[The Doomsday Gang] is a bleaker and less dramatic variation on Platt's Headman…. Led by tough 15-year-old Coby (he's been on the street since age 10), five Los Angeles teens who've been losers all their lives (they call themselves "fuck-ups") form the Doomsday Gang…. In trying to follow five characters, Platt is unable to develop any of them as much as he did Owen Kirby in Headman. Platt's message in both stories—there's nothing in gangs, but that's all there is—is driven home here with less impact and more cynicism.

Jack Forman, in his review of "The Doomsday Gang," in School Library Journal (reprinted from the May, 1978 issue of School Library Journal, published by R. R. Bowker Co./A Xerox Corporation; copyright © 1978), Vol. 24, No. 9, May, 1978, p. 79.