I just finished reading JB's Doom Patrol run for the first time. I haven't had that much fun with a Big 2 superhero series in a very long time. Besides the obvious quality of the story and art, the thing that made it so enjoyable was my utter lack of previous familiarity with the Doom Patrol. Somehow, although I grew up with Marvel and DC, I managed to miss all previous versions of the Doom Patrol, which meant that I went into this series with very little knowledge of any of the characters, making it similar to the first time I encountered other characters with whom I later became very familiar. Reading this recaptured the fun that we've all experienced when "meeting" characters for the first time. The entire series was fun from start to finish. I only wish it had run longer than 18 issues.

Obviously it's rare to feel like a kid again when reading something now, and I often find myself reading more to notice the storytelling methods that go into the work than to actually be engaged in the story. This series accomplished both for me.

On the subject of storytelling methods, one little detail stands out as an example of the right way to make a truly "all-ages" superhero story work. At the very end of the last issue, when Cliff gets his updated robot body, the slight change in his costume tells us something without having to hit us over the head with that information in a way that wouldn't be appropriate for younger readers. That's the way it should always be done in superhero comics.   

Except, if anyone actually pays attention, the deeper similarities are, indeed, much closer to the FF.

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"The LEGION of the World's Strangest Heroes". Perhaps you would like to suggest they have a lot in common with the Legion of Superheroes, too?

In any case, if you want to dance this dance, it should be remembered that the Doom Patrol made their debut in the June 1963 issue of MY GREATEST ADVENTURE (Love that title!), and the X-Men came along with their own book 3 months later. So it is the X-Men that resemble the Doom Patrol, not the other way 'round.

That's if you want to insist that a team of six mutants, five of whom are teenagers, and all of whom have secret identities, are more like a team of four non-mutants composed of a big, strong orange character, an "elastic" character and a flying "flaming" character, none of whom are teenagers, and none of whom have secret identies, than are, say, the Fantastic Four. And that's without invoking the personalities of those characters.

I liked it very much but I didn't get some other ones i picked up at a used book store with the guy with a decapitated head, not drawn/written by JB. I have seen them in Stern/JB JLA as well, they looked more like JB's version but I think they were "doppelgangers". I'm not sure which version is which. I believe JB's mini is its own version. The later years JB collectors have been "discriminated" after Doom patrol and blood of the demon were cancelled. It's like aiming a radio signal to Oregon and not to Connecticut, then citizens of Connecticut are discriminated.

Added for clarification: I have not in any way written that the writer and artist was discriminated, the readers are the ones who were discriminated when their comics that they want to read were cancelled.