My Greatest Adventure #80
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeMy Greatest Adventure #80 marks one of the most consequential character debuts of DC's Silver Age: the first appearance and origin of the Doom Patrol — Robotman, Elasti-Girl, Negative Man, and their wheelchair-bound mentor the Chief — a team built around the radical premise that its members resented their own powers and felt alienated from humanity rather than empowered by them. That concept of reluctant, psychologically damaged outsiders was virtually absent from superhero comics at the time, and the issue arrived on newsstands roughly seven weeks before Marvel's X-Men #1, sparking a decades-long debate about independent invention versus creative influence that has never been fully resolved. The title's success was significant enough that DC renamed the entire series The Doom Patrol starting with issue #86, cementing the team's place in DC's publishing line. The characters introduced here have since inspired celebrated comics runs by writers including Grant Morrison, and a critically recognized live-action television series that ran four seasons.
The Doom Patrol [Chapter 1] introduces a team unlike any other, as the enigmatic Chief gathers three individuals marked by tragedy and survival. Written by Arnold Drake and Bob Haney, with art by Bruno Premiani and inks by Premiani, this landmark issue sets the tone for a series built on resilience and the strange. The cover by Arnold Drake and Bruno Premiani captures the team’s eerie, otherworldly beginnings.
In this landmark 1963 tale from *My Greatest Adventure* #80, the enigmatic Chief gathers three individuals marked by tragedy and survival—each scarred by near-fatal accidents that left them broken, both physically and socially. Drawn together by fate and the Chief’s urgent plea, they’re offered a chance to redefine themselves as the Doom Patrol, their first task a high-stakes mission to defuse a bomb.
In "Chapter 2: The Challenge of the Timeless Commander," the Doom Patrol are called to safeguard an alien spaceship carrying a dangerous super-weapon, only to face a mysterious machine that defies explanation. As General Immortus watches from the shadows, the team must confront the unknown—before the weapon's power falls into the wrong hands.
ComicBooks.com Value
Show all 21 grades ▾
This exact issue on ebay
CGC 7.5 ▾ $1,895–$1,995 2 listings
CGC 6.5 ▾ $925–$1,000 5 listings
CGC 4.5 ▾ $495–$600 4 listings
CGC 4 ▾ $465–$475 2 listings
CGC 3.5 ▾ $380–$403 2 listings
CGC 3 ▾ $325–$450 3 listings
Raw / ungraded ▾ $275–$484 5 listings
More listings for this title
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
Editor Murray Boltinoff approached writer Arnold Drake on a Friday, with a script due the following Tuesday, asking him to devise a superhero feature that could rescue the struggling adventure anthology My Greatest Adventure from cancellation. Drake's rapid-fire pitch — a wheelchair-using scientific genius directing a trio of super-powered social outcasts who actively hated what they had become — was enthusiastically greenlighted; Drake then enlisted fellow DC writer Bob Haney to co-plot and co-script the debut adventure, with Drake scripting the first half and Haney the second. Artist Bruno Premiani, an Italian-born illustrator who had previously fled both Mussolini's Italy and Perón's Argentina before landing at DC, designed the characters and drew both the cover and interior, and Drake later credited Premiani's insistence on grounding the team's humanity as essential to the series' tone. The team had been advertised in the letters page of issue #79 under the working title 'The Legion of the Strange' before the name Doom Patrol was settled on before publication.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First appearance and origin of the original Doom Patrol: Robotman (Cliff Steele), Elasti-Girl (Rita Farr), Negative Man (Larry Trainor), and the Chief (Dr. Niles Caulder), all introduced in a single self-contained three-part story titled 'The Doom Patrol.'
- First appearance of General Immortus, the immortality-obsessed villain who would become one of the team's recurring primary antagonists throughout the original series.
- Created by writers Arnold Drake and Bob Haney with art, inks, and cover by Bruno Premiani; edited by Murray Boltinoff; lettered by Stan Starkman — published by National Periodical Publications (DC Comics) with a cover date of June 1963.
- Cliff Steele's character is named 'Automaton' in this debut issue; the name was changed to Robotman by his third appearance in issue #82.
- The original costumes worn by Elasti-Girl and Negative Man in this issue are plain green utility suits — the team's familiar red-and-white uniforms did not appear until Doom Patrol #89.
- The team had been pre-announced in the letters column of My Greatest Adventure #79 under the working name 'The Legion of the Strange'; the name Doom Patrol replaced it before the issue went to press.
- The issue's success prompted DC to retitle the anthology series The Doom Patrol beginning with issue #86 (March 1964); issues #80–85 constitute the final run of the My Greatest Adventure banner.
- The story has been reprinted numerous times, including in Batman #238, DC Special Blue Ribbon Digest #19, Doom Patrol Archives Vol. 1 (2002), Showcase Presents: The Doom Patrol Vol. 1, Doom Patrol: The Silver Age Omnibus Vol. 1, and a DC Facsimile Edition published July 4, 2023, on the team's 60th anniversary.
Cast · 18 characters
Full credits
Reprints
↩ Reprints Strange Adventures #95 (1958)
Reprinted in Batman #238 (1972), DC Special Blue Ribbon Digest #19 (1982), The Doom Patrol Archives #1 (2002), Showcase Presents the Doom Patrol #1 (2009), DC Comics Graphic Novel Collection #113 (2017), Doom Patrol: The Silver Age Omnibus #[nn] (2017), Doom Patrol: The Silver Age #1 (2018), My Greatest Adventure 80 (Facsimile Edition) #[nn] (2023), DC Finest: The Doom Patrol: The World's Strangest Heroes #[nn] (2025), Mi Gran Aventura #43
Key issues in My Greatest Adventure
Reviews
Reader reviews
No reader reviews yet.