Doom Patrol: The Painting That Ate Paris

Written by: Grant Morrison
Art by: Richard Case & John Nyberg

The Brotherhood of Evil has disbanded, alchemically morphed, and spurned its own (and all) meaning to become The Brotherhood of Dada in this second volume of Morrison's run on Doom Patrol. With an enemy with no concept of good and evil--an enemy where even the concept of concepts doesn't apply--the Doom Patrol must battle some of the wackiest shit this side of meaning.


The Painting that Ate Paris cover prominently displays The Brotherhood of Dada

The book's title comes from the first story arc about Piranesi's painting within a painting within a painting within a...You know, the one with the hall of mirrors effect? Word on the street is that the painting has a certain hunger, which the Brotherhood of Dada use to devour Paris and trap it inside the infinite layers of the painting. What the Brotherhood doesn't know and what the Doom Patrol soon discovers is that there is a sleeper inside the painting that's just starting to wake up...

Filled with more ideas and moments of wonderment than any other comic on the shelf, volume two of Morrison's Doom Patrol is unfortunately downhill after the title story. On the other hand, the book is worth purchasing just to discover Mr. Nobody's origins. Gamma rays, eat your heart out. Mr. Nobody's birth is one of the most original origin stories in comic history.

While Morrison's work in this volume is so imaginative so as to make this reader envious of his wit, his stories don't have the thematic cohesiveness of his later work on The Invisibles or even The Filth. Granted, you'll see skeletons of some of the themes he explores in depth later on--infinity in the finite, good and evil being the same side of the same system, etc.--they just simply aren't fleshed out to any point of real interest. Nevertheless, the stories are entertaining as hell and smart to boot. A worthy follow-up to his fantastic first volume.

D

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