"Who Are the Devolutionists?"
Writer/Artist: John Byrne, Doug Hazelwood(i), Alex Bleyaert(c)
Publisher: DC
"Who Are the Devolutionists?" in Doom Patrol offers the same old same old from John Byrne. It's really embarrassing how he puts together such a professional story with seeming great ease. Byrne for instance carefully crafts artwork. You can squint and still watch all this composition of anatomy, proportion, scale and background detail form a visual narrative that's easy to follow.
Doug Hazelwood had his work cut out for him because Byrne's panels do not skimp on intricacy. You can find it in fur and Byrne Robotics. Colorist Alex Bleyaert enhances the depth and precision with an excellent use of shading. Just take a look at page (damn it)....one, two, three...eight. Page eight. Take a look at page eight. Byrne pencils a beautiful Rita Farr exhibiting joy in the laid back Xmas atmosphere. Hazelwood and Bleyaert bring out the texture of her hair from the pencils. Hazelwood's inks very smoothly capture the features Byrne embellishes, especially the underside of Rita's nose seen at a well chosen angle. Bleyaert adds natural color shading to mimic the fall of light on penciled contours of her face. Just beautiful.
So how's the story? Pretty cool. Byrne brings out all the dimensions of the Doom Patrol either through the art or the dialogue and sometimes both. The ghostly subplot which Byrne treats as his thread to mostly self-contained chapters of two or three part stories grows as do the smart innovations for the cast.
Larry pilots the Doom Patrol's plane. Cliff was a race car driver. So Byrne provides the team with ground transport that gives Cliff the opportunity to be more than mere Robot Man. The Devolutionists themselves are visually striking with intriguing behavior. What's the plan? I don't really know, but Byrne makes me want to know.
Even should readers lay aside the writing and the plotting, they will find Byrne adding something more to his Doom Patrol. Byrne's stories do not occur in a vacuum. Cliff mentions "The Big Red S," and Byrne explains without exposition why Superman did not stop this particular problem while also providing a clue to what goes on. In Doom Patrol the Byrne villains anticipate the involvement of the Justice League, and Nudge attempts to contact Faith. On the other side of the coin in JSA Geoff Johns had Eclipso move the moon--where sits the Watchtower--and not mention the Justice League in even a snatch of dialogue. Was Eclipso a job for Superman? No. Apparently this was a job for Airwave.
You know I think I know why Byrne has garnered such a loathing from certain sects of fandom. Yeah, his opinions can be pretty out there. Sorry, my opinion is that Jessica Alba looks totally hot as Sue Storm. Sue Storm has never looked hot. Ms. Alba is an improvement. His opinions though seem harmless when compared to Orson Scott Card's flinging his right wing screed at the cages. No, I think people come down hard on Byrne because he gets his work done on time, doesn't slack off because he realizes that readers are paying for these comic books and they deserve the best he can muster. Worst of all he can really draw a story.
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