Among the comic book titles leading the charge into the Dawn of DC publishing initiative is Unstoppable Doom Patrol, helmed by Dennis Culver and Chris Burnham. Because of popular demand, the series order was extended by an additional issue than initially intended. For this issue, Culver is joined by artist David Lafuente while each member of the Doom Patrol undergoes psychoanalytical therapy courtesy the team's de facto psychiatrist Dr. Syncho.
In an exclusive interview with CBR, Unstoppable Doom Patrol writer Dennis Culver revealed the origins of the added issue, explained how the issue speaks the wider story and its characters, and teased what fans can expect next as the Doom Patrol towards their final showdown against the villainous General Immortus.
CBR: How was it working with David Lafuente to put this therapy-centric interlude together?
Dennis Culver: It was really cool! It was an interesting thing because this issue when we ended up adding it, I was already done with the rest of the series. We knew we wanted it to be in the middle, so I got to come back and look at the rest of the series as a whole and really hit the parts that we didn't have room or time for. I really wanted to dig deep into the emotional cores of all the characters and hit on that in a way we didn't get to in the main issues. I always loved those old X-Factor therapy issues, and I thought it'd be fun to do that with a Doom Patrol twist.
We have Dr. Syncho, who's the team therapist, and she's channeling Fifth Dimension beings, so I thought we could manifest all the things that they're talking about and interacting with. I was figuring out how we were going to do those double-page spreads, and David Lafuente has done stuff like that before and is the perfect artist for that. He was able to take the crazy thing I put together and really make it just beautiful. It's like getting six posters in that comic!
And so many of those spreads are back-to-back! You guys really went for it.
Yeah, it's a really ambitious issue, and I love how it all came together. It looks so cool, and not to undersell it, Brian Reber's colors -- he's worked with David before, and he's the main colorist on the book. He made it sing. He took all those complicated backgrounds and made them look cosmic and cool. I'm really happy with how the issue came out.
With all the new characters you've introduced in Unstoppable Doom Patrol and the Lazarus Planet prologue, what appealed to you about giving Degenerate the spotlight?
I felt like he was the logical entry point for that. In Issue #2, when we meet Dr. Syncho, [Degenerate] is coming out of her office upset and angry. He doesn't want to share his feelings. He doesn't want to get into it. If we're coming back to Dr. Syncho, he's the guy. What happens when that big, angry facade starts to crack a little, and he starts to show his belly, even if he doesn't want to? Getting him to open up was neat and was a way to get the concept of Dr. Syncho on the table as fast as possible and get us moving.
He's an interesting character to me, and I call him a "Dick Hulk" because he's got to be mean in order to have his powers work. When you see him in his non-powered form, he's this albino guy who's overweight and doesn't love himself. If he can be a little bit of a dick, he can bulk out, look a little muscular and handsome. He may not be as smart as he was, but he's willing to do that. That's super interesting to me to see somebody willing to be an asshole in order to make themselves feel better. I think that's relatable because we all know people like that.
We're starting to see General Immortus' plans escalate halfway through the series. Why did you want to make him this story's principal antagonist?
You'll see this unfold once we get to his major plan. He's their Magneto, for lack of a better term. He's this original villain, but he's this decrepit old man and a silly villain, too. I wanted to take him and make him scary. As things progress, we'll see that develop. What he has in mind is pretty horrific, and once we get to Issue #6, we call that "Stoppable Part One." It's when his assembled brotherhood attacks, and he unleashes his plan. It's a two-parter at the end, and once you see what he's doing, not only if you've been following this run but if you know all the Doom Patrol stuff, it's going to click together in a way that you're not ready for.
Degenerate and the new, younger characters serve as POV characters into how weird the Doom Patrol can be. What was it about having this perspective into the wacky adventures of the team that appealed to you?
Beast Girl is the angel POV character, and Degenerate is the devil POV character, like double the POV characters. Degenerate is going to be the guy who's always like, "That's really stupid. What is that?" Whereas Beast Girl is just happy to be there and is amazed by everything. It's fun being able to bounce off those things that you might be feeling as a reader, to have somebody there to verbalize those things. I love those characters, and I feel like readers respond to them. You can't help but love Beast Girl, and you love to hate Degenerate, and that's by design.
Links to the wider Dawn of DC story are prevalent in this book, with Peacemaker using a double agent to keep an eye on the Doom Patrol. How was it incorporating those elements into the series?
Well, all the writers talk. I've known Josh Williamson for nearly 20 years, maybe more. He was my retailer when I first moved to L.A., and we both ended up living in Portland at the same time. We've co-written some books together and things like that, and I've known those plans were in the works. I think using Peacemaker for Doom Patrol is a little more interesting than using someone like Amanda Waller because Amanda Waller is a little darker than we're at with the Doom Patrol right now.
Having Peacemaker be the guy, of course, he'd make giant robots in his own image to chase down metahumans. Those Peacehammers are really delightful to me, and having him with General Blanche is an interesting way to play off each other. He's always there in the background moving things around [and] developing that storyline but also keeping it tied into a larger Dawn of DC story that's going to be evolving.
Jane has been the Doom Patrol's new Chief since the start of the series, but as we see in the interlude, even though she's more altruistic than Niles Caulder, she's not as stable as she thought.
Well, Jane and the Chief are two different identities in the same construct of Kay Challis, that's the character's name. Jane is typically the primary identity, and we touch on this in this issue. We learn that Jane and Cliff, this was their idea to build this metahuman rescue team. It got accelerated once Lazarus Planet happened, maybe in a way that was faster than they were ready for. I think that affected the Chief personally. It was this thing that they were trying to start as a slow build, and it suddenly got slammed into crunch time because there are more metahumans than ever.
By necessity, the Chief, who was built for this role to be the leader of this team, she's taking on the role full-time, and that's pushing Jane to the back. Jane's not happy about that. The rest of the alters, as we saw in Issue #2, seem to be going along with it, but there's some conflict there. We'll see how that evolves. Jane has a role with her functions. Can the Chief see her value? Can the Chief see the value of letting other alters come up and play their part? I like the depth and nuance of this Chief character because it's not quite Jane. It's someone who's a bit different, and we'll see that unfold.
For years, the Doom Patrol was sequestered in their own corner of the DCU. What was it about having them play off the Green Lantern Corps and, more specifically, Guy Gardner and Kyle Rayner that appealed to you?
My original concept, before we were pitching Doom Patrol, [was] that I had this story idea -- it wasn't even a fully fleshed-out idea. Cliff is a race car driver, and in my mind, he's probably one of the best drivers in the DC Universe. It would be cool to have a series focused on that, and I was thinking about the possibility of doing a miniseries that's a road trip adventure of Cliff trying to do Midnight Run, getting someone from Point A to Point B. I had the seeds of that idea, and once I ended up doing Doom Patrol, it became bigger. If it is like Midnight Run or Smokey and the Bandit, who's Smokey? Use the cops of the DC Universe, the Green Lanterns. They're space cops. I thought that was an interesting idea.
Honestly, Guy and Kyle are my favorite Green Lanterns, but I also thought personality-wise, especially Guy Gardner, that's the guy that you want to be an antagonist to the Doom Patrol. I think that Cliff and Guy have a lot of similarities. Guy is maybe more of an asshole than Cliff is, but there's still an aspect of them both being these curmudgeon characters. Just seeing them brush against each other, you've just got to do that. You've got to get those characters in the mix and see what they do. It ended up being a really fun issue. Chris Burnham and Brian Reber killed it. It looks so good. It's super funny and exceeded my wildest expectations, and I'm really happy with it.
I love Chris Burnham's artwork in Unstoppable Doom Patrol. It feels right in his wheelhouse with the big bombastic superhero action and gross-out monsters. How has your collaborative process been with him?
Burnham and I used to be in a studio together when he lived in L.A. before the pandemic. We've collaborated on stuff before, studio projects and some comic stuff. We sat right next to each other for a few years, talked about comics, argued about comics, and we were simpatico as far as that goes. We were already talking pretty much every day, so we're just talking all the time now that we're doing Doom Patrol. I know what Burnham likes. I know the stuff he likes to draw.
It was our editor Ben Abernathy's idea to put him and I together on Doom Patrol, and when he said that, I was like, "Yeah, why hasn't Burnham drawn Doom Patrol? It seems like a no-brainer!" He is probably the perfect artist for this. He loves drawing the monsters and the weird gross-out stuff. He's the guy for this. He just finished up the art for Issue #5, and there's some cool stuff in there. I can't wait for people to see it.
One of the most poignant moments in the series has Rebis call out Robotman for constantly referring to them by the wrong name. Walk me through that moment.
I reread everything prior to diving back into doing the Doom Patrol. As I was building the outline, it was just something that stuck out to me on my fourth or fifth reread of the whole series. I was like, "He's kind of a dick here! He just keeps calling him Larry." It was something that I was itching at, and I didn't intend to do it when I was writing it, but as the characters were sitting in the car talking together and the kid is like, "Call me Starbro," of course Cliff would be like, "That's dumb." That's just his reaction to that kind of thing.
It just evolved from that, making these characters talk together and having them bounce off of each other. It was just making sure that was handled with care and nuance, but I think that it came off really well.
Dennis, what else can you tease as we enter the final half of Unstoppable Doom Patrol?
The last two-parter is called "Stoppable." One of the cool things in that, all the recruits we've been gathering, Flex Mentallo's trainees, we've put the best ones together in a group that we're calling Flex Force. We get to show them off a little bit in as the Brotherhood of Evil attacks, so they're will be a big, all-out battle issue, and we'll also see where General Immortus' plans are going.
Everything has been building to this final two-parter, and no one's put it together. I was worried that some of the components I have coming up were a little too obvious, but nobody's picked up on it quite yet. A couple people have kind of started to, but if you reread everything, you'll see how it all fits into place.
Written by Dennis Culver, illustrated by David Lafuente, colored by Brian Reber and lettered by Pat Brosseau, Unstoppable Doom Patrol #4 is on sale now from DC. The story continues in Unstoppable Doom Patrol #5, on sale Aug. 22.