No-one brings the weird shit quite like Grant Morrison. As ever, Doom Patrol veers between sharp satire and utter incomprehensibility, sometimes within a single panel. Highlights of this instalment include: the secret origins of Flex Mentallo and his attempts to flex hard enough to turn the Pentagon into a circle. A supervillain called the Beard Hunter who has some truly great lines, such as “You know where I’ve been, mom. I’ve been out on the streets, fighting my lonely war against facial hair....

I read this in the span of a few hours, having never read any previous Doom Patrol comics. Out of the other Grant Morrison series I've read (The Invisibles and the New X-Men), I liked this the best; however, it didn't blow my mind. I blame the artists. Their failure to clearly illustrate Morrison's absurdist dialogue and actions renders panels dull and nonsensical. For a book laden with so many Da Da and Surrealist motifs, you'd think there would be some visual interest here. NOPE! Additionally,...

I didn't even finish this book, which for a comic book is saying something. Frankly, I got about half-way through it when I realized I wasn't enjoying it, and that the loud, rambling nonsense that this series was had totally no bearing on anything and was only serving to clutter my mind with more junk.This series, I think I've decided, is sort of a catch all for popular/junk culture. Weirdness erupts from its juxtaposition of two innocuous elements of culture, much like how a surrealist painting...

More absurdity and awesomeness. World: Art is amazing informing the oddness and absurdity of the book. The colors also are all over the place making it disorienting in the best possible way. The world building, holy wow. Just read it. This is book 4 I don't need to tell readers that it's nuts. However I'd like to say that the topical and allegorical pieces in the world building are wonderful and good commentary to the times and informs the story which was very very topical this arc. Story: The d...

Imagine if Bill Griffith (Zippy the Pinhead) wrote a superhero comic book and it wasn't the Flaming Carrot. Now that's what I'm talking about!In the early 90's, Grant Morrison (somehow!) took over your decent-but-predictable-pretty-average comic book the Doom Patrol and flucked it up beyond all recognition. You could call what he did the comic book as surrealist art, but I think that's a little too precious- what he really did was weird it up, and include a lot of bonafide "random" humor and sil...

Overall, a strong volume, minus the penultimate story.Musclebound (#42-44). Stuck right in the middle of Morrison's run, this is perhaps the best arc since "Crawling from the Wreckage". Flex is just a wonderful creation, as evidenced by the fact that he's another character who has survived to more recent days, and the monster under the Pentagon is another neat nemesis, especially combining the idea of Graham's summoning with the Pentagon's quest to destroy creativity and drive conformity, which

This is a much more coherent volume than the previous one (if you can ever describe The Doom Patrol as coherent in any context). The bulk of the story completes the Flex Mentallo storyline and features the team venturing deep into the heart of the Pentagon to uncover some gruesome secrets, as well as Flex's true origin. The story has a kind of The Divine Comedy feel to it as our heroes descend the layers into their version of Hell. There are a few minor stories before we kick off into the next m...

I'm really not sure where to even begin with this. Volume 4 of Morrison's run on Doom Patrol takes us through the secret origin of a muscle-bound superhero from previous volumes, the appearance of someone who may or may not be Satan, the reappearance of a new new Brotherhood of Dada and, possibly best of all, a lone vigilante who is the best at what he does. And what he does is hunt beards.Bizarre, funny, sometimes feeling a little like it's being weird for its own sake, like other stories in th...

The absurdity is becoming absurd. A bit of normality wouldn't go amiss!

Recommended for mature audiences. I guess I don't qualify. Must confess I know nothing of "Doom Patrol" but one gathers it is tongue in cheek superhero satire. Might have enjoyed this more if I was younger and less jaded.

Grant Morrison has made a career out of throwing around tons of wildly creative ideas and waiting to see which ones stick. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But I admire his creativity and willingness to try to work out even his strangest ideas (and DC's willingness to let him do as he likes, for that matter) whether it works or not. And the Doom Patrol that I've read so far, especially this volume, is where he did a remarkable job of pulling it all together.There are enough head-tilting...

Things get back on track and we have some of the better issues in the series contained in this volume. Musclebound and Beard Hunter stand out as great comics in particular. There are still some missteps and a bit too much nonsense (even for me, an avowed Morrisonite). The quality of this series varies pretty wildly from issue to issue. It really must have been something to be reading this as it was being released.

Much more engaging than Vol. 3, but then again I was probably in a better mindset to read DP when I read this. Flex Mentallo's origin story is included, along with an absurdist yet humourous take on a version of the Punisher who only killed men with Beards due to his hatred of facial hair since he was hormonally imbalanced. Funny but ridiculous. Further personality development of Crazy Jane, and yet another new body for Cliff. Rebus transforms somewhat and Dorothy is investigated a little deeper...

So far the best of the series. All the new characters and the old one that returned to the drama of bizarreness, I loved every single of them. Although I'm getting sad about the fact that only two volumes are left from Grant's run.

This volume brings the reader the true origin of Flex Mentallo, the coming of the beard hunter (yes, as in facial hair), some debauchery that see the arrival of the Sex-Men, and maybe some more problems with that Painting? This earlier Morrison work, although innovative at time appears to be weird for the sake of being weird, where his later material is weird, but with weirdness integral to the plot. 6 out of 12.In case you missed it at the end of my last review.. the TV show is way better.

Ah, so this is why ‘Doom Patrol’ is so loved! Up until this point, I felt that this series was hit-and-miss. Sometimes it felt like Morrison was trying to be weird for the sake of being weird, clever for the sake of being clever; whereas the high points of the series were few and far between (though very high they were). This volume, however, is the first consistently excellent book in the series.‘Doom Patrol vol. 4: Musclebound’ is not a single solid story. Like all of the other volumes so far,...

Flex Mentallo is a fun idea. I loved how his origins mixed in with the ads in the back of old comic books. I also dug the return of the Men from N.O.W.H.E.R.E. and the Brotherhood of Dada. The pltos do have a tendency to repeat. A villain appears that spouts a bunch of nonsense while trying to destroy reality until the Doom Patrol stops them. Cliff and Crazy Jane continue to be the backbone of the series, typically they jump in at the last second to rescue us from absurdity. I love their relatio...

The Flex Mentallo stuff was actually pretty good. Unfortunately, that's the only ting that was good about this. The characters and events are random and bizarre. But the plots are all exactly the same: some surreal villain spouts nonsense and tries to destroy reality. Then the Doom Patrol gets messed up by the villain and then some chance power or character some how saves the day at the end. Grant Morrison did much better stuff for other series like Batman and X-Men.

Last night when I reread the title story in this volume, I thought to myself, "Oh yeah -- this is when I stopped liking Doom Patrol." There's a lot that feels off about "Musclebound," and saying that something feels 'off' in Doom Patrol is like saying that something feels 'off' on a Frank Zappa record. Like, what exactly did you expect, my dude?But I think what's weird here is that this is the point in the series when it feels like Grant Morrison starts trying. The first twenty-or-so issues aren...

Reaches a new, profound level of absurdity. The first half of this volume tells the story of Flex Mentallo, a mysterious, amnesiac superhero with the power to flex his muscles so hard that he can alter reality. His backstory is intriguing and funny, though as the story continues it begins to border on nonsense. A fun, ridiculous sort of nonsense, though. The remainder of the book is mostly buildup to the final two issues, but these chapters feature several laugh-out-loud moments, and one particu...