself. We have them coming together to recruit more metahumans, training them to deal with their powers, and working with one another. They’re able to just be nice to one another while dealing with General Immortus. Having the team act like the friends they’ve been for the past few decades without those inevitable personality clashes gives the story time to set up more in the background as we’re focused more on team-building. How much of this new amicability is due to their previous Chief being ousted from leadership and replaced by one of Crazy Jane’s alters remains to be seen. 

There’s something in the idea of weirdos and outcasts sticking together to do good—it’s half the reason the X-Men have been a staple of comics for more than half a century—but with the Doom Patrol it feels like a logical step for a team so steeped in the illogical. And the good and weird being done here only helps to expand their world and the team as a whole. While our core group of Robotman, Elasti-Woman, and Negative Man will be the perennial favorite, folding more into their core can only help to make the team feel more familial than a group of disparate strangers. 

Get excited. Get doomed. 

Drew Barth (Episode 331, 485, & 510) resides in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida.