Our story opens not with Doom but with… a poor fellow getting their ass handed to them. 'Where is he?' a vampire-looking feral lady with distinctive twin-peaked hair demands from her quarry, while a winged 'Batwing' (no relation) blasts him asunder for failing to answer. The person they're after? The legendary Wolverine! Yes, the original one. We're soon introduced to the surviving members of the Nine - they are six mutants who once ruled a planet together before the Guardians of the Galaxy deposed them in a previous storyline. There used to be nine, as the name suggests, but the other three died - whoops! The remaining members are led by Rancor, who is Wolverine's great great great granddaughter, and she carries one of her ancestor's severed claws with her. Her subordinates include the flying Batwing, the vanta-black shadow manipulator Shaddo, the oversized size-changer Blockade, telepath Mindscan, and teleporter Side-Step.
I like Shaddo's character design (but not name) whereas the rest of them range from generic (the yellow outfit on what I think is Sidestep) to cringey (Rancor) to somehow both at once (Blockade). The next most tolerable is Batwing and that's still not great. I do like that Rancor's outfit is reminiscent of Wolverine's without being a copy, though. But she should ditch those giant spikey shoulderpads and the ridiculous dipping neckline. Sidestep is a good name for a teleporter, though.
Realitee-Vee, Doom explains, is the most sophisticated and effective method of mass manipulation ever conceived. Indeed, he himself invented the technology to transmit a highly addictive odorless gas along with audio and video signals (somehow) and test marketed it as a form of entertainment, employing some aliens as lackeys to see it done.
These alternate depictions of Doom's future are interesting, because it makes you wonder how he would continue to evolve over time. In 2099 he becomes more heroic, in this last world he becomes more ruthless.
These alternate depictions of Doom's future are interesting, because it makes you wonder how he would continue to evolve over time. In 2099 he becomes more heroic, in this last world he becomes more ruthless.
These are not the last future incarnations of Doom we'll run into, so we'll probably see a few more possible variations on the theme. But yeah, Doom does seem to like reinventing himself one way or another when in a new situation.
One of the perks of Doom getting a solo title - which is not just a team-up affair - is that we can expect a larger volume of cool frontpage shots of him in full costume - and given that his futuristic getup is all shiny and chrome, I won't complain about that! I am not entirely sure why Doom decided to make everything up to and including his pants so goddamn reflective, as it has to be a pain for the artists to draw, but it does make for some pretty photogenic shots, doesn't it? This image of Doom's brand new armor style on full display is nice, and it's one of those images where I could pinpoint exactly when it takes place in the story, right down to the exact panel. That's pretty cool!
Story Overview
The Action of the Tiger
This comic opens with several snapshots of major cities around the world - Brussels, Hong Kong, Moscow, Mexico City. Each of the pictures conspicuously stars a man in a suit carrying a briefcase, and digital text scrolls by which betrays that some intense hacking is going on beneath everyone's notice. All of the stolen data pertains to Tiger Wylde Inc, the company belonging to the current dictator and corporate overlord of Latveria. Financial information is gained from Brussels, foreign acquisitions from Hong Kong, cybernetic history and prosthetic schematics from Moscow, and Alchemax files about Tiger Wylde's defection from Mexico City. It's all in-depth information about Doom's latest enemy…
Back on Isla Lobos de Afuera, the site of the Pixel compound Doom and his minions took over last issue, Dr. Quinones compliments Doom on his amazing faculty in robotic design, and questions whether or not this is a passion of his. Doom explains that in his youth, his Roma tribe's puppeteer mesmerized him with his marionettes, and that he carried that fascination into adulthood, where his robotic puppets proved a great aid in both the maintenance of state and the gathering of information. As he says this, we see a robot taking shape behind him, one with a face remarkably similar to all those men in suits from the previous page... Quinones says that it's hard to imagine Doom as a child, and the villain respond that he stopped being a child on the day he watched the old Baron murder his father. Yikes. He then swears that just as he wrested Latveria from the twisted hands of that particular monarch, he shall liberate his homeland for a second time from the usurper Tiger Wylde!
Quinones compliments Doom on his swift recovery from his recent neurosurgery and his adaptation to his new cyberlinked armor - it's been two weeks since the previous issue, evidently - but she warns him that he might be overestimating his ability if he thinks he can take on Tiger Wylde soon. Doom interrupts her and says that he's perfectly aware of how much time has passed - and of the proper speed with which to proceed against Wylde. Fortune reminds him who saved him after Wylde mutilated his face and left him for dead - she won't let his need for revenge lead to her people getting killed unnecessarily. Doom assures her that Latveria's gypsies have nothing to fear from him, and explains that he previously sent out a host of robotic couriers built in the Pixel compound - the men in suits from the first page - to gather information on Wylde's history and operations, and he's getting all the relevant information back from them as they speak.
Said information is summarized, noting that Wylde was once contracted to Alchemax, and he rose to lead their Elite corps, Public Eye, as corporate muscle who forcibly enacted business takeovers with - y'know - giant guns and explosions. During various multinational skirmishes he rebuilt his body piece by piece, and then finally declared himself an independent, breaking his contract. As a brilliant strategist, Wylde staged a coup in unstable Latveria, draining its resources for his personal gain. Amusingly, Wylde even got himself a throne - though the big 'L' on his throne is a puzzle. Maybe it just stands for Latveria? In any case, Doom declares that while Wylde's corporate lackeys might have failed in destroying him, Doom shall succeed! For extra drama, he flips up his hood which looks pretty dark purple in the scans I'm using, but I presume it's meant to be blue.
Later, while the Latverians prepare to leave the Pixel base, Doom asks Dr. Quinones and her assistant to join them in his homeland. It would be foolish to waste her talent in a place it isn't appreciated, after all! Quinones says she'll consider the offer, but for now they're going their separate ways, as she and her ally Gordo will have to ensure Pixel believes them truly dead to avoid getting chased around the world. While Xandra and Wire squabble over who gets to fly the Diamondhawk plane this time, Fortune straps into her seat and declares that the charges are set - the base they just evacuated is now rigged to blow. Doom notes that Pixel's Worldnet would become aware of their presence on the island within hours, so they'll ensure there's no trace of their use of the facilities. As the plane flies off, Wire sets off the explosives, and a huge blast engulfs the facility. Doom then says they're bound for Latveria - the revolution has begun!
We suddenly switch over to the ass-end of the world - to Antarctica. There, inside a gigantic dip in the frozen ground, a pair of men in thick winter clothing explore the locations of what was once 'Zed Station.' There's no trace of it left except a scoured empty crater, which spooks one of the men, as one false move might cause the same to happen to them! The other notes that if they do their job correctly there won't be a repeat of the Zed Station 'incident.' They approach an excavator which is digging into the ice below and has just unearthed what they are after - the mineral Tritonium, an extremely rare material originally mined from the moons of Saturn. Even a small fragment can generate enough energy to wipe out a city block - or an antarctic station - but the truly unique property is its regenerative properties. To wit, even after violently exploding, the stuff will just reform to be used once again.
Once corporate sources discover the destruction of the research base via seismic and satellite data they'll surely come running south en masse to look for Tritonium, so it has to be removed immediately. This, the second man says, is why Tiger Wylde hired him - he's going to babysit this rare ore all the way to Gojradia, to Latveria's capital!
Meanwhile, on board Doom's Diamondhawk, the systems have a malfunction and the cloaking device fails. A pair of Stark/Fujikama scramble missiles are hot on their tail within seconds, launching from the ground nearby only moments after they are exposed. Wire immediately decides they're dead meat - these things never miss! Doom dismissively says he's dealt with Stark technology before - it's an annoyance, no more! He already knew they were outnumbered by the enemy, so he declares that they shall fight a guerilla war of attrition, confusion, subterfuge - and carefully placed allies within the enemy's walls! In that moment the two missiles veer into each other and explode harmlessly. Inside the Latverian Ministry of Defense, several corporate security people break into Air Command Control, where someone snuck in and took over the place. They discover only a single person who has accessed the air defense system - and it's an all too familiar man in a suit. While the soldiers hold the man at gunpoint, the digital command for self-destruction arrives, and the robotic infiltrator goes out in a blaze of fire…
Elsewhere in Gojradia, the discontent among the populace due to the harsh realities of life in Tiger Wylde's nation have created what amounts to a populist powderkeg - there's demonstrations in front of the giant tower that houses the tyrant, calling for food, and the downfall of their oppressor. Police tanks hover overhead and activate sonic weapons to control the crowds, and thousands go rushing away from the machines, but that hardly calms the crowds. Up in his tower's fancy apartments, Wylde wonders if he should throw the dogs a bone - because what do a few table scraps matter to him, really? He's warned by his servant Zone that he has bigger problems to deal with, since air security was compromised by a self-destructing robot! Wylde wonders if this trickery is Alchemax's doing, but Zone declares that microscopic analysis of the debris suggests Pixel serial numbers instead! This sets Wylde off - if Pixel is trying to double-cross him on the Tritonium deal, he won't stand for it! He demands to speak to Devargas immediately!
Devargas, it turns out, is the CEO of Pixel - he transformed it from a regional medianet into a transnational megacorporation. Zone warns Wylde that duplicity is Devargas' signature, and the dictator acknowledges the man's business stratagems - plus, he would never trust an eccentric who seals himself inside a hygienic bubble due to his exaggerated germophobia. Sure enough, when the call connects it seems Devargas is a man entirely contained within a glassy, see-through shell, and he drinks through a straw that goes into a special induction port. He's basically a transparent Quarian.
He greets Wylde in Spanish before noting he didn't expect this call - did the Tritonium arrive ahead of schedule? Wylde immediately confronts him with the remnants of the robot that Doom sent, and Devargas quickly explains that a base in South America was raided recently, and the perpetrators no doubt used Pixel resources to their own ends - he assures he has no intention of jeopardizing their deal. Wylde reluctantly accepts this explanation, requesting an update if they identify the saboteurs, then decides that with the Tritonium in their hands, they'll leverage it against Alchemax!
In the countryside, the gypsies of the Zefiro clan move their caravans across the Arkopa Pass into the Malhela mountains seeking safe ground away from the oppressive government. Doom and his entourage have just arrived back to rejoin them, and one of the Zefiro tells Fortune that a few of the tribe got roughed up by guardsmen while they were off gallivanting in Peru. The man also admits his misgivings about Doom claiming to have Zefiro blood, but at the same time standing alone and ordering people around as if he's in charge rather than the council which actually runs the Zefiro tribe. Fortune assures he'll talk to Doom about this issue, and make him listen.
Nearby, Doom looks over the caravan morosely and reflects that he once swore that his people would never be denied safe haven in Latveria - but here they are, once more driven onto the back roads by a malevolent despot. When Fortune walks up to him, Doom tells her that when he rules once again, this injustice will not stand!
Fortune tells him that he should drop the imperious tone - this is the twenty-first century after all, and the tribe is run by a council now. Doom says he's never required consensus to validate his actions before - she should just trust him! Fortune replies that trust must be earned, which means he can't do things without asking - like sending Wire and Xandra off on errands without checking with her first! Oh, snap! Doom explains that he learned about the Tritonium shipment that's due in Latveria soon, and he requested the two of them to procure its transport schedule - that's all. Fortune is pissed that he cut her out of the loop, but Doom impatiently says that if she's quite done whining, he's got more important things to do. She storms off in a huff, calling him 'arrogant son of a -' to his back…
Later, Doom wanders through the destroyed ruins of his old castle, and reflects that with all his temporal travels, he really should have known that the future is never how you expect. In this year of 2099, he's essentially been forgotten and his castle lies in ruins, while Latveria has stepped backwards into feudalism with corporate logos instead of royal crests. Indeed, his own memory is like his castle - fragmented remains of a past life. Many questions plague him, and their answers are infuriatingly out of reach - he has to remember!
Doom suddenly remembers being old. The age of heroes was long over, and he danced on the graves of both enemies and allies - yet for all his accomplishments, a foreboding feeling gnawed at him like a cancer. We see a scene of one of Doom's servants, Damon, telling the aged monarch not to push himself so much - his health is declining, even with medicine. Doom responded by explaining that threats taunt him from every shadow, subverting his every move - but he has conquered continents, survived Mephisto's inferno - he is Doom, he is forever triumphant! Thus he threw himself once more into the void, chasing phantoms he believed to be weaving subtle patterns of discord into the fabric of his empire. Whether he ever found these insidious wraiths, the current Doom doesn't know - he remembers only the pain that came afterwards. The full truth of the past continues to elude him.
In Gojradia, Tiger Wylde meets with his diviner Fortune, who excuses her three week absence by explaining that there was a Zefiro Council called - it was a blood obligation. A furious Wylde declares that he is her only obligation! He smacks her to the ground and scatters her cards everywhere, reminding her that while he respects her talents, if she tempts fate again he'll find another seer - for gypsies are, as he notes, historically expendable. On the floor, Fortune recognizes the card in front of her as an inverted magician - chaos, uncertainty, destruction. Yeah, tell her something she doesn't know!
In Antikva village, Wire and Xandra get ready to do their job for Doom, which is hacking into the network of the guardsmen - a risky operation at the best of times. Wire enters a police station and asks where he can join the guardsmen, and the local Sergeant - a heavy-set woman named Cabrara - is incredulous at his request; not only is this not a recruiting office, but he's too young and too skinny! They're interrupted when glass breaks nearby, as it turns out Xandra has begun shooting at the building from her hover-bike to cause a distraction. As she speeds off with guardsmen on her tail, she hopes Wire can do his part.
Wire jacks into the system real quick to get the data, but he's apparently forgotten about Cabrara, who grabs him and demands to know what he's up to. Wire's excuses are weak, so she again demands to know what he was doing, and threatens to jack him into some high voltage! Right then, however, a blond man approaches from behind the Sergeant and knocks her unconscious with a club. Wire asks him who he is, and the man seemingly morphs from a blond, white dude into a black man with dreadlocks. He then declares he's a friend, maybe, and asks to be taken to see Doom.
A short time later, in the Latverian Museum's gardens, the mysterious newcomer meets up with Doom, and declares that Wire should not be blamed - he was forced to arrange this meeting, after all. It was time to meet face to face. Doom says that face to face meetings with a master of disguise don't really engender trust, and asks if he's using some sort of holograms. The man agrees that it's one of his tools. He has many faces, many names, but Doom can call him Poet. He's got no corporate affiliation - he's a free agent. Doom notes that for all his talk, Poet is saying very little, and asks him why he came to Wire's aid. Poet explains that he was raiding Pixel's compound when Doom took over in the previous issue (which explains the shortage of guards and that mysterious guy in the control room.) He figured anyone who was willing to take on Wylde directly deserved a little help. Doom asks what the man wants in return for his help, but Poet says he wants nothing right now - his support is a favor for an old friend. He then drives away on his hover-bike, leaving Doom with a last warning - he should be careful when hijacking the Tritonium, as it's almost as dangerous as he is!
We next see Tiger Wylde's armored transport plane approaching Gojradia airport. Doom flies closer on a personal transport vehicle of his own, cloak flapping behind him. Leaving the heist of the Tritonium to this late point in its flight is risky, he acknowledges, since it leaves him only a short window of time in which to act - but at the same time Wylde's forces won't expect an attack so close to the destination. Doom ditches his ride as he falls with style towards the plane, blasting a hole into the side of the plane with a concussive shock from his gauntlets - that would be the cover image - before going inside. According to Wire's hacked data there's a mercenary who was hired to guard the cargo, so-called 'Rook Seven', a veteran of the same corporate wars that birthed Wylde, so he's ready for anything.
As Doom enters the fuselage of the plane he determines that Rook Seven must be cautiously waiting and watching, assessing his combat ability, so Doom decides to play into this, pretending not to notice the mercenary's presence as he moves towards the cargo, acting as if he's being greedy and hasty to lure the man into making a move. A moment before that happens, the merc's reflection becomes visible on the shiny exterior of Doom's new armor - it's pretty neat art. Rook opens fire with a huge sonic gun, declaring he doesn't care to know who Doom might be - he'll check with the genetic material left over afterwards! Doom momentarily worries he'll be blown straight through the hull by the focused sonic waves, but manages to hold on.
With the plane dropping quickly, either because they're approaching the runway or because of the sudden hole in its side messing with its aerodynamics, Rook decides to try and grab the cargo and escape out the hole to safety. Doom instead trusts his internal equilibrium to keep him upright while he blasts more holes into the plane to hasten its descent further…
Rook Seven, aghast, shouts at Doom that if he sets off any more concussive blasts the Tritonium might ignite and blow them all to smithereens, and Doom has to admit the mercenary has a point. He puts aside his weapons and turns the battle into one of physical force, wrestling with Rook over the canister which contains the volatile element. Rook tells Doom that he won't survive the conflict when the plane dips dangerously low - it's hopeless! During their fight, however, Doom reflects that while he might not remember many details about his past, his martial training in Tibet comes readily to mind and allows him to keep up. Rook asks Doom if he's ready to die, and Doom dryly answers: 'No', before dumping him out of the burning side of the plane to his death. He then grabs the Tritonium, but belatedly realizes that it's too late!
The plane hits the ground in a cataclysmic explosion, covering the ground in burning debris and clouds of acrid smoke. Tiger Wylde's army approaches with equipment to put the raging fire out, since they're worried that if the Tritonium goes boom, they'll all be dead meat either way. Before they can even get started, however, something moves inside the inferno. A survivor! Sure enough, an armored form strides out of the flames, untouched by the fury around him. He then cries out that Doom has returned… and war is declared! Under his arm he holds the Tritonium storage canister, somehow untouched by the calamity.
The final quote, this time, is from Shakespeare's Henry V: 'In peace there's nothing so becomes a man as modest stillness and humility; but when the blast of war blows in our ears, then imitate the action of the tiger.' The quote, in full, continues: 'Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, disguise fair nature with hard-favor'd rage.'
Rating & Comments
After a strong start, this issue carries the story forward well - mostly because, despite the title being about the 'actions of the tiger', which implies Tiger Wylde gets to take the initiative, it's actually Doom who does most of the heavy lifting here. From the first page onwards, Doom employs his skills and allies with remarkable efficiency - he builds himself some spy robots, gets them to infiltrate his enemy's base of operations as well as half the major cities in the world, and ensures that he has access to pretty much everything he could possibly need in the event of an emergency. It's hard not to root for the guy when the enemy is a corporate asshole who mistreats people for the sake of making money, and spends most of his time having adversarial phone calls with other stuck-up billionaires while literally looking down on the poors with contempt, contemplating throwing the dogs a bone to calm them down. I can relate to Doom's disdain, is what I'm saying.
One oddity in this issue is the timing of events in Peru - while Doom declares that Pixel will notice them being present in their base 'within 10 hours' in this issue, the writers also confirm that it has been a full two weeks since the previous issue. This means that Pixel apparently completely ignored the takeover of one of their bases for actual ages, until some arbitrary point when suddenly Doom's people had to hustle to get out before the corporate forces showed up. I guess they finally called up to ask what was going on? Since Doom had enough time to make a small army of robots and send them around the world, though, let's assume Pixel is just supremely incompetent rather than that there's any weirdness with time going on. Fortune was apparently absent for three weeks when she met with Wylde, so we lost a few more days somewhere along the way, but I'm guessing this includes the journey back from the mountains where the Zefiro are hiding out. I wonder how time works, exactly, when the entire storyline supposedly takes place in the year '2099' but publication takes place across multiple years and covers more than one week per issue…?
Getting back to this comic, the relationships between the various major characters stay on course from last issue - Fortune is still the adversarial one who talks back to Doom, Xandra is doubtful but willing to go along with Doom's ideas to see where they lead, and Wire is enthusiastically on board with anything that makes him useful - he's obviously my favorite. Newcomer Poet plays the mysterious background character who may or may not become relevant later and has cool shapeshifter powers, but there's not enough to go on for now. Dr. Quinones might return too, since they did leave the door open for her after things cool down in her life - and I wouldn't mind a sassy no-nonsense doctor on the team. Shades of Bones McCoy, yeah? Aside from all those allies, we get an introduction to another villain too, who is once more a CEO - this time it's Devargas of Pixel. There's not really enough here to form a string opinion about him, but he'll surely be back in future issues. It's nice to see such a varied array of supporting cast members get their day in the sun, considering Doom usually has to make do with random flunkies and the occasional three-issue German doctor as his entourage. Boris on a good day.
The name of this issue is backstory and buildup - we get some for our antagonist Tiger Wylde's via Doom's robots hacking the planet, mostly centered around his origins as an elite enforcer for Alchemax before striking out on his own, and his eventual solo gig of taking over Latveria to form his own corporate cabal (if one that's more limited than the big competitors.) We also get some more tantalizing hints about future Doom's backstory, notably that he remembers being physically older and unhealthy from (presumably) age, with a servant cautioning him to be careful. It's notable that in this same flashback, Doom survived the 'Age of Heroes' which had already ended at that point, but even when all his competition is dead, he still chases some unknown threat which remains in the shadows. It's left vague whether or not he's just being paranoid or if there's actually an underlying danger people are ignoring, but given that the world kind of ended for a while there in the 2099 timeline, he may have had a point? The path from there to essentially reincarnating into the future is left unknown for now…
Doom shows his skill in this issue in a multitude of ways - the spy robots are an obvious one that he's used before, but the fact that he managed to subvert missiles by installing a fake person into air command to break the system on command is just excellent planning, and the assault on the plane towards the finale is just a badass achievement all around. Tritonium might be an obvious MacGuffin, but you gotta admit that crashing a plane with the equivalent of a nuke on it and then striding out of the flaming wreckage with the bomb under one arm is supremely awesome. Honestly, the entire plane segment is pretty sweet, since even though it doesn't go flawlessly, Doom was prepared for everything that happened there and turned the whole affair into a bit of a show, even though it went differently than he expected.
I enjoyed this continuation - it keeps the momentum going even though we get some more backstory, since people are always moving, with Wire and Xandra doing their little heist while Doom and Fortune are having their disagreement elsewhere, and even Tiger Wylde is evidently looking into things. I'm enjoying all the groundwork that's being laid here, and hold out hope that all of it will get revisited later - though I am aware that in comic books, that's by no means a sure thing. Let's enjoy what we have while it's here, yeah? For another pretty good issue, well above average, I'll land on four stars here. The first issue did get that 'fresh car smell' boost...
Do They Speak English in 2099?
"Jackin' into a Guardsmen terminal's no easy netslide. No freestyling either. Snake the info and exit realtime fast."
"Get in and out before they scope you cold."
Quotations from Chairman Doom
"My childhood ended the day I watched the old Baron murder my father - and I swear, as I wrested Latveria from that monarch's twisted grasp - so shall I free my homeland a second time - from the usurper Tiger Wylde."
"Now we return to Latveria. The revolution has begun."
"My memory is like my castle - the fragmented remains of a past life."
"I have conquered continents. I have survived Mephisto's inferno. I am Doom. I am forever triumphant."
"Tell Tiger Wylde… that Doom has returned… AND WAR IS DECLARED!"
Art Spotlight
Special mention here for the reflections in Doom's armor. There's some really nice panels where the armor really has that excessive bling look which they were clearly going for, and it's pretty cool. Also looks like a lot of work for artists...
Doom-Tech of the Future
The Spy Robots are Doom's first invention in the future aside from his new armor, but presumably they're based on his old models. It's notable that they're fully capable of hacking and infiltrating the world even a century on, though.
One oddity in this issue is the timing of events in Peru - while Doom declares that Pixel will notice them being present in their base 'within 10 hours' in this issue, the writers also confirm that it has been a full two weeks since the previous issue. This means that Pixel apparently completely ignored the takeover of one of their bases for actual ages, until some arbitrary point when suddenly Doom's people had to hustle to get out before the corporate forces showed up. I guess they finally called up to ask what was going on? Since Doom had enough time to make a small army of robots and send them around the world, though, let's assume Pixel is just supremely imcompetent rather than that there's any weirdness with time going on. Fortune was apparently absent for three weeks when she met with Wylde, so we lost a few more days somewhere along the way, but I'm guessing this includes the journey back from the mountains where the Zefiro are hiding out. I wonder how time works, exactly, when the entire storyline supposedly takes place in the year '2099' but publication takes place across multiple years and covers more than one week per issue…?
Maybe they missed a monthly check in? It is a bit weird.
As for the overall timeline, Doom 2099 had 44 issues and while some of them cover multiple weeks, such as this one, I'm pretty sure others take place in a single day, so you'd really have to do some work to determine if they all fit in a single year but it's at least possible.
You know, I don't think I ever found out exactly what was going on with Doom's backstory in this one, so hopefully your read will shine some light on that.
Maybe they missed a monthly check in? It is a bit weird.
As for the overall timeline, Doom 2099 had 44 issues and while some of them cover multiple weeks, such as this one, I'm pretty sure others take place in a single day, so you'd really have to do some work to determine if they all fit in a single year but it's at least possible.
You know, I don't think I ever found out exactly what was going on with Doom's backstory in this one, so hopefully your read will shine some light on that.
That's what I'd go with. Simplest explanation. You could argue that only having a single monthly check-in is lax, but if we assume Pixel is just overconfident and sloppy wrt some of their security measures then it fits.
As for the time explanation, that works, or alternatively after the First System War of 2073 they decided to add more weeks to the year to prevent a repeat of the Hyperborean Temporal Plague. One or the other./s
In Luke Cage, Hero for Hire #8-9, I agree that it is out of character for Doom to be stingy with his money. On explanation I found online which makes perfect sense to me is this.
Doom left the money to pay Luke Cage with the doorman, because he had to return to Latveria to deal with the robot rebellion at once. The doorman decided to pocket the money, and figured Luke Cage would never try to complain to Doom about it. Doom was genuinely surprised when Cage showed up in Latveria, since he though he had already been paid. He assumed Cage just wanted more money. Afterwards, Doom probably executed the doorman for "impugning the honor of Doom" which in Latveria is definitely treason.
AH! The setting might be the distant cyberpunk dystopia of 2099, but even here giant horizon-spanning Doom will show up to terrorize the city! Judging by all the shiny lights, he's charging up his atomic breath! Seriously, did every single spike on his armor really need an independent glinting point? And all his fingers too? And that's without mentioning whatever is going on with the lighting of that sky-tank. Either the buildings behind it have some very unusual lighting arrangements, or the car's lights are reflecting streaks of individual points of light perpendicular to the direction of its travel…? I'm confused. Regardless, this issue's cover features Doom grasping the very phallic symbol of Tiger Wylde's dominance, and I choose not to follow that particular rabbit trail any further than that. Let us move on, quickly!.
Story Overview
Unto the Breach
We pick back up at Doom's secluded hangar built into a mountainside, that same old base where the Diamondhawk airplane was stored back in the first issue. It is now inhabited by a contingent of Zefiro revolutionaries under Fortune's leadership, subservient only to Doom. While the place was constructed a century ago by Doctor Doom in his glory days, it's apparently still one of the best places to hide out from Tiger Wylde in 2099, even if Xandra is dubious about that particular claim. While Fortune reassures her that tarot readings confirm that they can't get rid of Wylde without Doom's assistance, Xandra isn't convinced by all that - since both Doom and his technology have been gathering dust for a century, she doesn't trust either. Doom isn't one of their tribe, she argues, and perhaps he isn't even human!
As if to demonstrate her point, Doom floats down from the ceiling, passing straight through the Diamondhawk as if it's not even there, and states that humanity, in times of revolution, is an overrated commodity. Fortune has no interest in discussing philosophy with Doom, but interrupts herself when she realizes what she just saw - what the hell, did Doom just float through solid matter? Yup!
Doom explains that he built a phase shifter into his new armor which allows him to briefly go intangible, a feature which he can control with mere mental concentration due to the neural linkage that his nanite treatment gave him. Fortune tells him to concentrate on something other than his new technological goodies - he should focus on the issue of Tiger Wylde! After stealing the man's shipment of Tritonium in the last issue, Wylde's trackers have been sent out in full force to find Doom, so the tribe will have to take the fight to the enemy before Wylde finds their secret base and takes the initiative.
Xandra and Doom walk deeper into the base, and the latter confesses that she's not too confident that a bunch of untrained gypsies could take on Wylde's army and mercenaries on the best of days, if it came to such a confrontation. Doom tells her to look beyond the superficial; they have something Wylde desperately wants now, the Tritonium - a potent source of regenerating, intensely explosive energy. He intends to use it as both Wylde's bait and downfall in one. Xandra notes that this is fine, just as long as it doesn't blow them all to kingdom come first!
We switch over to the polluted Ciri river which cuts through Latveria and its capital of Gojradia - only to see a man engulfed in fire rushing across a pier towards the cool waters, an agonized scream on his lips. He jumps off and lands in the water, but it seems to have been too late - he disappears beneath the waves without struggling.
Nearby, Tiger Wylde's minion Zone holds a second man at gunpoint, backed up by a small army of guardsmen and Wylde himself. They've captured Makarov, another Alchemax spy like the one they just executed. Zone demands to know where the Tritonium has gone, but Makarov says he doesn't know where it went - he cross-referenced the name 'Doom' claimed by the man who stole it, but it doesn't show up anywhere among independent contractors. Zone doesn't buy the answer, but Makarov blurts out that if Alchemax really had the Tritonium, he wouldn't even be here to spy on them. Wylde approaches and agrees that if Alchemax was behind the theft, CEO Tyler Stone would surely have called up to gloat, so Makarov is likely telling the truth. Then, as a 'professional courtesy' he turns his gun on the spy and vaporizes him in a single shot - a quick death. This was another dead end, he decides: no Doom, no Tritonium.
Back in Antikva village, people on the street are discussing the recent upsurge in guardsmen activity after the explosive plane crash in the previous week, while other people are disinterested in ongoing politics and just want some clean food. What they wouldn't give for uncontaminated food packs! Their discussions are interrupted when a flying cargo vehicle suddenly starts spouting propaganda - but instead of favoring Wylde, the messages are in the voice of Doom! The vehicle loudly announces that soon they will no longer suffer under the neglect of Tiger Wylde - a new Latveria will rise under Doom's leadership! The people aren't convinced, noting that the Doom they know from history is long dead - but when the cargo transport then drops crates of food into the streets, they quickly change their tune. Xandra is piloting the vehicle with Doom as a passenger, and the latter notes that providing the disenfranchised with sustenance is a small part of their ongoing campaign to free Latveria - food succeeds where rhetoric cannot in disrupting the status quo.
Soon enough the charity drive gets them unwelcome attention, as guardsmen fly towards them in a tank to bother them. The cops demand surrender, and Xandra nervously says that their transport is neither armed nor armored, so how are they going to get out of this? Doom just tells her to pilot the ship - and he'll take care of this personally. He then raises one hand to the sky and fires a blast of energy towards the police vehicle, vaporizing their would-be captors entirely. Boom! Xandra confesses that she has no love for guardsmen, but that was still ice-cold! Doom declares that he simply does what needs to be done, that's all...
Back at Tiger Wylde's headquarters, the elaborate and very baroque airship of Pixel's CEO Devargas has arrived for an unscheduled meeting, docking at the top of the building. Wylde is surprised to see the man outside the germ-free comforts of his Madrid offices, and Devargas agrees that he wouldn't have risked contamination if things weren't so urgent. He brought along a bunch of synthetic people - mindless and servile 'bioshop creations' that he refers to as Androgynes - to serve as his aides. Devargas warns Wylde that losing the Tritonium endangered their shared plan to counter Alchemax, and asks who on Earth this 'Doom' fellow is supposed to be. Wylde just tells him Doom is of no consequence, as he'll get the Tritonium back soon. Devargas is skeptical, and admits that he was impressed with Wylde when he broke from Alchemax, and when he conquered Latveria - but maybe he's finally losing his edge?
After Devargas leaves in his airship, a furious Wylde watches him fly away and declares that he'd better slink back to Madrid - Wylde never intended his alliance with Pixel to be more than temporary anyway! And as for losing his edge? That accusation gets under his skin even more, and his building anger triggers the sonic resonators in his limbs, bathing the room in feedback and shattering every glass in the vicinity in the process. Subtle - destroying your own office because you were vaguely slighted. That's totally sensible behaviour, sure…
Veering away from there, we enter Cyberspace - the digital superhighway of the interwebs is a landscape of information, a frontier of electronic data that manifests as a landscape of circuit boards and off-colour clouds. It's extremely 90's. Most people can only visit fractions of it, through virtual reality or communication software, but to people like Wire - cyber-savants - no frontiers exist, and no programs cannot be accessed. Naturally, Wire is surfing this particular web on a green board made of bits, dodging walls made of 0's and 1's in a very Tron kind of way. It seems he used a backdoor left by programmers to enter through Wylde's security systems, and snatched up some codes as well as an APB. Finished with his task, he disconnects from the network to return to the real world.
Waking up from his cyber-trance to a concerned Xandra and a watchful Doom, it takes him a few moments to gather himself from the trip - he's always a bit dizzy and scrambled after going offline from the net. He tells Doom that he got what he needed, though - defense codes for Wylde's systems, and a message directed specifically at Doom. The message was put everywhere and directed at 'the independent called Doom', but the rest of the message was encrypted. He uses a wire attached to his glasses to forward the message to a nearby terminal, where it takes Doom only moments to break the logarithmically based code - it seems it's from the Pixel Corporation, who want to negotiate for the return of the Tritonium. Clearly their faith in Wylde is diminishing if they're going around him like this...
Doom warns Wire and Xandra that they haven't achieved victory yet - but they're one step closer now. Combining the defense codes Wire just stole with the ones he had already taken at the very beginning of the first issue, they now have access to all of Latveria's communication network. Xandra wonders what they'll use that for - cancel their holovid bills, maybe? Doom explains they'll use this access to bring down the walls of Jericho from the inside. Since they don't have the resources to take on Wylde's forces directly, they will take his foundation out from under his feet instead.
Tiger Wylde's administration depends heavily on the day to day maintenance of the country's utilities, but Wire's codes allow them to throw a spanner into such public works, bringing the nation to an abrupt halt. It'll mean that sacrifices have to be made by the citizens, but such are the costs of freedom! They'll cripple the ground transportation by damping the magnetic currents, then shut down the drainage system causing the sewers to clog up and factories to choke on their own toxic fumes. Afterwards, he'll shut down the power grid to leave the place in a blackout. In this time of national chaos, Doom will arrive to give public addresses through holoprojection, supporting the aggrieved masses against their corporate overlord, and promising a better Latveria… under Doom! Thus, revolution is achieved...
Later, somewhere over the Pyrenees mountains on the border of France and Spain, Devargas's personal airship - a baroque monstrosity called the Cicada - is invaded by an outside force, who breaks into the hermetically sealed and germ-free interior, much to the dismay of its owner. Doom is the invader, naturally, and wonders why Devargas is being so discourteous to an invited guest?
The CEO, not wearing his glassy suit, rejects this statement entirely - nobody's invited inside his sealed environment, and Doom is surely crawling with bacteria and viral strains - thousands upon thousands! Doom simply says that if Devargas wants to discuss the return of the Tritonium, he'll have to put up with his presence. Devargas finally seems to get what's going on, who he's talking to, and offers Doom clemency in exchange for the substance. Doom tells the CEO he's in no position to dictate terms, and offers his own: if Devargas withdraws his support for Wylde, he won't use the Tritonium against Pixel. Devargas quickly agrees to these terms, and then bids Doom to leave. He needs to perform an emergency sterilization of the entire zeppelin, now!
Back in Gojradia, Wylde is enraged at Doom's recent actions - not only did he steal Tritonium, but now he's shutting down his city from under him. How could one man sabotage this much? Perhaps he's not doing this alone - but who else would gain by his defeat? In a fit of paranoia, he takes aim at his subordinate Zone, who keeps calm and says that he has no interest in taking over his administration. Besides, while killing Zone might alleviate some of Wylde's frustration, it wouldn't return the Tritonium. Wylde calms down and asks forgiveness for his rash accusations, and Zone treats the whole affair as water under the bridge. He then declares that while the entire computer network is being re-secured as they speak, restoring control over the city's systems, there's a more immediate priority he's discovered elsewhere. He hands over a tablet which displays a satellite feed, and explains that there was a strange weather anomaly that Zone has identified as an atmospheric cloak, and beneath it… there's an image of Doom speaking to Fortune at a mysterious secluded base in the mountains...
Meanwhile, at said no-longer-so-hidden hangar, Doom goes to visit the Zefiro experts on all things magical - their mute adept Vox, who briefly showed up in the first issue. He admits that his own meditations have failed to dredge up more of his past, and he wants to reconstruct the shattered memories in his head - but he doesn't dare use half-remembered incantations to help matters along, so he has to bank on someone else's expertise here. Vox agrees without saying a word - he's mute, after all - and with a simple gesture he casts magic at Doom, surprising the monarch with the ease. He rises into the air, and the present grows hazy to him as the past rises up. For a moment he seems to stand on some great precipice, on the edge of his lost memories…
Elsewhere, Fortune arrives at Wylde's headquarters in response to the CEO's summons, unaware that she's been made. She tries to excuse her tardiness, but Wylde tells her she's been unapologetic since their first meeting when he caught her stripping some of his guardsmen's vehicles for parts - there's no reason to start acting humble now! He could have killed her then, but he recognized her skill at reading Tarot cards and kept her around to benefit from her talent. In return for that counsel he ensured her tribe's safety within Latveria - and her betrayal of that agreement hurts him deeply! Fortune nervously tries to weasel out of it, but Wylde just tells her that today he will be the one predicting the future. He takes out one of her cards and shows it to her - it's Death! Not a card that bodes well for her, he concludes. He then demands to know everything about this man called Doom…
Doom, caught up in Vox's magic spell, isn't entirely sure whether he's reliving memories he's previously forgotten, or if he has been displaced into his own body of years past. Regardless, his surroundings are both vivid and yet unfamiliar to him - but the smells of death and destruction are all too recognizable. Images flash by of abandoned streets, of pockmarked buildings in a war-torn city, and a mortally wounded warrior stumbling out of a doorway to confront Doom, declaring that all this is his fault - he destroyed everything! Even as she dies at his feet, she declares Doom will fry for this. Doom himself feels strangely moved by sympathy and responsibility, and his past self speaks to a servant about what happened - and he laments that perhaps he destroyed a city for nothing. Did he sow discord and conflict where he meant to create unity and vision? Doom sees the world collapse beneath his feet, and decides that for order to be restored, he must leave to the only place where he can find answers --
The vision is abruptly cut off when a panicked Xandra bursts into the room with Doom's name on her lips.
She promtly declares that their situation has just gone from bad to worse - they are defconned and up to their butt in radwaste, in future parlance. Doom asks her what exactly got her so upset, and she explains that they should have scattered like she advised, because now they've been discovered! Wylde is outside with 'mega-hardware', and all of them are stuck inside a cave, an easy target. Doom simply muses that it may change things, but doesn't seem too shocked. Outside, a legion of armored sky-cars arrive, including one carrying Wylde and piloted by Zone. The Latverian dictator lays down an ultimatum - Doom must surrender, or he will be buried, alongside his gypsies, beneath his own mountain!
The pretentious quote of the week is, again, from Shakespeare's Henry V: "Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; or close the wall up with our English dead." It's actually a phrase that comes shortly before the previous issue's quotation, but it makes sense - Doom restarts his assault on Wylde in this issue using a gap in his cyber-defenses, which is analogous to the situation of the original quote.
Rating & Comments
This issue, I feel, is a bit more uneven than the last two - while it still moves the plot forward and has some nice moments, it also feels like it treads water a bit too much compared to the last two comics, spending time reestablishing things which were already confirmed in the previous issues. There was no real reason to have a scene dedicated to Doom explaining the Tritonium to Xandra, for example, when it was elaborated on just last issue and there's already a reminder note or two about its properties anyway. Neither did we really need a scene of Wire stealing secrets he already had from a previous issue - especially since his hacking abilities will be a focus in the next story arc already, so saving the specifics would've been fine for now. Having two separate scenes of Wylde failing to get a bead on Doom and raging about it seems a bit much too - I suppose the third time proves to be the charm there. Still, at worst I can say that the ongoing story stumbles for a moment - it regains momentum towards the end of the issue, and obviously the cliffhanger is pretty good, setting up for a rematch that's been approaching since the first issue. It's come earlier than I expected, honestly, but perhaps I'm just used to this stuff taking forever since Doom spent years in exile almost every previous time he was dethroned...
We get our first glimpse of 2099's version of the internet in Wire's segment - their version of cyberspace. It features Wire literally surfing the worldwide web on a board made of pure cheese like he's in Tron - it's almost more 80's than 90's. It'll get more elaboration in the future, as I mentioned, but it's nice to see that this particular element of cyberpunk made the cut - it's just so entertainingly silly. We also get more information in this comic about how terribly cutthroat corporate interests are in this future world, with assassins and spies of various corporations in every direction taking each other out. It's a bit unfortunate, I think, that both Wylde and Devargas come off as rather cartoonishly over the top, even for comic book villains - Wylde blows up his own office for being slighted and vaporizes people, while Devargas is such an enormous germaphobe that he can barely even think without being hermetically sealed into a container at all times while he's not disinfecting his entire airship. They're the enemies of our protagonist, sure, but they don't come across as particularly viable foils for a version of Doom who is rather more laser-focused than usual, keeping his more excessive personal failings in check for several issues in a row in the interests of his ultimate goals. I guess that's what you get when the Fantastic Four aren't around to bother him!
Speaking of Doom himself, the cyber-future continues to provide plenty of goodies for those of us who like competence and bloodymindedness. Doom constructs himself a brand new technological trick on the first page - namely momentary intangibility - and also sets up an elaborate plan to destabilize Latveria from under Wylde's rule with relatively minor effort, which actually works as intended. Now, we could debate whether or not putting more strain on an already beleaguered society in order to force the underclass into revolutionary action is a defensible strategy, but it's certainly a very Doom way to go. I guess he learned it from the Soviets? Anyway, it proves effective, as Wylde quickly goes from excessive to actively crazy. He's snapping under the pressure, judging by his unhinged interactions with Devargas and Zone. He goes full blood knight on Doom here - and when an enemy is blinded by rage, it's really easy to trick them into going along with your plans. This is, I believe, what's going on here - Doom is far too calm about his base being discovered, even though he probably hoped it'd be a bit later than right this moment since it interrupted his meditations. Clearly, he's got something big brewing behind the scenes...
Speaking of behind the scenes, Doom's pre-series backstory is slowly taking form over time, with each issue filling in a few details - we already know from the last few that Doom was much older before he went into the future, living with an ailing body that was feeling the strain of years of constant fighting and possibly age. We also know that he was hunting for a grand, hidden threat that was manipulating society in secret from the shadows - some Illuminati type organization that most could not even fathom. This time around, we also learn that Doom blames himself for some of his well-intentioned actions which led to a city being destroyed - whether or not those actions were actually good ones is of course up in the air, since Doom has been known to justify his worst excesses with flowery language before. Hopefully we'll get more puzzle pieces going forward so we can get a clearer image of what happened, but thus far it's at least enticing enough to keep me going. Why is Doom young again, exactly? Is he a clone of the original? Did he deage himself? Did he bodyjack some poor sod with his Ovoid mind powers…?
While this issue doesn't quite get as high a score as the last ones, it's still pretty good - and it's buoyed it up by what preceded it. That, and there's some fun Wire material - he's my favorite of the 2099 characters, in case you couldn't tell, save for maybe Doom himself. I'll give this issue a neat 3 stars then, and hope that the final issue of this four-parter can drive the story home - it's the finale of Doom 2099's introduction arc, setting up where this series is going from here, so it'd be nice if it manages that. It should be fun to see what Doom's plan turns out to be - and how many people have to suffer and die to see it completed. I mean, I've read his mainstream incarnation, I know how Doom works!
Do They Speak English in 2099?
"Our situation's defconned big time! We're up to our butts in radwaste!"
Quotations from Chairman Doom
"In times of revolution, humanity is an overrated commodity."
"Citizens of Latveria, heed the words of Doom! No longer will you suffer the neglect of the usurper Tiger Wylde. Soon the tiger will be dead, and a new Latveria will rise. Remember the voice of Doom."
Art Spotlight
There's something rather peculiar about Zone's footage of Doom and Fortune - for some reason Doom has exchanged his fancy new blue/purple cape for his classic green one in this single panel. Whoops! Guess the colorist fell back on old habits.
Doom-Tech of the Week
Well, Doom's new Phase Shifter fits in nicely with the rest of Chekhov's armory, don't you think?
"Up to our butts in radwaste" is definitely silly, but I can see 'defconned' as future slang for being attacked, considering I already hear people talking about needing to 'go to Defcon 1' for various things where that's not literally the case.
Compared to the last handful of issues, this cover is a bit of a downer, by portraying the villain as the one in control while Doom is pressed into the corner while cowering on the floor. Declaring that his enemies must grovel before their king is really more of a Doom thing too, isn't it? In any case, the cover conveys the main feature of this issue, which is the promised rematch between Tiger Wylde and Doom after the latter's ignominious defeat back in the first issue. Will he do better, this time around? Let's hope so, or this comic series will come to a swift end...
Story Overview
Fire Answers Fire
For the second issue in a row, we return to the secluded mountain bunker that the Zefiro tribe has been using as a hideout - except it's no longer so hidden, since an army of Wylde's corporate goons are taking potshots at the beleaguered minority hiding within. Worried that they might be caught in a desperate and suicidal final stand, a small contingent of Zefiro gypsies at the bunker entrance ask why the armored enigma in whom they've placed their trust is absent from the fight. They can't hold out much longer by themselves - where exactly is Doom? Wire explains that Xandra went inside to find him and warn him of what's happening, but any further conversation is cut off by the explosion of a concussion grenade in their midst, destroying any further opposition plans in one swift moment.
In the aftermath of the blast, the Zefiro are forced to lay down their arms and are taken captive by Wylde's men. When the big man himself arrives to oversee the attack, the Zefiro are surprised to see that one of their own, Fortune, is present alongside the enemy. She quickly explains that she was captured earlier in the city, and asks whether Wire is alright, since he's still unconscious from the blast. Thankfully, the cyber-savant was simply stunned by the grenade, not physically harmed. A scowling Tiger Wylde takes it all in stride, telling Fortune that this is the price of her betrayal. She made a poor decision when she sided with the wannabe-revolutionary Doom, and she must now see her people suffer for it. She really should have realized that Wylde didn't conquer Latveria by worrying about the lives of peasants! Now, he states, she'll hand Doom and the Tritonium over to him, or she shall have to watch as her beloved tribe's people die in front of her eyes, one by one!
In response to this demand, a booming voice speaks from off-panel and declares that Wylde won't be getting the Tritonium from Fortune - for that, he'll have to face Doom personally! Doom isn't actually there in person, of course, using an enormous hologram of his red-eyed mask to convey his displeasure instead. Wylde is annoyed and tells him that he can't hide behind such tricks - if Doom doesn't give up the ore, he'll simply drown the mountain in gypsy blood until he gives up! Doom response is ice-cold - Wylde can go ahead and kill them all, if he must - it won't do him any good. Doom does not surrender! He recounts that Wylde threatened to bury him beneath the mountain last issue, and Doom promises that he's fully prepared to do the same thing in return - and for this reason he has primed the Tritonium to detonate unless Wylde agrees to face him in single combat…!
Wylde agrees to the deal, though his minion Zone tries to convince him that they should just let Doom set off his suicide bomb like he's threatening - since Tritonium regenerates after use, they could just dig it up again later without much fuss. Wylde doesn't want to let this 'tin-plated anachronism' off so easily, since Doom has caused him no end of trouble and turned his country upside down. He's looking forward to slowly taking apart Doom piece by piece with his own two hands - it'll be a great pleasure to see him suffer!
Down in the bunker's sublevels, Xandra confronts Doom with his statement to Wylde that he should go ahead and kill the tribe - is that really what he thinks of them? Are they just cannon fodder to Doom!? Doom rejects this interpretation out of hand, motioning Xandra to keep her head cool - this is a war of strategy, and he could not afford to let Wylde use the tribe against him. Fortune understands that, he says. Xandra doesn't care for sophistry, refusing to treat her friends as pawns to be sacrificed in a chess game, and decides she's going up there personally to take care of things. Doom quickly shuts her down, pointing out that she'd just get killed, since she can't overpower Wylde's troops.
Desperate, she asks what the hell she's supposed to do instead, and Doom tells her that she should take the sorcerer Vox to safety. While the child is magically powerful, he's hardly a warrior. Doom leads her to a series of ventilation shafts which will allow them to escape the mountain, and instructs her to wait outside until the conflict is over. Reluctantly, Xandra agrees with this course of action, but she warns him that if Fortune or Wire die during this whole mess, she'll be back to shut him down for good.
Beneath his mask, Doom allows himself half a smile as he watches his subordinates leave. Fire drives Xandra, he reflects, just like it does him; it is that molten core burning in his heart which brought him to this time of reckoning, which withstood the unexplained decades-long exile he took from the world, which survived a near-fatal confrontation with Wylde, and which now balances him on a cataclysmic ledge in his quest to reclaim his homeland. He knows that Wylde requires the Tritonium to counter Alchemax, his old employer, which is why he elected to use the material as bait - and he intends to forge that same alien metal into the final nail in Wylde's coffin as well. Doom shall reclaim what is rightfully his - his country, his people, his throne! And as for revenge? Well, he'll get that too...
Xandra and Vox make their way out of the ventilation shafts and escape into the nearby forest. Xandra warns the young sorcerer to stay low - it seems he's using his magic to float around rather than simply walking, but he'd make an easy target up in the air. Sometimes, she admits, she really wishes Vox could talk - she could use a reassuring word or two! While the two of them look on at the army arrayed outside the bunker, Xandra admits that she hates feeling so helpless. Behind them, a shadowy figure approaches and declares that she shouldn't do anything foolish, because what would her boyfriend do without her...?
Wylde and Zone have made their way inside Doom's bunker with Fortune tagging along, and the latter warns Wylde that she makes for a poor hostage, since Doom and Wylde are alike in one way - sentiment never clouds their actions! Wylde seems to resent the comparison, immediately proclaiming that Doom is just a relic of the past regardless of the vintage of his armor. Zone contradicts this by complaining that Doom's century-old technology is remarkably advanced, and even with current methods he can't actually crack anything but the basic security. With what he can get access to, he knows that Doom is down in the seventh sub-level somewhere, but he can't tell what defenses might have been set up. With time he'd be able to set off a magnetic pulse and trap Doom down there, but Wylde dismisses this option since he wants this to be a grand fight between the two of them. Impatiently, he declares that he'll take the express way down.
Firing downwards at the floor with his laser gun, Wylde atomizes the levels between him and the one where Doom is hiding out, dropping down through a cloud of disintegrating steel and clouds of sparks and dust, before landing in a crouching posture far, far below. Is it still a superhero landing if a villain does it...?
The moment he arrives he spots the Tritonium nearby, wired up with an explosive detonator just as Doom described. Wylde promises he'll kill Doom long before the device has a chance to be triggered, while Doom calls the device mere insurance, to avoid their little subterranean summit getting interrupted by those bothersome guardsmen upstairs. 'Or the Zefiro,' Wylde adds. Doom declares that they're gypsies, so they'll survive regardless of the outcome of their duel, and Wylde darkly replies that the 'once and future Doom' will not be so lucky.
Without much more warning, Tiger Wylde suddenly opens fire with his gun while shouting that it's time for the old man to go back to the dust - Doom simply tanks the shots without flinching, declaring that conventional weaponry has no chance of getting through his new Adamantium-lanxide armor, and he has not returned to his ancestral country only to be driven away by some mechanized carpetbagger! That's actually a pretty appropriate term to use, heh. Wylde thinks it's pretty rich for Doom to use that sort of language when he believes himself to be a long-dead member of the monarchy, but decides he won't contest his enemy's delusions any further - if he chooses to live as Doom, then he shall die as Doom! Engulfing his arms in an abundance of Kirby Krackles, the fight then turns to energetic super-fisticuffs. Well, mostly just posing, but it looks vaguely like they're fighting?
Much like he did in the first issue, Wylde attempts to use a disruption field to fry Doom's armor with him still inside, but his tactic has markedly less effect this time around thanks to the new duds. Doom mocks Wylde for thinking he'd get away with using the same tactic twice, since Wylde himself was the one who taught Doom that he was painfully unprepared for this future time period. Now he faces a Doom who has had time to upgrade, one who can rechannel the disruption field right back to its sender! Wylde declares that he fought his way out of corporate servitude, rebuilt his body piece by piece, and took Latveria not through technology but through force of will - so he can't give up now. This country is his - Latveria is his! Doom retorts that Latveria has never been Wylde's, and when he raises his hands overhead, he unleashes a disruption field that tints the air green and has the villain writhing in pain.
Back on the surface, Xandra gets grabbed from behind by a mysterious newcomer, and he tries to muffle her cries by putting his hand over her mouth. In response, Xandra takes hold of her attacker and violently flips him head over heels, smashing him into the floor in front of her while she pulls out the barbed knife from the start of the first issue to gut him. She's surprised to find her attacker is actually Poet, the shapechanging mysterious ally from before, and tells him that grabbing her was a very stupid idea - she could have killed him! Poet simply says that would have been a bad idea, since he's the only friend the tribe has on the outside - he's always had a soft spot for gypsy revolutionaries! Xandra decides to join Poet for whatever he's planning, gives Vox instructions on where to go in case things go badly, and walks off with him.
On their way to his hoverbike, apropos of nothing, Poet wonders why Xandra has such fanatical loyalty to the Zefiro tribe when she wasn't even born a gypsy. Xandra briefly explains that some Zefiro took her in when she was just a stray child, hungry on the streets of Antikva Vilago. The tribe isn't blood, perhaps, but they're still family. She turns the question around, asking Poet why he's on Doom's side, but he just deflects that question, indicating it's not really Doom's side he's on, claiming he'll explain the entire story some other time. Right now, they have to move! He gets to his bike and retrieves some neural grenades from storage, warning Xandra that they'll fry her brain if they go off. She is impressed by the firepower, noting that normally only Stark-Fujikawa elites would have access to these goodies, and Poet smugly says he knows where to shop. The two of them find a suitable attack position, and Poet tells Xandra to aim for the pilots - the grenades will mess with their motor skills and cause the flying tanks to crash. He then quotes his grandmother Arcadia in both French and English: 'Let the good times roll!'
The attack is a complete success - a pair of tanks go down in flames when the stabilizers fail and the pilots can't keep the vessels in the air, and soon the rest crash as well, engulfing the entire front of the facility in a sea of fire.
Inside the hangar, both the guardsmen and Zefiro are caught off guard by the sudden inferno, and Zone decides that the gypsies were clearly much better armed than his reconnaissance suggested. He turns to Fortune and demands the truth - which Megacorp funded this little coup d'etat, really? Fortune tells him that he's wrong - Doom really is who he says he is, there is no other corporation. She also refers to her tarot cards, which Zone immediately dismisses, deciding that Wylde never should have trusted in card tricks of a con artist. He pulls his gun and aims it at Fortune's face to finish her off, but his shot goes wild when he is unexpectedly shot dead by Poet, who rushes into the base from outside. Fortune is aghast to see him, shouting 'YOU?!' before declaring that he has some nerve coming back here! Oh boy, there's some backstory I'm not yet privy to, isn't there…? Poet says there's no time for thanks, 'darling', and they need to get everyone out before the guardsmen get their reinforcements in position.
In a bath of crackling energy, meanwhile, the 'civil conversation' between Doom and Wylde continues apace. Wylde declares that Doom's movements are slowing, and that all the stolen Pixel technology in the world can't protect him from disruptors forever. He asks Doom to regale him again with tales of old, of the power and glory of Doctor Doom, whose schemes were continually undone by armchair intellectuals and sidewalk vigilantes! Ouch. Wylde declares that Doom only ever mastered self-obsession. Doom says that Wylde can mock him all he likes - he too is slowing from fighting this 'anachronism.' Perhaps history will be kinder to Wylde, Doom muses, than he will be! Wylde smugly declares that what Doom perceived as him slowing down was but a diversion of power! Sure enough, Wylde uses a blast of energy to knock down the roof, burying Doom in debris that comes raining down and crushes him underneath, overloading his defensive systems since he was still busy protecting against the disruption field.
While Wylde stands over Doom with a huge slab of metal, ready to crush him to a pulp as his armor's systems are shutting down, Doom suddenly gets a very inopportune flashback. With his body bleeding and bruised within his coffin-like armor, a memory is triggered of a very similar situation - pain suffered in another place, another time. In a world of shadows, Doom hunted phantoms, but was himself caught instead. He can't see his captors, but he can hear their alien voices as they taunt him, relishing in the pain they inflict. He feels his body temperature rise and his muscles tear, and he's acutely aware that he's not going to survive this moment - he will die in this foreign place, far from home, far from Latveria. He returns from the flashback in the very instant that Wylde brings down the metal slab with a cry of: 'DIE!'
Wylde thanks the buried Doom for shaking him from his administrative complacency, and decides to monologue about his future plans. After he cripples Alchemax's energy concerns using the Tritonium, he'll move to repaying Devargas for betraying him, and with a controlling interest in both of those corporations, he'll begin global corporate acquisition - he'll take over the world! Muahaha! Too bad Doom won't be around to see him redefine hostile takeover, huh? Chortling, he walks over to the Tritonium, only to realize as he arrives that the detonator is already active - and it's nearly counted down to zero!
'It is a good day to die,' Doom declares from behind him, revealing that Wylde took out only one of his armor's systems, but didn't destroy remotely enough to take the monarch down for good. Doom built in failsafes which activated backup systems as soon as the originals crashed, and even as they speak the nanotech within his body is repairing his broken bones and staunching his bleeding. Doom does not die easily! With mere seconds on the clock, Wylde cries that by priming the Tritonium he's signed both their death warrants, and Doom replies that he'd planned as much from the very beginning - just as he promised, the mountain shall bury them both! Wylde, aghast, tells Doom to 'go to h-'
The mountain violently explodes. With Doom's castle annihilated in his absence, and parts of Doom's memory destroyed upon his return, the last little piece of his legacy was this secluded bunker he'd put aside for emergencies - in the explosion, the final remnants of Doom's 20th century life atomize into dust upon the wind. Nearby, the Zefiro tribe looks on as the pyre reaches into the sky.
Xandra checks up on Wire, who has recovered from the stun grenade with little more than some ringing in his ears. Wire wonders if Doom got out in time, but Fortune thinks it's unlikely, what with half a mountainside collapsing on top of him. Poet is already thinking ahead, noting that once news of Wylde's death hits the infonet, every corporate raider within spitting distance will be rocketing over to claim the Tritonium. Fortune observes that Poet 'or whatever you're calling yourself these days' is right - without Doom, they don't have much leverage against megacorporations trying to move in on Latv-
Hold on, what's happening now? A plume of fire rises from the destroyed mountainside as a flame-wreathed Doom violently smashes through the ground and out into the open air, holding his cloak with both arms spread out as he declares: 'I AM RISEN!' Wew, real subtle there, Vic.
Doom's voice betrays none of the strain that was required in the instant before the Tritonium detonated, when Doom had to ignore the pain of his battered body, and concentrate solely on the latest addition to his armor. In that moment, he used the latest technological acquisition he'd installed - the phasing technology which permitted him, for just a moment, to go entirely intangible. In that instant the explosive force of Tritonium and the collapsing mountain flowed through him as if they were a mere breeze…! Oh hey, they fired Chekhov's gun!
Three days later, we learn of the aftermath of the whole debacle. We visit the capital city of Gojradia, where Doom and Fortune are having a palaver on top of Tiger Wylde's skyscraper. Doom explains that half of the retrieved Tritonium will be used to supply Latveria's power needs for the next century, while the other half will be set aside for Doom's own purposes. Fortune responds that she's just glad his suicide gambit didn't destabilize the entire mountain range. Doom says the risk was justified, as Latveria is now free of Tiger Wylde! Fortune worries about the rest of the world, and Doom tells her that if their country is to stand against the chaotic and destructive forces that surround it, they'll also have to change the world itself! Fortune isn't so keen on world domination, noting that fixing Latveria will be enough of a challenge by itself, but Doom tells her that she misinterpreted his words - conquest isn't what interests him. He's returned to a world that's teetering on the brink of destruction, a house of cards destined to collapse under the weight of all the corporate and political factionalism. If a future of anarchy is to be avoided, it will have to be rebuilt, restructured - and Doom will be the architect of that future!
The parting quote, this time, is from Shakespeare's Henry V: 'Fire answers fire, and through their paly flames each battle sees the other's umbered face.' It references preparations for war, the men waiting on the eve of battle and imagining seeing the faces of their enemies in the flames of their campfires. I suppose then that it doesn't so much reference the evens of this issue but the future of the comic series - Doom is readying for global conflict, after all. Bit weird that this comic title references the quote, then, but whatever...?
Rating & Comments
Here we are, at the finale of Doom 2099's first story arc - and it's actually a pretty nice one! Admittedly, I do think the story weakened a bit over time, but this issue is still pretty good overall as a reasonably satisfying conclusion to the ongoing conflict, though it feels rather abrupt to have the main villain die only four issues into a series. I guess this arc was all more setup than being a significant part of the actual storyline of Doom 2099 though, since it ends with Doom back in power in Latveria, which is obviously what they were going for since the beginning. It just came a lot sooner than I would've thought. At least it means they can start telling more traditional tales soon, since the status quo is turned into something resembling Doom's usual one. (Actually, since Doom spends more time in exile than ruling his nation, wasn't the previous arrangement more traditional? Food for thought.)
After the rather broad setup of the previous issue, in which Doom basically turns the capital city upside down to spur up rebellion against Wylde, this issue really dials back the scope of things - but it also lets us in on Doom's plan, at long last. All the stuff in the city was essentially a distraction to rile up Wylde, rather than actually there to cause revolution. Doom knew that Wylde, in the end, had eyes only for the Tritonium. It's likely that Zone never caught a surprise glimpse through the atmospheric shield last issue, but that Doom intentionally allowed it to fail, in order to set up the exact situation that he wanted. He arranged for a final one-on-one confrontation, knowing Wylde would take that bait, and then made sure that even the fight itself was another distraction from a grander plan, which involved the nuking his own base with Wylde still inside. It's… certainly a plan, if rather convoluted and risky. I guess there's no kill like overkill?
I am not entirely sure why, if blowing up the base with the Tritonium was Doom's ultimate plan, he had all the Zefiro hang around until the baddies arrived - if the Tritonium was enough bait on its own, they were really just put in danger for no reason. I guess Doom really doesn't care that much about people dying, so it makes some sense? Maybe he reasoned it would look too suspicious to Wylde if Doom was the only person there. The delay timer on the Tritonium was there so Doom could get a few licks in before the big explosion - he did really want a proper rematch with Wylde after getting humiliated back in the first issue, and he got his revenge, even if he never did beat Wylde in a straight up fight. Still, even his defeat was apparently another layer to the trick, since he regenerated from the damage quickly enough that it seems suspicious. If the Tritonium hadn't finished things, I imagine the fight would've gone in Doom's direction anyway - there's always one more surprise...
I can lob my criticisms around all day, I guess, but I have to admit that seeing Doom pull one of his ridiculously convoluted supervillain plans in order to take down another villain is pretty fun. It's also nice that the comic referenced back to the way Doom was defeated in the first issue, and showed that such tricks no longer worked on him, before the comic threw Wylde a bone by giving him some new abilities to still pose a viable threat. Wylde was depicted as a bit of a rabid dog in this issue, incoherently yelling about killing Doom when he wasn't spouting his impossibly grandiose plans for world domination, but it's also true that he's gotten more and more aggressive over the past few issues, nearly murdering his minion Zone and trashing his own office because he was getting to pissed off. Wylde somehow came off as more deluded and conceited than Doom himself in this issue, which is a hell of an achievement!
Doom himself gets a few more wrinkles to his character in this issue - for one, he recognizes the internal conviction of Xandra and likens it to his own, characterizing it as an internal fire that refuses to go out, and really commits to establishing himself in this future. He also has another flashback to his mysterious past - in this one he remembers being tormented by unknown shadowy beings in a weird alien dimension, possibly to his death. This might suggest that he really was resurrected in some sense, rather than just time-traveling. Could explain his younger age, too. More puzzle pieces! The resurrection angle gets a bit more blatant when, not much later, Doom decides to go full ham and quotes Jesus Christ as he escapes from death with the help of Chekhov's gun - ironically, this is not a deus ex machina! Go figure. He is risen!
I do have some critiques of the whole Doom vs. Wylde rematch - to my tastes, it consisted of way too much flailing and posing with crackling energy surrounding each of them, and not enough actual fighting - if the blows make contact, the comic doesn't really bother to show it. This ain't JoJo, you have to actually fight-fight at some point! I guess being covered in armor makes that sort of thing harder to show, too... Until Wylde starts smashing things on top of Doom towards the end of the fight, it's mostly just two guys grunting and screaming at each other in the middle of a bunch of special effects, which don't even look that great. You know I like good old cosmic energy Kirby crackling, but it's overdone and gets in the way of what could have been a nice climactic brawl. It's like they're fighting in a bubble bath! On the flipside, the art of explosions is pretty great in this issue - the fire and huge detonations are well-realized in this style. Maybe I was just imagining something a little more epic than a basement stare-off. Maybe if it'd been set in that skyscraper and it'd been torn down by the end of the issue due to the conflict? Just a suggestion, writers.
Besides the main attraction of the fight described above, there are some other story arcs to mention. Xandra, most notably, feels helpless and ends up getting a little assistance from Poet to take down some of the tanks outside before saving her friends - although I think the entire scene is a bit stilted and convenient. We also get confirmation, obliquely, that she and Wire are an actual couple. I'd assumed as much, but there you go. Anyway, Xandra's scenes seem a bit superfluous - as far as I can tell the only reason Fortune even needs to be rescued from Zone is because she and Poet started blowing shit up, so he got trigger-happy. There's also the sorcerer Vox, but he is basically irrelevant, showing up and then disappearing as the plot demands without affecting it. Poet is still the mysterious wanderer type, but at least we now know that he and Fortune have history, so we'll get into that in a future issue, I'm sure. Zone shows up to be the voice of reason, gets ignored again, and then meets his ignominious end. Too bad, he seemed like he would make for a way more competent bad guy than Wylde ever did, if he struck out on his own…
The final scene of the comic is the most promising, since it suggests that with control over Latveria reestablished and its energy needs assured due to access to Tritonium, Doom's next step isn't just to improve Latveria, but to fix the world. Here we go, Doom's back! He sees the teetering edifice of corporate megalomania and thinks that he can do better. He's not interested in conquest, he assures Fortune - which is probably a lie - but he leaves it vague exactly what means he'd use to try and stave off the inevitable anarchy he sees in the world's future. It'll be interesting to see where exactly that goes, since I know that this series has a reputation for going somewhat political, and a few plot points from way down the line which make this more than an empty statement, but more of a mission...
This issue is alright, but it didn't grab me as much as the first couple, and maybe that's because the fight didn't feel as climactic as it was supposed to be, and not a lot of new information was actually revealed - this issue is really just checking off boxes before the status quo of this series can be established. With Tiger Wylde gone, the book loses one of its central villains - and with Zone also dead, there's no obvious second in command to take over as the opposition. I guess there's plenty of other evil CEOs around to pick up the slack, so we'll see who decides to be the baddie next time. I guess Devargas is the most obvious loose end to follow up, since the agreement there was only ever to stop supporting Wylde. Anyway, this comic gets three stars - it's a competent if underwhelming finish to the first story arc of 2099!
Next time... a hellish barrage of 90's Tron nonsense begins! Why explore a weird future version of Doom's nation if you can play pastel-colored retro-future videogames instead? See you there!
Quotations from Chairman Doom
"Kill them all! It will do you no good - Doom does not surrender."
"I have not returned to my homeland to be driven away by some mechanized carpetbagger."
"Mock me as you will - but you too suffer and slow from battle with this anachronism! Perhaps history will be kinder to you, than I will be."
"It is a good day to die."
"I AM RISEN!"
Doom: "If our country is to stand against the chaotic and destructive forces that surround it - we must change the world without as well…"
Fortune: "Forgive me if I don't share your desire for world domination. Latveria alone will be enough challenge."
Doom: "You misinterpret my words. Conquest does not interest me. I have returned to a world teetering on the brink of destruction - a house of cards destined to collapse under the weight of political and corporate factionalism. If that anarchic tomorrow is to be avoided, this world must be rebuilt and restructured. And I am the architect of that future."
Art Spotlight
The explosions are pretty!
Doom-Tech of the Week
Disruption Field Manipulators are the most obvious new addition to Doom's armor - besides the whole incorporeality which he installed in a previous issue. The disruption field gets redirected as intended, but it seems Doom needs to use a lot of power to make that work, since he ends up getting overpowered by Wylde, who uses part of his own might to collapse the ceiling.
He arranged for a final one-on-one confrontation, knowing Wylde would take that bait, and then made sure that even the fight itself was another distraction from a grander plan, which involved the nuking his own base with Wylde still inside. It's… certainly a plan, if rather convoluted and risky. I guess there's no kill like overkill?
I'd personally assume that the main plan here was straight up fighting Wylde and trying to win. If you do, drop his broken body at the feet of his former minions, monologue in traditional Doom fashion, move on. However, have the Tritonium-detonator plus phasing as a backup plan for if the guy manages to get the upper hand on you, because it's always good to have a backup plan and he's proven reasonably dangerous before.
I'd personally assume that the main plan here was straight up fighting Wylde and trying to win. If you do, drop his broken body at the feet of his former minions, monologue in traditional Doom fashion, move on. However, have the Tritonium-detonator plus phasing as a backup plan for if the guy manages to get the upper hand on you, because it's always good to have a backup plan and he's proven reasonably dangerous before.
I would think that, if not for Doom mentioning being willing to bury them both under the mountain in his initial pitch for a one-on-one fight - and the conversation with Xandra in the previous issue, where he directly mentions that he intended for the Tritonium to be both the bait to lure Wylde over and his downfall. Those seem to imply that Doom's plan really did involve the explosion from the start - and why he installed his Chekhov's gun.
Never let it be said that I am not thorough - and a helpful commenter pointed out that I've actually foregone covering the original debut of our favorite Latverian dictator, way back in 1950! That's more than a decade before he'd send the Fantastic Four off to barter with pirates in the distant past. You'll have to forgive me for the unfortunate oversight!
This cover promises a daring feat by our intrepid villain - to uncover the one thousand and one secrets of the famed hero Batman and his high-flying sidekick Robin's hall of trophies, housed deep within the notorious Batcave itself. Clearly showing up on the enemy's doorstep is a Doom calling card at this point, so I suppose I should have expected this! Unfortunately Doom doesn't actually show up on the cover except in name - Batman and Robin just kind of look shocked as they stand among the loot they've gathered over the years while a stored gun spontaneously fires on its own…
Story Overview
The Thousand and One Trophies of Batman!
A thousand times, the story claims, have the heroic Batman and Robin come out victorious in their eternal struggle against the forces of evil. A thousand strange trophies from all of those great cases fill up their hall of trophies, silent memorials to master criminals who were brought to justice. Now, as they add one more trophy to the collection, eerie danger threatens from the very trophies they've gathered! The intrepid duo must fight for their lives against the strange menace embodied within their loot! The trophy room of Batman is… remarkable, to say the least. Most striking is the enormous animatronic dinosaur that overlooks the place - more of a brontosaurus here than the usual T-Rex - as well as the super-sized penny, Joker mask, and giant penguin. It's all kept deep in the Batcave behind an enormous wooden door. Batman and Robin have just arrived to deliver their thousandth trophy, which turns out to be a musical note. Apparently they're talking about the actual sound here, not just an object - it's a trophy because it was the musical note used to kill someone via triggering a 'sound relay death gadget.' Hm, I wonder who invented that?
While they're there, the two heroes decide to check out the rest of their trophies to see if they're in good condition, recalling their greatest exploits as they pass by the weird memorabilia. They pass by a giant mechanical dice-cup which was once used by the Joker to roll out 'super-dice' in the case of 'The Gamble with Doom' in Batman v1 #44, and Robin confirms that he remembers well. Next they pass by the giant penny, from 'The Penny Plunderers' in World's Finest Comics v1 #30, which they give a quick polish so it doesn't corrode. Robin notes that it nearly polished them off at the time! They also lubricate a helicopter-car from 'Crime from Tomorrow' in Batman v1 #48, a case where some hoaxers used it against Gotham. In case they ever want to fly with it, you know?
Later, in another part of the trophy hall, they change the batteries in the robot dinosaur, recalling their adventure on Dinosaur Island in Batman v1 #35, and walk past a life-sized chess set from some 'chess crimes' which aren't actually shown in any comic. They then pass a harpoon cannon used to hunt the White Whale submarine, from Batman v1 #9 and the 'tangling umbrella' from one of Penguin's old capers. They also pass an empty trophy case which once held a dollar bill trophy, which was used to establish a man's innocence in the 'case without a crime' in Detective Comics v1 #112. A thousand trophies, a thousand criminals who tried to break the law and failed! Some are behind bars, others paid the ultimate price…! Robin feels a bit grim about the constant barrage of baddies and is glad that with the closure of another case, they can get some R&R.
Suddenly an urgent summons arrives from somewhere outside the trophy room, as police commissioner Gordon seems to be calling for the assistance of Batman and Robin! The heroes rush away from the trophy room through the batcave tunnels to the main area, where Batman left the Batmobile radio tuned to the police frequency for precisely these situations. Robin locks up the trophy room while Batman learns of what's happened. It seems a notorious leader of a smuggling operation, a certain Doctor Doom, was seen down at pier 16, where the ship Queen Maude is just arriving. Batman promises they'll be there in a minute, and the dynamic duo quickly sets off. They've been after Doctor Doom for a long time - but he's been too clever to slip up. He's smart… but they all slip up some time!
After joining Commissioner Gordon at the waterside, it takes them very little effort to find and apprehend Doctor Doom, who is just hanging out at the waterside having a smoke without a care in the world. The suave criminal dismisses the accusations of smuggling, declaring that he's simply importing some Egyptian relics for which he's legitimately paid! I guess we're gonna ignore the part where graverobbing was involved. Gordon regretfully informs Batman that it's actually true that the relics are legal - the police have gone over the imports and it's just as it's supposed to be: an empty sarcophagus and a bunch of baked clay statuettes. Batman isn't convinced, declaring that the glaze on the 'antique' statuettes is perfectly smooth, which means it was made in a modern furnace rather than an ancient kiln. It's not antique at all! Batman then breaks open one of the statues, revealing that there is a hollow space inside filled with smuggled jewelry. He knew it!
Doctor Doom, realizing he's been made, shouts that he'd prefer death to prison and takes a short dive off a long pier, vanishing beneath the waves as Batman and Robin chase after him helplessly. The heroes and Gordon stand around for a while and don't see any sign of Doom resurfacing, so they conclude he must have drowned. Well, that settles it! Deciding they'll have someone else dredge up the body later, they move to check out the smuggled statuettes. Meanwhile, mere feet away, a submerged Doom is using his cigarette holder as a makeshift breathing tube to survive. Ingenious!
While Batman and Robin go to inspect the smuggled wares, Doom climbs out of the water and decides there's only one way he's getting away from the pier unnoticed - inside his own smuggled sarcophagus! He manages to squeeze himself in there while Gordon is congratulating Batman on another successful case, apparently avoiding their notice from mere feet away. Holy spot checks, Batman!
Gordon knows that Batman has a thing for collecting trophies, like some sort of criminal-punching magpie, so he grants permission to take the mummy case for his collection as a reminder of his victory over Doctor Doom. Batman is stoked, and declares it'll be unique among his collection! They load the sarcophagus onto the Batmobile, and while Doom is relieved that there's enough cracks to let air in so he can breathe, Robin comments that Egyptians sure made their stuff solid and heavy back in the day - that must be why their stuff lasted so long! Not sure why he presumes the casket is real when everything else was fake, but sure.
They head towards home, unaware of the threat they're carrying, looking forward to finally getting some actual rest. Doom is quite enthusiastic about getting shuttled right into his enemy's secret base, since he can wreak some havoc there and get revenge! As they get to the trophy hall, they install the sarcophagus and label it acquisition #1001, before leaving to get a bite to eat upstairs.
The unusually ball-chinned Doom waits for a few minutes after the heroes have left before he leaves the sarcophagus and goes to explore, intending to use the legendary batcave as his future hideout, the ideal crime headquarters!
Unfortunately he can't seem to open the door to leave the trophy room because Bats locked it as he left, so Doom determines he'll have to set up a death trap in there! Favoring a bit of irony, Doom goes to repair the trophies of the heroes' previous victories so they can be used as weapons against them, including the aforementioned harpoon gun and giant dice cup. He uses his criminal genius to rig up an elaborate series of traps to ambush his foes, before he decides that it's time to call his victims to their doom! For some reason he short-circuits the 'prowler alarm' in the trophy room to warn the heroes of his presence, when in reality that alarm is designed to detect people snooping around in the batcave - it really should have gone off regardless!
A few minutes later, Bruce Wayne and his pupil Dick Grayson are startled by the sudden alarm from down in the basement, and realize that someone is down in the trophy room - but that place is locked tight! Nobody could get in there!
Hastily they dress up again and rush downstairs, puzzled how someone could get into the hall of trophies without setting off any of a dozen other alarms in the batcave on the way there. When they arrive, however, there's nobody present; maybe the alarm malfunctioned? Batman doesn't buy it and decides to do a manual inspection, searching the whole hall. He doesn't see anyone, but his spot checks still aren't great, since he also doesn't realize the motors of the giant dice cup nearby suddenly started up. Robin spots the problem in time, and decides he needs to act fast! At the last possible second, Robin manages to push the both of them out of the way of a pair of gigantic falling dice, with the boy wonder declaring that they nearly rolled an unlucky number for Batman!
Robin goes over the mechanism of the dice cups and finds a loose wire, and concludes Batman must have brushed it as he passed and set the mechanism into motion - a regrettable accident. Batman isn't so sure of that explanation, and decides to continue the search. Robin next inspects the giant penny and is startled to realize it's begun falling over towards him, and he escapes using an incredible back-flip that's so amazing not even the artist could depict it.
Batman goes to check up on the boy, but as he does so, the nearby harpoon gun fires, and it only narrowly misses because Robin calls for his mentor to get down. Boy Wonder is being a lot more useful than his mentor so far!
The shaken heroes take a moment to recover, then inspect the trophies used to attack them, concluding that both of them were set up on hair triggers, so the slightest interaction would cause them to fall over or go off. Robin superstitiously decides it's like the criminals they fought to get all those trophies are back and attacking them through their former possessions! A more skeptical Batman decides someone must've been rigging up these problems for them, and decides to go check the surveillance tapes. Or, more precisely, he has a look at an automatic camera at the entrance which photographs anyone who enters the batcave. Such futuristic technology! There's no obvious people entering the cave, but Bats has a brainwave and realizes the sarcophagus was large enough to contain a person inside it! Gasp! The duo quickly head over to check on the thing, but it's empty like it's supposed to be. And yet, it's the only possible explanation…
Doom looks on from inside the animatronic dinosaur as Batman detects moisture inside the mummy case. Someone was in there recently - someone who was wet, since the thing is still damp! Batman deduces what that means: Doctor Doom is alive! Instead of drowning like they thought, he must have slipped into the sarcophagus! That means he's still around, and he's using their trophies to try and kill them! Thanks for summarizing the plot, guys, that was really complicated. As Batman and Robin cross the giant chess set looking for Doom, however, the giant dinosaur suddenly animates and goes to sweep them away with its tail. Fearful of getting crushed, the heroes jump to get away, but Robin gets tangled in Penguin's umbrella and can't get out of the way of the stomping dinosaur…
Batman, in a desperate bid to save his sidekick, climbs the neck of the giant Brontosaurus robot to try and get to the control center in its head and get Doom away from the controls. Doom, meanwhile, intends to shake off the Batman and finish the brat afterwards.
The mighty mechanical beast roars and rears up, tossing Batman away from itself before grasping Robin with its metal jaws, intending to hurl him to his death. Actually, it grabs hold of the umbrella instead of him, but since he's still stuck within he's dragged along. Batman sees a solution, and quickly fires up one of his other trophies, and uses the rotor-blades of the helicopter-car to sever the electric wires in the dinosaur's neck, thereby cutting off the controls. With its electrical nerves severed the dinosaur grounds to a halt, and Batman flies to the thing's mouth to rescue Robin while Doom makes a run for it, abandoning his now useless machine.
Moments later the dynamic duo corner their foe, who has grabbed a grenade trophy and declares that while the robot might have failed, this surely will do the job! Batman declares that Doom won't throw it, since he'd get hurt just like the two of them if the explosive went off. Doom still pulls the pin and throws the grenade, then quickly retreats to the sarcophagus he entered the trophy room in, declaring that the massive mummy case will protect him from the blast!
Batman tells Robin to get down, then uses a miniature house, a 'midget mansion, made by the Pee-Wee people of Tiny Town' from Batman v1 #41 to protect himself from the blast, since it's so well-made he can use it as a shield! Yeah, I've got nothing...
A relieved Batman and Robin go to crack open the mummy case so they can drag Doom off to prison, but they find that the thing is wedged closed because of the explosion, so they need tools to open it. Robin fetches a chisel, and after several minutes they reopen the sarcophagus, only to discover that Doctor Doom… is dead! Doom met an ironic doom, since he suffocated inside the casket after his own grenade sealed the air cracks allowing him to breathe. I mean, I'm not entirely sure how he used up all the air in a giant sarcophagus in minutes, but there you go!
Later, the intrepid heroic duo decides they'll keep the sarcophagus as a trophy of Doom's defeat (presumably sans said dead guy) and Batman comments that the trophy brought death into their hall - death that recoiled on its plotter!
Comments
Reading one of these classic comics in the modern day, it just comes off as charmingly naive on almost every level, and also randomly callous in places. The characters basically prance around without a care in the world in much of the comic, going about their aw-shucks life in which their main concern is that their hall of shiny trophies is in good condition. Their superheroing consists of doing the police's job of chasing after common criminals for such petty crimes as minor league jewel smuggling - but they're wearing funny costumes. Their method seems to be 'walk up to the perp, accuse them of crime, forget that they have the ability to run.' Afterwards, when they think their foe has died, the heroes immediately go to inspect the loot so they can pick out their favorite souvenir of that one time they pushed a smuggler into suicide. It's… all a bit ridiculous, isn't it? Even for comic books!
Batman comes off as particularly incompetent early in this issue, since he not only fails to do anything useful to Doctor Doom at all during the entire comic - the most he ever does is disable the robot dinosaur he owns - but he also has to be saved from getting maimed on no less than two occasions! Robin really pulls his weight, there. I guess Bats makes up for his lackluster performance early on by rescuing Robin twice as well - once from the aforementioned robot dinosaur, once by shielding them both from the grenade explosion with a… house. Still weird. So I guess they're tied in surviving? Really, they're both colossal failures for needing to be saved several times from a smuggler who they themselves dropped inside their super-secret base. Fucking brilliant! He doesn't even have any powers either, he's just smart! C'mon Bats, fire up the brain cells!
It's interesting how this Doctor Doom, despite being quite unlike his more commonly known counterpart in some ways, nevertheless shares some superficial traits - for one, they're both engineering geniuses who put on a veneer of respectability but go full ham when threatened, employing the enemy's gadgets against them in a gauntlet of death. That is definitely something that other Doom would pull, and making doom puns is also on brand. I guess anyone with a badass name might get that idea at some point, though. One glaring difference? The other Doom always makes sure he has a backup air supply on his person. You know, just in case. Could've been useful on this occasion, I think!
The comic is a 1950's one, and it shows. It feels the need to overexplain a lot, the characters keep nattering on about this or that, and the internal logic is a bit screwy. When Batman and Robin assume Doom has drowned, even though they don't have a body, it's weird. So is never checking the unusually heavy sarcophagus, or needing to actively trigger the burglar alarm in order to warn someone that a burglar is around. And that's not to mention the logic of keeping an entire warehouse full of apparently nearly fully-functional weapons and gadgets from a vast array of baddies for no reason. It even has live grenades and cannons! Is Batman a kleptomaniac hoarder? And why are there trophies of the Joker when he's very much still out there? I guess it's easy to get a thousand trophies if your cases include stuff like seeing a guy jump into the water and assuming they drowned, though…
Doctor Doom dies in this issue, and never makes a reappearance in DC comics. The other Doom eventually would in some crossover comics I'm sure I'll cover at some point in a variant entry, though. Since this is his entire oeuvre, I'm afraid that DC's Doctor Doom was forgotten...
Most Glorious Doom Quotes
"I prefer death to prison!"
"Now to explore the Bat Cave and plan my revenge! Then I can take over this hidden base as an ideal crime-headquarters!"
"This massive mummy-case will protect me from the blast!" (Last words)
Comic Trivia
Detective Comics #158 came out in 1950 and contained, aside from the story of Doctor Doom's ignominious end, four other stories - one about Roy Raymond, a TV detective, one about Robotman, who is pretty much exactly what you'd expect from that descriptor, a gag strip called Dover and Clover, and a Pow-Wow Smith story featuring a Sioux tribe member who gets employed as a sheriff in the Old West. "The 1,001 Trophies of Batman" story was later reprinted in Batman v1 #256, Batman Archives v8 and Batman: Secrets of the Batcave. None of the other strips were notable enough to get that kind of recognition.
After the rather broad setup of the previous issue, in which Doom basically turns the capital city upside down to spur up rebellion against Wylde, this issue really dials back the scope of things - but it also lets us in on Doom's plan, at long last. All the stuff in the city was essentially a distraction to rile up Wylde, rather than actually there to cause revolution. Doom knew that Wylde, in the end, had eyes only for the Tritonium. It's likely that Zone never caught a surprise glimpse through the atmospheric shield last issue, but that Doom intentionally allowed it to fail, in order to set up the exact situation that he wanted. He arranged for a final one-on-one confrontation, knowing Wylde would take that bait, and then made sure that even the fight itself was another distraction from a grander plan, which involved the nuking his own base with Wylde still inside. It's… certainly a plan, if rather convoluted and risky. I guess there's no kill like overkill?
I am not entirely sure why, if blowing up the base with the Tritonium was Doom's ultimate plan, he had all the Zefiro hang around until the baddies arrived - if the Tritonium was enough bait on its own, they were really just put in danger for no reason. I guess Doom really doesn't care that much about people dying, so it makes some sense? Maybe he reasoned it would look too suspicious to Wylde if Doom was the only person there. The delay timer on the Tritonium was there so Doom could get a few licks in before the big explosion - he did really want a proper rematch with Wylde after getting humiliated back in the first issue, and he got his revenge, even if he never did beat Wylde in a straight up fight. Still, even his defeat was apparently another layer to the trick, since he regenerated from the damage quickly enough that it seems suspicious. If the Tritonium hadn't finished things, I imagine the fight would've gone in Doom's direction anyway - there's always one more surprise...
Backtracking a bit, I think this plan mostly works. Last time they fought, Tyger beat Doom like a baby seal, so this time he made a plan that didn't depend on being able to outfight Wylde. And we saw that was a good decision because Wylde was able to hold his own against Doom's upgraded armor. Would Doom have won in the long run? Maybe. I'd give him favorable odds. But Wylde's chance of winning wouldn't be that low and a smart man doesn't make plans with only a moderately higher chance of success than failure, especially with his life on the line.
And Wylde matching Doom's armor isn't as unlikely as it might seem. I have no doubt that Doom has already adapted to this future's advanced tech and made armor that's more advanced than any system in Wyde's body but the cyborg has the advantage that his mechanical bits don't have to be a series of thin tubes wrapped around a big hunk of squishy meat. Almost certainly, his future tech cyborg organs occupy less space than natural ones, giving him more space for various systems, especially in areas like the arms. That Doom seems to be holding his own even with this disadvantage and after only having been in this time period a brief time before building this armor out of whatever he could steal shows his genius but he's still working with a handicap.
Plus, you're probably right that Doom is risking the Zefiro just to make the trap look real. But also he can't help being a giant show off so any survivors get to see him being awesome better than they would from a distance, which is its own reward as far as Doom is concerned.
It's interesting how this Doctor Doom, despite being quite unlike his more commonly known counterpart in some ways, nevertheless shares some superficial traits - for one, they're both engineering geniuses who put on a veneer of respectability but go full ham when threatened, employing the enemy's gadgets against them in a gauntlet of death. That is definitely something that other Doom would pull, and making doom puns is also on brand. I guess anyone with a badass name might get that idea at some point, though. One glaring difference? The other Doom always makes sure he has a backup air supply on his person. You know, just in case. Could've been useful on this occasion, I think!
Yeah, that struck me, too. It's bizarre that this almost is a Doctor Doom plan. "Break into my enemy's place and turn the trophies of his past triumphs against him" is so Doctor Doom it's not even funny. Really the only thing that's missing is a suit of armor and him having gone to college with Bruce Wayne.
Anyway, the reason there are multiple Joker trophies is probably that they aren't trophies of beating the Joker once and for all but of foiling specific schemes of his. And yes, yes, Batman is a hoarder. Although part of it is probably just not wanting to leave some of this dangerous stuff lying around but not having a good way to surreptitiously dispose of it.
After four issues which composed a single introductory story, here we start the second proper arc of Doom 2099 - the 'Fever' storyline, headlined here by the big villain of the hour looming like a weird shiny version of Venom over Doom while eating the business end of his laser blasts. I'm not entirely sure why Doom is also firing in the other direction, since that's not where his enemy is at, but I guess he's trying to free himself from his restraints?
The colors of Doom's fire blasts and Fever's tongue blend together, so it took me a while to realize that he was entangled rather than just kinda hovering in mid-air there. Fever looks vaguely robotic based on the neck having segments, but I'm not entirely sure if he's supposed to be transparent or yellow-white - it seems like his skin might just be lighting up from the fire he's just eaten, rather than naturally being like that. Guess we'll find out what his deal is soon...
Story Overview
This Man Condemned
We start in an M.C. Escher dimension of weird stairways that go in odd and nonsensical directions - or cyberspace, whichever. On one of the freaky stairs is a weird globule of organic-looking mucus which starts to grow into a person, arm-first, while narration declares that cyberspace isn't remotely as safe as people think it is. PSA time! The rhythmic pulse of electronic interfaces provide no protection from his viral touch, the narrator declares, and cannot shelter from his infectious kiss! Okay, so it's a PSA about STDs, gotcha. The narrator then announces that he acknowledges no borders, no locks, no passwords, no security systems within this virtual realm - he is the disease that corrupts the silicon core, the abomination in the electronic heart. He is Fever, and he's coming for Doom! He's also a big-mouthed thing with a mohawk, as per the cover. Actually, he looks a tad more human here, and bright red and orange instead of yellow, but the resemblance is there.
Over in Latveria, in the real world, Doom and Fortune have moved on from squatting on an office building to flying around their capital city on an air scooter. Doom openly laments the environmental condition of Latveria - its contaminated ground, polluted rivers, and terrible air - and says that he can taste the chemical soup even through his armor's filtration systems! These dirty skies make him think back to his youth, when the sky was still pristine, so clean and pure that breathing it was almost intoxicating. Fortune notes that it's the twenty-first century now - nothing is as pure and clean as it once was. (Yea, rub it in, 1993…) She pauses and admits that she doesn't want to interrupt Doom's childhood reverie, but wonders if his recollections imply he's gotten all his memories back. Doom denies that, and admits that during his fight with Wylde he did have another flashback, but this one was to his death before coming to this time period. He's concluded that his resurrection must have some greater purpose to it that he hasn't yet grasped. Still, he cannot live in the past - he must construct a future instead! Someday he'll fill in his missing memory, but for now his priorities must lie in the present.
Fortune next mentions that the reclamation crew which retrieved the Tritonium after it exploded last issue didn't find a trace of Tiger Wylde's corpse in their excavation - that might prove to be an issue in the future. Doom reminds her that Wylde took the Tritonium explosion to the face and was likely vaporized in the blast - he surely couldn't have survived the disaster! Fortune dryly notes that Doom did. Doom hastily dismisses these implications, telling Fortune she should be more concerned about other people right now, those who think that Latveria is theirs to plunder and take advantage of in Wylde's absence.
As a pair of robots remove a huge Tiger Wylde symbol from a nearby building, Fortune comments that maybe Doom should get his priorities in order himself, since building a huge freaking castle can probably wait until after they've formalized a deal with the megacorporations. Doom declares that just as the trappings of Wylde's rule have to come down, New Latveria must put up its own to replace them, to symbolize their change of heart. He considers a rebuilt Castle Doom a necessity, as it will be the center of government, defense, and a tangible representation of Latveria's newfound strength and resolve!
Fortune wryly points out they'll need some of that strength and resolve to deal with some old unresolved business - the remaining mercenary elite that Wylde gave asylum in the country in exchange for their services are still around. Scattered around the nation, they could prove to be trouble. As such, Fortune introduces Doom to the representatives of the independent elite guild: Chill, a weaponmaster with face paint and a cybernetic eye, Scratch, a virtuoso of personal combat who dresses like a ninja, and Fade, a suave spy.
Doom greets them and explains that their previous deal of handing over half their profits in exchange for safe haven in Latveria is acceptable to him - with one additional stipulation. If in the future Doom has dire need of their services, he'll pay double - but he'll also expect them to prioritize such a mission above anything else they might have going on. Chill says he has no interest in kowtowing to some new regent or CEO, and figures Latveria would be better off with the guild calling the shots. Doom impatiently says he's explained his terms - they're each free to agree or disagree as they like, but he promises that opposing him directly would have… dire consequences.
As they fly off afterwards, Fortune observes that Doom is a tough negotiator - the mercs appeared ready to start another war with all the tension that was in the air. Doom explains that mercenaries like Chill understand only brute force and intimidation - reason would have been wasted effort. Fortune concedes that much, but says that keeping this guild active within Latverian borders might still be risky. Doom argues that it's better to deal with this guild of independents than fight off the occupying forces of Stark-Fujikawa or Alchemax. The mercs will act as a deterrent - they're the devil you know, and all that.
The discussion is about to continue when disaster strikes - Doom's armor suddenly locks up and sends the air scooter careening off course towards a nearby building, while text boxes of Fever's internal monologue pop up here and there. A panicked Fortune tries to save them, but at the last possible moment Doom regains control of himself and evades a crash, narrowly avoiding an overpass in the process as Fever retreats. Fortune asks what on Earth just happened, and Doom admits… he doesn't know!
Later, back at the Zefiro camp, Fortune explains to fellow gypsy Andrei that they were this close to getting splattered against a skyscraper. Andrei says the signs are clear - by staying with Doom, she's gambling with her life. She should refocus her attention to the tribe, her true responsibility! Fortune responds by drawing a tarot card: Strength, an image of someone holding the mouth of a lion shut. Doom's history is a dark one, true, but she's in a position to keep his more destructive nature in check, and she feels she should. Andrei notes that this is the same mistake she made with Wylde, as well - these men are agents of chaos, just look at what they did to the poor mountainside with the Tritonium! Fortune responds that the magician Vox trusts Doom, and he has better instincts than either of them do. Besides, the tribe's leadership is in good hands with Andrei - she doesn't have to step into that role. She pulls another card, then - the Lovers.
Surreptitiously entering the room, Poet comments that the Lovers card showed up a lot in the old days. Andrei senses the suddenly charged atmosphere and quickly takes Vox out of the room with him, using an excuse about food pack shipments to allow Fortune and Poet to get reacquainted. Poet comments that ever since the Tritonium mess, Fortune's been avoiding him like the plague, even though he figured she would've gotten around to forgiving him at some point after all this time. In response, Fortune slaps him so hard his glasses go flying off. Poet sheepishly says that maybe he deserves that - but it wasn't always this way between them, was it? Doesn't she remember that first night back in Antikva Vilago, all those years ago?
We get a flashback to Fortune's memory of 'that night.' It was years before Wylde and his elite seized power from a crumbling regional alliance, when Fortune and her brother Kaz raided a storehouse for food. Going home, they made a wrong turn and ran into a dog pack - a bunch of 'trashboy scavengers.' Since she and her brother were thieves, not warriors, they were in no position to fight back against an armed mob of stereotypical post-apocalyptic cannibals. The scavengers figured they were fresh meat and food delivered together - what a lucky find! Kaz motions for Fortune to stay behind him, but they were then saved by an unexpected person before anything more could happen. A clean-shaven black youth clothed in a white robe descended from above, bashing the scavengers aside with his martial arts and a long staff, and Fortune was immediately enchanted by this mysterious, graceful stranger who declared himself 'just a tourist.' Back in the modern day, Fortune isn't so enthusiastic, telling Poet 'you swore you'd protect him. I trusted you, Poet…'
Meanwhile, over in Pixel's corporate headquarters in Madrid, we learn that Eduardo Devargas used PALOMA, a groundbreaking medianet program, to aggressively transform his minor corporation into a global concern by brokering all sorts of information and commodities through his network. Devargas himself is impatient with that system, however, seeking to understand the man who now controls Latveria - but all he gets out of PALOMA is contradictions. Tiger Wylde was easily understood by him as a predictable North American, but nothing offers any insight into Doom's identity, history, or motivations. PALOMA responds in a monotone by summarizing that Victor von Doom's birthdate is unknown, his birthplace is Haasenstadt, his parents were Werner Josef and Cynthia Elena - the first time we get their middle names, I believe - and Doom assumed the Latverian throne from Baron Vassily Gonereo Krozi… (The first time we get most of those names, too, I think.)
'Enough!' Devargas exclaims mid-way through PALOMA's data-regurgitation. All of this information is irrelevant - Doom wore too many faces over the years to take such information as more than vague historical speculation. Even the 'Richards Archives' acknowledge that any Doom encountered in the twentieth century may really have been a robot, and behind Devargas appears an image of four different masks that the monarch has worn over the years - Doom's original mask from his debut in Fantastic Four v1 #5, his mainstream mask worn in most issues since, the updated shiny one he wore briefly between Fantastic Four v1 #350-#358 after he regained rule in Latveria from Kristoff, and the newfangled 2099 look from the current series of comics. Devargas asks PALOMA to compute the probability that the current Doom is the real deal, but knock-off Siri announces that there is insufficient data to give a meaningful answer. Just then, a screeching noise interrupts the readout.
Fever takes over the screen with a distorted image of his broad, fanged smile and greets Devargas, asking how life under wraps is - he looks pale, so maybe he should take a walk outside in the fresh air? Devargas asks Fever to address him formally, since Fever is technically an employee of his, and notes that his intrusion had better not damage any of the files on the computer. Fever dismisses this concern before moving on to why he's there - Doom! All Devargas needs to know about Doom is that thanks to a little satellite enhancement, Fever has managed to breach his armor. Once he was inside, modifying the familiar Pixel circuitry was child's play since there's all sorts of backdoors in PALOMA-based programs that lead to unexpected places! Devargas concludes that this means he was right in speculating that Doom used Pixel technology to build his new armor, and instructs Fever to get on with his job of taking down the would-be conqueror - Latveria's resources will be very profitable for Pixel once their competition has been eliminated!
We turn to the Latverian Museum, which was long ago ransacked during Doom's absence, but which now serves as the temporary capital of Doom's government until his castle has been reconstructed. It's also the site of his private laboratory, where Fortune is running tests on Doom's armor. She argues that they should call in Dr. Quiñones, since the neurosurgeon would be better equipped to diagnose problems with the technology she helped implement, but Doom says he sees no need to disturb her for a minor hiccup. Fortune observes Doom has a real issue asking for help, and he curtly responds that he seldom needs assistance - which doesn't really answer her point. He soon steps out of the scanning machine to study the results himself, and concludes they are the same as they should be. There's no apparent problems - everything's working as intended. And yet Doom cannot accept that the recent malfunction was just mere happenstance. Fortune suggests that maybe Doom puts too much faith in technology, but she relents, and is willing to run the same test again if it puts his mind at ease. Doom is getting tired of wasting his precious time, though, and decides to get back to the castle construction instead.
At the would-be castle's busy grounds, we see Wire shimmying across a high girder while Xandra looks on in worry from below, telling him to watch before he breaks something. Wire isn't concerned, reminding her he once climbed around a cathedral like a gargoyle, and Xandra notes he broke an arm doing that. Sure enough, Wire stumbles a bit mere moments later and falls off the construction site, and is caught in the last moment by Xandra before he can land headfirst on the ground below.
The rescue is a feat of incredible physical fortitude, and a curious Doom asks Fortune how exactly Xandra ended up joining the Zefiro tribe. Fortune explains that a six year old Xandra was hiding in a bombed out building in Antikva, scared and alone, when Wire went in after her and convinced her to come along - and they've been inseparable ever since. A few months afterwards they fished a couple of Wakandans out of the river, and suspect they might have been her parents. What Wakandans were doing in Latveria, though, is anyone's guess. Nearby, the merc Chill observes this conversation from the shadows and decides that this combination of Wakandan heritage and superhuman strength might be worth investigating…
Doom is unaware of that particular future plot thread, and he's also unaware of Fever's renewed assault on his systems - the viral presence of the villain once more finds its way into his armor's circuitry, observing the whirling prototype security systems that Doom pilfered from Pixel with little respect. Oh, he's so scared! With an exaggerated 'Booga! Booga!' he blasts the virtual constructs into bits and bytes, and then takes complete control of Doom's armor. Time to begin dealing real damage! Since Doom prides himself on his absolute self-discipline, his control, it will be great fun to shatter that particular illusion!
In the real world, Doom's armor once more locks up, and Fortune and Wire briefly worry that he's having a seizure, before the armor unwillingly takes off into the sky, careening towards the framework for the turrets in its malfunctioning state. Moments later Doom starts firing energy blasts at his own unfinished castle, blasting apart the early construction and scattering the materials. He then falls back to the ground, warning the others to stay back since he can't seem to control himself - someone is toying with him! Xandra reasons that between claiming to be the original Doctor Doom and this disaster, they'll just have to file him under 'crazy!'
We next visit Wire as he is travelling through the magic of cyberspace on his digital surfboard - traversing the interface between man and machine, a crossroads where information is processed and the user translates the machine's electronic code into sensory images. As a cyber savant, Wire knows this place like the back of his hand, and he moves through it with natural ease. Wire is surprised that Doom allowed him to jack into his armor's inner systems to run a systems check like this - with the nanotech in his head connecting to his armor's software, this is like cracking a person rather than a program! Wire soon finds the problem, discovering a stubborn viral infection that has manifested as a grotesque mutant landscape of fleshy growths and red spines that's clogging up everything. He doesn't recognize the signature, but it's widespread. Still, he thinks it's nothing a dose of disinfectant can't cure. He tosses out an industrial strength cleaner, which manifests as a simple spherical lump of indistinct material, but it's grabbed and consumed by a viral tentacle before it has a chance to do anything. Wire gulps nervously as he backs off.
Back in the lab, Wire informs Doom of what he's found in VR, noting that the virus has infected Doom's entire system - and while Wire could wipe his CPU to start fresh, the virus is adaptable, almost conscious, and would probably hibernate through the process to reappear somewhere down the line. Wire suggests reworking his disinfectant solution so he can go back in and try again, this time on a search and destroy mission. Doom decides he won't do that alone, and Wire is enthusiastic about taking someone else along into cyberspace: especially if it's Doom himself!
Getting ready to jack into the matrix, Wire explains that a person is represented in cyberspace by an abstract called an archetype, and anyone's free to customize it as they like. Fortune sarcastically suggests that Doom should pick something wearing real clothes. Doom decides that the viral infection is no laughing matter since it nearly brought down his new castle, so he's shutting down his armor's systems to avoid wrecking more havoc while he's off tripping in the virtual world. Soon enough, Doom's surroundings fade to black as he drops into a sensory trance, and then he is whisked away from his familiar world into an exhilarating alternative one that exists within the digital circuitry of his own armor.
Doom reappears as his armored self, naturally, and admits that he did not expect to feel such a distinct sense of reality from what is really an imaginary place. Wire reminds him that while his physical body remains in the museum, all sensory input that his mind processes is generated here in cyberspace, so naturally it feels real. He also warns Doom that this is no mere surface-level VR program - there are no safeguards here. If his archetype is scrambled or derezzed, he could risk real physical damage through neural feedback. (If you die in the game, you die in real life!) Still, the netglide's worth the risk, he argues. Doom acknowledges that it may be interesting to explore this plane of existence, but not until after the virus is handled. Wire explains that the virus has the main access path to Doom's systems locked down, but backup routes should still be around which they can use to avoid detection. Doom wonders if they'll actually explore such things by touch, and Wire explains that a tactile interface is programmed into their archetypes - once you learn how to find them, open doors are everywhere in cyberspace, ready to be used with the touch of a finger.
Their little VR tutorial session is interrupted when the floor suddenly erupts with organic growths, since Fever has discovered their presence within the system before they could get anywhere, and set off an attack. A wormhole opens beneath their feet and Wire tries to stay close to a disoriented Doom who falls into it without much control, unused to moving in this new, strange world. Fever rants about the host sending antibodies to fight him, but reflects that the fools do not realize that fever is a terminal infection, and before his excruciatingly slow kill is finished, he will first drive them mad! Doom asks Wire if there's nothing he can do about the sudden fall, and Wire tells him to just ride it out - the wormhole will spit them out sooner or later, somewhere.
Doom asks if that means they're now lost, and Wire agrees that's technically true - but he can just trace his way back to their system once he figures their new locale. The ride finally ends and the pair are spat out somewhere new. They appear in a hallway flanked with technology and computer banks, and Wire activates a program to identify where they've landed. He discovers that it's actually a simulation of the real world, and he also can't immediately identify an exit within the program - he'll need a bit of time to figure this out. It's sort of retro, neo-vintage, he says. Doom looks around and realizes that there's something strangely familiar about the décor of the place...
Suddenly, a voice from off-panel declares that while he doesn't know how the two of them made it through the security defenses, they've made a huge mistake in coming here! A second voice declares that 'stretch' should save his breath, since if these Yancy Street rejects want to tango, his dance card is wide open! Doom is shocked when his oldest foes suddenly appear in front of him: the Fantastic Four!
'It's clobberin' time!' declares one of them: the Incredible Hulk!
Wait, what?
Yes, it's actually the Hulk who appears in Fantastic Four regalia, chomping on a cigar and looking stockier than normal. The rest of the quartet isn't quite right either compared to our usual view of them, with a bespectacled Mr. Fantastic with frizzy hair leading the charge, while a skull-faced Human Torch who took a page out of Ghost Rider's book flies overhead, and a version of Sue that has been merged with Medusa of the Inhumans looks on with a head of prehensile hair. It seems the historical records might be in need of a little revision!
The final quote, which seems relevant to this cliffhanger, is from George Santanaya: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
Rating & Comments
Well, that was something. This issue steers the overall momentum of this series into a direction I don't care for, but I expect the bulk of that discussion will have to wait until the next few issues. This one starts off decently enough - we get an overview of the developments in Latveria since the previous adventure, including a mention of the retrieval of Tritonium, taking down all of Tiger Wylde's old stuff, and some negotiating with the various third party mercenaries Wylde kept under his employ as peacekeepers. Doom and Fortune tackle this together, and the latter is basically confirmed to be a major element of the new government who has some actual influence, rather than her just being a flunky for Doom to order around. It's refreshing to see someone in Latveria who isn't slavishly impressed with Doom, but still works alongside him anyway!
The actual plot of the issue soon begins to develop - the devious CEO of Pixel, Devargas, hired a mysterious cyber-assassin named Fever to hack into Doom's suit, exploiting weaknesses that are apparently inherent to all Pixel technology to do so, which I guess Doom missed entirely when he was integrating it into his actual body. It sort of makes sense if we accept that this futuristic incarnation of cyberspace is entirely new to Doom, as is confirmed later in the issue - it's difficult to protect against a threat that you don't know exists. That said, you'd think someone like Wire or Dr. Quiñones would have mentioned it back in the first or second issue. Regardless, Fever immediately starts screwing with Doom's armor, trying to variously fly him into buildings or blow up his own stuff before retreating for a time to, presumably, shore up his attack vectors a bit more. The only way to solve this? Surf the tubular webs, my dudes.
This issue sets up a number of other plotlines in the background - there's obviously going to be a reckoning with the remaining mercenaries Wylde hired, for example, even if they're content to lie low for the moment. We also get some more of Fortune's backstory here, which consists of her personal history with Poet and the death of her brother Kaz under unclear circumstances. There's also an addition to Xandra's backstory which confirms a connection to Wakanda, and likely the Black Panther, especially with those hints of physical enhancements. None of those plot threads are actually explored here, and all of them sound more interesting than what we're actually going to be dealing with for the next… (checks notes) … six issues? Jesus Christ. I guess we'll see where they end up eventually.
While this comic is generally fine, the upshot is that the big villain of the week is a glorified internet troll. And since this is the crazy futuristic world of 2099, the internet is now an alternate dimension where you upload your mind and risk your very soul to look at cat pictures or whatever. Thus, Wire and Doom are getting themselves strapped in for what is essentially a virtual reality acid trip, leaving their physical selves just kind of lying there in a laboratory doing nothing for several issues in a row. Riveting. I know that cyberspace is a bit of a cyberpunk staple, but I admit that the prospect of spending an extended period in a fake dream-like simulation world right after getting Latveria back seems like a really lame way to delay dealing with the implications of that regime change. We'll see if it's better than I'm expecting, though.
Due to sheer inexperience, Doom turns out to be pretty harmless in cyberspace - he has never done this sort of thing before (in 2099 at least) so he's basically a tourist who gets dumped into a dangerous situation without the tools to deal with it. Fever hands him and Wire their asses pretty handily before dropping them into a simulation that's clearly just there to screw with Doom. I mean, what are the odds they'd accidentally end up in a Fantastic Four simulation? At least the presence of Wire livens everything up, since he's the 'dude, awesome' cyber-surfer stereotype who just reacts to everything with a dopey grin. Couldn't get a bigger contrast to grim-masked Doom if you tried, but they get along surprisingly well.
Although this issue has good elements, especially the potential in reveals regarding Doom's supporting cast, the overall plot direction is less appealing, and steers away from dealing with real world issues to farting around in cyberspace to deal with Devargas being a dick from afar. At least it means I was right that he was the obvious next person to deal with after Wylde! Perhaps he'll get his turn in the crosshairs after this arc is over and everyone returns to the real world? I anticipate several issues of inane virtual reality games first, unfortunately, before this gets to a point. Three stars for the issue, but only because there were actual real world developments! Next time… weird virtual reality games.
Spare me.
Do They Speak English in 2099?
Xandra: "You're gonna do some mainframe damage!"
Wire: "Don't overheat, Xan!"
You're talking about breaking bones, guys, not overclocking your GPU.
Quotations from Chairman Doom
"My resurrection here and now has purpose. I cannot live in the past. I have a future to construct."
"A rebuilt Castle Doom is a necessity, both as a center of government and defense - and as a tangible symbol of Latverie's newfound strength and resolve."
"If you are foolish enough to oppose me, I will gladly show you the error of your ways."
Art Spotlight
I appreciate the way how, in this panel, the building that Doom very nearly crashed into is reflected in the shiny surface of his armor. It's just a pretty sweet detail to add.
Doom-Tech of the Week
Doom flies around on an Airscooter, but I have no idea if he had any part in designing or constructing it...
