Gerard Way is best known, of course, for his music, as the frontman of My Chemical Romance. But Way has a love of comics that runs way, way back: He published his first book in 1993, and broke through in comics with Umbrella Academy and The True Lives Of The Fabulous Killjoys. And now he’s tackling his biggest project as a writer yet; reviving DC’s storied cult series Doom Patrol for his new imprint Young Animal, arriving Sept. 14.
The Doom Patrol have been oddballs right from their ’60s debut. Written by Arnold Drake and Bob Haney, and drawn by Bruno Premiani, the Patrol weren’t heroes with gifts, but rather misfits saddled with powers that were as much disability as gift. They even bowed out unusually, dying in 1968 defending a small fishing village in Maine. Since then, the Patrol has come back in a number of books, most notably Grant Morrison’s surreal and critically acclaimed run, and focused on the weirdness that always sits just at the edge of superhero comics, a world of sentient transvestite streets, Freudian slips writ in energy blasts and thought projections, and magic coexisting with superscience.
So, what’s Way’s take on it? Check out the first eight pages, with art from Nick Derington, as we meet the Patrol’s first new member, who doesn’t seem to know she’s a superhero just yet.
And celebrating the launch is a host of variant covers:
Brian Bolland
Sanford Greene
Jamie Hernandez
Babs Tarr
Brian Chippendale
Look for Doom Patrol in stores and digitally Wednesday, Sept. 14.
