Fantastic Four: Doom's Master - Part 3

[history79]

Comments

[chakzarmada]

Being extremely powerful makes you have no balls at all, apparently

[angry_marmot]

Air-conditioning's on high in Area 87.

[remial]

not everyone can pull of the "naked except for a hood and cape" look.
and neither can that guy.

[mrstatham]

Mark Millar tries yet again to crib off his much better mentor - Morrison - in trying to put together an 'epic' connecting his stories together. Ugh. As much as I dislike Morrison these days, his stories at least had some entertaining elements and real highlights. This just reads like the fanfic Mark wrote aged ten, only with the villain renamed from say, the 'Master of Death' because now-senior Mark thinks 'Marquis' is an infinitely classier word/has some awareness of the Marquis de Sade.

[starwolf_oakley]

"Bitterist Gall?" Oh, brother!

[scorntx]

Ah, the best of all plot and character development - the ones that happen offscreen.
We don't need to see the Avengers or the X-Men fighting Evil Naked Guy, we just need to be told they've been subdued effortlessly.
(Kind of like in Ultimates 2, actually)
And we don't need to be told why Clyde became evil or naked, it just happened at some point.
Oh, it was probably because he was, like, brain damaged or something, wasn't it?
(God dammit, Mark...)

Also, I like how the collection of supremely powerful villains (and some evil Watcher) includes Klaw. Wondering why.
"Sure, Ulysses, you can - *snerk* - hang out with us. *pfft* But first, you have to make coffee for Molecule Man."
"I'm only here because I was promised coffee. And it had better be the best coffee in the world."

Oh, and pointlessly murdering Aunt Petunia to show how "dangerous" Evil Nekkid Dude is.
Truly, his unoriginality knows no bounds.

[locuatico]

You know what would have been original? having Aunt Petunia actually saving the day.

[scorntx]

You know what? I would have paid money to see that.

[locuatico]

You see, HE may be Doom's master, but even HE cannot defeat the one who trained Squirrel Girl herself!

[dc2houseofmystery]

Aron the ROGUE Watcher, so 90s!

[scorntx]

See, all that makes me think of is a Watcher acting like that Rogue.

"Ah'm Aron th' Watcher, sugah. Sworn to watch, but nevah to interfere."
"Why, because of some ancient code made centuries ago?"
"Nope, because ah cain't touch nobody without suckin' the life out'a 'dem."

[dc2houseofmystery]

Then I can only apologise

[silicondream]

Clyde was brain dead, according to his future self. That makes showing him "pleasant dreams" a pretty good trick, let alone actually waking him up. (Or Millar doesn't know what brain death is.)

And then when he woke up and killed a bunch of people, that was so fun that all Clyde wanted to do for the next billion years was kill more people. This makes Carnage look nuanced.

So who are the villains even fighting? They’re supposed to have “joined forces,” but they seem to just be playfully roughhousing with each other, or possibly performing interpretive dance, I’m not sure. I like the Mad Thinker just kind of hanging out there, though. “My amazing intellect has deduced that I should be standing unprotected in the middle of a brawl between Terrax, a Watcher and the Molecule Man. I think my intellect may just be fucking with me.”

[balbanes]

Huh. Always thought Aunt Petunia was older.

[dc2houseofmystery]

That's Penny, not Petunia. Weird though that they didn't kill off Ben's most famous relative to establish his Millar villain cred

[balbanes]

So villain just killed off a random relative? Weird.

[cyberghostface]

Its her.

http://marvel.wikia.com/wiki/Petunia_Grimm_(Earth-616)

[dc2houseofmystery]

My bad!

Also, what terrible writing.

[bjornwilde]

So bad that no one has mentioned it sense. Not Ben grieving for Aunt P and no funeral.

[byc]

"This guy is so strong, he beat Molecule Man."

"I'm such a great writer!"

[cainofdreaming]

And that was before he became even more powerful!

Though "conquering time and space" still doesn't sound quite that impressive against someone with the powers of an evolved cosmic cube.

[scorntx]

"Definitely defeated him. Owen did not just get bored and decide to have a lie down."

(Because, c'mon, guy looks like he's just all tuckered out.)

[onsokumaru]

Why is Owen fighting Terminus?

[captainbellman]

Alongside Franklin Richards, Jean Grey, that one mutant back in "Original Sin: X-Men", Molecule Man, and more recently Ulysses, there seem to be a whole lot of hyperbolic this-one-person-is-soooo-much-more-powerful-than-anything-else-in-the-universe types.

Which...kind of defeats the purpose of continually introducing them, does it not?

[lordultimus]

To be fair with Ulysses, his thing is seeing into the future, as opposed to being a generic reality warper.

[starwolf_oakley]

I get creating new bad guys to fight established heroes in tricky. But you would think we could get something better.

[silicondream]

So why would this guy be Doom's master at anything? He's not a genius schemer, or a super-scientist, or a multiversal dictator. He's just Omega-level Mutant #38471 (collect 'em all!) and he really likes to kill shit. What could Doom actually learn from him?

If a young Doom was going to recognize anyone as his "Master," which he wouldn't, but never mind that, it would be someone like Thanos. Or Kang or the High Evolutionary. Someone smart and ambitious, with an impressive record of bootstrapping themselves into godhood. The Earl of Slaughter here is simply another nigh-omnipotent mutant reality warper. Doom has no interest in such beings beyond killing them, avoiding them or stealing their powers.

[an_idol_mind]

So is that just a hallucination or did they really kill off Aunt Petunia in such a throwaway manner?

[bruinsfan]

That scene can so easily be retconned (the Baronet of Pining for the Fjords just made Doom live through illusory years of triumph earlier in the story, and this was all before the big Secret Wars reboot) that it's probably not necessary for anyone to ever clarify.

[wizardru]

It has not been retconned specifically that I'm aware of...but in a post-Secret Wars world, I'm assuming it's just going to be politely ignored going forward. Most likely Aunt Petunia, a modern reference to a Bronze Age reference to a Silver Age reference, will be quietly not mentioned until another writer feels like referencing Stan and Jack again.

[q99]

Ah, the "really cares about the hero's moral code," villain motivation.

For someone Reed just met.

It's not a motive or decision I don't find very compelling.