DC Versus Marvel Omnibus Pt. 3: Marvel Treasury Edition #28

Superman vs. The Amazing Spider-Man must have been a success for DC and Marvel, as it was followed by a second crossover starring the pair, although almost everything other than the headliners would be different in the sequel: Different creators, different villains and a different way of assembling and publishing the book. 

Reading it in 2024, and immediately after reading its predecessor, I think it suffers somewhat in comparison with the original. Certainly, some of that may be due to the fact that this is the second go-round, and it therefore doesn't feel as special as the first, but that can't entirely account for what seems like an overall dip in quality. 

As previously mentioned, the second Superman/Spider-Man crossover wasn't as painfully, painstakingly produced as the first, with the two publishers negotiating over every decision and every panel. Instead, by the time of its publication in 1981 (and one does wonder why it took them five years for a follow-up), DC and Marvel decided to take turns producing their crossovers, with each publishing a crossover in-house (Marvel would handle this one, while DC would be responsible for the Batman/Hulk crossover published later that same year).

Thus the story was published in what was technically Marvel Treasury Edition #28, although the painted John Romita Sr. and Bob Larkin cover simply blares "Superman and Spider-Man". Marvel Treasury Edition, which launched in 1971 and ended with this very issue, consisted of Marvel comics printed in the "Treasury" format, meaning they were over-sized 10-inch-by-14-inch tabloids...so, as with the original crossover, this one would have been in a bigger format than those of most comics at the time.

This time the creative team would consist of writer Jim Shooter, who had previously written plenty of Superman comics for DC at the start of his career and was, at the time, the Editor-in-Chief of Marvel, and pencil artist John Buscema. The artist would be inked by a whole cadre of inkers; the credit box gives Joe Sinnnott a "figures inked by" credit, while nine different inkers are listed under "Backgrounds inked by" (These are all name artists that most modern readers would recognize and include the likes of Walt Simonson and Klaus Janson).

The villains our heroes would be facing off against this time are both rather odd choices, at least compared to the original crossover, which featured their respective archenemies Lex Luthor and Doctor Octopus.

Here the Marvel villain is Dr. Doom, who had, of course, crossed paths with Spider-Man (as well as most Marvel heroes) over the years, but is nevertheless more of a Fantastic Four villain or a Marvel Universe-in-general villain, rather than a Spidey-specific one (Although I do recall him being prominently featured in the opening sequence of 1981 Saturday morning cartoon Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends, one of my first introductions to Spider-Man). Of course, putting Superman and Doctor Doom in the same comic was probably a great temptation, so I don't suppose one can blame Shooter for taking this extremely rare opportunity to do so. 

As for the Superman villain, it's The Parasite, who is such a relatively minor member of the Man of Steel's rogues' gallery that he seems rather out of place here, especially considering that the previous crossover featured Luthor. Using Parasite in such a high-profile Superman story seems somewhat random, like using, I don't know, Terra-Man. In Marv Wolfman's introduction, which originally ran in 1991 collection Crossover Classics and is collected in the omnibus, he points out that Shooter had created The Parasite, which may explain the villain's presence here. 

Also somewhat odd for a Superman/Spider-Man crossover? The book has guest-stars. Both Marvel's The Incredible Hulk and DC's Wonder Woman appear rather prominently in the book, particularly the former, who is rather central to the plot (As for the latter, she seems almost shoehorned in, present mainly to offer a DC counterweight to the Hulk's appearance). Referring to Wolfman's introduction again, the reason for the pair's appearances in this book was apparently simply because both were on TV at the time, and so the publishers had requested they appear in the story as well. 

As for that story, it is driven by Doom's latest ambitious plan to conquer the world. This, which isn't thoroughly explained until fairly late into the 62-page story, involves controlling The Hulk with a sonic device, freeing Parasite from his special underground prison, a series of underground bases hidden under construction sites all over the world, destroying all of the world's fossil fuels, plunging the world into chaos and, finally, swooping in to reveal his new energy source, which he claims in equivalent to a small star, after which point he will be declared king of the world.

As for Parasite's role, it seems mainly manufactured to include him in the proceedings; Doom needs his powers to ultimately operate his new fuel source, but he strings Parasite along, promising to feed him the captured superheroes Doom collects throughout the story. 

The book opens with two parallel columns on the inside cover just as the previous crossover did, although here instead of introductions by that project's editors Stan Lee and Carmine Infantino, they are short prose pieces with seven tiny inset illustrations, dedicated to recapping the two heroes' origins.

After we're briefly introduced to the Spider-Man on the title page—the tale is officially called "The Heroes and the Holocaust!", although the holocaust in question refers to the dictionary definition of the word, not the historical one that immediately comes to mid—and a brief action sequence, we get two rather interminable pages of Doom talking to himself in his underground lair. It's so overdone as to almost be funny. Certainly, the point where Doom commands a lackey to make sure he's recording his "every utterance" and to produce a transcript he can review later on, is genuinely funny, but man, it just goes on and on.

I should here pause to note that I've never actually read anything Shooter has written before (at least, not to my knowledge, anyway), his time at DC and Marvel preceding my interest in comics by a decade or more, and I was rather surprised to find out just how wordy he is. Panels that could use a word balloon or two might get seven, and some panels where words aren't even necessary will get four paragraphs.

I've always associated this sort of over-writing with early Marvel, and its founding writer/editor Stan Lee's efforts to contribute something of his own to the clear storytelling of his collaborators like Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, so I'm not sure how much of this is Shooter, and how much of it is simply Marvel's house style at the time, but there is a ton of verbiage in this comic, far more than in the crossover that preceded it. 

Anyway, in the tenth straight panel of Doom's monologuing, he reveals "Operation H!", which is to send The Hulk to Metropolis. Also on the way to Metropolis? Down on his luck Daily Bugle photog Peter Parker, who needs to make money to take girls to Elvis Costello concerts and pay his aunt's hospital bills; his editor, J. Jonah Jameson, points to a poster of Superman on his office wall (Funny we never see that in any other Marvel comics!) and tells Parker he would certainly pay for photos of a Hulk/Superman fight, which seems to be brewing. 

The fight does indeed take place, in an eight-page sequence in which the Man of Steel tries to talk the Hulk down to no effect, and blows are traded. Somewhat surprisingly, though the Hulk tackles Superman and gets in a devastating sucker punch, he's really no match for Superman, the fight ending with Superman planting his feet and letting Hulk strike him repeatedly, to no visible effect.

Superman: "Not this time, Hulk! You caught me by surprise--once! This time, I'm ready! And when I'm ready...and I don't want to be moved, no power on Earth-- --can move me!"  

Hulk: "RRRRAH!"

Having read other Superman/Hulk fights (in the pages of 1996's DC Versus Marvel, which will be collected in the upcoming DC Versus Marvel: The Amalgam Age Omnibus, and in Roger Stern and Steve Rude's 1999 The Incredible Hulk Vs. Superman #1, collected in this very volume), and having seen Superman beaten to death by the Hulk-like Doomsday in 1993, the one-sidedness of the fight seemed off, especially given the fact that this was a Marvel produced book, but then I suppose this is the pre-Crisis Superman, whose power levels were of the planet-juggling variety, and not even the strongest one there is can knock him on his heels.

After several panels of the Hulk trying to do just that, Superman's vision powers diagnose the problem: "A micro-miniature drone...emitting an ultrasonic screech at a frequency that drives the Hulk wild!" With that destroyed, Hulk loses interest in the fight—"Cape-Man talks stupid! Cape-Man is stupid! Hulk should smash anyway-- --but Hulk is tired!"—and reverts to a shirtless Bruce Banner and is taken away to S.T.A.R. Labs. (Peter Parker, who was there to take pictures of the fight, briefly suits up as Spider-Man, but Superman waves him off.)

What was the point of all that, other than to get the Hulk in the comic? Well, apparently Doom planned it so that at one point the Hulk would strike the ground in a specific spot with a powerful enough blow to free the Parasite from his prison.

While in town, Parker runs into Jimmy Olsen, who recognizes him and buys him a cup of coffee. They get to talking, and ultimately Parker sells his photos to the much-more-generous-than-Jameson Perry White, and he decides to stick around Metropolis for a while, freelancing for the Daily Planet. (And asking out Lana Lang and falling prey to one of Steve Lombard's practical jokes; at this point in his history, Parker was apparently single).

Meanwhile, Clark Kent relocates to New York City and goes to the Daily Bugle to look for some work while he's there. He suspects Doom is behind the Hulk rampage/Parasite prison escape business ("Only two men alive could have engineered something like that...and I happen to know that one of them, Lex Luthor, is safely locked away!"), so he wants to keep an eye on him, as well as maintain a high profile as Clark Kent in NYC, in an attempt to "draw fire" away from his friends in Metropolis.

But mainly it's just fun to see the two trade cities and supporting casts for a while.

Eventually, Spider-Man infiltrates one of Doom's underground bases, where he finds Wonder Woman rather randomly in the process of fighting off a horde of the villain's soldiers. She's eventually captured, and put into a stasis tube alongside the Hulk, who Doom had captured off-panel.

After hearing Doom's master plan as laid out to Parasite—a 12-panel sequence—Spidey goes for help and finds Superman. Together, the pair storm the base, battle the villains and, at the climax, team-up to stop Doom's malfunctioning experimental star-like power source, which threatens to destroy the entire world. To do this, Superman rushes into the reactor and hugs it, apparently keeping it from exploding with his bare hands, while he tells Spider-Man to figure out how to shut the thing off (Doom has long since retreated to a pre-readied rocket ship, having assumed the Earth was toast and planning to escape the planet.)

As impossible as their tasks may seem, the two heroes manage to save the day and, afterwards, return to their respective cities, jobs and supporting casts. 

Having already met one another once and gotten along, there is no need for the fight-then-team-up ritual here, and so the most exciting action sequences involve Superman vs. The Hulk and Spidey vs. The Parasite, who borrows his spider-powers from him (Though she initially tries to lasso him, Wonder Woman and Spider-Man never actually fight one another). 

So that aspect of a crossover is out, but, somewhat oddly, Superman and Spider-Man aren't really together throughout most of the book.  

During the Hulk battle, for example, when Spider-Man is about to confront the Hulk, taking over for the punched-out-of-the-panel Superman, the Man of Steel suddenly returns and shoos Spidey away: "Step aside, son! This is a job for Superman!" (Spidey responds with, "Hey! Hold on, big shot! What am I--? The water boy?" and then, after Superman has crushed the drone driving Hulk and solved the problem, the wall-crawler slinks back into an alley, saying "Now I know what a fifth wheel feels like!")

It's only at the climax that the two really work together, and even then, they don't share all that many panels with one another, as they divide up their world-saving duties. 

As with Shooter, I'm not terribly familiar with the work of artist John Buscema, although consulting his list of credits on Wikipedia, I see that I definitely read at least one book he drew (2001's Just Imagine Stan Lee and John Buscema Creating Superman), although given the number of comics he's drawn over the years for Marvel, I'm sure I've encountered his work at least a few times, likely in the pages of Conan collections or those phonebook-like Essential volumes.

He does a fine job on the art here, although it's notable that at no point does he seem to be given the sorts of showcases afforded Ross Andru in the first Superman/Spider-Man team-up, which featured multiple splashes and double-page splashes. The closest he gets is a single splash page, the title page, wherein most of the visual real estate is eaten up by the title and credits and the figure of Spider-Man swinging into action that appears is relatively small and seen from behind.

Later, when Superman first appears, he gets something of a splash page, although two inset panels also eat into it. 

The rest of the pages are fairly panel-packed, which, when coupled-with all of Shooter's dialogue bubbles and narration boxes, gives the book a cramped, crowded feel. I do wonder how it would have read in the bigger size it was originally published in, but Marvel doesn't seem to have taken special advantage of that size to really show off its heroes, their crossing paths or Buscema's art. 

The real pleasure of the book—aside from seeing the two heroes' secret identities working at one another's newspapers, which is obviously a lot of fun—is probably Shooter and Buscema pitting the world's greatest hero (That would be Superman, obviously) against the comic books' greatest villain (Doctor Doom). It's little surprise, then, that the strongest scene is that in which Superman visits the Latverian embassy and the two characters trade dialogue and worldviews before Doom tries to kill Superman, fails and then simply crosses his arms and says "Bah!" when Superman foils him, as his diplomatic immunity spares him of facing any real consequences. 

Overall though, this isn't a particularly strong comic, which is quite disappointing given the relative rarity of DC and Marvel characters sharing space and, of course, that the previous effort was so much stronger. But, as mentioned earlier, this wasn't 1981's only DC/Marvel crossover and, thankfully, the other one turned out pretty great. 

Next: 1981's DC Special Series #27, featuring Batman and The Hulk

What are you so worried about, Doom?

His crotch is now the perfect height for a metal-encased headbutt or a well-placed uppercut!

And if you want to fight a little less dirty—and why would you?—you could always go for one of the ankles on those ungainly legs; I'd go for the Captain America on on his right leg, rather than the Hulk one on his left.

I’m going to talk at length about Doomwar, a Marvel comic most of you probably didn’t even read.

In 2010, Marvel published a six-issue series by writer Jonathan Maberry, a prose writer turned comics-writer, and pencil artist Scott Eaton entitled Doomwar, dealing with the Black Panther characters’ international conflict with Doctor Doom. The premise was laid out in the title and cover images, and the hook apparent and appealing—the supervillain king of a fictional Marvel kingdom versus the superhero king of another fictional Marvel kingdom.

At the time, Marvel was switching tack after a great deal of sales frustration in keeping the 2005-launched, Reginald Hudlin-written volume of Black Panther going. The previous year, Marvel tried relaunching the book with a new #1 issue and a new, female character in the title role (T’Challa’s little sister Shuri), but that lasted twelve issues, ending with an arc entitled “Prelude to Doomwar.” Doomwar was essentially just the next arc of the now-canceled Black Panther, but given it’s own title and lots of guest-stars to position it as an event. (Marvel, incidentially, is still casting about for a way to make a Black Panther comic stick; Doomwar was then followed by another miniseries, Klaws of The Panther, and then T’Challa took over the numbering, sub-title and setting of Daredevil in a perplexing publishing move).

I’m probably part of the reason Black Panther’s sales flagged so. T’challa The Black Panther is a great comics character, and one I always want to like. In 2005, Marvel made it easy to do so by assigning the book to a famous-outside-of-comics writer (when that wasn’t quite as commonplace as it was today) able to generate mainstream interest and by assigning John Romita Jr., the publisher’s very best artist, to the book.

Sadly Romita only stuck around for the first story arc, so although Hudlin proved to be a much stronger writer than many form outside of comics (and much more dedicated to the character, title and a schedule than most of his peers with similar entries into comics), the book’s visuals were inconsistent. I stuck with it through the first thirtysome issues, and dropped it around the time Secret Invasion began. Doomwar was the first thing to really pique my interest again, due to its premise and the Romita art on the cool-looking covers, but by that time Marvel had chased me away from reading their line in a serial format with their price increases (I’m not currently reading any Marvel ongoing series, although I think I’m going to try the upcoming Daredevil and Captain America and Bucky comics as serials).

So I picked up the trade of Doomwar. I found at least one aspect of Maberry’s plot and scripting to be rather weak, enough so that it distracted me from the story, but otherwise fine for what it was—a big, huge fight comic with a whole bunch of power-players. Eaton’s art was decent, with only a few really poor sequences, although it was all over-colored in the way the vast majority of Marvel’s comics are these days.

None of the images inside are as powerful as the one’s on the covers though.

*****************

When I got to the climax of the story, I remembered reading a post on 4thletter.net that was pretty critical of that climax, so shortly after finishing the story I went to look for it and reread it now that I knew the context.

It was written by David Brothers, and entitled “Superhero Comics Still For Children, Also Unbelievably Stupid”. You can (and should) read the text in full here.

In essence, Brothers’ complaint is that the two Black Panthers, T’Challa and Shuri, the rules or Wakanda, don’t kill Doctor Doom at the end of the story when they have him at their mercy, Shuri lets him off with a warning/threat, that if he ever does anything like this again, she will kill him.

Brothers:

Doctor Doom invaded Wakanda (a sovereign nation), held its queen hostage, murdered a whole gang of its inhabitants whenever he liked, staged a coup, and generally acted exactly like a James Bond villain, complete with a plan with poorly defined goals and acts of villainy for the evil of it.

If someone breaks into your house and starts murdering your family while cackling about how you are lazy and terrible and threatening your wife like he’s Snidely Whiplash? You don’t let him off with a warning. You leave his brains on the wall and sleep the sleep of the just. That is the only appropriate response. You kill him, and you kill him because he needs to be dead. Some things are beyond the pale, and what Doom did? That’s worthy of death. Past a certain level, your position on the death penalty and violence become irrelevant. And I know, blah blah blah, protect trademarks, blah blah can’t kill Doom, blah blah comic books, blah blah diplomatic immunity, but to that I say “blah blah crap.”

While Brothers clearly understands (and underlines his understanding) that Doctor Doom can never really be killed off because he’s a corporate owned intellectual property, a money making machine than can be massaged and calibrated to be more or less successful in different media and circumstances, but always needs to be around, he also has problems suspending his disbelief that a character—even a superhero character—wouldn’t kill a foe under these circumstances.

“If you’re going to wear Big Boy Pants and write comics with Big Boy Stakes, maybe you should be willing to make some Big Boy Decisions and not completely neuter your heroes at the end of the story,” Brothers notes, writing that every time he sees some variation of the hero sparing a villain who horribly wronged him or society and making a speech about why he or she isn’t going to pull the trigger, it reminds him “that superhero comics used to be aimed at children and still haven’t grown up yet.”

I disagree.

Personally—and this is all just purely personal at this level—I’m uncomfortable reading about superheroes who kill. Particularly heroes who have always shown an unwillingness to do so (like Wonder Woman, for example). I don’t like seeing heroes torture, hurt animals or perform lobotomies on their foes either.

Not only is there not necessarily anything heroic about any of the above, but it also creates creative dead ends for many characters whose main appeal is the serial, endless nature of their adventures and the never-completely exhausted potential those IPs have; and it also leads to bleak, unappealing stories that ask the reader to consider troubling questions that the texts suggests immoral, wrong-headed answers to; and it also leads to a lot of bad stories; and, most importantly, it also put the reader in the same corner that Doomwar apparently put Brothers in—suggesting a character has to die for the sake of the story, and that not killing him due to artificial reasons not evident in the text (More on this last reason in a bit).

I suppose a lot of my personal preference for whether heroes should ever kill or not comes from my own personal beliefs—I’m against the death penalty, I don’t think violence is a good answer to most problems and although I understand there are circumstances and reasons under which human beings sometimes end up having to kill one another, I feel in an ideal world they never would. Certainly, a paragon of human virtue, someone better than me, like, say, a superhero, shouldn’t ever have to take a life.

I think the fact that Batman never kills anyone, not even a mass-murderer and terrorist like The Joker with thousands of deaths to his name, is more admirable than a The Punisher, who always kills his villains…and always a hell of a lot more believable. (Which isn’t to say there are no good Punisher comics; it’s just that the Punisher is the villain in them all).

The thing about ends-justifying-the-means superhero comics, of course, is that the ends are always a foregone conclusion. Is it realistic that a hero like Batman wouldn’t kill The Joker? (Which may be a bad example, if you go with the reading that Batman’s too insane to ever actually kill anyone; him killing would be like someone with a certain type of obsessive compulsive disorder not touching a certain door knob so many times a day). Maybe, maybe not. But why would a writer put him in that position anyway, without a good answer? And a good writer should have a good answer. If a writer can’t think their way around something like why Batman doesn’t just kill all his foes all the time, and sell it to their readers, then they probably shouldn’t be writing Batman comics.

I suspect that is, in large part, what bugged Brothers so much about that scene. Maberry didn’t do a good enough job of explaining why Shuri and T’Challa didn’t kill Doom there. Or, as Brothers put it, Maberry was writing a story about the deadly consequences of war, but at the resolution just walked away from the natural ending to the story he had written.

To review, if you haven’t read it, here’s what Doctor Doom did to The Panthers and their nation Wakanda. Off-panel (or perhaps in previous issues of Black Panther, like those with the words “Prelude to Doomwar” printed across the top) Doom funded an opposition movement within Wakanda, one that eventually grew so large and influential that it deposed the royal family, banished hero/rulers T’Challa and Suki, and arrested Queen Storm for witchcraft, with the intent of executing her for the crime (This is a trifling point, but I find it amusing that anywhere in the civilized world would still believe in witchcraft and think it some sort of evil at this point in time in the Marvel Universe; clearly Storm flies and controls the weather, a relatively minor set of powers compared to many in the world, and yet their assumption is she’s also a witch, and not just a mutant…?).

From the outside—i.e. to everyone except T’Challa, Shuri and the reader—this looks like a natural turn of events in Wakandan politics, and not the work of a single supervillain who, remember, is also the ruler of a sovereign nation of his own (So maybe this would be like Kim Jong Il funding a Third Party in the U.S., and that party banishing Barack Obama and putting Michelle Obama on trial for witchcraft…?). Doom does this because he’s trying to steal Wakanda’s natural resource Maguffinanium—I mean, vibranium—which is kept in a particular vault.

It’s a valuable metal with practically magical properties, which Doom has discovered had actual magical properties. (So, Kim Jong Il is breaking into the secret super-uranium vault below the White House, because he and he alone knows how to turn super-uranium into super-duper-uranium).

He’s trying to coerce Storm into opening the vault for him, but shooting citizens in the head to motivate her. At one point, he tries to murder T’Challa and Shuri’s mother, but their uncle takes the bullet instead.

To rescue Storm, the Panthers and their allies must wage war against the faction of Doom-funded Wakandans; soldiers on both sides die.

When Doom acquires the vibranium, the Panthers begin waging war on his many hidden, international factories, many more of their Wakandan allies dying in the conflict (Doom uses robots, so no soldiers on his side really “die”). At that point, Wakdanda and Latveria are essentially at undeclared war, although it’s basically just the rulers of the two countries fighting—plus the handful of soldiers in the Panther’s inner circle.

At the book’s climax, Doom has built a new suit of invincible armor out of the magically-enhanced vibranium; he’s also gained the ability to control every particle of vibranium on earth, and thus he controls all the metal in the entire world, making him one of the most powerful beings that ever lived. The Panthers challenge him to fight on his own border, and T’Challa has to play the only card he has to stop Doom and save the world—he can eradicate all of the vibranium at once with the push of a button on some device he and Reed Richards built.

He does so. The world is saved. Doom’s armor shuts down, and he falls immobile to his knees. That’s when Shuri makes her speech about not killing Doom, the one that Brothers posted in his post on the issue.

As I said, I don’t object to the characters not killing Doom, which I would have found a dramatically unsatisfying ending, given the fluidity of death in the Marvel Universe (Doom has died and gone to hell repeatedly only to return to life later; in fact, the last issue of a Marvel comic I saw Doom appear in featured scenes of Doom waltzing in and out of hell).

Maybe Maberry didn’t sell the Panthers’ decision not to kill him very well though.

Shuri especially shows no compunctions about killing throughout the story. Her first act of war in retaking Wakanda is to have Nightcrawler teleport her to the room with the leader of the usurpers, where she promptly snaps the guy’s neck (he is, of course, a Wakandan citizen; is this good or bad? It is war…) During the fight, Shuri and her allies kill a lot of Wakandans, and at one point both Nightcrawler and Wolverine warn her about killing too wantonly or getting too used to it.

Later, she spends the lives of her soldiers at such a rate that T’Challa and others are concerned that she’s throwing too many lives away.

Her decision not to kill Doom could then be seen as her learning a lesson, about ultimately deciding not to become a cold-hearted killing machine. I suspect that was what Maberry was going for, but it’s a sudden U-turn, and not foreshadowed or explained clearly at all.

T’Challa’s not the one who talks her out of it, either. In fact, his decision to not kill Doom seems even stranger. He doesn’t seem as willing or eager to kill or spend lives as his sister, but he does hire a mercenary assassin (Deadpool) and send an elite squad of assassins to infiltrate Doom’s capital city and kill him. They fail obviously, but it does seem strange for T’Challa to attempt to kill Doom in one issue, and not kill him in the next when the opportunity presents itself.

Again, this may have been T’Challa having a change of heart—or maybe he knew Deadpool would fail and was only using him to distract Doom–but Maberry doesn’t include anything in the text to justify these readings. I’m just making guesses.

There were, of course, two very easy solutions for having The Panthers sparing Doom, even if they wanted to kill him.

First, they had Doom at their mercy in the presence of the Fantastic Four, none of whom would have allowed them to execute a defenseless Doom (A panel or two of Invisible Woman putting a shield around Doom and saying she can’t allow them to kill Doom like this would have sufficed.)

Second, this entire war was off the books. It wasn’t between Wakanda and Latveria, but between The Panthers and Doom. Both of them broke a mess of international law, and if they summarily executed Doom on the spot, it would have looked bad for Wakanda in the long run. It’s easy to imagine that, from the perspective of someone watching all this on the news, that it looked like the Wakandan royal family attacked Doom without provocation and killed him in or next to his own country.

Maberry didn’t choose either route though, so it does look like a more or less random decision by the Panthers.

********************

I suppose one could compare Black Panther versus Doctor Doom to Barack Obama versus Osama bin Laden in light of recent events. I’m not gonna get into that.

*******************

The aspect of the story that I found more distracting, that I had trouble suspending my disbelief over, was how generally unconcerned the rest of the superheroes of the Marvel Universe seemed to be in the threat of Storm’s execution and the prospect of an invincible Doctor Doom.

Now, reading universe superhero comics often requires the reader to accept a certain amount of illogic in the proceedings. There’s no real reason why Superman and The Flash couldn’t stop all of the super-crime, maybe even all the normal crime too, in the DC Universe all by themselves, but if the a villain in an issue of, say, Green Arrow or Batman is threatening a city or a country or the world with destruction, we don’t generally expect to see Superman fly in to save the day, even though a practically omniscient, practically omnipresent and practically omnipotent guy wholly devoted the preservation of human life should probably show up for any and all such events.

Maberry opens the door for the whole Marvel Universe to get involved, however, by showing Black Panther seeking allies and getting some assistance from some characters, raising questions for why so-and-so showed up, but not so-and-so.

Storm’s trial and death penalty verdict are announced on national television before the Bad Wakandans shut down the media. The X-Men make no move to rescue their friend and ally though. Even when T’Challa flies to their island and asks them for help, Cyclops says he can’t officially involve his team—which, at this point in Marvel history, is kinda sorta their own sovereign nation on an island off the West Coast of the United States—but that he can’t stop X-Men from volunteering either.

That explains why Cyclops and Emma Frost, and perhaps why all 150 X-people, don’t storm Wakanda, but it doesn’t explain why, of all the X-Men, Wolverine, Nightcrawler and Colossus are the only ones who volunteer. (From Maberry’s perspective, it’s clear Wolverine is there because he’s popular and his image on the cover might sell some books; Nightcrawler is there to provide transportation; Colossus is there for…no real reason, which makes it strange that more X-Men don’t come along to pose in backgrounds).

With those three in tow, T’Challa races back to try and overthrow his own country. He doesn’t approach his long-time allies in The Avengers or the Fantastic Four? He doesn’t call up Luke Cage or Monica Rambeau or any of those guys who were like, “Man, you should totally start a Black Avengers” heroes? The X-Men don’t loan him Namor, Doctor Doom’s greatest frenemy?

Once they’ve rescued Storm and retake Wakanda, The Fantastic Four do get involved (at which point, the three X-Men go home). During this phase of the conflict, Shuri, the FF and the Wakandan forces raid some dozen or so Doombot factories and fight a war of attrition, trying to find the right factory containing Doom and the stolen vibranium before he’s able to magically super-weaponize it. Again, no Avengers or anyone get involved.

I think that this may have been during the “Dark Reign” period, in which Norman Osborn controlled SHIELD, the Avengers initiative and his own team of Avengers, and its possible he was deliberately keeping all his forces out of it (that, or politics, since all of the above are U.S. sanctioned at that point), but it doesn’t explain the absence of the “New” Avengers, Thor, Iron Man and the like.

When Reed Richards thinks things are getting out of hand and he and T’Challa will need more help, he makes a call to…War Machine. Not Iron Man (the Bush to Reed’s Cheney in Civil War) or Luke Cage or a Captain America or Cyclops or Namor, someone with their own force of heroes or soldiers to turn the tide of a war-like conflict, but just this one guy in an Iron Man suit. This one guy who’s not Iron Man! (I don’t know if Iron Man is more powerful than War Machine or not, but the former has a bigger leadership role in the Marvel Universe, and is a super scientist along the lines of Reed, T’Challa and Doom, and thus would presumably be of more use than War Machine).

At the end of the story, when Doom controls all metal on Earth, T’Challa does reach out to The Avengers and X-Men and so on, but at that point they’re too busy fighting metal shenangigans in their own backyards.

Again, it wouldn’t have taken more than a few panels or lines of dialogue here and there to explain why so few X-Men give a damn about Storm, or where FF was at one point, or why no one else is trying to prevent Doctor Doom from gaining omnipotence, but Maberry didn’t use those panels or lines at the right times, at least not to my reading.

That bugged me more than Shuri not killing Doom, although I can see why it bugged Brothers (I’m not sure if I would have seen that scene as a real weakness if I hadn’t seen someone else raise the point, though).

********************

I did enjoy Doomwar for the most part though, and would recommend it to fans of Marvel superhero punch-‘em-ups.

Doctors Doom and Doomer

The cover of 1976’s Super-Villain Team-Up #6 promises the “The Most Unexpected GUEST STAR of all!”

As you can see, the issue's already got The Sub-Mariner, The Fantastic Four, Dr. Doom and newcomer The Shroud in it, who is this unexpected guest star, and what makes him or her the "most unexpected guest star of all?” Is this guest star a hero, or a villain, or something in between?

Let’s find out together, shall we?

It may be a little difficult to set the stage here, as this particular issue—written by Steve Englehart and drawn by Herb Trimpe and Jack Abel—is only about a quarter of the way into a huge, epic, several hundred page-long story in which Doom tries forging an alliance with Namor, and many, many other superheroes and villains end up getting fought along the way. You can read all about it in Essential Super-Villain Team-Up Vol. 1 which, I remind you, is about 450 pages of Namor and Doctor Doom yelling at each other, with about 50 pages of things like Doctor Doom fighting Red Skull on the moon or Skull teaming up with Hitler accounting for the rest of the book.

Anyway, Doom has poisoned Namor so that the Atlantean can no longer live out of water without regular administrations of an antidote of Doom’s own making. In exchange, Namor has given his word to serve Doom, and the proud prince won’t break his word no matter what.

As this issue opens, Namor is pacing around Doom’s Latverian castle, shouting “Doom!” in ever-larger font sizes. In the previous issue, Namor went to the Fantastic Four for help, but Reed Richards was unable to devise an antidote in time to save him, and so he had to return to Latveria with his new master.

Doom is all like, “Knock if off Namor, I heard you the first ten times! Now be quiet, I have a very important meeting.”

This meeting is with none other than “the most unexpected guest star of all.” Doom calls the guest star his “first official visitor,” while noticing he also has unofficial visitors, in the form of a Fantasticar full of the Fantastic Four, arriving to save Subby.

Doom activates all his automated defenses and Doombots and then proceeds to meet with his visitor.

Deep within the castle, Doom shows a mysterious man wearing a suit and glasses a controlled nuclear blast.
Then he shows his visitor “The Di-Litium Thermal Mine, capable of blockading an entire seaport by itself!” And then his Pluto Probe. And his Orbital Laser Bomb.

But he demurs when his visitor asks about the time machine: “All in good time my friend…you must allow me some secrets in this early stage of our relationship, eh?”

Doom hands his visitor, still only seen in shadow, a goblet, and makes a speech:

You have known, for all those years, what Dr. Doom is capable of-- --But you said nothing, leaving the peoples of the world to cherish their fantasy of a three-way struggle for supremacy, among Russia, China, and America.

His visitor replies:

I, too shall speak frankly, Doctor. Until now, I have not considered your weaponry enough to make you a fourth super-power! Your political base was too small! Under those conditions, I considered revelation of your tactical strength unnecessarily unsettling to the world’s peace of mind!

Who is this Realpolitick-speaking stranger? And why does he shout all of his sentences?

Apparently, with Latveria aligned with Atlantis, the stranger considers Doom to have a large enough political base to be considered a fourth super-power. This is kind of odd since the entire population of Atlantis is currently comatose in a deathless sleeping state at the bottom of the ocean, so Doom only really has one Atlantean to add to his political base, Namor The Sub-Mariner.

The visitor thus raises a toast to Victor Von Doom, while thinking to himself how dangerous his new ally is.
But who is it?

Just when it looks like we’re about to find out, a lackey interrupts to inform Doom that the FF are routing his forces and will soon breach the castle. Doom is thus forced to call upon Namor, who is duty bound to fight the Fantastic Four at Doom’s bidding, even though he himself doesn’t want to.

You see—and Namor actually says this—“Namor’s word is his bond.”

Yes.

Well Namor holds the FF off for a bit, but he eventually succumbs to the Human Torch’s dehydrating fires, and the heroes manage to breach the castle.

There they find Doom waiting, as well as Doom’s newest ally, who stops them cold with just a few sentences.

Behold—
—United States Secretary of State Dr. Henry Kissinger!

Now, they don’t actually use his name in this particular issue, although it’s pretty clear who it’s supposed to be. How many of Secretaries of State were there in 1976?

Super-Villain Team-Up #7 makes his identity quite clear, however, as seen on this splash page:
Kissinger’s say-so is enough to drive the FF off, as Reed explains in this terribly scanned panel from SVTU #6: Huh. Maybe Reed wasn’t written so out of character during Civil War after all…

Beware the violent punning of Namor!

Get it? He said we'll see who gets overthrown, while literally throwing someone! Ha ha, good one Namor!

That scene was drawn by Herb Trimpe and Jim Mooney and written by Bill Mantlo, originally for 1976's Super-Villan Team-Up #4. It's one of the fifty or so instances of Namor hurling someone or something within the pages of Essential Super-Villan Team-Up Vol. 1, a 550-page collection consisting almost entirely of scenes of Namor and Dr. Doom yelling at each other.

Behold—The kiddy table of evil!

Geez Norman Osborn, you're a big, powerful businessman type who's been running a federal superhero-busting organization for a couple of months, you just got a big, huge promotion to be in charge of The Avengers and the entire Fifty-State Initiative, and you decide to hold a super-secret meeting in the basement of Avengers Tower, a meeting with two highly irritable monarchs, the Norse god of mischief, the kingpin of super-crime and an X-Lady, and that's the table you decide to use?

Really? That's the best table you can supply for that particular meeting? My kitchen table is bigger and more stately than that. That looks like a piece of patio furniture.

Just look at poor Dr. Doom there. Dude is pissed to be seated at such a small table. He's like one second away from "Doom demands elbow room! Bah, Namor and Red Hood won't quit kicking Doom's feet under the table!"

This isn't a very auspicious beginning to your dark reign, Osborn.

Jerry Falwell Memorial Post

The late Jerry Falwell has said a lot of ignorant, irresponsible, reprehensible things during his life. Probably the most reprehensible thing I've heard him say was regarding the September 11 attacks, where he immediately sided with the hijackers who carried them out, saying that the death and destruction was God's punishment for America's perceived cultural immorality.

And whenever I think of Falwell, I think of his brief appearance in J. Michael Straczynski, John Romiat Jr. and Scot Hanna's Amazing Spider-Man #36, the issue that dealing with Spider-Man's reaction to 9/11.

The narration refers to "self-serving proclamations of holy warriors...who announce that somehow we had this coming," leading to this very panel, featuring JRjr's version of Falwell, spouting a version of his infamous quote:



What really underscored the, well, evil of this statement is that elsewhere in the book, Straczynski checks in with some of Marvel's most nefarious villains—The Kingpin, Magneto, Doctor Octopus, Juggernaut and Dr. Doom, all of whom the narration tells us are sickened by the cruel barbarity of the attacks: "Because the story of humanity is written...in the voice that speaks within even the worst of us, and says This is not right.. Because even the worst of us, however scarred, are still human. Still feel. Still mourn the random death of innocents."



So what does that make Falwell—worse than the worst of us? I mean, just how evil do you have to be to come out of a comic book looking less decent, human and noble than a supervillain whose name is Dr. Doom?

Delayed Reaction: Doctor Strange and Doctor Doom: Triumph and Torment

Doctor Strange and Doctor Doom: Triumph and Torment (Marvel Comics), by Roger Stern, Michael Mignola and Mark Badger


Why’d I Wait?: As far as I can tell, this original graphic novel was released in 1989, which was actually a few years before I started reading comics. So unlike a lot of the books I feature in these “Delayed Reaction” segments, I didn’t wait to read it so much as I completely didn’t know it existed until fairly recently. It’s unfortunately long out of print, despite the fact that it features pencils by Mike “King of the Hellboy Multi-Media Empire” Mignola.



Why Now?: Synchronicity, I guess.

A few months back I re-read Cosmic Odyssey and kept thinking how crazy it was to see a big-deal artist like Mignola drawing the likes of the J’onn J’onnz and Orion for DC.

Retailer Mike Sterling at EDILW favorite Progressiveruin.com recently mentioned Triumph and Torment in the context of, “Hey, wouldn’t it make good business sense for Marvel to have this book available for sale?” (With a Dr. Strange direct-to-DVD ‘toon in the works and another Fantastic Four film just months away, the book seems like one that it would be easy to foist on all sorts of readers, not just Hellboy/Mignola fans).

Then last weekend I was selling some old comics to my local Half-Priced Books, I found it sitting among the graphic novels for a scant $8.50 (Also scored: A Killraven graphic novel with art by P. Craig Russell for just $3).

Clearly the universe wanted me to read this story, and who am I to argue with the universe?



(Above: Doom's very nice fire place, as drawn by Mignola and Badger. Richards may be smarter and more virtuous than Doom, but Castle Doom is much more tastefully appointed than the Baxter Building)



Well?: It’s actually a pretty strange artifact, from the days when graphic novels were still pretty brand new. It’s relatively short—only about 80 pages—but it’s a hardcover, and an oversized, album one at that. This is the biggest I’ve ever seen Mignola art, and it’s quite a treat (if Marvel ever gets around to reprinting it, though, I suspect it would sell better as a traditional-sized trade paper back).

Roger Stern handles the writing, and it’s a fairly simple story, with the most complex part being the portrayal of Doctor Doom as a less evil guy than his name might imply. He’s actually a pretty complicated guy.

Stern opens in the Himalyas, where a crazy old mystic by the name of the Aged Gehngis is ranting and raving to his Wong-like servant, and then off he flies to do the work of The Vishanti, whom turn out to be actual deities, and not just an empty swear word Strange uses when frustrated or excited. Once every 300 years they declare a worldwide magic contest, and the winner gets the title “Sorcerer Supreme,” as well as a sacred task—to grant a boon to the runner-up.

Strange wins, naturally enough, but it’s Doom who comes in second, and so Strange must help Doom.

What he wants isn’t any magical assistance getting revenge on Richards or anything so pedestrian. Rather, he needs Strange’s expertise in the realms of the mystic to help him free his sorceress mother’s soul from Hell, where’s Marvel’s Devil Mephisto keeps it.

The rest of the book basically consists of Marvel’s two baddest doctors in Hell, shooting beams at hordes of Mignola-designed demons, while a gigantic Mephisto lounges on his throne in the background.

There’s some very nice melodrama in here, as the title promises there will be, and while I’ve read very little of Stern’s writing in the past—certainly not enough to get excited just by seeing his name on the cover—I was quite pleased with how it reads here. Clearly he approached working on a graphic novel as something a little more special than just another comic book script, and he really upped his game.

Mignola is inked by Mark Badger, and his art has yet to be refined down to the bare essentials that it’s currently at, but it’s awfully close to the style on display in his Hellboy stories (And it’s more Hellboy-esque thant it was even in Cosmic Odyssey).

Mignola’s characters have always had a thickness and a blockiness about them, something which I’ve always felt makes him and ideal artist for Marvel characters, as you can draw a line from the work of Jack Kirby to that of Mike Mignola.

His Doom is therefore unsurprisingly utterly perfect, and his Mephisto is probably the best I’ve ever seen.

I didn’t care for Minola’s Strange all that much, however, in part because Steve had a more ‘80s/Metallica-looking moustache here instead of the Vincent Price one I so like, and, in greater part, because Marcos Martin so spoiled me with Doctor Strange: The Oath that I don’t think I’ll ever like a visual interpretation of the character as much.



Would I Travel Back in Time to Buy it off the Shelf?: Well you’d pretty much have to in order to buy it now, wouldn’t you? In the mean time, you can see several pages of it (and some very colorful color commentary on those pages) at Scans_Daily.