Venom #25 - "The Butterfly Collectors"

[laughing_tree]

When Editor Devin Lewis pitched me the 50-page oversized issue, my first thought was packing as much bang per buck into those fifty pages as possible – and who provides more bang than the Lord of Latveria? -- Al Ewing

Comments

[cainofdreaming]

Ooh. Self-burn by Doom. Those are rare.

[agharta75]

Ewing needs to write a Doom book.

[blues32]

So Flexo was just going to break into Hitler's summer home and eat him...and presumably everyone else? Hrm...let's see here...the "top brass" tended to be a bunch of yes-men with medals, so not sure if that would have been a big loss to the war effort...but they would need replacing. This needs more context. What year is it? What stage of the war? The US is already involved, so it must be post Pearl Harbor. A lot of damage has already been done...

Wait, no...this is Marvel history. So the likes of Zemo and Red Skull are around. This may have been a terrible idea...unless they were present at the Berghof at that time.

[agharta75]

The Stauffenberg plotters wanted to get Goebbels and Himmler too, but for lack of opportunity they decided just to kill Adolf and whoever else was in the room at the time.

[shadur]

Thing is, the Allies actually called off several assassination plots when it became clear that Hitler's narcissism, paranoia, heavy-handed micromanaging and general military incompetence meant that taking him out of the picture would risk him being succeeded by someone competent which would wind up prolonging the war.

[blues32]

It really wouldn't take much to find someone more competent. If they understood the idea of retreating to a defensible position, they'd already be doing better than Hitler could.

[huntleyhaverstock]

I laughed so hard at the panel where he tells his younger self to call Reed Richards. The single worst thing he could possibly have said, and he knows it.

I love writers like Ewing and Ryan North who write Doom as an unreliable narrator. It's gotta be incredibly hard to write a guy who's the hero of his own story, and yet do so in a way that his inner monologue shows cracks in his facade that are visible to us, but to which he's oblivious.

And while I'm always here to see Nazis getting pasted, isn't Doom also a fascist tyrant? Is he beating up on them because he considers them inferior jokes compared to how well he does it? Or is it because he only murders his own people if they pose a direct threat to him, and his Romani background makes him all too sensitive to the folly and cruelty of ethnic hatred?

[blues32]

Oh, no, no, no. It isn't the fascism that bothers him. It's the genocide and feelings of racial superiority that gets under Doom's skin. Doom is above such things. All are equally below Doom. Besides, the Nazis had a problem with HIM first, even if they didn't know it yet. Both by heritage and association, Victor would be marked for termination by them.

[cainofdreaming]

Doom is above such things... unless written by Hudlin.

Still headdesking from that.

[blues32]

Is that the guy who wrote Doom talking about how Wakandans being of "exceptional stock" or something? God, that was terrible.

[agharta75]

Another malfunctioning Doombot. You'd think Doom would do something about quality control.

[nyadnar17]

Doom, like a lot of super villains actually, hates racist with a passion.

[agharta75]

He isn't a racist. He's a Doomist. There's Doom, and then there's everyone else. Especially that fool Richards.

[blues32]

Even Joker hates racism...unless he's written by Frank Miller, who had his frowny Joker employ a Nazi lady named Bruno.

[scorntx]

I'd say sufficient quantity of bang per buck was certainly provided.

Doom actually did meet and kill a future version of himself, way back in the 80s. Don't know if he remembers that, because his memory was wiped afterwards, but since this is Doom we're talking about...

It's an interesting thing, back in the issue with Eventuality he made the comparison between the Beyonders / White Magicians and Kings in Black / Black Magicians, and how being one doesn't automatically make one good or bad.
And here we have Doom, who stole the power of the Beyonders... and used it to spend eight years playing out his Game of Thrones fanfic.
A contrast to Eddie in more ways than one...

The bit with Kang is also another look at Doom's psyche.
Nate is willing to throw his alternate selves to the wolves because he's a jerk and a weasel, but at the same time Kang isn't (usually) bothered by the idea of dying in a fight.
He's saving himself for that One, Last Glorious Battle (even though he knows it won't happen because he's got to become Immortus.)
Unlike Victor, who's unwilling to sully himself in a fistfight.

... be kind of interesting seeing Ewing write more Kang.
A villain with a motivation of fighting against a status quo he knows is coming? With time travel?
Pretty much gift-wrapped for him.
(Although given things, chances of seeing more Kang in the future seem pretty good anyhow.)

[blues32]

If I recall correctly, the older Doom was kept alive through machinery and magic. Doom looked on it as an affront to his dignity, claiming he would never do such a thing as he understand that power comes with a price.

[iamrman]

Well, now I guess I have to read this series.

[shakalooloo]

Aw, this issue was a total joy. Even managed to make a little sense of how Kang does his 'thing'!

[mazway_75]

I just love the idea of Kang screwing over versions of himself and Doom summing it up as "playing solitaire."

Hell, this is an amazing Doom from his showdown with himself to about to go "for f-s sake...." and the arrogance.

"They're the 67th century version of lava lamps." That made me laugh.

[blues32]

"At the very least, he could use robots..."

The idea of Doom getting so frustrated that he also said something as uncivilized as "for f---'s sake" did make me laugh.

[shakalooloo]

The fact that this issue also had Doom saying 'Blast!' is awesome.

[lbd_nytetrayn]

This was great. I may need to buy this issue.

Not quite sure I get what telling his younger self to call Richards was meant to accomplish.

Loved the Dino-Venom bit (was that ever explained here?), the Nazi-zapping, and "not everything needs to be a family car, Richards", too.

[blues32]

I believe Doom was trying to send his younger self into a rage. Made it easier to walk up and erase his memory of the encounter since he'd be too busy attacking to defend against whatever spell/device Doom used.

Shame it left him with that idea about recruiting Spider-Man though.

[lbd_nytetrayn]

I dunno, I think they were really getting on to something there...

https://youtu.be/nQlaLoGU3pY?si=sJj3kr46Eb119cN1