/1.jpg "Doom Patrol: Weight of the Worlds #1")
All hail the Supreme Shape! Gerard Way and the World's Strangest Superheroes return in an all-new series that takes them beyond the borders of time and space! Featuring artwork by acclaimed cartoonist James Harvey, this issue finds the Doom Patrol facing off against the fanatical fitness fiends of planet Orbius and the Marathon Eternal! Meanwhile, Cliff Steele, formerly known as Robotman, must come to terms with his new body of flesh and bone...yet the real test turns out to be something far more frightening: his mom.
THE GOOD:
-I didn't hate the art? I really miss Nick Derington though. For all of the flaws of Gerard Way's original 12-issue run, at least the art was always a pleasure.
-I liked Cliff… a lot actually. I don't remember much about him from the original 12 issue run, so he couldn't have been written that well there. But his story here was great. The only parts of the issue I really enjoyed, if I'm being honest.
THE BAD:
-Sigh. More Gerard Way. Yay… This seems to check all the Gerard Way DP boxes… lazy writing (check), forced weirdness (check), weak characters (check…mostly).
-I don't like Casey at all. In the first Gerard Way series, she was an unnecessary new character who was always shallow as hell. Here she's even worse. I don't think I've read a Doom Patrol run with more dull characters. And Doom Patrol is a series that essentially relies on exactly the opposite. So right there, he's missed the core of the series.
-Man, I do not like how this artist draws Rita. At. All.
-This whole thing felt so shallow. It might look like the "good old Doom Patrol" on the surface, but the story is weak as hell, and it's a drag to read. Especially considering how contrived all the "weirdness" is.
-As if Gerard Way didn't do a bad enough job on the plotting, Jeremy Lambert comes in and gives us this awful script.
-The "Marathon World" maybe could've been done better by a good writer, but here it was just painfully stupid. The execution made it feel like a really bad Cartoon Network show, or even an Illumination movie.
© 2025
people keep telling me to check out Gerard Way's Doom Patrol. i tried issue 1 of his first Young Animal line. it didn't really do anything for me. felt like it was trying to be something that it was not.
Yeah… that's exactly right actually. That forced sense of weirdness stuck with the series in its entirety. Then things got even worse when the schedule was all messed up and half-assed issues came out once every three months. I've heard people talk about this run like it's the best one since Morrison's, which is honestly ridiculous.
yeah. i agree with you 100%. this run isn't even a pimple on Morrison's Doom Patrol's ass.