3 out of 5

Man, remember when Milligan could do no wrong?

Well, no, neither do I.  Milligan has always had – and I say this owning writing from him that I adore – a sort of hack-y edge to his work, but there was a point (perhaps a drug-fueled point) when he seemed willing to indulge that side with abandon, producing some wonderfully anarchic titles like Strange Days.  Occasionally, he could figure out how to balance his quirk with his sappy poeticism, resulting in the wandering but impactful ‘Enigma,’ and sometimes he’s found projects that provide him with the right template for his soap-opera style: X-Statix (though I haven’t read it in a while, so perhaps it doesn’t stand up); The Bronx Kill.  Though those are latter-day projects, overall, as Peter has ‘matured’ and tried to temper earlier yuks with meaning, he’s gotten… more and more cheeseball.  He’s obsessed with sexual confusion and with mommy issues, and those topics find their way into everything, shoe-horned in whether they belong or not.  And when you read a lot of it – which, as a fan of Pete’s, I tend to do – you can’t help but ask: haven’t we dealt with this by now?

So while I was hoping that I could file ‘Doop’ into the X-Statix pile of Millie titles that get their pop satire on, he still reroutes things to deal with mommy issues.  He also sets this deep in a recent X-Men story arc, and without knowing that and trying to just read it fresh, without the story recaps, you might find your head spinning.  To counter both critiques, though, Doop still functions as a heart-warming skip back to X-Statix lane (check that “maybe we’ll have a comic book again” hint), and to be fair, Pete’s story indulgences are really just a roundabout way for Doop to be Doop… though it’s roundabout enough to kill some momentum, since it takes up two issues.  Regarding the X-Men bit, it really doesn’t matter, but again, the story structure makes it seem like it does; issue 2 even ends with a cliffhanger that I have no idea if it was part of the original X story or new to this story, but either way… why would we care about some random Wolverine interaction when this is a Doop book?  Because it’s Wolverine?  This is, frankly, another historical Pete problem, though: he’s not great at divvying up his stories into issue-by-issue format, so we end up with some forced techniques.

Thankfully, there’s enough quirk and fun in ‘All-New Doop’ to keep it afloat: Doop’s world is defined as ‘Marginalia,’ truly the world between panels.  It’s a totally random world, brought to crazy life by artist David Lafuente (…alas, assisted by different artists from ish 3 on who don’t quite have Lafuente’s paneling glee and energy) and rife with the kind of random details out of which Milligan could once structure entire comics.  And, for better or worse, we get an actual history on Doop which helps to fill in some of the what and why of his role in X-Statix.  It’s pure schmaltzy Pete (here’re some film and book references), but it’s fun and fitting.

The whole tale (maybe) ends up being something of a ‘gotcha, it was really about THIS’ that, again, is another charmingly Pete hallmark, but ignoring that, the best part of Doop is that it makes me realize I miss the X-Statix world, and I think Pete does too.  And I would definitely check that comic out if it started up again.  So most Milligan titles are guilty of the author’s indulgences, and Doop is no exception, but as it leans closer to Pete’s humorous tendencies than his sappy ones, on the whole it’s an entertaining read.