I read DP #121 yesterday afternoon, and it's the last issue of Silver Age Doom Patrol. It is with a heavy heart that I soldier forward to say a few words about this issue. Not just because it's the last issue of this wonderful Silver Age series, but because it is a sad issue as the Doom Patrol meets a tragic but heroic end.

It's such a great ending though! Tying up so many loose ends, it makes the whole series seem a lot more like a single storyline.

There's a framing sequence where artist Bruno Premiani is saying to editor Murray Boltinoff that he can't believe the script he's been given because it depicts the death of the Doom Patrol. Boltinoff tells Premiani that the DP can be saved, BUT ONLY THE FANS CAN SAVE THEM!

(From a review on the Internet, I learned that writer Arnold Drake was supposed to be the person telling Bruno the bad news. But Drake had apparently been spearheading a creators rights movement and had become persona non grata at DC, so Boltinoff was substituted. That's the story I heard anyway.)

Madame Rouge has left the DP but she hasn't gone back to the Brotherhood of Evil. She hates them too! She hates them so much that while she's running a harassment campaign against the DP, she blows up the Brotherhood's HQ, and there's a huge panel of the Brain and Monsieur Mallah being blown sky high!

Madame Rouge is helped by a former Nazi called General Zahl. He has a grudge against the DP because he lost his arm to one of the Chiefs devices during World War II.

At the end, the DP are all trapped on an island by the machinations of Madame Rouge and General Zahl, and Zahl gives them a choice. They can choose death, or they can choose to live, but if they want to live, it means he will set off a bomb that will kill all the inhabitants of a New England fishing village!

He's certain they will choose to live, and it will show they aren't really heroes.

But Zahl is thwarted when they choose death! And the island explodes and the DP is killed!

Madame Rouge is more than a little bit upset by this because she had a thing for the Chief, but Zahl assured her they would chose to live. She didn't expect her plan would get so out of hand, I guess.

The people of the village rename their town Four Heroes, Massachusetts. (I think it was Massachusetts.)

And at the very end, Boltinoff and Bruno are back to tell the fans they can save the DP but they have to WRITE IN AND DEMAND THEIR RETURN!

I guess it didn't work. Not for a while anyway.

Four Heroes, Maine, should still be a thing in the DC Universe. There's a statue of the Chief, Rita, Cliff and Larry next to the gazebo in the town square. (It was built before most of them turned up alive.)

They should bring back Ralph and Sue and they should start wandering DC America again and there should be an episode where they stop in Four Heroes, Maine, because Sue wants to browse in the shops, and then ... Ralph notices a disturbance at the docks and the fisherman are all in a tizzy because the catch of the day is a bunch of fish with Groucho moustaches!

In the course of solving the mystery, he passes by the Doom Patrol monument.

Danny LaRue, O.B.E. (1927-2009) was a beloved British entertainer known for peforming in drag.  "La Rue" = "the street" in French.  Morrison could make all sorts of jokes that went over the heads of us Yanks.

I also had that Doom Patrol digest quite a while ago. Thought the origin was cool, but the other stories(especially the villains) were must have been a little too wird for 8 year old me, and it felt a little too 'science fiction' when I was just looking for superheroes and supervillains. I should try one of the later collections to follow along propely.
I was just a little too young to get the Showcase revival with the 'New' Doom Patrol, but I enjoyed reading those issues much later.
My intro to the new team was DC Comics Presents # 52(also the intro for Ambush Bug). I'd seen the original Robotman before, and learned that there was another one who belonged to this team. I liked Cliff Steele(good pun!) right off the bat, sort of reminded me of a metallic Ben Grimm or Nick Fury(if he'd been a Marvel character, he almost certainly would have fought in WW II alongside both!) I didn't really get a handle in the other members,Celsius and Tempest, as the story had them still very inexperienced 'in the field', and Steel had kept them out of action for a while for more training. That story used Negative Woman's powers going wrong as the gist of the plot, so she was presumably 'out of character', as well.
I thought it was interesting that Superman and Cliff Steele knew each other,but there was no almost-obligatory footnote telling us where they'd met(I assume Supes turned up somewhere in the old DP's book, since I don't recall hearing about them guest-starring in any of his).
As gar as the post-Crisis Doom Patrol, I only picked up one issue, which again involved a Superman team-up, crossing over to over of Byrne's issues. I also vaguely remember a 'special edition' DP-Suicide Squad team-up. My local store, for some reason, wasn't carrying a lot of DC stuff when the Patrol's title was starting out, and I didn't follow up with it when I'd visit my nearest not-that local LCS. So, a lot of water went under the bridge, I eventually heard Byrne moved on, and at some point, Grant Morrison took over and was writing sone..unusual...stuff in their title, 'Animal Man', and whatever else...but by then, it all felt that it was too far along to go back and try catching up.

The Chief has kind of stuffy dialogue as part of his character. Nudge being Korean sometimes had idiosyncratic dialogue. I thought the comic started off weak, tying up loose ends from the JLA issues and a guest appearance by the Martian Manhunter, but after that it keeps getting better. The last bunch of issues were really well done in my opinion and there is even a fun cross-over with parts of the '60s original comic. The X-Men: Hidden Years on the other paw starts great but got a bit weaker, again my opinion, but still worth keeping. I'm left wanting more of that Doom Patrol than more Hidden Years X-Men, and I would like more Hidden Years for sure.