The Doom Patrol #121

(September-October 1968)

The Beginning of the End! (Table of Contents: 1)

Doom Patrol / comic story / 22.67 pages (report information)

Script

Arnold Drake

Pencils

Bruno Premiani

Inks

Bruno Premiani

Colors

?

Letters

Ben Oda

Genre

superhero

Characters

Doom Patrol [The Chief [Niles Caulder] (death); Elasti-Girl [Rita Farr] (death); Negative Man [Larry Trainor] (death); Robotman [Cliff Steele] (death)]; Murray Boltinoff; Bruno Premiani; Mento [Steve Dayton]; Wilmer Boggs; Captain Zahl (villain); Madame Rouge (villain); Brotherhood of Evil [Monsieur Mallah (death); The Brain (death)] (villains)

Synopsis

Madame Rouge plans to eliminate both the Brotherhood of Evil and the Doom Patrol. She bombs the Brotherhood's headquarters, killing the Brain and Mallah, then she attacks the Doom Patrol. They survive, but the attacks are endangering others in the city, so they move to a new base on a Carribean island. Rouge and her ally Captain Zahl, an old enemy of the Chief's, trap them with weapons that rob them of their powers. They are given a choice: either allow themselves to be blown up, or the villains will blow up a small town in Maine. The heroes heroically choose to sacrifice themselves.

Reprints

• in Aventures Fiction (Arédit-Artima, 1966 series) #55 (1er trimestre 1977) [N&B et recadré/B&W and reframed]
• in The Doom Patrol Archives (DC, 2002 series) #5 ([September] 2008)
• in Showcase Presents: The Doom Patrol (DC, 2009 series) #2 ([October] 2010)
• in Doom Patrol: The Silver Age Omnibus (DC, 2017 series) ([August] 2017)

Indexer Notes

Story is across 24 pages, but page 8 is a 2/3-page and page 8 and 24 are 1/2-pages.

Death of the Doom Patrol.

It is later revealed the Robotman survives the explosion, and becomes part of the New Doom Patrol in Showcase (DC, 1977 series) #94. Robotman would later team up with Gar Logan, then called Changeling, and the rest of the New Teen Titans to hunt down Rouge and Zahl in New Teen Titans (DC, 1980 series) #13-15.

In this issue, Robotman mentions utterly defeating "Mr. 104," but when last seen in #106 this villain was called "Mr. 103," and he got away scot free. In his next appearance, Teen Titans Spotlight (DC, 1986 series) #9, he explains to Robotman how he had managed to survive their last encounter, which an editor's note identified as being in DP #106. Sometime between #106 and #121, an untold fight between the original Doom Patrol and Mr. 103, now calling himself Mr. 104, must have occurred.

[no title indexed] (Table of Contents: 2)

Patrol Postscripts / letters page / 0.5 page (report information)

Script

Murray Boltinoff

Pencils

Bruno Premiani (illustration)

Inks

Bruno Premiani (illustration)

Colors

?

Letters

typeset