Doom Patrol #86
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeDoom Patrol #86 (Vol. 2, 1995) is the penultimate issue of Rachel Pollack's entire run on the title — the final two issues of a series that holds a singular place in Vertigo history as the first Doom Patrol book published under that imprint. As part three of the four-part closing arc 'Imagine Ari's Friends,' it brings Pollack's deeply personal, Kabbalah-inflected storytelling to its climax just one issue before the series concluded for good with #87. The run as a whole introduced Coagula (Kate Godwin), widely credited as the first trans superhero in mainstream comics history, and Pollack — herself a trans woman — used the Doom Patrol's tradition of otherness to explore gender identity, mysticism, and social belonging in ways the mainstream superhero genre had never attempted. This issue is therefore a document of the final pages of one of the most quietly radical chapters in 1990s American comics.
ComicBooks.com Value
This exact issue on ebay
CGC 3.5 ▾ $175–$399 2 listings
Raw / ungraded ▾ $16.48–$22.93 2 listings
Read it digitally
Sell my copy
Have this issue — or a whole collection? Get a fair offer from us, skip the marketplace fees and the hassle.
We Buy Collections ▸History
Rachel Pollack inherited the series from Grant Morrison beginning with issue #64 (February 1993), after pitching editor Tom Peyer at a party and following up with a sample script. By the time Ted McKeever replaced Linda Medley as series artist with issue #75, the book had developed a spare, expressionistic aesthetic to match Pollack's increasingly mythological scripts. 'Imagine Ari's Friends,' the four-part closing arc covering issues #84–87, drew explicitly on Kabbalistic tradition and Jewish mysticism — Pollack's scholarly lifelong specialty — and McKeever handled both pencils and coloring throughout, producing a unified visual tone for the series finale. The series was cancelled with issue #87 in February 1995, and Pollack's entire run went uncollected for nearly three decades until DC released the Rachel Pollack Doom Patrol Omnibus in 2022.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Issue is part three of the four-part finale arc 'Imagine Ari's Friends' (issues #84–87), in which the Doom Patrol searches for the last piece of the Biblical Joseph's Cup of Dreams while a messianic cult called the Healers unleashes the Light of Healing into an unprepared world.
- Written by Rachel Pollack — an Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning science fiction author and renowned Tarot scholar — with interior art and colors by Ted McKeever.
- The painted cover was provided by Kyle Baker, who contributed cover art to the final arc of the run.
- Published on-sale December 6, 1994, with a January 1995 cover date, by DC Comics under the Vertigo mature-readers imprint.
- This is the penultimate issue of the entire 1987–1995 Doom Patrol volume; the series concluded one issue later with #87 (February 1995).
- Pollack's run (#64–87) was the first Doom Patrol published as a native Vertigo title — Morrison's run predated the imprint and was only later rebranded with the Vertigo logo.
- During Pollack's run she introduced Coagula (Kate Godwin), broadly recognized as the first trans superhero in mainstream DC or Marvel comics history; it would be over twenty years before DC introduced another out trans character in a monthly title.
- The complete run, including this issue, was collected for the first time in the Rachel Pollack Doom Patrol Omnibus (2022, ISBN 978-1779515346), alongside Doom Patrol Annual #2, Totems #1, and Vertigo Jam #1.
Full credits
Reprints
Reprinted in Doom Patrol by Rachel Pollack Omnibus #[nn] (2022)
Key issues in Doom Patrol
Reviews
Reader reviews
No reader reviews yet.