The original Doom Patrol first appeared in My Greatest Adventure #80 (June 1963),[1] and was created by writers Arnold Drake and Bob Haney, along with artist Bruno Premiani.

Dubbed the "world's strangest heroes" by editor Murray Boltinoff,[2] the original team included the Chief (Niles Caulder), Robotman (Cliff Steele), Elasti-Girl (Rita Farr), and Negative Man (Larry Trainor); Beast Boy (Garfield Logan) and Mento (Steve Dayton) joined soon after.

event, at the nineteenth issue of the second volume of Doom Patrol, Scottish comic writer Grant Morrison transformed the title into a much more surreal and bizarre story that explored topics of mental health, gender identity, and sexual discovery in an abstract manner.

With fellow writer Bob Haney and artist Bruno Premiani, he created Doom Patrol, a team of super-powered misfits who were regarded as freaks by the world at large.

That made them something that wasn't around at the time.The members of the Doom Patrol often quarrelled and had personal problems, something that was already common among superhero teams published by Marvel Comics such as Fantastic Four, but was novel among the DC lineup.

The Brotherhood of Evil also included the intelligent gorilla Monsieur Mallah and Madame Rouge, who was given powers similar to those of Elongated Man, with the extra attribute of a malleable face, allowing her to impersonate various people.

[citation needed] Artist Bruno Premiani and editor Murray Boltinoff appeared at the beginning and the end of the story, asking fans to write to DC to resurrect Doom Patrol, although the latter was supposed to have been Arnold Drake.

Therefore from when I first brought the idea into [DC editor] Murray Boltinoff's office, it would've been easy for someone to walk over and hear that [I was] working on a story about a bunch of reluctant superheroes who are led by a man in a wheelchair.

[10]In an interview shortly before his death in 2007, Drake took a more moderate position, stating that while it is possible Lee took his ideas from Doom Patrol, he could also have arrived at a similar concept independently: "Since we were working in the same vineyards, and if you do enough of that stuff, sooner or later, you will kind of look like you are imitating each other.

Both teams, composed of a woman and three men, have one member with stretching powers, another with great strength trapped in a distorted or inhuman orange body, and a third whose form seems ablaze with fire or energy.

[14] Kupperberg opted to create a new lineup because he wanted to respect the story in which the Doom Patrol met their deaths, and was inspired by Len Wein and Dave Cockrum's then-recent "all-new, all-different X-Men".

"[14] The new team is led by Celsius (Arani Desai), the Chief's previously unseen wife, who recreates the Doom Patrol to protect herself from General Immortus.

Robotman also appeared as an occasional supporting character in the Marv Wolfman and George Pérez era of Teen Titans, where it was revealed that Changeling, formerly DP associate Beast Boy, had arranged for Dayton Industries technicians to recreate the Caulder body design for Cliff.

[14] It included new members who were hired to the team: the magnetically empowered strong-girl Lodestone (Rhea Jones); Karma (Wayne Hawking), whose psychic power make anyone trying to attack him fall over themselves; and Scorch (Scott Fischer), whose body generates phenomenal quantities of heat focused through his hands, requiring him to wear protective gloves at all times.

Returning characters for Rachel Pollack's run included Cliff Steele, Niles Caulder (kept alive by the nanobots, but reduced to a disembodied head, usually kept on a tray filled with ice), and Dorothy Spinner.

At the Doom Patrol headquarters, Builder agents attacked, and in the craziness, two of the Teiresias approached Dorothy with a new brain for Cliff, but to insert it she needed the Chief's expertise.

There, three new members joined: The Bandage People, George and Marion, who were once two workers for the Builders but managed to escape, and the Inner Child, a manifestation of the ghosts' purity and innocence.

Villains that the team fought, besides the Builders, included the Fox and the Crow, two animal spirits whose feud Dorothy and Cliff were subsequently pulled into; the Master Cleaner, a being with a human fetus inside a bubble for a head who began "cleaning" the world by stripping it down to nothing and replacing the stolen items, including people, with a paper ticket; and a group of Hassidic healers who called themselves the False Healers and their leader, the Rabbi of Darkness.

[28] The series debuted as part of a six-part storyline that ran in JLA #94–99 as "The Tenth Circle", though Byrne only drew this arc as it was written by Chris Claremont.

In escaping from the paradise dimension they had inhabited since the end of Crisis on Infinite Earths, Superboy-Prime and Alex Luthor created temporal ripples which spread throughout reality, causing overlaps on parallel timelines of certain events (Hypertime), such as restoring Jason Todd to life.

In the reprinted edition of Infinite Crisis, additional scenes added to the collection showed Fever, Kid Slick, Ava, Nudge, Grunt, and Vortex among a two-page spread of heroes.

On February 7, 2009, it was announced at the New York Comic Con that Keith Giffen would be spearheading a revival of Doom Patrol, a title which he has long said he wanted to write.

[35][36] In the first issue, Rita takes on the alias "Elasti-Woman", and according to the team shrink, she's "mothering" Bumblebee, who's now eight inches tall after being shrunk to the size of a bee in Infinite Crisis.

First published in July 2019, Doom Patrol: Weight of the Worlds retained the oversight of Gerard Way's Young Animal imprint, and directly continued from the ending of Volume 6.

The plot primarily concerned Cliff Steele acquiring a new robot body that was ever upgrading to the point that he became an entire planet in an attempt to protect the universe from hurt, motivated by his mother disowning him and the loss of Dorothy Spinner.

[42] Following the cancellation of their series, Robotman, Elasti-Girl, and Negative Man were reintroduced to the main DC continuity, alongside Niles Caulder, in issue #1 of Batman/Superman: World's Finest.

[43] The seven-issue Unstoppable Doom Patrol series by writer Dennis Culver, artist Chris Burnham, and colorist Brian Reber launched March 28, 2023.

General Immortus, an immortal military mastermind, leads a cultish criminal syndicate, while The Brain, a disembodied genius, commands the Brotherhood of Evil.

An alternate universe iteration of the Doom Patrol from Earth-9 appear in a self-titled Tangent Comics one-shot, consisting of Doomsday, Star Sapphire, Firehawk, and Rampage.

An alternate universe iteration of the Doom Patrol appear in Just Imagine..., consisting of Brock Smith / Blockbuster, Lucinda Radama / Parasite, and Deke Durgan / Deathstroke.