The Doom Patrol #86
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeDoom Patrol #86 is the issue where DC's anthology series My Greatest Adventure officially became The Doom Patrol, marking the moment the team earned its own eponymous title after reader response made the superhero format impossible to ignore. Beyond the title change, this single issue introduced three of the franchise's most durable and distinctive villains — Madame Rouge, the Brain, and Monsieur Mallah — as a unified threat under the banner of the Brotherhood of Evil, giving the Doom Patrol the dedicated rogues' gallery every great superhero team requires. In a remarkable coincidence of comics history, this very same month Marvel published Uncanny X-Men #1, which debuted its own Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, making March 1964 the month two rival publishers independently put a Brotherhood of Evil on stands simultaneously. The characters born here proved far more than one-off obstacles: Madame Rouge, the Brain, and Mallah drove the narrative of the entire original run through to its tragic climax in issue #121, and all three have remained active parts of the DC Universe across decades of comics, animation, and live-action television.
In "The Brotherhood of Evil, Part 1," a Japanese war criminal, grotesquely altered by wartime experiments, assumes the identity of the missing astronaut Scott Reed to infiltrate the United States and sow chaos. Written, drawn, and inked by Howard Purcell, this issue marks a pivotal moment in the Doom Patrol's early saga, with a chilling cover by Arnold Drake and Bob Brown capturing the menace of the impostor’s reveal.
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The Doom Patrol had been running in My Greatest Adventure since issue #80 (June 1963), created by writer Arnold Drake with co-plotter Bob Haney and Italian artist Bruno Premiani, after editor Murray Boltinoff asked Drake to develop a superhero feature that might save the struggling anthology from cancellation. Drake scripted virtually every issue of the run, with Premiani penciling and inking most of it, and #86 continued that creative partnership for the main story. The series was originally planned to launch under its own title with a fresh numbering sequence — early house ads advertised it that way — but DC ultimately chose to continue the numbering from My Greatest Adventure, so issue #86 carried both the legacy numbering and the new masthead simultaneously. The issue also contains a second, unrelated science-fiction back-up story, 'A Medal for Go-Buggy 3!', scripted and drawn by Howard Purcell, a standard editorial practice of the era for filling out page counts; Bob Brown provided the cover illustration rather than Premiani.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First appearance of Madame Rouge (Laura De Mille), created by Arnold Drake and Bruno Premiani — cover-dated March 1964, published January 23, 1964.
- First appearance of the Brotherhood of Evil as a group, including its founding members: the Brain (a disembodied genius preserved in a jar), Monsieur Mallah (a super-intelligent talking gorilla), and Madame Rouge.
- First appearance of Eric Morden (later reimagined by Grant Morrison as Mr. Nobody), introduced here as a small-time criminal seeking Brotherhood membership by piloting the stolen giant robot Rog.
- This is the first issue published under the title 'The Doom Patrol,' continuing the numbering from My Greatest Adventure; issue #85 was the last to carry the previous title.
- Main story 'The Brotherhood of Evil' was scripted by Arnold Drake with art and inks by Bruno Premiani; cover art was by Bob Brown; editor was Murray Boltinoff.
- The issue includes a brief retelling of the origins of Elasti-Girl, Negative Man, Robotman, and the Doom Patrol in flashback form.
- The lead story has been reprinted in Super-Team Family #7 (1976), DC Special Blue Ribbon Digest #19, Doom Patrol Archives Vol. 1 (2002), the Doom Patrol: The Silver Age hardcover, and the Doom Patrol: The Silver Age Omnibus.
- In the same month this issue introduced DC's Brotherhood of Evil, Marvel published Uncanny X-Men #1 introducing the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants — two editorially independent 'Brotherhood of Evil' debuts on newsstands simultaneously.
Cast · 8 characters
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Full plot ⚠ may contain spoilers
▸ Reveal full plot — may contain spoilers
A Japanese war criminal, transformed into a strange creature, pretends to be missing astronaut Scott Reed when he is rescued so that he can travel to the US and create havoc.
Plot details indexed by the Grand Comics Database (CC BY-SA).
Key issues in The Doom Patrol
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