Unstoppable Doom Patrol #4 // Review
He’s just sat down to a session with the psychotherapist. She’s introducing herself to him again. He typically doesn’t get very far into the conversation before he leaves. She’s okay with that. He’s going to stick around a bit longer than usual in Unstoppable Doom Patrol #4. Writer Dennis Culver continues a strangely patchwork narrative with another enjoyable exploration into the lives of some of DC’s strangest heroes. The visual reality of that exploration is once again brought beautifully to the page by artist David Lafuente. Color is brought to the story courtesy of Brian Reber. The art continues to tie together strange fragments of story in another eerily breezy trip between two covers.
He was helping the rest of the team deal with Animal Vegetable Mineral Man. There was something that happened in the middle of that fight. And he doesn’t want to talk about it. This is nothing new. He hasn’t wanted to talk to the therapist about it at all. She knows that much. Dr. Syncho knows a great deal about a great many things. She channels Fifth Dimensional entities into a super-consciousness that gives her a very advanced and evolved understanding of everything. Maybe this time she’ll reach him.
Culver tackles the Doom Patrol in a series of interrelated events that seem to avoid an overall feeling of momentum. Being action-based, the superhero genre has a tendency to hit the accelerator right away and try to maintain forward momentum throughout the story until it lands on its inevitable resolution. Culver allows moments to play out that don’t necessarily fit into the overall feel of that forward momentum. It might feel directionless, but that directionless energy allows Culver to explore the skewed psyches of his characters in ways that would be impossible under the machinery of a more traditional plot structure. Each of the characters gets a couple of pages in therapy. It’s fun stuff.
Lafuente fills page and panel with interesting detail that never quite overpowers the emotional resonance of what he’s putting on the page. The result feels something quite unlike reality on this side of the comics page while bringing a kind of immersive depth to Culver’s story fragments. Lafuente’s art would be a nebulous mass of ink on the page were it not for the deft work of Reber on colors. The depth and radiance that Reber gives the action define everything beautifully. It all comes together so very, very well visually.
The gorgeous visuals of the issue deeply engage with and amplify the weirdness of Culver’s script. Superhero teams are notoriously filled with neurotics, psychotics, and general dysfunction. They’re almost never given the opportunity to get in-panel psychiatric treatment. It’s fascinating to watch it happen. As weird as it is, the same overall plot COULD be brought to the page by a different writer, and it would be a completely different story. The same could be said of the art and the coloring. The weird fusion of Culver, Lafuente, and Reber has made for one of the more unique experiences on the mainstream comics rack over the course of the past few months. It’s weird to think that the series is over in just three months. It feels like it’s just getting started.
