Originally made up of the following heroes Animal Man,Cave Carson,Congorilla,Dolphin,Dane Dorrance,Rick Flag Jr,Rip Hunter and the Immortal Man. They only made a few appearances pre-Crisis. Post-Crisis they showed up in the Resurrection Man title. I love the pre-Crisis team because of how it was a group of almost unknowns. Plus it has Animal Man.
In the early 80s I wasn't reading much from DC. But New Teen Titans caught my attention. Unlike the older Titans team,which was mostly made up of sidekicks, this team was a nice mixture of sidekicks and new characters. With 3 new characters created just for this series. Starfire, the alien Princess who comes to Earth to escape her crazy sister. Raven,the daughter of a demon who helps form the Titans so they can defeat her father. And then Cyborg,a former high school all star athlete who had to have most of his body replaced with robot parts. Also I love that former Doom Patrol member Changling was brought in. Then you add in Marv Wolfman writing the series and George Perez doing the pencils, you end up with one of the 80s best series.
This series started off as 5 comics that came with various Atari 2600 games. I loved them. So when I saw the first issue of the second series on the spinner rack I had to grab it. This second series was one of the best science fiction series of the 80s. In many ways it reminds me of the UK classic science fiction show Blake's 7. Sadly thanks to rights issues this series will not be reprinted. And the Atari Force more than likely won't appear again. Thankfully the second series is easy to find in the cheap bins. I managed to get all 20 issues for around a buck an issue.
Set in the World War II era, this series was set on Earth 2. I loved how Roy Thomas used all the various heroes that DC had bought the rights too. And All Star Squadron gave some lessor known characters the chance to shine. Then the Crisis happened. And this series got royally fucked. This is another series that I managed to get a run of out of the cheap bins.
I have went back and read lots of the Silver Age Doom Patrol run. I do enjoy them. But the second series was so much better. Once Grant Morrison took over the comic went places that very few comics have ever been. How can you hate a comic that has a living sentient street. Or Crazy Jane, a woman that has multiple personality disorder. With each personality has a different power. Then there is Dorthy Spanner, a simian looking young lady. Who can bring her imaginary friends to life. Or Rebis, a hermaphrodite who has the minds of 3 different people.
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