I'll leave that to you - although if I get any time this weekend, I might finish work on the legendary Luke Cage entries that are coming next. (Where's my money, honey?!) Most likely I'll be celebrating the holidays, though, and save it for next week. Like before, I've got a couple things saved up from past weeks, but I have to get around to editing and selecting pictures...
I've been looking over future appearances, and I'm coming up to the point that I have to decide what to do with variants. Up to this point, the only Doom has been Earth-616's version, the mainstream edition that sticks around. But somewhere in 1973 the first variant shows up, the Doctor Doom of Counter-Earth. What do I do about that? It's still Doom, even if it's not the main one - shouldn't I be covering those if they get stories centered around them? I'd surely cover timetraveling Doom or dimensional traveler Doom if they rolled into a Fantastic Four comic, right? Same thing, I imagine...
Of course, if I sign up for the variant Dooms - that pretty much means I'll have to cover Ultimate Doom with the goat legs, as well as Doom 2099, the radical version from the tubular 90s comic where everyone lives in a future version of that decade. Would Valeria von Doom count, since she takes the identity of Doctor Doom? Oh my god, what am I going to do about Vernard?
I'll leave that to you - although if I get any time this weekend, I might finish work on the legendary Luke Cage entries that are coming next. (Where's my money, honey?!) Most likely I'll be celebrating the holidays, though, and save it for next week. Like before, I've got a couple things saved up from past weeks, but I have to get around to editing and selecting pictures...
I've been looking over future appearances, and I'm coming up to the point that I have to decide what to do with variants. Up to this point, the only Doom has been Earth-616's version, the mainstream edition that sticks around. But somewhere in 1973 the first variant shows up, the Doctor Doom of Counter-Earth. What do I do about that? It's still Doom, even if it's not the main one - shouldn't I be covering those if they get stories centered around them? I'd surely cover timetraveling Doom or dimensional traveler Doom if they rolled into a Fantastic Four comic, right? Same thing, I imagine...
Of course, if I sign up for the variant Dooms - that pretty much means I'll have to cover Ultimate Doom with the goat legs, as well as Doom 2099, the radical version from the tubular 90s comic where everyone lives in a future version of that decade. Would Valeria von Doom count, since she takes the identity of Doctor Doom? Oh my god, what am I going to do about Vernard?
Variant 01: Professor Victor von Doom of Counter-Earth (1973) Introduction
This was going to happen one of these days, because one Doctor Doom just isn't enough. Today we're not chronicling the life and times of Victor von Doom, inhabitant of the mainline 616 Marvel Universe. We're instead spotlighting our very first alternate Victor von Doom!
Okay, strictly speaking there was a parody version of Doom that predates this version - but it's basically a bunch of gags taped together with duct tape, most of which involve Doctor 'Bloom' getting caught up in his own cloak and making pratfalls, or having juvenile slap fights with 'Weed Wichards.' I prefer to go with a more dignified portrayal, thank you very much!
The Victor von Doom we're inspecting today is also from the 616 universe, but not from Earth. Instead, he lives on the High Evolutionary's artificial planet, the copycat world known as Counter-Earth! Hidden in the Earth's orbit on the other side of the Sun, Counter-Earth has alternate versions of regular Marvel characters, and it's the home base of weirdo superhero Adam Warlock, generally known for his involvement with Thanos and the Infinity Gauntlet.
Victor von Counter-Doom appeared in a total of eight comics, but we can discount his appearances in Strange Tales #178 and two later Warlock issues as mere flashbacks. That leaves us with Marvel Premiere #2, where he makes an early bird cameo, and Warlock issues #4 through #7, the first of which consists only of a two-panel preview. Three full issues remain, and they form a single-ish story arc. (You'll see what I mean.) That's pithy enough to knock out in one go! Let's get to it.
Cover
Counter-Doom appears on two of the relevant covers, #5 and #7, both of which involve him cowering. Wonderful. On the first he's flinching away from an attack of 'death-birds' that look an awful lot like robot bats in this image, while the second cover depicts his worried face looming over the scene. Warlock's words on the latter issue imply that Doom is playing an antagonistic role, at least, but he certainly seems pretty different from ol' 616...
Story Overview
Marvel Premiere #2
Counter-Doom's storyline starts with a brief appearance in Marvel Premiere #2, during the creation story of Counter-Earth. It's… pretty obvious that this entire comic has some serious religious overtones, and this part should make that abundantly clear. You see, the High Evolutionary created this world, and he is pretty much the comic's equivalent to God. Which would make Adam Warlock, our golden hero, Jesus Christ. Yup. The comic isn't too subtle about that allegory, considering Warlock starts running around with a bunch of devoted disciples pretty quickly, and people keep trying to worship him...
This world also contains an equivalent to Satan, a being that slipped in when the High Evolutionary was resting from the effort of creation. He is the murderous Man-Beast, and he's the reason this new world's humanity recommits the sins of the old one by introducing aggression. More importantly, the Man-Beast ensured there would be no super-people on this new Earth, so that his dark reign would not be threatened. On Counter-Earth, people like Reed Richards and Bruce Banner are normal scientists, as is their selfless colleague Victor von Doom. Wait, what?
Selfless? Doctor Doom? What craven, godless realm have we entered?
Warlock #4 - Come Sing a Searing Song of Vengeance!
We return to this ungodly timeline at the end of Warlock's fourth solo outing, when the scene switches to a government laboratory in the Livermore Valley. A strangely familiar scientist cries out: 'It cannot be!', and we get our first good look at Counter-Doom. He's dressed in a simple lab coat rather than armor, but he's still wearing his metal mask and gauntlets - they look more like gloves in other panels. Doom looks a little strange without that fetching green cloak he's always donning, so I can see why 616 does it!
'A disaster threatens the entire planet,' Doom explains to an empty room. 'There is only one man who can stave it off - and his name is Victor von Doom!' Oh thank the High Evolutionary! Selfless or not, my good Doctor, I'm very glad to see that your ego is intact!
Warlock #5 - The Day of the Death Birds!
We enter the story proper with a quick story recap. Weeks ago, one of Warlock's teenage disciples died during an encounter with the monster Triax. Filled with guilt and self-doubt over the incident, Warlock told his followers he would wander alone in the Mojave desert for a while, then ascended into the sky. (Does this remind you of anything…?)
Caught up in anger and guilt over others dying for his cause, Warlock attempts to exorcise his emotions with violence. That's how the High Evolutionary finds him, smashing up the wilderness like a madman. 'Are you ready to admit you cannot help this world?' asks a voice booming from the heavens. Warlock rejects this instantly, but he's still worked up about his failures. The High Evolutionary suggests that he return to the cocoon from which he hatched, his equivalent to a virgin birth, to sleep without thought - and thus without remorse. Eventually he could be reawakened, and they could examine whether he still held his stubborn faith in people.
Warlock's cocoon is discovered mere weeks later by a pair of geologists who took their jeep into the desert, intent on preventing some sort of bomb test that is due within two hours. It's not clear what they imagine they can do in the middle of nowhere, but they're convinced the test will cause an earthquake - and a hell of a big one, since they're talking about it ripping open the San Andreas fault! Warlock isn't sure how it's his problem.
Nearby, at a government laboratory in Livermore Valley, we see Professor von Doom looking over new data that's coming in, worrying out loud about the possibility of the fault rupturing and causing untold havoc. Even the San Andreas Dam could be in danger! Worse, there's a cache of outlawed weapons buried near the fault, which might detonate and kill millions! This is going too far, so it's time for Doom to pick up the phone and call… the President of the United States!
President Rex Carpenter is in his office when he gets the call. He instantly surmises it's either Richards or von Doom on the phone - and either one means trouble. I guess this means Doom's research station has one of those emergency phones from the cold war. Neat! Doom tells the President of his concerns about an impending earthquake, and impresses upon him that the bomb test has to be cancelled. The President dismisses the whole thing out of hand, claiming that the security of 200 million people requires the taking of some risks. The test will go forward as planned!
Not everyone is convinced of the test's safety, so thousands of people are seen departing from the test area, and refugees clog up the roads with cars. Soon the fateful countdown begins, there is a great underground blast - and then the rumbling starts. Followed immediately by violent shaking and trembling, vast cracks across the land, and a giant hole in the San Andreas Dam! Well, that was so predictable it was literally predicted!
Warlock descends from the sky, recognizes a situation he can help with, and promptly uses his powers to melt the rock walls around the dam, replacing the man-made structure with a natural one. He then chases after the water that already rushed through the hole, cutting a channel to a nearby lake and safely diverting the flood. The worst is over, he decides.
Not so much. The tremors break away the walls of a sealed cavern, shaking the outlawed weapons stored within. The intense vibrations and convulsions prod their delicate systems into activity, and soon anti-personnel missiles start blasting off on their own. They are Deathbirds, automated kill vehicles were deemed to vicious for civil warfare - and now they're free, hunting whatever prey they can find…
Professor von Doom is aghast at the thousands left homeless, and the looters that are already taking advantage of the earthquake - but the activation of the Deathbirds is a more immediate danger. He redials the President, requesting permission to call the Air Force in for help. Unfortunately Carpenter downplays the severity of the situation - it's not like it's the end of the world, you know! He tells Doom just to do what he can on his end, and hangs up. 'Do what I can?' Doom wonders, not sure what he's supposed to do without at least some planes to send against the killer drones. He stops in his tracks, realizing he might have a solution - he can try his portable deactivator device! He races towards his car, regretting that he can't take his colleague Reed Richards along. Today, Doom must act alone! (This world is weird.)
We next see a crowd of refugees struggling to get to safe ground, when they are suddenly attacked by the Deathbirds. Built to kill from the air, these machines find their victims by body heat, and then rain fire down indiscriminately. They're 1973's Predator Drones, basically. Bodies go flying every which way, and stray shots detonate a truck - which is enough to alert Warlock. The hero is too late to help, though, as he finds the aftermath of a massacre, as dozens of innocents are slain by the automated weapons.
Warlock follows the trail of destruction and discovers the culprits as they go about their grim work. Recognizing that the machines hunt for heat, Warlock lures them away by generating fire on his skin, making himself a prime target. Like the Pied Piper he leads the swarm of missiles over empty desert, but before he can destroy them, they all self-destruct in his face, sending him hurtling to the ground. Alive, but worn out by the exertion, he collapses.
Soon Professor von Doom finds Warlock, who compliments the golden hero on his amazing feat of destroying the Deathbirds, and asks whether he was hurt in the process. When the alien shakes his head, Doom is utterly fascinated - anyone else would have been killed by the explosion. Who is Warlock, why is his skin gold, how can he do these things? Warlock answers only the question about his name, keeping silent on the rest. He then turns things around, asking why the birds exploded - and Doom says that it was the work of his Deactivator. He didn't want to set them off so close to Warlock, of course, but he had no choice!
So, which is it, Doctor? Did Warlock take those missiles down, or did you? For a while I figured this was a hint at some nefarious plot of Doom's, but nope… The writer just screwed up, and accidentally contradicted himself here. Lame!
Doom tells Warlock that they should talk, and summons his car to them - apparently it's a Tesla. Warlock isn't sure he's ready for social discourse yet, but Doom tells him that he should at least meet with the people he saved. They drive to a makeshift refugee camp, and they are both recognized: Warlock as the man who fixed the dam, and Doom as the 'most famous egghead in the country.' Wow, Doom - even when you're not Super, you're still pretty super!
Warlock is less than enthusiastic about the awed response he's getting, and Doom asks him why he avoids the limelight. Warlock just says his powers are a mixed blessing, and he is obviously distressed when a woman thanks him profusely, getting on her knees and telling him that what he did was a miracle. Doom is stunned by Warlock's effect on the people around him, and tells the golden hero that he could be a great force for good - he could be a leader of men, like Doom always wanted to be, before he was disfigured! Warlock considers this, but figures a leader would know where he himself was going, first.
Interrupting all this quasi-messianic stuff is a special broadcast from the Romans - ahem, I mean the President of the United States. Carpenter begins by expressing his sympathies, before quickly switches to extolling the virtues of sacrifice, and then moving on to warning people about a new menace that endangers them all: Adam Warlock! The refugees and Doom are puzzled by this announcement, but none more so than Warlock himself.
Warlock #6 - The Brute!
After a quick recap of the previous issue, we return to the President's broadcast. Carpenter explains that he says these things with a heavy heart, since he personally witnessed Warlock's heroic fight against Triax in Warlock #4, but he's instructed the military to arrest Warlock. They are to investigate Warlock's part in the Mojave disaster, and ascertain whether or not the jewel embedded in his forehead has hypnotic powers...
Doom is none too pleased with the President's words, deciding that Carpenter's information must've gotten completely garbled somewhere along the way - blast that Pentagon! Even after he personally warned the President about the risk of an earthquake, the man was still getting it all wrong!
I gotta say - Carpenter is awfully unrealistic here. I mean, could you imagine an American President who downplays the collateral damage that drones can cause? How about one that ignores the plights of refugees, or focuses all his efforts on vague foreign threats who may possible become a danger in the future? I swear, some writers don't have a grasp on the real world...
Doom's recriminations are cut off when the army rolls into the refugee camp. When a colonel gets on top of a jeep and starts demanding Warlock's surrender, the refugees aren't too keen on assisting - and they're instantly suspected of being brainwashed and threatened with teargas. Warlock comes forward, however, unwilling to have another innocent injured on his behalf.
Doom approaches the military convoy too, demanding to know what this is all about from one of the soldiers. The soldier answers that he's just following the President's orders, and personally believes him over the word of some gold-skinned freak. Doom responds by calling him a racist. Hah!
Warlock isn't too keen on getting whisked off in black helicopters, so he demands to hear the charges under which he's to be held. This, apparently, constitutes resisting arrest, because several helicopters start firing at him with missiles. Slight overreaction there. Warlock avoids the gunfire and flies away from the refugee camp, both for the safety of the people there, and to find a place to reconsider his options.
Doom is back on the phone with the President, yelling that this whole affair is an outrage, that Warlock saved thousands when the dam broke, and he shouldn't be hunted like an animal. 'So it would seem, on the surface,' Carpenter declares, before explaining that classified reports indicate Warlock is an alien, as if that fact alone justifies everything. He adds that 'at any rate, a President knows more than you civilians.' Doom is unimpressed by this argument, since the President's not even in the area - and he promptly gets hung up on.
Over in the Oval Office, we get a quick glimpse at Carpenter's actual motivations. He tells himself that he must find some excuse to have Warlock watched, since the golden being could disrupt his entire administration. Apparently Carpenter is literally Dick Cheney. (Or Batman, I suppose. 'If there is even a 1% chance,' and all that…)
Doom is beating himself up over failing to sway Carpenter, still convinced that the President must be working off faulty information. He decides he needs to get in contact with another acquaintance in D.C. to make some headway: Reed Richards! Unfortunately Reed answers his call by saying he has more pressing problems, and Doom concludes that even his closest colleague doesn't believe him about Warlock's innocence. Though, he has to admit, Reed did sound a bit strange and distant when he answered - perhaps something's going on with him?
The comic switches to show Reed - who is sporting some gigantic beastly arms! It's good that Doom worries, the comic explains, because their lives are entwined… Backstory time! It all began in a Berkeley dorm, where Reed and Doom found in each other heterosexual life partners - theirs was the grandest of bromances. They have supported each other ever since, pushing each other to ever greater heights of achievement. That is, until the accident! Then Reed offered support of a different kind, staying by Doom's side during his long recovery. In repayment for the humanity shown to him in this moment of crisis, Doom rededicated himself to his scientific work, earning much acclaim.
Then, in 1961, four people hijacked an untested rocket - and one of them was Reed Richards. Doom tried to stop him, telling Reed that he had no idea what cosmic radiation in space might do to him, but Reed would not be stopped. Someone had to ensure America was first in space, after all! So it was Doom's time to support his friend, and he prayed that his friend would return unaltered. He got his wish, since superpowers cannot develop on this world due to the interference of Man-Beast. Still, the would-be Fantastic Four still crashed their ship, and instead of gaining powers from the experience they lost one of their own: Susan Storm was rendered comatose, and remains that way even a decade later.
Though hailed as a hero, fame could not replace this tragic loss, and Reed buried himself in his work, trying to forget what happened. More than ten years later, on the anniversary of the mission, Reed made a sudden horrific discovery: his hand turned lumpy and purple before his very eyes. The cosmic rays did affect him, after all! Mutated into a monstrous troll-like creature, the self-styled Brute, he smashed up his laboratory in a fit of rage - before reverting to human form just as abruptly. (For some reason all his clothes reappear on him, intact. Hulk wishes he had that power…)
Fascinated by this new ability, Reed soon began experimenting on himself, trying to bring out the Brute by sheer force of will. He is successful, but the moment he succeeds a secret door opens, from which a mysterious figure emerges. The shadowed man claims to have had a hand in causing Reed's transformation, and hypnotizes the trollish figure for purposes of his own…
We catch up with Warlock in Drakes Bay, California. He was last seen fleeing from the military, but now he's simply looking for some peace - which he can't seem to find. He's soon approached by a woman he knows as an ally: Astrella Carpenter, the sister of the President. She's there to tell Warlock that quite a few people are upset at her brother's treatment of him, including important ones like Colonel Roberts, and they're planning to have a meeting. She explains that she can take him there, and she's even brought a disguise along! Warlock immediately agrees, and Astrella is a bit surprised that he's buying what she's selling so readily - he's way too trusting. What would he think, she wonders, if he knew that everything she was telling him was a lie? A set-up?
They arrive at the Golden Gate Bridge, and find it clogged with traffic. Astrella wonders aloud what's going on, but in her thoughts she's already fully aware. Suddenly cars go flying through the air - it's the Brute, and he's here to kill Warlock! While the superhero ditches his recently acquired disguise to answer the challenge, Astrella retreats. She knows she's there to betray Warlock, but secretly she prays that he wins - and the soul gem in the alien's forehead seems to register the sentiment. (Symbolism!)
Throwing himself into battle, Warlock comments on the Brute's resemblance to the Beast-Men that dispersed upon the defeat of their leader, Man-Beast. The Brute professes not to know anything about this Man-Beast - he's just there to kill Warlock, and he'll pull the entire bridge down if that's what it takes. He proceeds to do exactly that, tearing down the Golden Gate Bridge as cars rain down into the river.
Warlock uses his soul gem's powers to fuse the molecules of the bridge together, preventing its complete collapse, but this gives the Brute the opportunity to tackle him out of the air and into the water below. The Brute, it seems, was told that Warlock's use of his forehead jewel weakened him - and this sends the hero's mind spinning. Who could be the beast's master? Who would want to kill him?
As they descend into the river below, Warlock focuses all his energy on conserving his oxygen and stroking his way back to the surface, but the Brute has other plans. Still, Warlock manages to catch a breath just as the beast grabs him by the leg - and then turns the gem's power on the beast blasting it with its power, devolving the monster back into human form. He is astonished to recognize the Reed Richards' counterpart - a man who supposedly never gained a mutation on this Earth!
Before he can wake the unconscious Reed and question him, though, Warlock comes under missile fire from military helicopters once more. Briefly tempted to attack the aggressors, he decides not to answer death with death and flies off towards the south, following Astrella's directions towards a mountain cabin that overlooks Lompico Canyon... As Warlock descends from the sky towards the cabin, he muses that Astrella told him his followers - Dave, Jason, and Ellie - would be waiting here. Instead, he can hear only a single person inside the cabin, so could this, too, be a trap? He slams the door open, only to find… Victor von Doom! Hey, it's been a while!
It seems Doom, too, was pointed to this cabin by Astrella, but he's not sure where everyone else is. Warlock fills him in on his encounter with the Brute, and Doom is understandably shocked by the revelations about his friend Reed Richards. 'That clinches it!' he exclaims. 'There's something pretty rotten going on here!' You don't say!
To confirm Doom's exclamation, a third figure then staggers in the door - it's Jason Grey, one of the missing cast members, and his clothes are torn to shreds. 'Th-they got us all,' he explains haltingly. 'Only I… I escaped. We're in trouble, Adam! We g-gotta go underground!'
Warlock #7 - Doom: At the Earth's Core!
After another brief recap, Warlock interrogates Jason Grey about the situation, asking what exactly happened. It seems Jason and the other members of Warlock's supporting cast were waiting for Astrella in San Francisco, when they were recognized as Warlock's posse by some thugs. Due to President Carpenter's announcement that Warlock was a dangerous menace to society, a whole bunch of 'concerned citizens' decided beating up some of his followers would be a great idea. Soon the police arrived and took them into 'protective custody', scare quotes included. Jason alone managed to slip away in the confusion, deciding to try and find Warlock at a place Astrella told him about.
Doom wonders whether any of them know Astrella's motivations, and Warlock admits he doesn't understand her anymore. It seems she told each of them they'd be meeting with some of Warlock's secret supporters here, but there's none of those around. Warlock decides he ought to go spring Dave and Ellie from jail, while Doom suggest laying low for a while, since the army is still after him, and they've shown no restraint thus far. Warlock acknowledges this point, but he doesn't let that stop him.
At the local police station we see Senator Nathan Carter (Dave's father) in a row with Colonel Barney Roberts (Ellie's father) over their children's confinement. Carter argues that their children got themselves into this mess by siding with a self-styled messiah, while Roberts responds that Warlock saved his daughter's life, changed much of his thinking, and - oh yeah - the kids weren't actually doing anything illegal. A police officer pipes up that there's another side to things: there's an angry mob outside threatening to lynch the kids. The law states that they can hold the kids for 24 hours - which is the only thing preventing them from being torn limb from limb by the crazies. Yikes!
We switch back to the Golden Gate Bridge, where it appears President Carpenter has had a change of heart. Crediting Warlock with repairing the bridge, he rescinds the ongoing manhunt, announcing that it was started mistakenly, and that it's time to come together as a nation. In his thoughts, though, Carpenter complains that Warlock's good deeds are too public to deny, so he could no longer avoid responding to them without losing popular support. He's still convinced that Warlock's dangerous, though, and decides he'll just try a more subtle approach next time.
Counter-Earth's Reed Richards departs from the hospital, and we get a quick recap of his change into the Brute, and the mysterious figure that instructed him to destroy Warlock. He recognized the hypnotists from somewhere, he's sure, but he's not certain where. He's stopped in his musing by a limousine - it was sent by the President, who wants to see him while they're both in San Francisco.
When he arrives for the audience, however, it's not in some fancy office, but a darkened hotel room - and the moment he steps inside, Reed is once more hypnotized by the mysterious figure, and turned back into his monstrous form, now unleashed to his full potential! The Brute runs off and starts destroying stuff like usual - but soon experiences weakness, dizziness - and a great, desperate hunger.
Back at the police station we see protesters gathered outside, both for and against Warlock, some with incredibly daft signs. Almost immediately a fight breaks out between the two sides.
Warlock arrives to intercede, and the pro-Warlock forces feel emboldened, until he sets them straight too with another blast of gem power. He will not tolerate violence - not even on his behalf.
Senator Carter commands the police to arrest Warlock, who just asks whether or not it's illegal to stop a riot. The policeman says he has a point, and since the White House has called off the heat, it's time for people to disperse. Carter complains about liberal softies, even as the protestors consider him a reactionary pig. Ah, some things never change! Soon Dave and Ellie are released into Warlock's custody, and this entire lame subplot comes to a close.
Not a moment later, Astrella appears back in the picture, and Warlock demands some answers. She quickly explains that after she gave directions to everyone, she found out that it was all a trap set by their enemies! (Except the enemy was her, and she couldn't go through with it.) As Warlock says they're grateful for her help, Astrella simultaneously celebrates getting another lie to stick, while also lamenting she still can't seem to tell the full truth, even though she's on Warlock's side now.
We return to Professor von Doom at last, who has returned to his Livermore lab. He's trying to forget all the recent upsets in his life by focusing on his work - the prize jewel of which is the Earth-Corer 1, the very first Inner Space exploration vehicle - a vehicle we've seen regular Doom use to invade Wakanda not long ago! I think this is a sign that Doom's personality might be radically different, but his ego is still there - with his best friend as this world's equivalent o Yuri Gagarin, it's clear he's looking to achieve something similarly grand himself!
Doom's work is interrupted by the arrival of the monstrous Brute - who seems a little less brutish than expected. The monster can't quite remember things right, but he recognizes Doom. 'We were college roommates,' Doom explains. 'Lab partners, best friends! Some of that must penetrate your mind!' The Brute gets confused, focusing instead on why he's come here - energy food - which he knows he can get here, somewhere. Before Doom can get another word in edgewise he gets punched in the face, and the Brute heads towards the subterrene.
Doom wakes up from a brief stint of unconsciousness to find a giant hole in the ground - it seems that the Brute has enough of Reed's mind within it to control the digging machine, and he has taken it straight down! Hopping into his car, he drives off towards the one man he believes can fix this problem - Adam Warlock!
He quickly explains to Warlock and his human appendices that Reed has mutated to require raw energy to survive, and has set out to tap Counter-Earth's geothermal energy. Which wouldn't be a problem if his energy needs weren't so massive, and the surface world didn't rely on that energy for life support. If Reed's not stopped, the world might freeze over into a snowball! This is questionable science, to say the least, and it suffers from a severe misjudging of the scales involved - but at least it lights a fire under everyone's ass. Their route is clear - they'll journey to the Earth's core! (Doom mutters that he hopes he's the only Doom they'll find down there. Puns! Glorious puns!)
We next see Warlock blasting his way downwards through bedrock, with Doom and Warlock's followers trailing behind him in a fancy subterranean car - an auxiliary vehicle, Doom explains, which can only follow Warlock's lead. Far below the Earth they come upon the Brute, who is already cooling the area around him by absorbing all the heat into his bod.
Warlock approaches the beast, who immediately spots him - and now that the mutant's immediate need for sustenance has been fulfilled, he reverts to his programming: Kill Warlock! Warlock gets pummeled into the stone walls of the underground cave system that has solidified around them - things are a lot less one-sided now that the Brute has increased in power tenfold from his diet of red-hot magma, while Warlock is tired from all the tunneling he's been doing. Even the soul gem seems to have no effect anymore. Channeling the energy of the Earth, the Brute starts sending energy blasts at his enemy, and Warlock is quickly defeated by the onslaught.
Looking on from a nearby cavern with Warlock's followers, Doom is aghast: not only is the golden hero in danger, but Reed's body is reaching critical mass - like an atom bomb, he's almost ready to explode! There's only one way to save him now - and Doom must take it! He tells the others to stay behind in safety, then dashes back over towards the Earth-Corer 1, risking death at the hands of the Brute on the way there.
As explosions go off around him Doom dives back into the vehicle, briefly flashing back to the time Reed was there in the wake of his accident, helping to keep his head together. Doom decides that he can attempt no less in return. He crosses a few wires in the vessel's radiation shield to convert it into a radiation absorber, then turns the Earth-Corer 1 towards the Brute. Warlock tells Doom he's only putting himself in danger, but Doom maintains course, committed to his plan. He merely tells Warlock to ready his strongest assault and join him in the attack.
As the monster threatens to deliver a fatal blow on Warlock, Doom makes his move. Warlock suffuses the Brute with the energy of his soul gem, while Doom turns on his radiation absorber - and almost immediately Reed's form reemerges. Doom isn't finished, though - he knows that he can't be gradual about this, he needs to rip all the radiation out of Reed, or he'll just turn back into the monster again the moment he turns the machine off.
Soon Reed is himself again, for good, and he wakes up. He's just in time to hear Doom exclaim that they all have to get away from the Earth-Corer - if he doesn't handle the radiation he's just absorbed into the thing, they'll all die! Warlock yells at Doom to save himself before it's too late, but it's no use - the subterrene vanishes in a titanic explosion, annihilating Doom with it.
As they stand at the edge of a huge crater, Reed thanks Warlock for shielding him from the explosion - if not for that, he'd surely have joined Victor in death. He admits that part of him wishes he did. Warlock laments the second death he's been unable to prevent in such a short time - but he consoles himself with the knowledge that Doom's sacrifice had a purpose. He intends to make sure the world does not forget it, so he turns to the stone around him and fashions a gravestone from the material of Earth's core. A message for the living, a message of hope - that their lives could have such significance at their deaths as did Doom's.
Fittingly, Doom's gravestone is a life size statue of himself, with the Earth held upon his palm. The epitaph reads: 'Victor von Doom - he died that another might have life. No greater love - or life - can a man have than this.'
RIP.
Rating & Comments
Our first alternate Doom is an interesting one, but he's not in particularly good comics... Not only do the stories meander wildly from place to place, they also seem to veer into new territory at the drop of a hat - the plot at the Counter-Earth's core came right the hell out of nowhere. Repercussions of huge events are soon relegated to background fodder, with the massive earthquake in California shoved aside to make room for a broken bridge, only for that to be forgotten because the core of the Earth is freezing. Rogue military weapons massacre a crowd of people and everyone's apparently forgotten that by the time the bridge collapse happens!
Character-wise, things aren't looking a whole lot better. Warlock's supporting cast is uninteresting and has nothing to do in any of these issues. They keep getting ditched entirely or relegated to excess baggage, and the few that get to speak go on about inconsequential stuff. Warlock himself comes across as dim and helpless throughout, acting only when it becomes abundantly obvious he should. Astrella is a lame excuse for a villain who is already converting herself to Warlock's side from the first panels she appears in. The Brute is a mindless ripoff of the Hulk. And President Carpenter? He is basically supervillain Dick Cheney, but not nearly entertaining enough to make that work.
Which just leaves… Professor von Doom. Easily the most interesting character in any of these issues, even without the bias of a Doom biographer, he's a take on a Victor von Doom who shared college dorms with Reed Richards rather than Ben Grimm. Key to his development is his deep friendship with Reed, who pulled him through his depression after his face was maimed in that fated accident. It's a key moment that influenced Doom's character, but it's not actually the divergence point with regular Earth - Doom and Reed went to State U instead of Berkeley on Earth, and Doom did his experiments alone. Also the accident involved witchcraft, which doesn't even seem to exist on Counter-Earth!
If we were judging these comics by plots alone, I'd label this whole set a solid two or three stars - they're all below average to middling stories, unimpressive and derivative at best, loaded with unsubtle religious imagery. Seriously, we get it, he's Space Jesus! It was blatant when Man of Steel did it, and that was minor compared to this level of sermonizing! It's more blatant at the start, granted, but even Doom's epitaph is a paraphrased line from the bible! (It's John 5:13 : 'Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.')
I'm siding on the side of giving these stories three stars, but only because Victor von Doom gets to be a true archetypal hero, right down to the tragic sacrifice. Showing the complete mirror image of the usual Doom - his counterpart, you might say - I have to give it some style points for that.
And also for that bitchin' statue! Rock on!
Best Panel(s) of the Issue
How can I not elect Counter-Doom's gravestone here? Granted, it makes absolutely no sense how the subterranean caverns at the Earth's core somehow resemble the open air here, but that's a problem with the entire issue - there's a weird lack of lava in the deep places of the world, and a remarkable amount of free oxygen. I'm not sure the statue is in a place that will even exist in a moment, actually, since it's in the part of the core cooled by the Brute's energy-absorbing powers. Also, how is anyone ever supposed to read that message all the way down there? Still neat.
Most Gloriously Villainous Heroic Doom Quotes
"Do what I can? It would take planes, perhaps even - Wait! I can try this portable deactivator on those things. If only my colleague Reed Richards weren't away researching a new project… Well, no time for that. Today, Victor von Doom must act alone!"
Doom's Bad Hair Day
It's an interesting choice, this time - it's textual! The author apparently switched the word 'alternative' with 'alternating', and made Doom sound like an idiot in the process. There's several sloppy mistakes in these comics, actually... Incidentally, it's pretty classy to keep your sweet purple phone in a desk drawer, and the artists were clever to replace Doom's usual gauntlets with grey gloves to give a similar impression.
Comic Trivia
In the next issue of Warlock it would be revealed, to nobody's great shock, that President Rex Carpenter was possessed by Sata- the Man-Beast - all along! I wonder how long they thought about giving him a name like 'Carpenter', given all the other religious references... Anyway, even his run for office was apparently compelled by the demon! Astrella finally tells Warlock the whole truth, and when they confront Rex, the Man-Beast abandons his presidential host and takes them all prisoner. That cliffhanger… marks the end of the comic, since 'Warlock' was cancelled before this storyline could be resolved. Brilliant.
Thankfully, if you care for that sort of thing, the plot would be resolved in the pages of Incredible Hulk some nine months later. With a little help from the titular titan, Warlock is finally able to free Counter-Earth from the malevolent Man-Beast's influence. Released from mind control, Rex Carpenter decides that he'll remain President - even though he wasn't technically the one who was elected. This is allowed? What does the Constitution say about the electability of body-snatchers? How about meat-suits? Someone call Congress!
Counter-Earth would continue to appear in stories on occasion, but lost much of its relevance when Warlock went off to have cosmic adventures. That, and the multiverse made it essentially superfluous. The largest upset experienced there was likely that time the alien Sphinxor stole the entire planet on behalf of the Beyonders (who we'll get back to!) and placed it in a museum. Very… Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, isn't it?
Still, getting relegated to the stuffy aisle in the back, wedged between the Planet of the Apes and Arrakis, wasn't actually the worst thing ever suffered by this poor world. Let's sum it up by saying that every single supporting cast member in the entire setting was killed by a snap of gauntleted fingers. (And an off-screen Counter-Earth-shattering explosion.)
Doom-Tech of the Week
Counter-Doom's inventions include the Remote Control Car that he drives around everywhere, the portable Deactivator which he uses to take out the Deathbirds (even though he mistakenly says Warlock did that…) There's also the Earth-Corer 1 and the Auxiliary Vehicle, two subterranean vessels that can travel into the core of the Earth. And, of course, we can't leave off without mentioning the Radiation Absorber, his final, fatal invention.
Ah it doesn't matter wither they Make Doom a Hero or a Villain he is glorious in ether role. Its really a pity they Killed off this version of Doom it would have been great to see him again.
Thankfully, if you care for that sort of thing, the plot would be resolved in the pages of Incredible Hulk some nine months later. With a little help from the titular titan, Warlock is finally able to free Counter-Earth from the malevolent Man-Beast's influence. Released from mind control, Rex Carpenter decides that he'll remain President - even though he wasn't technically the one who was elected. This is allowed? What does the Constitution say about the electability of body-snatchers? How about meat-suits? Someone call Congress!
Ahh, yes. 70s Hulk. A character whose book sometimes seems to exist to either finish up storylines from cancelled titles or to let artists go crazy and try odd ideas out.
Okay, this is a sweet (Christmas?) cover, as it does exactly what a cover is supposed to do: entice someone to read the comic it's attached to. The dynamic action happening on this cover is impressively drawn, conveys Luke Cage's strength, and on top of that the robots are creepy with and without their human disguises. Nice! And that's not even mentioning the ghoulish ripped off faces thrown into the mix!
The 'surprise super-villain' announced on the cover is no great shock to us, I'm sure, but I'm doubtful anyone would've been terribly puzzled even at the time this came out. The Venn diagram of people associated with humanoid robots and hooded green cloaks is pretty much just a circle, I imagine...
Story Overview
Crescendo!
We arrive to find Luke Cage, our hero for hire, on the tail end of a three-hour long stream of expletives. Yup. He punches a table in half while ranting about a 'jive-talkin', freakin' motherless candidate for the psycho hatch!' Alrighty then! Cage recaps his last few issues in brief, even as he punches holes in the walls. Apparently he was present when someone was murdered, and was then attacked because he was present. 'I don't dig it at all!' he complains.
It's here that D.W. Griffith enters the room. He's the owner of the building Cage is living in, and also a personal friend - and given the damage the place is always taking at Cage's hand, that's pretty impressive. He's brought along someone who wants to hire Cage, but the hero for hire isn't too keen on starting a new job - he's got personal issues he has to work out.
Still, the man in the three-piece suit is persistent, and even after they leave the office, he still attempts to convince Cage with a fat paycheck. The discussion is tabled, however, when Cage suddenly recognizes a familiar face on the street… It's one of the people who attacked him the other day!
Cage immediately gives chase, and the Samuel L. Jackson-looking assailant takes off at speed, vaulting across walls and running himself ragged to get away. Finally convinced that he's escaped his pursuer, he grins to himself in relief - but Luke Cage is right there, arms crossed and unimpressed. In a moment of desperation the attacker - Georgie - then flings himself at Cage, refusing to be taken in on an assault charge. Cage agrees with this, declaring that they'll settle things right then and there, with their fists!
It doesn't go well for poor Georgie. He first breaks his hand on Cage's face, then snaps his knife against his impenetrable skin, all the while screaming he's going to cut Cage from ear to toenail! Cage scoffs at this boast, telling Georgie he couldn't even cut school, then knocks him on the head.
An apparent racial stereotype of an Eastern-European woman throws open a window nearby, and starts screeching about the 'recket' and that 'decent pipple are trying to relex!' Cage is briefly distracted by this, and Georgie manages to get away. The woman, who I'm convinced is a horrific stereotype of some people I'm not familiar with, quickly goes on to tell her long-suffering husband about her encounter with the 'qviet, friendly schvartze boy…'
Hold on, let me google that. 'Schvartze' sounds German…
Oh. Oh dear.
Georgie rushes off across the rooftops, and we get a cool shot of Luke Cage watching in the distance, no more than a silhouette. Still, it's not enough, and Cage loses the trail. Since he's near a clinic he's familiar with, Cage decides to pay a visit. Claire Temple works there, a medical professional who's treated various superheroes in her time in comics. Cage asks her to 'do a Betsy Ross' and sew up his shirt instead, since Georgie managed to damage it with his knife.
Lest you believe this is a 1970's comic where there's a strong black female character without ulterior motives on the writer's part, though, they then start making out. Figures.
When Cage returns home, he finds that the man in the fancy suit is still there waiting for him. He concludes that Cage must've completed his personal business, and offers a fee of $200 a day for a simple task: go to a ghetto and capture four men who have absconded with some of his employer's secrets. Cage decides to agree, if only to get the man off his back.
Luke Cage submerges himself in New York's underworld, where he grew up. 'The world of people who call New York an animal and lives off it like tapeworms,' as the comic puts it. Within hours he tracks down the people he's supposed to find to an old garage in a back-alley. Cage clearly has some serious detective skills! He kicks through the door to announce his presence, declaring that he's there on behalf of their boss, and he says 'stealin' never pays!'
The thieves respond with violence of their own, one using a laser gun he 'liberated', stunning Cage with it and ripping up his shirt, again. The thieves then argue among themselves, deciding that they will survive whatever is sent against them - because they have someone to kill! One they hate above all others!
Cage soon recovers and punches two of the men at the same time, but they barely seem to notice the hits. Cage is puzzled by this, so when he decides to throw his full weight behind his next punch, he's startled to find an explanation: the man's head explodes on impact, revealing him to be a robot!
Cage is understandably distracted by this revelation, and another thief up above takes advantage by dropping a heavy weight on his back, smashing him to the floor. He isn't actually hurt since his skin is supernaturally tough, but his brain still got a pounding and he takes a moment to recuperate. He chooses not to force himself to his feet and chase the remaining thieves, far more interested in having a chat with the man who hired him. In a truly retro moment, Cage goes to a phone switch operator to connect the phone number he's been given with an address, and he soon finds himself walking up First Avenue. His employer lives at an embassy, and Cage figures this explains why the man was so oily…
Going into the embassy, there's plenty of fancily-dressed people, but Cage soon identifies the man who hired him, now dressed up in a fancy red military costume. He approaches aggressively and a few troopers try to stop Cage since he's moving towards 'General Mantoff.' He shrugs them off, grabbing Mantoff by his lapels and telling him: 'Move you mouth - or I'll re-move your teeth!'
"Stop! Leave that man alone!" declares a new arrival. A familiar armored form takes center stage. "No one manhandles a loyal subject of… Doctor Doom!"
It's about time he showed up! Cage seems completely nonplussed, convinced there can't possibly exist someone going around in full armor like this, or bearing a silly name like that. Doom is not amused by the skepticism, declaring that as the monarch of Latveria he deserves more respect. He then commands everyone to leave so they can have a one-on-one talk.
Doom starts the conversation by pointing out that while Cage might not believe in him, the feeling is quite mutual. He's baffled that someone who gained superpowers and chose to take on the role of hero for hire is utterly unprepared to deal with all that entails - because for people like him, the fantastic is commonplace. Cage really shouldn't be so surprised that he ended up fighting a bunch of robots. (Doom has a point…)
We then turn to the reason Doom hired Cage in the first place. It appears that several of Doom's robots rebelled against him and fled to America, disguising themselves as black men to hide. Latveria doesn't have a black population and - sad to say - nobody emigrates there, so to track the robots unobtrusively he needed to hire an, ahem, a 'black' to blend in. Enter Luke Cage. Doom then asks whether anything's changed with their agreement. After all, the robots are still thieves, and he is still being paid for his services. Cage acknowledges that Doom has a right to hire him just like anyone else.
Doom hands over a card with the address where the robots are now hiding. He never pursues just one plan at a time, he explains, so he had Cage followed by an electronic spy-eye, and it tracked the robots after they fled the scene. Cage takes the tip, musing to himself that he'd love to tell Doom to stick it - but he has no reason except personal dislike. (I guess he never did learn about all the super-villainy…) Heading back towards the ghetto, Cage soon feels like he's being watched, and when he comes to a quiet, dark alcove he thinks it's the perfect place for an ambush. He's right, as he's barely even finished that thought when the robots attack, now without their human disguises!
Cage focuses on destroying their laser guns first, then moves on to disabling them, landing punches with the impact of a freight train. As they rip apart Cage's shirt - again! - the robots start chattering among each other, declaring 'Death to all humans!' and 'Everyone of flesh, blood and bone must die!'
The leader of the robots - Primus - takes Cage on personally, and gets tossed around for his trouble. Still, he's not going down for the count. Cage realizes that if he doesn't throw everything into this fight, these robots will doubtlessly kill him within minutes - while his skin doesn't break, his organs still take a beating, and the robots don't ever get tired. Cage switches to lethal attacks, and quickly starts reducing the metal men to heaps of scrap. He doesn't feel great about it - he didn't want to kill, and he hates being forced to do it because a client cornered him into it.
Rushing back to the Latverian embassy, Cage demands an audience with the head honcho. The guard at the door has bad news for him, however: Doom kept an eye on his victory through his mechanical spy-eye and applauds his action, but he doesn't pay money when he can avoid it, so he's closed the embassy and departed to Latveria mere minutes before.
Cage is enraged, punching a chunk out of a nearby wall and declaring Doom a 'motherless son of a witch!', somehow both contradictory and weirdly accurate. He then says he's coming for Doom - someway, somehow, he's going to nail that monarch to the wall!
To be continued!
Rating & Comments
Alright, I admit it, I was expecting a lot more blatant 1970's racism and a lot less awesome well-paced action. There's some of the former, sure, especially in that aside with the Jewish couple, but on the whole this was a fun read with a lot of dynamic action. The art is a bit sketchy sometimes, but it's got a distinctive style that sets it apart from a lot of things I've read.
Story-wise this issue is divided into halves, with the first half entirely focused on the ongoing meta-plot of Cage's life, featuring guest appearances by his supporting cast and a quick action scene that does little more than rip up his shirt. (This happens to Cage a lot. I feel that I've already identified several running jokes from this one issue alone, with him punching random objects to pieces and ripping his shirt being the obvious standouts.)
The second half of the issue is the part we're here for, and involves two huge brawls, both of which work pretty well. I'm not sure why the robots' disguises were ditched immediately after they were first mentioned, though, since the cover had some sweet scenes of those getting ripped off. We never really see that happening in the comic outside that one robot getting his head blown up. The cover is a total lie, honestly - not only do the robots look different there, but they're even disguised as white people!
I have to question the morality of Luke Cage's work a bit. In this issue he takes a job to hunt down four people from a random stranger, and since they're really renegade robots in disguise, he can't possible know much about what they've done before attacking. Cage hasn't even researched his employer enough to know where to find him, since he has to track him down through a phone operator! The hero also seems totally isolated from the superhero community, unable to recognize a world-famous supervillain who's been an imminent global threat before. So what is going on here, exactly? Cage appears to be a grossly ignorant super-powered flunkie that anyone could throw at their enemies for a couple hundred quid. He's supposed to be a hero?
Anyway, all the action is interrupted by a scene at the Latverian embassy, where we finally meet our man of the hour. Doctor Doom makes a pretty brief appearance in this issue, but he's still a pivotal character anyway - his robots are the antagonists, after all, and he sets up the follow-up issue in which his role is a lot more center-stage (and famous.)
The unfortunate part is that the sequel hook makes absolutely no sense, even if it is hilarious. Cage was promised 200 dollars for his work, which is a pittance to someone like Doom. I mean, the man is certainly a billionaire, considering he owns an entire freaking country and has enough loose cash to throw around that he can casually construct giant medieval castles or enormous armies of robots. He would not flee the country to dodge the equivalent of tax fare. Would his grandiose pride even allow such a thing? I think not.
I'll allow it, but only because it's funny. But no four stars for you, comic! (The random antisemitism didn't help your case!)
Best Panel(s) of the Issue
I really like a lot of the action shots in this issue, but I gotta give this one to the double-handed knockout punches he delivers to some robots in disguise. It doesn't work, but it looks pretty awesome. There's also that bad-ass knockout punch that reveals the robots for what they are, but I already showed that up above, so I'm not going to repeat myself.
Most Gloriously Villainous Doom Quotes
"You do not believe in me, Mr. Cage? The feeling is mutual. Did you expect to gain superhuman powers and stay within your limited world of petty hoodlums and petty crimes? You are here because you have discovered that my enemies are robots. But Doctor Doom has long used robots! What seems fantastic to you is commonplace to me… and since becoming a hero for hire was your choice, your surprise at the bizarre is truly comedic!"
Doom's Bad Hair Day
In one panel, for no apparent reason, Doom gets a blue cowl instead of a green one - but all the rest of his clothes remain their normal hue. What weird kind of colorist screw-up is this?
Doom-Tech of the Week
The Robots in Disguise are the obvious things to mention here, but there's also the Electronic Eye-Spy which we never actually see, but which apparently keeps an eye on things on Doom's behalf, and lets him skip out on paying minor bills.
WRT Cage; keeping in mind, at this point he's a wanted man for both his original crime of murder (which he didn't do) and the later crime of escaping from prison (which he did), who is doing the Hero For Hire gig because A: he needs to eat, and B: who's going to suspect a guy who dresses like that and advertises himself in the paper as a "hero-for-hire" is a wanted man?
WRT Cage; keeping in mind, at this point he's a wanted man for both his original crime of murder (which he didn't do) and the later crime of escaping from prison (which he did), who is doing the Hero For Hire gig because A; he needs to eat, and B: who's going to suspect a guy who dresses like that and advertises himself in the paper as a "hero-for-hire" is a wanted man?
Refuge in audacity, huh? I suppose that makes sense, but he's kind of inviting situations like in this issue - he did just end up attacking and then murdering a quartet of self-aware robots without really knowing what's going on. He's lucky AI rights in Marvel are in perpetual flux and applied only whenever the writers remember they might be a thing!
Refuge in audacity, huh? I suppose that makes sense, but he's kind of inviting situations like in this issue - he did just end up attacking and then murdering a quartet of self-aware robots without really knowing what's going on. He's lucky AI rights in Marvel are in perpetual flux and applied only whenever the writers remember they might be a thing!
Refuge in audacity, huh? I suppose that makes sense, but he's kind of inviting situations like in this issue - he did just end up attacking and then murdering a quartet of self-aware robots without really knowing what's going on. He's lucky AI rights in Marvel are in perpetual flux and applied only whenever the writers remember they might be a thing!
Well again, he didn't set out to be a superhero, he's a PI...who's main draw is having superpowers.
Fun fact; when Danny becomes his partner, there's a minor plotline wherein they inadvertently begin stealing clients from Danny's girl Misty and her friend/business partner Colleen's high-end PI business.
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041: Hero for Hire #9 - Where Angels Fear to Tread!
Alright, I gotta admit, this cover kinda disappoints after the last one. Doom is standing quite rigidly here, and his cape is a different color than his vest for some reason. That, and his left elbow looks absolutely enormous in that oversized flaring gauntlet... At least his hand lasers have a pretty neat splash effect as they hit Luke Cage, I suppose. And yes, speaking of Cage - what's wrong with his face? I'm not the only one who's weirded out by it, right? Also did he have this weirdly longish hair last issue? I could've sworn it was his usual short style…
This issue has a certain notoriety among the general public due to various 'silliest moments in comics' lists and similar mentions, but I've never actually read the story. Not beyond the panels people always copy-paste on the internet, at least. It'll be interesting to see what it's actually like, and whether or not this issue is unfairly maligned.
Story Overview
Where Angels Fear to Tread!
We open with Luke Cage fighting the entirety of the Fantastic Four. Yup! Granted, they've switched out Sue for Medusa, but for once it's no hallucination or trick. Apparently the hero for hire somehow took an elevator to the private superhero floors of the Baxter Building in order to find Reed Richards, and promptly got into a tussle with the Thing. Cage actually manages to get some licks in, but Reed quickly immobilized him with his stretching powers and demands to know what he's there for.
Luke Cage, it seems, wants to borrow a rocket. He needs one to put the screws on Doctor Doom, and he figured the Fantastic Four would have some lying around. The Latverian monarch owes him some money, you see, and he intends to collect! The Four don't seem convinced by this plan, with Ben openly laughing at Cage's motivation, but Reed decides to humor him, with Medusa commenting that she 'admires his spunk.' Ben just says that he's unsurprised the landlord wants them out of the building, if the keep doing crazy stuff like this…
Cage soon gets on a rocket-ship that resembles the Normandy from Mass Effect, which is already programmed to take him to Doom's palace in Latveria. Reed looks on from the roof of the Baxter Building as the ship speeds off into the sky, worrying about the outcome, but also strangely confident that Cage can beat the odds. Cage psyches himself up as the rocket travels, declaring that not even Latveria is far enough to run from Luke Cage!
It's at Latveria's border that things go awry. The ship suddenly halts in the sky, caught in a tractor beam, and a giant image of Doom fills the sky. It seems the automated systems recognized Cage's ship as belonging to the Fantastic Four, who are persona non grata in the kingdom, and he's being detained. Unexpectedly the ship doesn't just blow up, however - it's lowered slowly to the ground while a bunch of guards in those dorky Mickey Mouse helmets come rushing in to capture an expected four superheroes. Somehow.
The guards are surprised to find that it's Luke Cage who exits the ship instead of the famous Four, and he punches out one of the guards before taking a laser blast to the chest. The guards laugh among themselves, figuring the Fantastic Four had to scrape the bottom of the barrel for volunteers like this.
Cage, unexpectedly awake despite getting hit by a stunner, declares that the bottom of the barrel is where Doom got the lot of them, and they look like they came in a Crackerjacks box! Pummeling them relentlessly, he recommends that next time they shoot somebody, they should really check whether they're bulletproof first.
As he's beating up the guards, there's sudden footsteps behind him - a horde of robots streams into the clearing, attacking Doom's guards with vicious intensity. Cage recognizes them as similar to the ones he fought last issue. Soon they rout Doom's forces, and one of them tells Cage to follow - and he does, figuring that these robots haven't actually hassled him yet, unlike the local law enforcement.
They travel to a nearby cave, where a strangely familiar figure looms out of the shadows. Yes, it's the return of the Faceless One! We last saw him about three real years ago, back in Astonishing Tales #3, when he scuttled off in the wake of a Doom-induced earthquake. It seems he's become the leader of the Latverian robotic revolt in the interim, even though he's an alien, and still intent on deposing Doom. The Faceless One forgives Cage for unwittingly killing several of his followers in New York, explaining that they thought he was an agent of Doom. (Technically he was…) An honest misunderstanding, that's all.
Cage is a bit disturbed that his killing is waved off as a misunderstanding, but the Faceless One notes robots are replaceable, and regardless life and death are treated differently in Latveria - if you are not one of Doom's own, your life is hell. He explains that he's tried to revolt before with Prince Rudolfo, failed in the attempt, and is now attempting it again with a different army. He then claims he's doing it because the robotic suffering is 'heart-rendering', likening the android plight to slavery and asking Cage to sympathize with an indentured people who weren't imported from elsewhere, but instead constructed on demand.
Thankfully Cage isn't so easily manipulated, and immediately calls the Faceless One on his bullshit - he's fully aware that the alien doesn't care in the slightest about slavery or American history, and is just trying to play on his emotions. The alien admits he was overdramatizing, but still asks Cage to join them in that evening's assault - he could use the muscle, and Cage would never get into the castle by himself. Quid pro quo, you know?
Cage agrees, because we next see him hunkering down with several robots near Doom's castle. The androids suggest he pick up a weapon, but Cage says he doesn't need one. (He is the weapon, right?) Internally he's having a Hawkeye in Sokovia moment - you know, 'none of this makes sense.' Here he is, allying himself with aliens and robots wielding laser rifles, in order to fight an armored wizard in his medieval castle. It doesn't make any sense for a street-gang rumbler to get involved in any of it. But, like Doom told him last issue, the superhero business is a different thing altogether, and he signed up for it…
The rebels approach one of the castle's large metal gates and deploy a laser bazooka to make their way inside, but it doesn't have enough punch to penetrate the sturdy doors. Cue Luke Cage, who uses the opportunity to show his stuff, punching his way through in a pretty great action panel.
The robot rebellion rushes into the courtyard to face Doom's guards, and Cage even finds one of the people that attacked him before, knocking the guy out with a vicious hay-maker. Even as the 'alloyed' assault team (ha!) starts wrecking Doom's place, Cage keeps his eye on the prize - he's here to collect what he's owed, after all! He rushes past the outer defenses, running through abandoned hallways and dusty rooms, ever deeper into the castle, until he finds some guards who are protecting a door rather than an outside wall. He makes quick work of the men and approaches the massive door they were protecting, figuring it's probably important. To his surprise it's unlocked, and behind it, already waiting for him on his golden throne, sits Doctor Doom!
Doom is blunt about the reason he was expecting Cage: his men reported a 'crazy black man' arriving in the Fantastic Four's rocket, and he reasoned that could mean only one person. Cage's response is simple, short, and legendary. 'Where's my money, honey?'
Doctor Doom is briefly stumped by the question, but when he realizes what money Cage is talking about, he responds with an utterly incredulous, 'you came all the way here for that?! You are crazy!' He thought Cage was working for Reed Richards in some new plot to bring Doom to what he calls justice - but it's all about some stupid debt?
Cage doesn't consider it stupid. If he puts in a day of honest work, he expects payment. Doom dismisses him, exclaiming that there's a robot revolution going on outside, and he has no time for these trivialities. He should just get out! Cage tells Doom that he's not leaving - and if he wants Cage out, he'll have to put him out. He dares Doom to try.
Doom responds by electrifying his armor. 'This is a sample of the pain my protective armor can inflict!' he announces grandly. 'And this is a sample of my fist!' Cage snarls back, socking him in the face. Okay, Luke Cage is a straight up badass. Nice.
As they struggle, Cage gets impatient with Doom's constant dismissal, telling the monarch that he's been unjustly looking down on Cage since the start, brushing him off just because he talks like he's from Harlem. His accent doesn't mean he's stupid, though, and being a hero for hire is a tough business - it'd be a lot harder if he let anybody walk on him. Anybody. Doom says the hero's tiny capitalistic enterprise on the other side of the world is utterly inconsequential to him, and Cage should get his peasant hands off his royal personage. Sheesh, it's like he's getting worse!
Picking up the Latverian monarch and smashing him through some furniture, Cage angrily declares that Doom can do whatever the hell he wants on his own time, but when he deals with Cage, he does him right - or Cage will do him wrong! This seems to earn him some respect, as Doom sees in Cage a reflection of himself at a younger age, back when he first decided that nobody would ever best Victor von Doom again. Yet, because of that very vow, he can't allow himself any sympathy! Cage says he should cram the sympathy - they'll decide this flat out!
Doom finally puts some effort into the fight, grasping Cage with his metal fingers and declaring that with his armor he's crushed the Thing, and the Hulk! (I'm not sure either of those are accurate statements. I remember him getting trounced by both!) Cage retaliates by punching Doom's suit, and he rattles something loose inside.
Quickly picking up on this weak point and focusing more punches on that same spot, Cage starts doing some real damage, with Doom asking him to stop when parts go flying. It seems, for some unfathomable reason, Doom has built his armor to withstand anything - except repeated stress on a solitary point. That seems a very poor design decision! With gears and wires hanging out of his chest, Doom declares that his main weapon circuitry has been rendered inoperative - which is precisely what the Faceless One wanted to hear. Appearing up above and looking down on them from a balcony, the bobble-headed alien says he's here to finish what he started back in those early issues of Astonishing Tales: kill Doctor Doom!
For some bizarre reason the Faceless One's design switches between his old one from Astonishing Tales and this ungainly thing with a monstrously over-sized head. It seems to depend on the angle of the shot, so maybe the artist just screwed up interpreting the old art?
As the alien fires his weapon, Doom throws himself out of the way and tries to respond in kind - but without the power his armor provides, his laser blasts fail to fire. He curses the situation, admitting that he might die that day - but only because of the Faceless One's employee, Luke Cage!
Cage immediately denies being in the Faceless One's pocket, deciding that while the alien did assist him before, he's not going to be party to murder. Not even if the target is Doctor Doom. He slings himself up to the balcony and rips it to pieces with his bare hands, half-burying the alien in the rubble along with himself.
The Faceless One has lost his height advantage and now faces two threats at once, so he decides to retreat. He puts up a force field to keep Cage back, and then departs from his android body, scuttling away like a giant bulbous spider. As he leaves he gives some dumb exposition explaining why his body doesn't explode like last time - superfluous, but at least it tells me they kept continuity in mind.
Doom wanders over towards Cage, still clutching his torn-up chest armor, and tells him to hurry up - he can still catch the Faceless One! Cage tells Doom he's got no quarrel with the man, now that the immediate threat is over - and the alien could have killed Cage at the end there, and refrained. More importantly, Doom hasn't even paid him for his first job yet!
This is the tipping point for the monarch - instead of doing what one might expect, Doom bursts into peals of laughter, declaring that Cage is the ultimate. He next asks whether it would do any good to try and hire Cage for this new assignment, but seems to know the answer already. Swallowing his pride, Doom thanks Cage for saving his life, admits that the hero has amply earned his respect, and - at last - pays him his 200 dollars.
Cage departs from the room along an escape path that Doom points out to him. Behind him he can hear the clanking of metal feet on stone - the robot revolutionaries have reached the throne room. This, however, is not Cage's concern, and he moves on. 'Come in, gentlemen,' Doom announces cordially. 'I believe you have some grievances you wish to discuss…'
Cage doesn't stick around to see how this all turns out, heading for the Normandy and rocketing back to America. The return trip proves downright dull, and Cage finds the Fantastic Four squabbling over whether or not he's alright, and if they should've gone along. As he enters, Reed is amazed that Cage barely looks scuffed up by the experience. Cage thanks him for the space-bus, that he owes them one, and moves to leave. Ben isn't having that, though - you can't just go visit Doc Doom and not give a play-by-play of what happened! Cage says he's tired, wants to take a bath, and Ben should come by the office tomorrow to get the full story.
Ben remains behind, angry that he's being kept in suspense. He's peeved that Reed keeps riling up by talking too much, while Cage manages it by not talking enough! He throws his newspaper to the ground in his fury, scattering the pages every which way. We end on a single Daily Bugle headline:
'Doctor Doom Retains Power in Latveria: Ruler Single-Handedly Crushes Robot Revolt!'
Rating & Comments
This is an awesome issue that doesn't deserve the scorn it gets by people taking one or two panels out of it for purposes of mockery. Yes, the concept of flying to the other side of the world in a futuristic space plane and allying with aliens and robots to get your 200 dollar paycheck is utterly ridiculous. The comic even points this out. But dig a little deeper, and you realize that this comic cements Luke Cage's character, defines him.
Cage is a working class street-level hero, and in this issue he's facing off against the exact opposite: a rich, villainous, land-owning member of actual royalty. The choice to have the point of contention be that paycheck is pretty great stuff, and showcases the difference in their backgrounds. It's almost more about class than about super-heroics, with all the rich characters trivializing Cage's concerns, only to discover that he will not back down on this, ever.
It's simple, really: if Cage started backing down when faced with people like Doom, soon enough his reputation would be down the drain. He can't afford to let anyone step on him. For all the silliness involved, this issue establishes Cage as the kind of stone-cold badass who would punch out the devil if it came to it, and that's pretty awesome.
Doom's characterization is still a bit strange here, though recontextualizing his treatment of Cage as being a result of preoccupation with a robot rebellion is more palatable than him not wanting to pay 200 dollars for monetary reasons, like last issue suggested. Interestingly you can perceive the growing respect Doom has for Cage in this issue - he goes from outright dismissive and incredulous to drawing comparisons with his younger self - that's a sure sign someone's gotten on his good side. The Doctor Doom who appears at the end of the issue is more in line with his recent appearances in Sub-Mariner, since I can't imagine the crazy tyrant of older Fantastic Four issues would ever respect anyone who defeated him.
The weak side of the issue is the Faceless One, who is brought back for an extended cameo, rather than an actual substantial role. Not only did they screw up his design in a few panels and further inflate his already huge head, but he doesn't get anything interesting to do. The leader of the robots could have been anyone, so why did they bring this guy back? Might as well have dragged the Doomsman back, at least he was a machine!
The Fantastic Four also provide an extended cameo, but their role makes sense - getting Cage to borrow a rocket to get to Latveria is a better idea than a lot of writers in this era came up with to excuse stories, and the Four's incredulity over Cage going to these lengths fits in nicely. The Four are rich too, after all - they're world-famous explorers with a giant building. They have more in common with Doom than either of them do with a street-level character...
In summary, this issue is a fun ride, has a bunch of great lines and moments sprinkled in, and it showcases Cage as the total quip-spouting action movie badass he is. If judged by Doom's involvement alone it probably loses some points to that ridiculous design flaw in his armor, but you can't dismiss the cool factor of Cage's persistence and courage. Four stars!
Best Panel(s) of the Issue
I think Cage dodging laser blasts is one of the more striking images here, though I also like the shot of him punching the door to bits earlier.
Most Gloriously Villainous Doom Quotes
"Your tiny capitalistic enterprise halfway across the world means nothing to me, Cage. Not compared to my globe-girdling plans! Now take your peasant's hands off my royal personage!"
Doom's Bad Hair Day
Cage does a crazy fighting move, sure, but apparently he also dismembers one of his enemies!
Doom-Tech of the Week
Doom's Automated Tractor Beam is new, and specifically designed to halt the Fantastic Four in their tracks should they fly into the country. Not a bad idea on Doom's part, but I wonder if the writers will remember it exists in the future?
Well, I presume the weak-spot is just a requirement of how the armor works, and it's not like the odds of being able to exploit it are all that high. I mean, A: Doom has to let you hit him, B: you gotta be at least as strong as Luke Cage, and C: got to hit that one precise spot multiple times.
And also, "the monster is invincible except for one spot" has been a thing for millennia, it's kinda neat that Doom shares a characteristic with ancient tales of dragons and such.
So it's been long enough that I don't think this counts as a doublepost.
So, you're not gonna get to it for awhile, if you ever will, but I recently read an issue of Marvel Adventures Iron Man featuring Doom, and it does something weird I want to talk about; he refers to himself as "Chancellor-For-Life of the Republic of Latveria", which is just...whaaa?
EDIT: BTW, would it be OK if I posted some of your thoughts WRT that Luke Cage issue on my tumblr?
So it's been long enough that I don't think this counts as a doublepost.
So, you're not gonna get to it for awhile, if you ever will, but I recently read an issue of Marvel Adventures Iron Man featuring Doom, and it does something weird I want to talk about; he refers to himself as "Chancellor-For-Life of the Republic of Latveria", which is just...whaaa?
EDIT: BTW, would it be OK if I posted some of your thoughts WRT that Luke Cage issue on my tumblr?
042: Fantastic Four v1 #142-143 (January-February 1974)
Cover
Today, we're going to pick up a three-parter… with the middle entry. It's hard to justify classifying Fantastic Four v1 #142 as a Doom story when he only shows up on the final panel, acting as a preview for the next issue, and the story isn't interesting enough to warrant a full write-up just for context. So, I've decided to give the first part of this storyline the extended cliffnotes treatment below, and then I'll follow it up with second issue like usual.
Speaking of #143, its cover… is actually pretty great. In fact, it's a good enough cover that Marvel started using it on trade paperback collections of the Fantastic Four, switching out Medusa for Sue Storm in the artwork. It makes sense why they'd pick this cover, too - it's a great action scene featuring the team in interesting poses, fighting one of their most well-known villains within a spooky laboratory. It's an instant classic!
This is the first Fantastic Four vs. Doom story since all the way back in 1969, roughly five full real-life years before this, so it'll be interesting to see what's changed along the way.
Story Overview
#142: No Friend Beside Him!
Let's start with… backstory for the backstory. Unfortunately, that's kind of necessary. You see, this entire trilogy takes place a single issue after Mister Fantastic shot his infant son Franklin in the head with a giant anti-matter laser-rifle, rendering the kid essentially braindead in the process.
Yup. It was the first Fantastic Four comic I ever read in my life, and it was memorable enough that it's still the defining image I have of Reed Richards. Suffice to say I'm not a great fan. Yes, he did it to save the world from runaway godlike powers, and the kid eventually got better, but some of that hadn't been revealed yet at the time this came out. At the time of release, the entire status quo of the Fantastic Four was shot all to hell. Joy.
The aftermath of Reed's child lobotomy is explosive, and the entire rest of the Fantastic Four walk out on him, including his wife. Only Medusa remains behind. Ben comes across an unopened letter from Alicia Masters, his blind sculptor girlfriend, and immediately jumps on a transatlantic flight to catch up with her - clearly he wants to think of anything else. Sue Storm, meanwhile, takes the comatose body of her son to his aunt in Pennsylvania, far away from those who might hurt him again. Ouch.
Seventeen hours later we see Ben arrive in Eastern Europe. Apparently Alicia traveled to a remote country in the Balkans - unnamed, naturally - to have an eye operation that might give her back her sight. This country also has a local legend about a 'death-demon' that stalks the streets at night.
We don't have to wait long to find out if there's reality to the story, as the Thing is attacked by a giant purple monster that dramatically introduces itself as a creature from the fetid pits of hell, a mere slave to his Master - he's known to mortals as Darkoth, the Death-Demon!
...I swear I just found a character from the 90's in my 1974 comic book! The two scuffle, but Darkoth retreats as quickly as he arrived. Ben deduces that the creature somehow knew Ben would be there, even though he didn't tell anyone where he was going. How's that possible?
Alicia goes in for her operation, but when Ben checks on its progress, he finds the operating room entirely empty. Darkoth shows up for a rematch, and their fight leads them into a hidden door in the operating room, through a cavern, and then further into a secret high-tech laboratory. Ben has a sinking feeling when he realizes there's only one country in Eastern Europe capable of that kind of technology! Darkoth manages to scratch Ben, and the poison in his claws renders even the Thing unconscious within minutes. A cloaked figure declares from the shadows that Alicia served as excellent bait for Ben Grimm, but he's now moving on to hooking other fish. (Three guesses who the cloaked figure is...)
Two days later, Medusa has dragged Reed to a college alumni meeting, intent on dragging him out of his funk. Reed studies the paintings on the walls as he enters, finding them strangely familiar. He's distracted from this thought by the arrival of an old college buddy, sports coach Sam Thorne, who informs him that Johnny told him what happened with his son. Further interaction is interrupted, however, when they're invited over to the next room. You see, there is one other member of their college class in attendance… Doctor Doom!
We end the issue on that shot of Darth Vader at the table in Cloud City, except it's Doom instead. They have old friendships to discuss, Doom says, and old betrayals. And, of course - most importantly - the rapidly approaching end of the world! (I admit, after that recent bit of random antisemitism, the title of the next story was mildly worrisome. I guess the writers realized that too, and changed it!)
#143: The Terrible Triumph of Doctor Doom!
This comic opens with a synopsis of last time, and it actually spoils who the shadowed figure was that captured Ben - it was Doctor Doom, naturally. The table full of food has vanished since last issue, and instead we see Doom anticipating an attack from Reed, since that's what he expects from someone of 'somewhat inferior intelligence.' Reed loudly declares he's going to stop Doom, and he comes across as a little bloodthirsty. I guess we can excuse it, given the problems going on in his personal life…
Reed does actually go in for an attack, but Doom dismisses his use of physical force against scientific wizardry, activating a personal force field to keep the hero back. Next the walls of the room slide away, revealing all sorts of technology beyond, and Doom announces that he's been busy over these last months of relative inactivity. Still, he says he'd enjoy a good battle of wits - even if it'd be over quickly with Reed as his opponent.
Reed warns Sam Thorne and his wife to flee, as this conflict is no place for a college football coach, even if he was invited. One of Doom's guns tracks the coach, however, and Reed throws himself into its path, taking a blast to the back. It seems Doom wants Thorne, too! Medusa uses her hair to smash the turret, and Doom respond to this with a sexist comment that he wouldn't have expected such wit and skill from a woman. Bleh.
On another occasion, Doom says, he might've dragged this out, but not today. He hits a button and the floor opens up under the superheroes, who both fall in. For some reason Doom is more interested in coach Thorne, though, calling the man a muscle-bound clod with the brain of a Chimpanzee. Doom then observes that just one member of the Fantastic Four remains at large, the Human Torch, and when he's taken down the world is his for the taking! (Avengers who? X-What?)
Thorne finds some courage, declaring that you don't need superpowers to put up a good fight, and Doom still has to go through him. Doom explains that he invited Thorne to this reunion to humiliate him, not to destroy him, and in any case he doesn't kill helpless fools. Blasting Thorne unconscious, Doom then explains to the man's wife that he invited Reed and Thorne here because they were all classmates in college, and he wanted these men he's hated all his life present at the moment of his greatest triumph, to rub it in their face! Real mature, Doom.
Walls shift and lift away as Doom walks deeper into the building, one hand slung over the shoulder of Thorne's wife as he pushes her along. He had this entire city block built to his specifications years ago, intended as a secret base for hiding out from the Fantastic Four, but he's repurposed it now. It's become the American base for his latest, greatest project: Operation Babel. Doom welcomes her to… the Hidden Fortress of Doctor Doom!
We get a pretty great double page spread of a room filled with obvious Jack Kirby influences, and also contains the suspended forms of both Ben - who's mouthing off - and Darkoth the Death-Demon. Doom gets into a screaming match with Ben for a moment, but apologizes for the incivility, saying that the Thing brings out the worst in him. The guards in this story are in red and yellow costumes, but thankfully lack the silly helmets. One of them asks whether he should put the new prisoners in 'neutro-chambers' too, presumably the fancy gadgets that are holding Ben and Darkoth suspended. Doom agrees, telling him to get on with it.
As they maneuver Reed into position, though, they realize he's woken up from unconsciousness. Doom tells them to put him on his feet, presumably because he wants an audience for his speeches that's a little more informed than the wife of a sports teacher. Doom explains to the superhero that he has him and his friends in complete control, and they were easily manipulated... He recaps the previous issue, going over him setting up a fight between Ben and Darkoth, before moving on to Reed's own capture. He points out that Reed failed to recognize a clue he left for him in this little game - all the ornaments in the townhouse were taken from the Latverian Embassy! So that's why Reed recognized those paintings!
Reed wants to know what Doom's reason is for capturing them, and the tyrant answers with another monologue. He says he's tired of all the warfare, intrigue, adventure… by all rights, the world should be his to command already, but he keeps getting defeated by the power of misguided patriots. So he's going to fix that with his latest invention, the Vibration Bomb! Which does something rather different than the name suggests: it's a brainwashing machine that erases previous emotional ties, leaving someone a blank slate for Doom to draw on.
It's just Reed's luck, isn't it, that Doom decides now of all times is a great moment to pull out the lobotomy ray? That's gotta sting, huh? I'm sure it's doing wonders for his mental state, at any rate. How about that synchronicity...
To demonstrate his latest technological horror, Doom mentions that his spies tracked down two of traitorous subjects of his, who have been trying to sell Doom's secrets. He calls out their names, as they're both in attendance, and they try to flee in a panic when they realize their life is in danger. They get laser blasts in the back, courtesy of their Master - for no one can escape Victor von Doom!
Moving the traitors next to the disco-ball bomb, Doom explains that every man has a delicate brain-pattern, a series of codes and symbols that make up their personality, and the vibration device breaks down that personality by dissolving the codes. (I'm not sure that's how neurology works, but this is comic book science.) This device removes the necessity of Doom's war against the world, because with but a turn of the dial he can end that world! I guess that explains Doom's cryptic exclamation at the end of last issue!
Blasting the traitors with his giant vibrator, Doom announces that they are now totally susceptible to a superior brain - his brain. He goes full Spock on them, declaring that his will is their will, and his thoughts are their thoughts. Then he gives each of them a gun, and commands them to shoot each other. Reed is horrified when the two lackeys dutifully commit mutual murder, and all the while Doom is watching with obvious glee, laughing maniacally as the bodies fall. Damn, that's cold! Doom has ditched all his recent character development in favor of going full wide-eyed loony in this story!
We take a breather by visiting Wyatt Wingfoot, who is cruising around on his silly flying bike, following after a raging Human Torch. Wyatt is trying to calm his friend down, but Johnny is working off his anger with Reed by blazing around the New York skies all day and night. He accidentally knocks Wyatt off his bike, and is so caught up in his fury that he notices far too late. He swoops down in a panic, only to find his friend lying crumpled on a roof - but alive. Thankfully he only got the wind knocked out of him. Which is impressive, given that Wyatt fell a few dozen meters and has no superpowers.
The shock of nearly getting his friend killed jolts Johnny out of his fury, but before they can have a decent conversation the pair are interrupted by the police. The cop isn't too happy with the arrival of superheroes on his beat, declaring that they might put up with that kind of stuff in New York City, but this is Buffalo! They're under arrest for damaging public property! Whoops!
Meanwhile, over in Pennsylvania, we see Sue staring at the body of her comatose child. Mood whiplash, much? Her friend Carol tries to convince her that she can't just hide there forever, but Sue doesn't know what to do, or who to trust. She always followed Reed's lead, but after what he's done that's no longer an option. There's no one else she can trust… Nobody!
Enough catching up, the comic itself declares. We witness Doom installing the Vibration Bomb (or Vibro-Bomb) on top of a giant missile, but he's interrupted by a flying CRT monitor. It announces that there's a disturbance in the base, and Doom surmises his prisoners are probably trying to escape. He wonders if they even grasp the depth of his plan - for Doom intends to send the Vibro-Bomb into orbit, where it will detonate and destroy the personalities of every thinking creature on the planet below, Doom and his aides excluded. Then there would be no escape from Doom at all - because the Earth would be his!
Not content with one or two minor monologues, we get another one right away! Since his youth, Doom reflects, he's known his destiny. He was born to rule, as no man or king has ruled before, and the likes of Caesar, Charlemagne and Napoleon are children compared to him, for his vision far surpasses theirs! His dreams dwarf their greatest delusions! Every man, woman and child will grovel at the feet of a gypsy's son, his name will be on every tongue, and he will command absolute loyalty - because is that not his kingly due? We even see chanting hordes going: 'Doom! Doom! Doom!'
It's been a while since the last time Doom went full-on mad tyrant, and it's a little surprising to see this coming from the exact same writer that penned those recent Sub-Mariner issues, as well as Doom's fight with the devil for his mother's soul. It's such a radically different interpretation of the character that it's a little crazy to see it here, but it's still a valid one based on Doom's earlier appearances. Actually, this is possibly Doom's at his most deranged yet, and that's saying something!
There's a quick cutaway of Doom's hidden base next, which is an obvious reference to the cutaways of the Baxter Building seen in some of the earliest issues of Fantastic Four. Apparently Doom circumvented New York's zoning restrictions quite a bit, and also installed a giant silo for ICBMs in a residential area. Figures.
Doom heads over to check on that base disturbance, only to find several guards cowering in a hallway. They explain that it's Darkoth the Death-Demon who has broken free and refuses to be restrained. Doom tells them off for their incompetence, then rushes in to try and talk down the creature. Darkoth quickly relents and lets his guards go, admitting that as the person who summoned him from hell, Doom has the right to restrain him. Doom just calls him an unthinking clod, and says that he isn't just Darkoth's master - Doom is his creator! He's surprised the demon still hasn't guessed what's going on, so it's about time he knew the truth about himself! That revelation is left a mystery to the reader, as we next see Doom's jet taking off, heading over to capture the Human Torch.
Johnny and Wyatt are still stuck in jail after their earlier arrest, but soon their cell's wall starts glowing ominously, and then explodes! Doom's minions rush in to capture them, and the good Doctor follows on their heels. He tells Johnny that he'd best come quietly, since he has no time, or desire, to play games. He doesn't, naturally, go quietly. A fight breaks out in the cell, in which Johnny uses his fire to blast some of the lackeys around while Wyatt employs his implausible competence to take down multiple armed guards with wrestling moves. Wyatt worries that Doom is just standing there like he's watching children playing - but the moment he says that, the tyrant blasts him with a finger laser. Johnny rushes in to protect his friend, and gets the same treatment…
Back in the fortress, Darkoth sends Doom's guards away, telling them he's been assigned guard duty instead. He then quickly moves to the controls, releasing the Fantastic Four from their cages. Why? The creature explains that he needs their help, because he's been wronged and he wants revenge! Reed asks what this is all about, and gets his answer.
There's a legend in a small Balkan country, the demon explains, which speaks of a creature called Darkoth the Death-Demon, a monster summoned by a master of mysticism and used to crush his enemies. He first awakened a week earlier, convinced he was this mythical creature, and Doom was the first face he saw - so naturally he believed the monarch was his Master and followed his every word. But Doom recently revealed the truth to him, and it's quite different. Darkoth is no demon at all - he's actually one of Doom's former aides, converted through chemistry and the Vibration Bomb's effects into the monstrous being he is today. He wants Doom to pay for what was done to him!
Reed and the others aren't sure whether they can trust their vengeful new ally, but they don't have much choice - Doom still has Alicia Masters and the Thornes locked up somewhere, and there's also the matter of the Vibro-Bomb to contend with. Reed has an idea for the latter, but we get no detail on what that might be.
To be continued...
Rating & Comments
This is a fun issue that amps up the villainy of Doctor Doom to eleven, which is a little unexpected after a string of more humanizing entries on this list. He goes full-tilt lunatic in this comic, murdering and disfiguring his underlings while cackling maniacally, and monologuing to anyone who will listen about his foolproof plan to take over the world. He even gets a soliloquy about his destiny to rule, and how everyone will grovel before Doom. It's pretty damn glorious!
Doom's new technology is the stuff of nightmares, too - he's clearly been working on his brainwashing technology, since he's figured out a way to erase personalities on a global scale. Now that is the kind of large-scale supervillainy that earns him the name! Testing the weapon by erasing a couple traitorous underlings and having them shoot each other to death? Nasty. And then there's Darkoth, Doom's attack dog, whom he created by erasing the mind of one of his servants, physically mutilating him, and then convincing him he's an enslaved demon from hell. Jesus Christ!
Alongside all this heinous stuff, Doom also called coach Thorne names because they didn't get along back in college. I guess everyone has issues with P.E. teachers, and Doom holds really petty grudges for a really long time.
In terms of story, this issue is dedicated to Doom expounding on his victory, which shouldn't be a surprise after reading the title. Doom spends a lot of time expositing and demonstrating, which is neat but doesn't really move the plot forward very much, and doesn't lend itself to any action scenes. Thus we have a very talky entry, which isn't necessarily an issue for a verbose character like Doom, but can cause things to drag. Another downside of this comic, I think, is Darkoth's revelation at the end. Not only was he just told the truth by Doom for no apparent reason, but he's then left outside his cell, unattended? It seems contrived. (If it's a set-up, of course, it's fine - but I suspect not.)
As I said before, the Doom in this story is as unhinged as he's ever been, and his plan one of the most heinous and large in scale. That's not strictly out of character, it just depends on which comics you've been reading. I presume the writer decided to keep with Stan Lee's version of the character in the Fantastic Four comics, where Doom has always been at his most volatile, and he'll be back to tragic pathos and making friends the next time he shows up in Sub-Mariner or Hulk.
Even though I obviously prefer the more complex and human Doom over this moon-bat version, I still very much appreciate this comic for existing. It's fantastic to know that Doom's reputation as the arch-supervillain isn't all talk, and once upon a time he really did do all the most stereotypical, cartoonishly supervillain things you can think of. Bonus points for fulfilling expectations!
Best Panel(s) of the Issue
That panel of Doom laughing as his brainwashed minions kill each other for his amusement? It's awesome!
Most Gloriously Villainous Doom Quotes
"Since my youth, I've known my destiny… I've known that I was born to rule, as no man or king has ruled before. Caesar, Charlemagne, Napoleon… They are children compared to me, for mine is a vision that surpasses their own, a dream which dwarfs their greatest delusions! Every man, every woman, every child will bow to Victor von Doom before this week is out. They will grovel at his feet, the feet of a gypsy's son! My name will be on every tongue, and like no leader before me, I will command absolute loyalty, and it will be given me, for is it not, after all, my kingly due?"
Doom's Bad Hair Day
There's a couple instances of the artist forgetting to color things, in particular here, where he gives Doom a flat white mouthpiece and eyes. It's pretty obvious and it's right in between lavishly decorated panels too, so I wonder why they let that slip by?
Doom-Tech of the Week
The Vibration-Bomb is the key invention this time around - arguably one of Doom's more terrifying creations, given its apparent global potential. Technically I should also add Darkoth the Death-Demon, since Doom created him from an underling, basing the design on local folklore.
Personally, I am quite comfortable accepting the idea that Doom can be both a Tragic Noble Demon and a Mustache-Twirling Complete Monster; it's one of the things that makes him most interesting to me, that while he has honor, integrity, nobility, all that good stuff...he will also squash down that part of him and go full-tilt villain when that will get him what he wants.
And this is especially true when going up against the FF, because unlike other heroes, his feud with them is personal and that brings out the worst in him.
Personally, I am quite comfortable accepting the idea that Doom can be both a Tragic Noble Demon and a Mustache-Twirling Complete Monster; it's one of the things that makes him most interesting to me, that while he has honor, integrity, nobility, all that good stuff...he will also squash down that part of him and go full-tilt villain when that will get him what he wants.
This is true, but I'm still fascinated by the coexistence of such wildly different versions of the same character, even written by the same person. I'm almost convinced that while other characters get alternate costumes but never ever change their personality, Doom sticks to the same look from issue 1, page 1 until the end of time, but goes through different mindsets like they're a tie collection.
We're not yet in the era when you could assign any weird shit to Doombots, either. So inconvenient!
And this is especially true when going up against the FF, because unlike other heroes, his feud with them is personal and that brings out the worst in him.
This is explicitly called out in this issue, so that makes total sense. It's kind of interesting that there's a relatively small amount of stereotypical 'Riiiichards!' stuff in the comics so far, with only a few stray mentions of him specifically. Ben Grimm gets more hate, honestly. I wonder if the strong anti-Reed stuff is still to come...
This is true, but I'm still fascinated by the coexistence of such wildly different versions of the same character, even written by the same person. I'm almost convinced that while other characters get alternate costumes but never ever change their personality, Doom sticks to the same look from issue 1, page 1 until the end of time, but goes through different mindsets like they're a tie collection.
We're not yet in the era when you could assign any weird shit to Doombots, either. So inconvenient!
This is explicitly called out in this issue, so that makes total sense. It's kind of interesting that there's a relatively small amount of stereotypical 'Riiiichards!' stuff in the comics so far, with only a few stray mentions of him specifically. Ben Grimm gets more hate, honestly. I wonder if the strong anti-Reed stuff is still to come...
I like to think that he actually dislikes Ben more, because while his hatred of Reed is more...visceral, he views him as an intellectual rival (although he would never admit it), whereas as far as he's concerned, Ben is just some dumb jock who ought to be inconsequential. And yet, somehow, Ben keeps kicking his ass, and Doom cannot comprehend how that keeps happening.
Granted, I was exaggerating for effect - I have strong opinions about some of his redesigns. (Secret Wars is looming ever closer, and then there's Doom 2099...) I don't think Doom's wardrobe can touch the sheer volume of random costume changes that various heroes get up to, though, not by a mile!
I like to think that he actually dislikes Ben more, because while his hatred of Reed is more...visceral, he views him as an intellectual rival (although he would never admit it), whereas as far as he's concerned, Ben is just some dumb jock who ought to be inconsequential. And yet, somehow, Ben keeps kicking his ass, and Doom cannot comprehend how that keeps happening.
Kind of? But then again, just because no one figures out there doombots doesn't mean they're not doombots, and if that 'recreational scheming' with a ton of different super robots and my vague memory of a few flashbacks are any indication, it's not like couldn't have built them at this point.
Kind of? But then again, just because no one figures out there doombots doesn't mean they're not doombots, and if that 'recreational scheming' with a ton of different super robots and my vague memory of a few flashbacks are any indication, it's not like couldn't have built them at this point.
There was a Doombot in Doom's first appearance, so this is true... but they're a rare sight at the moment, not yet a go-to solution for every problem under the sun. For the moment Doom sticks to human lackeys in goofy costumes, or possibly robots pretending to be human lackeys in goofy costumes.
I admittedly find it amusing that in some cases like Doom's some more embarrassing which have later writers claiming it was a doombot all along only for yet writerx to come along and say nope that really happened like his defeat at the hands of squirrel girl though to be fair she also apparently somehow managed to win against Thanos of all people.
I admittedly find it amusing that in some cases like Doom's some more embarrassing which have later writers claiming it was a doombot all along only for yet writerx to come along and say nope that really happened like his defeat at the hands of squirrel girl though to be fair she also apparently somehow managed to win against Thanos of all people.
Well, I suppose we were due a for an overly busy mess of a cover, after last time's excellence. The framing device of Doom looking at stuff on a monitor is fine, but the Fantastic Four barely fit inside the screen, with Medusa in particular nearly squeezed out of frame entirely. And then there's the 'Sinister Seeker', who is yet another terrible 90's design that somehow got drawn in 1974. How did that happen again? He has bendy multi-barrel machine guns for hands, yet he fires purple energy blasts that spiral in different directions than where he's pointing...? How is that remotely useful?
I wonder if we're going to find out that there's another unspecified country in the Balkans which has legends about the Sinister Seeker... Doom must be getting these ideas from somewhere, right?
Story Overview
Attack!
We open this issue in the enormous, cavernous sewer system that stretches out beneath New York City - I'm sure that accurately reflects reality! After a text recap, we see the recently escaped Reed, Ben, and Medusa make their way across town with Darkoth the Death-Demon's assistance. Since Medusa was in street clothes when she got abducted last issue, and women don't exactly have a ton of room to hide gear in their clothes, the comic admits they screwed up and just put her in her costume anyway. Deal with it!
Darkoth thinks they're lost in the sewers, and even Medusa suspects they're going in circles. Ben gets angry at wandering around in abandoned tunnels while Doom is trying to enslave the world, and smashes the sewer walls in his frustration, burying himself in rubble and sewer water in the process. Ew.
He seems to realize he's cracking under the pressure, and Reed has to talk some courage back into him, reminding him that they can't free his girlfriend Alicia without him. Ben snaps back some cynical quip, but Reed tells him that he doesn't need the Thing's bitterness - he needs his friend, Benjamin Grimm.
They're interrupted by sudden tremors, as the Seeker from the cover blasts through a wall, declaring: 'I--have--been--sent--to--make--you--die!' Smacking Ben aside without effort, the Seeker is engulfed by Reed's stretchy body, and he tells the apparent android that he'll find it hard to kill anyone with his arms bound. The Seeker points out that he doesn't have arms - he has nuclear discharger prods!
The moment the Seeker manages to blast Reed away from himself, however, Darkoth join in on the attack, with Medusa following up. Rounding out the tag-team attack is Ben, back for a rematch, who punches the Seeker unconscious with a devastating blow. (It goes 'Braka-Boom!') This is also the first appearance of the random green bricks that Ben seems to spawn when he punches. After confirming the robot is down for the count, Reed decides it'd be a good idea to bring the Seeker along to the Baxter Building - he's got some ideas on how to use it.
Over in his secret base, we see Doctor Doom smacking around one of his minions - this particular one was meant to monitor the Seeker, but lost track of it after it was defeated. Doom declares that he's surrounded by incompetents, another one of those classic supervillain lines that I'm glad Doom actually said! Is there no one he can trust, he laments, nobody with whom he can share the greatness and glory of his master plan? He tells his underlings to get out of there, before he crushes them all!
Incidentally, all of those lackeys changed costumes again since last issue, and are now in blue and purple rather than red and yellow. You'd think that sort of aesthetic update could wait until after the takeover of Earth. (I really don't get why colorists do this. Surely they have the previous issue as reference? Changing things between stories is excusable, but does nobody care about internal consistency?)
Coach Thorne is still in this story, and apparently free to wander Doom's base. He taunts his old college classmate a bit, and is soon joined in trash-talking by Wyatt and Johnny, who have been captured and put in giant glass jars. The tyrant isn't impressed by all the bluster, and when he's called mad, he responds in classic Doom fashion: 'Insane? Is it insanity to recognize one's destiny? Is it madness to seek one's rightful place?' Wyatt and Johnny attempt to escape from their glass tube prisons, but find that they're filled with a gas that inhibits superpowers. Doom declares that defying him is useless, and in the end he will succeed! Not even Alicia's beloved Ben Grimm can do anything to stop him! (It's interesting to note that he singles out Ben, when traditionally everyone expects him to go after Reed Richards first…)
We switch to the back of the Baxter Building, where we see a janitor at work. He laments his life, wondering why he ever went to college if he'd just end up sweeping boiler rooms and fixing things. Sure, he tells himself, it might not have been the best idea to major in Physical Education, but it was an easy subject - not complicated like philosophy or calculus. How was he to know a few zillion other people had the same idea? He figured he'd get a cushy job as a gym teacher out of it, but here he is, cleaning pumps…
Hold on a minute here. This is the second issue in a row that takes a dump on Physical Education for no reason, and this one adds a negative portrayal of janitors to boot! As I recall, Conway was only around twenty-one at the time of writing this, so did he have a traumatic past with a shitty gym teacher that he wanted to get out of his system? (Also, is that seriously a 1970's version of that stupid 'women studies' argument? Ugh!)
Ben grabs the janitor by the lapels and threatens to beat him up, and Reed tells him to stop joking. 'Who's joking?' He starts swinging his fist above his head, arguing that the man might be on Doom's payroll, and why else he would be sneaking out around their building? Reed points out he was doing his job. Ben finally apologizes after realizing he's being unreasonable, and bends a pipe into a pretzel as a souvenir for the beleaguered janitor.
Doom, meanwhile, is on a ridiculous red telephone, giving the command to fire. The giant rocket carrying the Vibro-Bomb blasts off into the sky, much to Ben's horror, who is watching out the window as it disappears. He tells Reed they blew it, but Reed argues differently - he's working on the Seeker android, and he needs Darkoth's help to finish his plan.
Ben, however, has a different idea. Back to his paranoia, he now suggests Darkoth is a mole for Doom, and antagonizes the purple creature needlessly, even smacking some green bricks out of him until Darkoth's patience runs out and he retaliates. Reed intercedes, shouting at Ben to stop - and pointing out that it's the second time he's had to yell at him that day, since he's been acting like a child. Ben calms down, and admits he's tired of all the crummy waiting when there's fighting to be done. Even Medusa agrees with that.
A few thousand miles above the Earth, Doom's rocket separates and releases the Vibro-Bomb, which has gotten a smooth new look in between issues. Unexpectedly, it then instantly fires - vibration waves start impacting the world below, and people's eyes go blank, their minds drained of thoughts. In two hours, Doom declares, the whole of mankind will be but an extension of his ego, and he will be powerful enough to rule the cosmos!
An hour later, we see the Seeker android stalk into the secret base of Doctor Doom, passing through the security sensors effortlessly, since it's one of Doom's creations and supposed to be there. It moves over to the imprisoned Wyatt and Johnny and smashes open their prison-tubes, releasing them. The Human Torch ignites his flames, and promptly goes on a rampage in Doom's base, heading straight for the control room and Doom himself.
Doom is less than elegant in his response, telling his underlings to: 'Shoot him, you imbeciles!' at the top of his lungs while angrily shaking his fist in the air. Johnny explains that their guns won't work on him, since he's creating a heat shield around himself. Doom immediately smacks him out of the sky with a 'concussion vacuum' which circumvents the heat shield entirely, and renders him vulnerable.
Before he can finish Johnny off, however, the Seeker turns on Doom. The monarch blasts his traitorous android aside, only to reveal Darkoth, the Death-Demon within! Okay, this makes absolutely no sense since Darkoth is built like a brick outhouse and there's no way he was stashing that tail inside the humanoid robot. But I'm not sure how else to interpret what's happening here. Where else did Darkoth come from? Why else would Reed require his help with his ideas for the robot? I see no other interpretation except the dumb one.
It's right about here that Ben crashes through a wall in a shower of green bricks. What? I'm not sure why they felt the need to smuggle the Seeker or Darkoth into the secret base if Ben could simply waltz in, so what's going on here? This whole issue got really inconsistent, real quick. (It should be noted that Reed and Medusa never even show up for the fight - they apparently stayed back at the Baxter Building to spectate...)
Doom has somehow escaped after blasting apart the Seeker, declaring this but a minor setback. He heads to his control room, which we've seen before in other comics - it's the circular one with buttons, dials, and screens in every direction. Doom figures the Fantastic Four have forgotten about his greatest asset - the Vibro-Bomb. If he can turn on its full beam, the world will be his within the hour! I'm not sure why he punched in two hours, if he could have done it faster... Anyway, in order to change settings on his bomb, he'll have to do a manual override.
The building starts rumbling, and Johnny and Wyatt quickly get Thorne and his wife out of there, fearful of getting crushed by yet more green bricks. Soon the entire tower lifts off the ground like a rocket - it was a camouflaged spacecraft all along! I'm getting flashbacks to FF #6!
Doom is feeling good about himself, figuring he's now miles away from any threat to his plans. Soon there will be... a countdown to conquest! Never mind that the satellite is already transmitting, so the world ought to be more than half brainwashed already...
Life has been hard for Victor von Doom, the captions declare, and doubtlessly there are some who see him as the underdog in this tale. (What? You're mistaken, there's no Doom fanboys here whatsoever.) They won't be pleased by what happens next! Predictably, Darkoth has followed Doom up into space, and rejects any commands from his former Master. They get into a fight, and Doom snarls: 'Not now! NOT NOW!' During the fight, their building-spacecraft veers off its intended course, and smacks right into Doom's satellite. (Sci-fi writers have no sense of scale.) Ship and satellite alike go up in a giant explosion that's visible even from the ground.
Back on said ground, Medusa wonders if this means they're finally safe. Reed just says that 'safety' is relative in their line of work, but this threat is over with. We witness Alicia reunite with Ben while snow begins to fall. Ben is bummed that the eye surgery was a hoax, and angry with himself for putting Alicia in danger in the first place, since the only reason Doom kidnapped her was to get at him. He figures he has to think about that, and heads off to sulk.
Rating & Comments
I guess this is the reverse of that Submariner arc, as far as quality gradients go? After last time's entertaining cackling mania, this issue didn't impress me in the slightest. It's a poor continuation of a story that was decently told so far, and I'm really curious what Conway was thinking.
To start, there is the pointless introduction of a new character, the Seeker android, who serves absolutely no purpose that Darkoth couldn't fulfill already. It's like the comic forgot that Darkoth is also a creation of Doom's, and as such would have just as much ability to circumvent the sensors as the scaly robot does. It's not like Doom knows he's a traitor until near the end of the comic, after all!
Not that any of that matters, though, since the lion's share of this comic was completely unnecessary to start with. To summarize, the Fantastic Four were inside Doom's base at the start of the story, since that's where they were locked up in the previous issue. After Darkoth broke them out of their cells and led them into the sewers, they headed over to the Baxter Building… to construct a way to break back into the place they'd just broken out of. What was the point of that? Why did they not head over to free Johnny and Wyatt on page 1? What did they achieve by leaving, precisely? What was most of this issue even for?
In Doom's section of the issue we also get inconsistencies, mostly related to the Vibro-Bomb. The satellite is launched and then promptly used, and we see a shot of people getting brainwashed by it, along with a description that says it'll take two hours to finish. Fine. Then a full hour passes through a time skip, and when he next brings it up, Doom claims that he needs to activate the satellite to full power so it can finish its job within the hour. But wouldn't that already be the case, even without doing a thing? Later still, in space, he acts like he has yet to activate the satellite, which doesn't seem to be transmitting like it was earlier in the story. We never get an update on the brainwashed people either, so did all that just fix itself? Why is this so vague?
The fight scene at the end is confusing too, for a bunch of reasons. For one, either only Doom's lackeys can get into the base, and thus the reprogrammed Seeker and Darkoth had to save the day, or anyone can break into the base, and the Fantastic Four can all join in on the fighting. If the former is true, then the Thing should not have shown up. If the latter is true, then Reed and Medusa should have been there. A scenario in which only Ben shows up makes no sense! The concept of hiding Darkoth inside the Seeker robot is stupid and implausible too, but his spontaneous appearance one panel after the robot's destruction is confusing as hell, if that wasn't what the artist was going for. Finally, how exactly did Doom escape in the middle of that fight scene, when there were several people focused on him and no dramatic distractions?
This issue is getting to me. I'll rattle off my last problem - this issue doesn't resolve plot points that were raised in earlier parts of the three-parter. Johnny spent two of these issues raging at Reed over what happened to his nephew, but it never comes up here - Reed and Johnny don't even share a scene in this issue. Okay, so maybe they'll get back to that in the future, sure. How about Darkoth and the Thing, then? They spent an entire issue fighting, so how is their reunion resolved? Reed pulls them apart like they're squabbling children, and then Darkoth blows up. Coach Thorne has some relevance to events, right, since he was targeted specifically alongside Reed? Nope. He stands around and does nothing.
Oh, and there's that whole weird thing with the janitor...
This was a seriously disappointing issue which squandered whatever supervillain credibility Doom managed to build up in the previous issue. Yes, he does still gets one or two good lines, but his sudden bout of cowardice doesn't become him, and the story is a scatter-brained, confused mess. Dismal. It misses 1 star by only a hair - I save that score for the irredeemably awful, and this at least keeps people relatively in-character and on model.
Best Panel(s) of the Issue
Not a ton of choice, in my opinion, but I'll elect the attacking Human Torch, even though it does contain the Seeker in the shot. Meh.
Most Gloriously Villainous Doom Quotes
"In but two hours the world will be mine for the taking. My personality - my will - my mind - all humankind will be but an extension of my ego - and together, body and brain, we will become a force powerful enough to rule the cosmos! Never has there been a concept more grand - never a fate more fitting."
Doom's Bad Hair Day
Is it me, or does it look like Doom has gone full rabid in this panel, even drooling out of his mask? Also the white eyes and mouth are back!
Comic Trivia
Darkoth would survive the conclusion of this story, and make his eventual return in Fantastic Four v1 #193, some four years later. That return appearance does not feature Doctor Doom... Technically. Sort of. That comic is merely Doom-adjacent...? Honestly it's a bit of a grey area for my purposes, so I'm not yet sure how I'm going to handle this particular wrinkle. I might include a summary, like I did for the first part of this three-parter. In any case, Darkoth shares that return issue with our old pal Diablo, so they can share beers and bond over their mutual hatred for Doom!
Doom-Tech of the Week
The Seeker Android is the only thing of note this time - a scaly humanoid robot that gets trounced by the Fantastic Four in like three seconds flat, to the point that even the Thing comments on how easily it went down. Doom can do better!
Next time… We're due to play tourist in the land of Super-Villain Team-Up soon, but we might first take a quick detour past some fun variant stuff. After all, Doom toots as he pleases!
