Wally Wood drew four short Doctor Doom stories in Astonishing Tales. This page, from the fourth and final story is, like all of them, a Wood classic.
And yes, that’s the Red Skull lurking in the last panel. After all, what use is a super-villain story without another, even more twisted super-villain as the antagonist?
This would turn out to be Wood’s final output for Marvel Comics.
Took me a long time to pull the trigger on the “right” deal for one of these, and I’m glad to have finally acquired one.
Eric Powell brings his offbeat sensibility to the good doctor in this two-page gag story featured in a Secret Wars parody comic.
I acquired this page directly from Eric at SDCC a few years back, and apparently the other page had just sold to another lucky purchaser.
Missed it by that much.
(Full two-pager presented below.)
The TPB cover by our pal Jim Mahfood is much more interesting than the comic book cover, which is a gag without much art.
Doctor Doom has a terrific legacy in the pantheons of Marvel humor. Stan and Jack did a hilarious send-up of the FF-Doom-Silver Surfer multi-parter in the very first issue of Not Brand Echh in 1967. (The amazing published splash page here is from the actual story of course, not the parody.)
Doctor Doom’s greatest fantasy? Murdering Reed Richards, of course.
And if you have your own planet, you too can make your dreams come true.
Leo Manco nicely illustrates Doom choking Reed on this page from the Emperor Doom mini-series.
Reminds me of a film moment of a certain costumed villain that looks an awful lot like Doctor Doom. Art imitates art, imitates art, ad infinitum, apparently.
Manco, an Argentinian artist, is terrific, and I wish we’d see more of his work in the comic book space.
The similarities between Darth Vader and Doctor Doom always choke me up. (Ouch.)Per our last post, Lucas owes some public tribute to Jack Kirby as far as we are concerned.
Doctor Doom — Marvel’s first iconic super villain of the Silver Age* — celebrates his 60th anniversary this year.
And I have a question.
How are the MCU pros going to create a new on-screen look for the character that is true to form, but doesn’t look goofy as hell? These folks are the best in the business, but that’s a hell of challenge. Lesser talents have failed, not once, not even twice, but three times.**
They could go all black (always a safe choice) and make the costume more technological and futuristic, but… I believe George Lucas already beat them to the punch by about 45 years.***
The comic book Doom costume is one of those that almost makes sense in 2D, but three-dimensional? Oof.
I’m definitely looking forward to seeing the results, maybe even later this year, if we’re lucky.
And, as always, we digress.
Here, the versatile Ron Lim creates a dramatic splash page with the most Doctor Doom you will ever see in once place. You see, the good doctor has this cool hobby of building robots in his spare time.
Lots of them, apparently.
Fun fact footnotes:
Ok, Sub-Mariner beat Doom by a full issue — or more than 20 years, depending on how you count Silver Age vs. Golden Age — but I can’t fully embrace him as a villain. (This despite the fact that Doom and Sub-Mariner later appeared together in a comic book called Super-Villain Team-Up.)
** Two contemporary big budget film releases, plus the officially unreleased Roger Corman version. I probably shouldn’t count that, but I do. Sue me.
*** Lucas has yet to acknowledge that Darth Vader is essentially a mash-up of two Jack Kirby comic book creations, Doctor Doom and Darkseid. C’mon George, fess up.
Clayton Henry’s cover to the Fantastic Five is an homage (swipe?) of Kirby’s FF Annual #2
Doctor Doom’s first appearance features a ridiculous bird for good measure.
