Brotherhood of Evil
30 years ago - 37-year-old Brain begins selling his experiments to the highest bidder, his criminal organization earning the name the Brotherhood of Evil, with 19-year-old Mallah serving as his violent enforcer & 24-year-old Madame Rouge as their public face.
24 years ago - 43-year-old Brain’s Brotherhood of Evil first comes into conflict with Niles Caulder's Doom Patrol.
15 years ago - The Brotherhood of Evil attack the Doom Patrol's Doom Manor. Niles Caulder is able to track them back to Paris, where they corner the Brotherhood in the Parisian catacombs. 52-year-old Brain fakes his own death, his escape module sends his brain bottle to his secret lab at the bed of the Meditereanean Sea. 34-year-old Mallah is captured and put in prison, thinking the Brain is dead. 39-year-old Madame Rouge fakes her death, and takes over her old school with a new identity, bringing her daughter Angela Hawkins into the school as she turns it into a secret assassin guild.
4 years ago - 63-year-old Brain is found in his secret lab by 28-year-old Emil La Salle, who contacts 45-year-old Monsieur Mallah, who escapes with the help of 37-year-old Christopher Smith. they travel to the hidden lab and work together to gain access before Mallah kills him, reuniting with the Brain as they restart the Brotherhood of Evil. The Brain drugs 50-year-old Madame Rouge & 25-year-old Angela Haswkins to control their reunion.
now - The Brotherhood's secret military facility, hidden within the Golden Dragon's hidden training center in Bolivia, is discovered by Sandra Wu and the Birds of Prey, who work together to defeat the Golden Dragon and destroy the facility.
Membership
I don't know if it's really even a controversial opinion anymore to suggest that the X-Men, as originally conceived, were an almost direct pastiche of the Doom Patrol, but the point that always seems to seal the comparison is the names of their arch-nemesis team. The X-Men famously fought the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants in their very first appearance in September of 1963,, but The Doom Patrol met their main enemies, the Brotherhood of Evil, a whopping three months earlier.
Despite this probably being the most commonly known detail about this strange group of villains from one of the weirdest parts of the Silver Age, the Brotherhood really has so much more to it that makes it so unique. The fact that it's primary lineup is really only three characters, only one of which is technically superpowered, is by itself an oddity, but it gets much more peculiar from there.
Despite this probably being the most commonly known detail about this strange group of villains from one of the weirdest parts of the Silver Age, the Brotherhood really has so much more to it that makes it so unique. The fact that it's primary lineup is really only three characters, only one of which is technically superpowered, is by itself an oddity, but it gets much more peculiar from there.
The Brotherhood of Evil's Comic HistoryThe Brotherhood of Evil were the regularly occurring enemies of the Doom Patrol, appearing for the first time in the first issue of the Doom Patrol's self titled series, and constantly challenging them for the full duration of the series publication. They stand out among all other supervillain groups in comics... because they technically won. By the end of the series, the Brotherhood of Evil captured the Doom Patrol, put them in a moral puzzle where they could either save themselves or a small group of strangers, and the Doom Patrol chose to sacrifice themselves. A moral victory, maybe, but the heroes were still very much dead.
Fast Forward a few decades, and while the original threesome of the Brotherhood hadn't been around in a while, Madame Rouge started to appear as a villain in the New Teen Titans, and in a big reveal, she's suddenly confronted by her old teammates Brain and Mallah, along with a whole group of new members of the new Brotherhood of Evil. None of these characters were particularly innovative (although some of them, like Phobia, would develop further later on), but it still represented a big return to form. This iteration of the team made appearances in a few different titles, but it wasn't long before they would be redefined again, this time by only the smallest possible appearance in the weirdest comic ever. |
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The Brotherhood of Evil barely appeared in the 80's era Doom Patrol series. It was mostly in flashbacks, as the influence of the Brain was revealed to have created several of the new, deliberately meta villains, like Mr. Nobody and the Brotherhood of Dada.
Then came issue #57. Robotman's brain was being transplanted into a new body, but in the middle of it the Brain and Mallah intervene, leaving his brain in a jar as they put the Brain in his new body... and as Robotman's brain jar slowly drains away though it's cracked glass, Mallah & Brain find themselves finally confessing their love for each other. I've described this scene in the pages for both Brain and Mallah, but honestly it has to be done here again, because this sequence has become such a huge turning part of the history of this team. Before this, the team struggled to recapture the particular weirdness of its original appearances, trying to fill its ranks with new superpowered characters. From here on, however, the Brotherhood always knew exactly what it was. |
Our Brotherhood of Evil StoryThe timeline of the Brotherhood obviously needs to be structured around the Doom Patrol's original run as a team, which means that their original lineup needs to have been around some time ago, even predating teams like the Satellite Era Justice League. This is doable mostly because the team is pretty much entirely built around the machinations of the Brain. Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol introduced the idea that the Chief was actually responsible for the accidents that created all the Doom Patrol Members, and while we're not using that for THEM, it actually works really well for the Brotherhood., and we constantly go back to the idea that Brain is manipulating them all to serve his own nefarious ends.
We wanted to Brotherhood do essentially disappear from the scene for some time to come back more recently, and wanted to make the events around the disappearance of the Doom Patrol to be the result of Vandal Savage rather than the Brotherhood, so we put together the sequence of events that lead to Brain & Rouge faking their deaths and Mallah being sent to prison. This allowed us to bring the group back later with Warp & Phobia added to their membership, letting the team grow organically, and maintain the spirit of this incredibly unique group of baddies. |
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