3 out of 5

Amusing but exhaustive.

It’s not really clear what motivated this one-shot – which is an all-hands-on parody of Rob Liefeld / Image Comics as led by Grant Morrison, who uses the opportunity to poke fun at his own overwrought narratives and endless trove of random characters, all filtered through a Doom Patrol prism, as our titular team is still led by Niles Caulder.  Making light of these concepts isn’t hard, but Grant puts some amusingly slippery elbow grease into it; however, the thing is 50 pages and illustrated via artist jamboree, and never really gets past its main joke of overly emotive / hugely muscled / giant boobed warriors.  Grant’s creations are undeniably funny, and the artists really go to town with the visual yuks (Liefeld feet; teeny tiny bikini costumes; hilarious anatomy), but the confusion of Why? hangs over the whole thing.

Narrowed down to regular issue size, Doom Force would still be a peculiarity, but a pretty damn funny one.  At its over-sized length – perhaps requiring the, uh, six teams of artists – there are still good moments throughout, but after you stop chuckling at the BIG and MEAN introductions, the “plot” concerning a returning villain repurposing sentient cities – a meta-chuckle to that absolutely being a Grant Morrison storyline – starts to churn while we get in a few more Image jokes.

A worthwhile peruse, but likely not one to revisit much there after.  The energy in the backmatter editorial is nice, though.