The Best X-Men Story of the Last Decade Was Published by DC (and It’s From the Last Team You’d Expect)

Right now is what should be a great time to be an X-Men fan. Jean Grey made Spider-Man: Brand New Daythe most talked about MCU film since the last time an X-Man appeared in one, X-Men ’97 Season Two ended to some acclaim, and Disney and Marvel is putting out the full court press when it comes to the team. You can find more X-Men merch than ever, but one place where the X-Men aren’t doing the hottest right now is the comics. Now, that doesn’t mean the current X-Men comics are bad; they’ve honestly gotten a lot better than they were just a year ago. However, if you’re someone who is hoping to find an all-new amazing X-comic to discover, reading the current X-books might not be the best idea.

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Luckily, there are decades of brilliant X-Men stories out there. You can find so many great comic starring the team, various members, and spin-off groups. The X-Men’s popularity has made them into one of the most aped teams in comics, with Marvel and other publishers trying to take advantage of the team’s success. Over the decades, there have been numerous pastiche teams, as well as already established teams taking on aspects of the X-Men. While it’s rare, there have been times when other publishers have done X-Men stories better than Marvel has and one of the best examples of this came earlier in the 2020s, when DC began their rise to the top of the sales charts. This story starred the last DC team anyone expect, although comic historians would see the connection – the Doom Patrol.

Unstoppable Doom Patrol Did the X-Men Better Than Marvel Has In Years

So, we’re going to have to dig a little bit into comic history for this one. Back in the back, Marvel stopped doing superhero stories, only coming back to them after the success of DC’s Justice League of America #1. Their first new book was Fantastic Four, which was basically just DC’s Challengers of the Unknown. Thor was very much the Marvel Superman. The Avengers were the Marvel Justice League. Eventually, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby would introduce a team that seemed wholly original – the X-Men, a group of superpowered teens called freaks by the world and led by a man in a wheel chair.

However, at the same time, DC was putting out a team called the Doom Patrol. They were a group of superpowered freaks led by a man in a wheel chair. Now, as far as we know, Lee and Kirby didn’t know Arnold Drake, Bob Haney, and Bruno Premiani, and didn’t go out of their way to copy their creations. The two teams really only had superficial similarities; the Doom Patrol would go on to have the weirdest adventures ever, dying, being rebooted as a hero team, before Grant Morrison rebooted the Doom Patrol, taking them back to their weird roots.

For a long time, the Doom Patrol were basically the exact opposite of the X-Men. Their adventures were stories about people coming to terms with their trauma and their books became known for going in the wildest directions imaginable. DC would try to bring them back as a more run of the mill superhero team numerous times over the years, but it’s never stuck and they were only rarely rebooted. 2016’s Young Animal Doom Patrol series from Gerard Way and Nick Derington and its sequel would make the team weird again, but their next return would seemingly be more pedestrian.

The Unstoppable Doom Patrol, by Dennis Culver and Chris Burnham, wasn’t related to the Young Animal series and was seemingly in continuity with the rest of the team’s existence, but not that specific version (well, kind of; it’s complicated). However, instead of just being a group of ugly metahumans hanging out together, the team had a new purpose – their job was to travel the world and help new metahumans, many of them transformed by the event comic “Lazarus Planet” out of nowhere, come to terms with their new powers. The seven-issue series – it was originally six but preorder success got it another issue – was part of the “Dawn of DC” publishing initiative and made a minor splash with fans.

Culver and Burnham built the team around Cliff Steele and Larry Trainor, with returning member Elasti-Girl and new members Beast Girl and the Degenerate rounding out the field team. Crazy Jane, the most popular member introduced in the Morrison run, was the new Chief, her multiple personalities under the control of this new identity. Niles Caulder was still doing tech support for the team, but they didn’t trust him at all. Meanwhile, their greatest enemies unleash a new plot to destroy the Patrol, on top of the members having to deal with their new lives and all of the trauma.

It found a way to combine the classic weirdness of the Morrison/Rachel Pollack/Way Doom Patrol, with most issues involving the field team having to deal with a “weird” metahuman awakening, using their bonds of friendship and overcoming their trauma to win the day with the X-Men status quo of superhero teachers trying to make the world a better place for everyone. It took the common threads of the two teams, found ways to weave them together, and went to town.

Over the last decade, getting anything approaching a classic X-Men story has been basically impossible. Before 2019, Marvel was doing everything they could to not push mutants because they didn’t own the film rights. X-Men stories became empty, depressing events that were devoid of the charm and character we loved. These things have come back to an extent since 2019, but it feels like Marvel is allergic to giving readers old school X-Men thrills. The Unstoppable Doom Patrol came at a time when X-Men stories were very different from what they used to be and reminded us why those old X-Men stories were so fantastic.

The Doom Patrol and the X-Men premiered at the same time and had similar cuts to their jib. However, as time went on, the two groups became very different; the X-Men were a civil rights-coded superhero team while the Doom Patrol battled against the weirdest bad guys you could imagine, their story coming to a explosive ending before various returns made them into one of the most beloved teams in DC history. Doom Patrol fans are long-suffering sorts; for every Young Animal reboot, there’s a John Byrne/Keith Giffen reboot.

The Unstoppable Doom Patrol could have been a disaster. More traditional superhero Doom Patrols just haven’t worked, but Culver and Burnham were able to add a heaping helping of the X-Men to help the medicine go down. It quickly became a favorite of fans and everyone talked about how much like an X-Men story it was. Readers were hoping for a sequel, but DC has decided to go in a different direction with the team. However, we’ll always have this classic version of the group, proving that sometimes, everyone but Marvel does the X-Men the best.

What did you think of The Unstoppable Doom Patrol? Do you like its Doom Patrol meets the X-Men approach? Sound off in the comment section below.

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