This is the Issue I've All Been Waiting For
The Good: The very beginning, Ambush Bug recaps the past 13 issues, and it's an absolutely glorious and hilarious scene. I absolutely loved and found myself cracking up out loud more than once. I also found it flows really well if set to the tune of the opening theme to CatDog, a show I rarely watched, but somehow it just fell right into that tune without having to think about. In fact, it took me a few minutes to figure out what tune I had actually been using.
The Summary of the team members was interesting, especially since they were all given nicknames that started with the same letters for each other them. Niles "Chief" Caulder: Master Manipulator. Cliff "Robotman" Steele: Mechanical Marvel. Rita "Elasti-Woman" Farr: Size-Shifting Sensation. and Larry "Negative Man" Trainor: Energized Enigma.
The Doom Patrol is easily the most well functioning 'Dysfunctional Family Superhero Team.' It works well for them as a comic. There's a really nice scene where they all have a heart-to-heart with each other.
The Chief becomes a Kryptonian. It's incredibly badass.
On that subject, there's some amazing character exploration that goes with that. The Chief is essentially a horrible person, so giving him super powers is a bad bad idea. On top of that, with super powers of his own, he can cut the team loose and prusue his own selfish agendas alone, away from all those who don't understand him. His scenes where he's realizing his newfound awareness are extremely well done. His monologues and facial expressions are simply awesome.
The Bad: Rita is still a bit more annoying. I can't tell if I'm supposed to side with her or not as I don't really know if she's 100% right about Mento or not. I feel a little bad for Mento, it just seems like Rita's severely overreacting. But then again, she kind of realizes that, so, it's mostly fine.
It seems like a weird issue for a recap. I'm sure it means the next collection will have #7-13, which is just odd. 7-12 would be a lot better. The gap between 12 and 13 is much less cliffhangery than most, and it even cleaves a clear cut between story arcs. Putting a 13 issue recap in the middle of a tiny cliffhanger that just started in #13 and ends quickly in #14 just seems off.
In Conclusion: 5/5
This is, in my opinion, the best issue of Doom Patrol yet (In this current series, I haven't read any of Grant Morrison's run or any other previous series). It had some really nice overdue character development, some crazy acton, and moments of simply badass storytelling. It even had an amazingly hilarious intro by Ambush Bug. This would technically be a great issue to start off if you don't feel like reading the first 13 issues. Again, as I said last time, Doom Patrol is really off the wall and not for everyone, but this issue I think has more appeal to a wider audience, but I'm not a wider audience so I don't know. Either way, this was an excellent comic.