The Midway City Chief

My Greatest Adventure #80
“The Doom Patrol”
Writers: Arnold Drake and Bob Haney
Penciler: Bruno Premiani
Inker: Bruno Premiani
Editor: Murray Boltinoff
Released: April 18, 1963

If the Cincinnati Bengals had pulled off the win in the AFC Championship game, I could have just shared my post about Bengal from last year.

But thanks to Patrick Mahomes and company, I had to venture out of my Marvel comfort zone looking for a Chief. Since Perry White undoubtedly would have turned down the title, I went with Niles Caulder, the man who assembled (and, in some versions at least, literally disassembled some members of) the Doom Patrol.

I met Robotman in a random issue of “Who's Who” I picked up as a child, but my first exposure to the Chief and the rest of the Doom Patrol was either in Mark Waid, Brian Augustyn and Barry Kitson's “JLA: Year One” or Chris Claremont and John Byrne's reunion on “JLA.” I later wandered into Grant Morrison's extra-bizarre interpretation of the team. Among the many reboots, it's been revealed the Chief not only helped Doom Patrol members overcome the bizarre circumstances that granted them superpowers, he caused them in the first place.

For this post though, we'll go back to his very first appearance where the Chief is a mysterious, demanding, but much less sinister leader, perhaps comparable to Kansas City Coach Andy Reid in that great State Farm commercial.*

In an unnamed city,** the Chief addresses a trio of shadowy figures, offering them a chance to overcome “a cruel and fantastic fate” and go on incredible adventures for the benefit of humanity. Then we meet each of his guests as he details their strange origins and powers.

Movie star Rita Farr cheated death while doing her own stunts on location in Africa, but she was exposed to strange vapors rising from the ground that gave her the initially uncontrollable ability to grow and shrink, turning her into Elasti-Girl.

Test pilot Larry Trainor was flying an experimental rocket plane that malfunctioned, causing him to black out as the aircraft hurtled through “the still uncharted wave belts of inner space.” As you might expect, this left him with the ability to create a Negative Man, an energy avatar capable of flight and other superhuman feats that must return to his body within 60 seconds or he dies.

Finally, there's Cliff Steele, aka Robotman, a thrill-seeker gravely injured in a racing accident. The only part of his body that could be saved was his brain, which was transplanted into an orange, robotic body by a brilliant surgeon who turns out to be... the Chief.

He pitches the trio on using their bizarre abilities to serve mankind while he guides things from his high-tech headquarters. They aren't convinced until a conveniently timed bomb threat allows them to team up and do the kind of good the Chief proposed.

The story moves into chapter two where a senior citizen in military regalia that reminds me of the Tick's ancient foe, the Terror, is monitoring the group from a distance. It's clear he and the Chief share a history, though a bit odd for a brand-new super team to already have an arch-enemy spying on them midway through their first appearance.

The villain, known as General Immortus, is after an alien spacecraft which the Chief's equipment tells him contains a machine capable of turning any matter into atomic fuel. Because it could also be used to create a bomb capable of destroying “every planet in the solar system,” the team's first mission is to recover the atomic converter before the General and his agents can.

Into the field they go, with Robotman exchanging his casual attire for black briefs. They tangle with a weird tank deployed by the ship as a defense mechanism before facing off against General Immortus himself.

The General gets the upper hand, shutting down Robotman's body with a polarization ray, then trapping the Negative Man entity outside its host's body. But he forgot about Elasti-Girl, who shrank down and hid inside Robotman's metal skull. She shuts off the ray disabling Cliff, allowing him to smack around General Immortus' henchmen and their leader.

The Doom Patrol take the atomic converter and flee from the ship, which appears to be repairing itself and preparing to take off. That's exactly what it does before General Immortus can escape. But he's a smart guy, used to getting what he wants, so he tries to steer the ship and... it doesn't go well.

The story closes out with a suggestion of a future romantic rivalry between Elasti-Girl's male teammates before a post-mortem of the adventure back at the Chief's HQ and a newspaper article bestowing the team's name.

It's a fun introduction that doesn't feel as “clean” as I would have expected for this era of comics. The team assembled by the Chief are stricken with crises of confidence and fear about the strange conditions that have given them the chance to be superheroes. And they don't come across as experts in their field right from the start, as they struggle, particularly Robotman, whose left arm is disabled fighting the alien tank and who never gets back to full strength until the Chief repairs him at the end.

The Chief's paralysis keeping him in his headquarters and unable to adventure alongside the others makes sense to a degree, yet seems a little dated today when we're used to seeing people in real life live with and overcome disabilities. The story never makes him seem incapable though and emphasizes his brilliant intellect. His insistence that the others overcome the “harsh blow” life has dealt them seems a little gruff, but ultimately of good intent. Knowledge of future storylines in which his motives aren't as pure lends an extra dimension to some of his words, perhaps even suspicion about the initial bomb threat. Whether that's something that was always there and elaborated on by future writers or strictly informed by hindsight is debatable.

Coming soon, equal time for a comic analogue for the Philadelphia Eagles.

* - Now I'm imagining the Chief Sharpie-ing a mustache on Robotman's face.

** - Later revealed to be Midway City.