I think I just don't get Morrison when he gets all spacy and existential. ( )

Starts out really promising, but promptly gets bogged down in an alien story that just seems like weirdness for its own sake. I'm going to press on as I'm curious to see how Flex Mentallo connects back into all of this, but I'm not wild about it. ( )

Weird and fantastic! The cover art is so utterly gorgeous, it certainly puts the current T A bozos to shame. (Though the 2005 rerelease cover is, of course, a T A shot, which is so lame considering all the gorgeous art within. Idiots. Simon Bisley's work is a million times better than that smarm. *sighhhhh*) ( )

After a wonderfully inventive start with Danny the Street's suitably camp and stylish debut, the second story feels like the longeurs of Morrison's run on the title.

The first half integrates the trademark surrealism of this version of Doom Patrol with sly commentary on the terror of normality, so there's a strong heart to the story.

The second story never quite gels though. While Morrison throws around plenty of wild ideas it's a story about an alien war about abstract concepts with Doom Patrol as essentially wallpaper, so I could never quite connect with what was going on. Perhaps at this point Morrison hadn't quite got the skill to get those ideas across, so it's best seen as an interesting but flawed experiment, grim rather than witty. Such are the penalties of writing to a monthly schedule - the creative treadmill inevitably means some storylines won't work as there isn't time to perfect them. ( )