Doctor Doom #10

[cyberghostface]

"Goodbye, Victor. You may have no friends and this issue may prove you are Death’s Greatest Servant but you will always be in my heart." -- Christopher Cantwell

Doom finds himself in an alternate reality that is a utopia run by a version of himself.

Comments

[plastefuchs]

gotta ask:

y tho?

[donnblake]

Sort of a cycle with Doom- dangle the possibility of redemption and then watch his inherent fatal flaws burn down every chance. It's a little more dynamic than him being the static archetypal supervillain or Noble Demon, and some tellings will land better than others, but a title focused on Doom runs into the problem that in the long term, as a long running comic book character, Doom's bound to return to his archetypal self, which means that any real lasting character growth is difficult.

So you can have a story where Doom's just doing what he does (like that one with Princess Python and Selene) a Doom origin story where he becomes himself for the first time, or a story like this where he ultimately fails to change.

Or I suppose you could write a story where he actually does change and grow, and see how many subsequent writers it takes to revert him.

Bit of a problem with any long running character, but Doom's archetype is stronger than most.

[nyadnar17]

I gotta agree.

What was the point of any of this?

[chalicother]

My guess it is was made to deal with the heroic Doom, that this new universe started with. This whole story was made to move Doom back to being villain. Basically getting rid of the new start and direction Doom had in Secret Wars.

Which is a decision I greatly disagree with.

[aperturedreams]

Eh, Slott's Fantastic Four already had him back as pretty villianious.

[lordultimus]

Well, the end of Bendis' Infamous Iron Man basically burned that to the ground.

[deepspaceartist]

Nah, he ended Infamous Iron Man still wearing Iron Man armor and fighting evil. It was the Return of Tony Stark storyline immediately after that ended with his face getting fucked up again and him going back to his usual armor.

[lordultimus]

Well, Bendis wrote both. Also, don't forget that it had Ben Grimm say that he never trusted Doom when he and Doom became friends in Infamous Iron Man.

[cyberghostface]

Doom tried reaching out but they never became friends.

[thanekos]

" .. and this issue may prove you are Death’s Greatest Servant, until such time as I get a shot at Thanos.. " - Christopher Cantwell, maybe

[phantomfo]

Well, Thanos killed half of all living things in the universe. Doom killed all living things in a universe. So I suppose Thanos will have to kill two universes.

Also, that alternate Doom was an utter moron. "Let's taunt the heavily armed and armored version of myself on such a way that highlights all of his insecurities. Nothing wrong can come if this."

[silicondream]

Don't know as much about the newest version, but classic Thanos wouldn't have killed a whole universe because, y'know, then there's nothing left to die. Mistress Death wanted to equalize the numbers of the living and the dead, not wipe out life completely.

Thanos did wipe out the multiverse in that Marvel: The End mini, but that was just a tantrum and he put it right back.

As for alt-Doom, let's just say he was an alt-Doombot. And that entire universe was a universebot. They're even more convincing when Richards helps out on the design!

[cainofdreaming]

It'd take a bit more than two. Don't forget Doom was Rabum Alal, so he killed countless of universes.

Thanos did shorten his lead a bit during the lead to Secret Wars, tho.

[arilou_skiff]

Thanos has also killed a universe, and that's not getting into the canonical status of Marvel: The End.

[shakalooloo]

If the dead guy really was Doom, he wasn't a very smart one to think that his approach to the situation was in any way going to work. Telling somone they're ridiculous is not going to convince a regular person on the street to side with you, let alone Doctor Doom.

[donnblake]

To say nothing of the fact that laser fingers are quite a reasonable precaution in the world in which Doom operates.

"These no-nonsense solutions of yours just don't hold water in a complex world of jet-powered apes and time travel."

Still, ultimate nullifying the entire universe may have been a slight overreaction.

Well, I joke, but it's the sort of absolute monster moment that A) the story has no space to let land, and B) draws a line under the character such that future writers have no choice but to ignore this story or only ever treat Doom as an absolute genocidal monster.

[gnarll]

Was "Unthinkable" really such a popular arc that we needed an entire book about it?

Alternate Doom

[kuratowa]

The only way the other Doom's nonchalance makes any sense is that the reality gem in the case is a fake, and the real one is in the pocket of that safari vest. Everything from the blast on is a reality projection for our Victor's benefit, and to get him to leave.

Re: Alternate Doom

[gnarll]

that works. Everyone who actually uses the nullifier is nullified themselves, so there wasn't any actual nullifier use.

Re: Alternate Doom

[beyondthefringe]

I was just thinking that as well.
Rule 1 of the Nullifier: it destroys the user as well.
Therefore...

Re: Alternate Doom

[mazway_75]

Alt-Reed: "So he bought it? Really?"
Alt-Doom: "I know how I think, Reed. He truly believes he wiped out this universe in a fit of rage and will just brush it off. So he'll never bother us again."
Alt-Reed: "I never thought you could be...that naive, Victor."
Alt-Doom: "I tempered, he didn't. But yes, you'd think he would be suspicious I would be so foolish as to stand in front of all these items and taunt him. I wonder it was..."
Alt-Reed: "Victor, please, let's not get into the Doombots again."

Re: Alternate Doom

[matrix_dragon]

Victor: Doombots... Wow, even for a universe built around being as comic booky as possible, that me goes above and beyond. It's kind of embarrassing.

Re: Alternate Doom

[lbd_nytetrayn]

Yeah, I was thinking about that. This is my canon now, and if Marvel is smart (less so outside of movies, it seems), it'll be theirs, too.

[themajesticmoose]

So this run wasted ten issues on this Shaggy Dog story and pointlessly killed off one of the tiny number of canonically lesbian characters in the Marvel universe all to end with the message "The bloodthirsty tyrant who skinned his girlfriend alive and trapped her in hell and who has murdered countless innocent people just because he could is a bad person FYI"

Is it possible to sue a writer on the grounds that the "Story" they wrote needlessly wasted the trees that were cut down to publish it?

Asking for a friend

[dan_ingram]

Which lesbian character did it kill off besides the one from the Wild Pack?

...God, that was so damn stupid.

[themajesticmoose]

That was the one I was referring to

And "God, that was so damn stupid" is my reaction to what I've seen of Cantwell's godawful excuse for writing in general honestly between this and the absolute garbage that is his Iron Man run

[beyondthefringe]

Can I just say that I fucking hate this "Doom casually destroys an entire universe because he threw a temper tantrum?"

I don't necessarily want Doom to be a hero, especially since history has shown that, like Lex Luthor, he will NEVER allow his capacity for greatness to be fully realized in a positive manner so long as his archnemesis is around. But surely we can do better than "Doom annihilates untold numbers of innocents because he had a mad."

But then again, he also killed his first love and turned her into a leather suit of armor, so anything's possible.

Still, ugh.

[mazway_75]

Mark Waid openly said in his FF proposal that he wanted to challenge the "idea Doom is a noble guy driven by demons is absolute crap. He's a twisted monster and I can point to a dozen Lee/Kirby stories to prove it."

It's complex, some want to show him as a guy who could have been a hero with a few turns, others pure utter evil. Even Byrne bounced between the two takes, it just seems hard to figure for writers.

[cyberghostface]

Someone needs to tell Waid there’s a thing called character development.

[mazway_75]

At first, Waid did the same thing almost every new FF writer does, ignore years of development and once more turn Johnny into an arrogant cocky teen hothead.

But did love the bit where he and Sue swap powers and Sue realizing just how much self-control it takes Johnny not to erupt into flame constantly.

[dan_ingram]

"Doom is a noble guy driven by demons is absolute crap. He's a twisted monster"

If those aren't all of Waid's mastermind villains, sigh...

[thosefew]

I don't think Doom's internal monologue would ever allow him to refer to himself as Death's Servant. Death's Master certainly.

[owlbrigade1]

So how long until this is retconned to be a doombot gone rogue, they haven't done that for ages.

[lordultimus]

Refresh my memory: was Doom responsible for the multiverse dying in Time Runs Out?

[cyberghostface]

I don't think so. He just took advantage later.

[scorntx]

Yes and no.

The Beyonders wanted to blow up everything everywhere to see what would happen (best guess: Everything everywhere would die).
Doom and Molecule Man teamed up to prevent that by killing Molecule Man, since he existed on every Earth simultaneously, being as he was the means by which the Beyonders were going to blow everything up.
Doing so caused the Incursions (for some reason), and the only way to prevent Incursions destroying both Earths was blow one up first (well, there were other ways, but they were apparently too impractical to use more than once. Choo-choo.)
Then eventually Doom grabbed a whole bunch of Molecule Men, stuffed them in a box and threw them at the Beyonders. Something goes wrong (literally the most explanation Hickman bothered to give. "Something's gone wrong.") and this causes pretty much every alternate Earth to get destroyed, except for a few, which blow themselves up, leaving only Regular Marvel and Ultimate Marvel standing.

[beyondthefringe]

Thanks for the summary. I read the whole thing and I still sometimes have trouble keeping it all straight.

Hickman doesn't exactly think small.

[scorntx]

Well, that is true.
But sometimes it seems what he considers worth spending pages soliloquising about and what some people might think is actually worth explaining is... different.
(That and the big ideas that seem to fall apart if you spend more than five minutes thinking about them.)

[john_wyatt]

It amazes me how often modern comics writers can throw around stories that include "and several universes were destroyed" without any mention of the lives ended, civilizations razed, etc.
There just seems to be no thought given to the scale of such an idea beyond "dude, this is cosmic."

[scorntx]

It's just the concept of a Throwaway Country / Throwaway Planet on a bigger scale, with all the problems that comes with amplified.

"Well, Villain X has killed and skinned an entire country. But let's not think about that."
"Yeah, it's bumming me out."

[matrix_dragon]

Honestly, I feel it hurts the story these days. "Oh, Doom just murdered an entire universe. Wow."

[longboxingwhileblack]

DOOM is a man who's only real blindspot and limitation is his hatred of Reed Richards. The LAST thing he wants to hear the truth. DOOM being told the truth, by a version of himself who has surpassed him by befriending Reed Richards and who is insulting him would be an indignity of the highest level for him. This is completely within character for him. Even the heroic version of DOOM was an ego maniac.

[ap0cryphal]

Man, this is just so goddamn stale.

Doom isn't someone with the omnicidal appetite of, let's say, Dormammu. He's a bad buy, but he's a bad guy who is simultaneously petty and grandiose.

Where does being a visionary square with being someone who goes "yeah, let's genocide an entire reality because i can't take being dissed by some han-solo looking dipshit who is also me and also this is how I REAFFIRM my NEW COMMITMENT to being TOTES EVIL"

The Avengers EMH cartoon had a better Doom. Paul Tobin's Dr Doom and the Masters of Evil had a better Doom. Hell, What If: Secret Wars (from 2009) had a better Doom.

I should go dig up scans or something now, what a shitshow.

[shakalooloo]

Yeah, rather than destroy this universe, why would Doom not conquer it himself to prove himself better than the pale reflection?

[tcampbell1000]

I like this better than the rest of the run, if only because it shows Doom's arrogance in two flavors. Not only will he snap if you push his pride too far, but he will also fail to understand this about himself. So if by some miracle he slowly evolves in a way that doesn't set off his pride-reflex, renounces violence, and one day confronts another version of himself... he'll be so high-handed in dealing with that other Doom that he'll end up murdered.

None of the explanation for how Victor gets back or how he brings back Brashear or WHY he brings back Brashear makes one shred of sense (you could at least justify that last one by saying he wanted a living witness). But this series was always a deep dive into the head of an emotional-idiot genius: the plot was set dressing.

[onsokumaru]

I was happy to learn that Blue Marvel was going to be used in that mini. Like I was happy to hear that Rockslide would be in X of Swords.
Why do I keep forgetting that writers ignoring my favorite D-listers is often a blessing?

Brashear has been pathetic from the beginning to the end of that series. His power and intellect were reduced to make him a foil for Doom.
And now I'm supposed to believe he witnessed universal genocide and will just go home crying like a baby instead of using all his power and ressources to take down Doom?

[gnarll]

You know, I thought this run started out badly, with Doom having drinks with Kang -with his mask off! Generally not that worried about people seeing his face.

I kind of thought it was finding its pace in the middle when Doom out-thought himself by trying to analyze what Richrds really meant, or when he declared he would show humility such as the world had never seen! It felt like the book was at last getting a grip on its central character.

But then it finishes by putting this gigantic turd on top of the rest of the run.

[zechs80]

It's amazing how much this comic cratered after being postponed.Like it was SOOO good prior to the postponement. Then it just dropped in quantity so badly. That issue with Doom and Kang hitching a ride on a train with a hobo who greets them made me crack up.

I miss that fun. What followed after when the book came back was none of that.