Fantastic Four Fridays: Ant-Man and Doom

Another mediocre cover. Yes, the general image of Doom holding the FF in his hand is pretty dramatic, but the details are boring. The Thing is shaking his fist at Doom and that's about the most interesting reaction. Sue's doing the "hands in the air" surprise thing, and Johnny, having forgotten, he can fly is climbing up Doom's index and middle finger. Reed just looks askance at the Metal Monarch. And who's conveniently holding that magnifying glass so we can see Ant-Man?

As the story opens, Johnny is startled to find his teammates much diminished:

So he welds the duct closed and the other members of the FF regain their normal size. It turns out that all of them had experienced the same thing briefly a day or so before, but were worried that the other members would think them nutty if they revealed their experience. Because, you know, it's too fantastic even for the Fantastic Four.

Reed brainstorms and comes to the conclusion that maybe Ant-Man could help them. But how do they get in touch with him? Well, little do they know that ants in the room send out a message that Hank Pym receives and responds to:

He gives them a reducing liquid and an enlarging liquid to use to discover who's changing their sizes. Reid even wonders for a moment:

Of course, we have the benefit of having seen the cover, and those who had been around for FF #10 remember how it ended with Dr. Doom apparently shrinking away to nothingness.

But the story meanders on for another couple of pages. Reed tries another formula to change the Thing back into Ben Grimm, Johnny shows the kids how he can sear a hot dog with his flame-balls, Sue tries some perfume to deaden the scent of dogs (who are apparently the only things that can sense her presence). Then a voice warns them all to flee because Dr. Doom is on the loose again. So they take the shrinking solution, and descend down into the miniature world:

Well, it's certainly convenient that the FF happened to end up that close to Doom. But when they try to attack him, he shrinks them further. Then follows the madman recap of how he came to the micro world, gained the trust of the King and his daughter, then shrank them down and took control. And now he's going to turn the FF over to the Tok people from another world. The Toks will press the FF into service in their army. Well, all except one of them:

That's a pretty harsh assessment of Sue's value as a member of a fighting force; surely they could show her slipping past guards and opening the gates to a major invasion?

Anyway, the FF are imprisoned along with the King and his daughter, whom Johnny has his eye on. The prison is under an acidic sea, so they can't just bust out. But Sue (!) has an idea:

So they construct a small pod out of the material used to construct the walls, then bust loose. Meanwhile, Ant-Man has shrunk down to join them, but is also imprisoned by Doom. Sue once again comes through:

Doom, realizing that the FF free endangers him, flees back to the normal world. Johnny has a tender parting with the princess:

That plot thread was never picked up in the Silver Age, although Pearla did return much later.

And we learn that this story (although reasonably self-contained) will be continued in the next issue.

Comments: Although the story takes a long time to get going, and although there are no real battle scenes with Doom, I do like the sudden emergence of Sue as a valuable member of the team; perhaps the bit about making her a scullery maid lit a fire under her. The coloring is somewhat inconsistent; Pearla's hair is gold and brown earlier, and then green at the end.

More about →

Fantastic Four Fridays: Mind Meld

The story opens with a bit where the Thing has summoned the rest of the FF to Alicia's apartment with a 4 flare. They have some trouble however, as the "nuclear lock" has jammed. Eventually they make their way to the scene, where they learn it's not an emergency:

Now that you mention it, yes, Reed it's a little amazing that a blind girl can create such accurate statues. Sue does a little moping over the fact that the Sub-Mariner is included, apparently forgetting that he tried to kill Reed and Johnny last issue.

The scene switches to the offices of "Kirby and Lee" where the creators are debating whom to have battle the FF next. Too bad that Dr Doom was lost in space in #6, eh. And then he enters the room:

This breaking of the fourth wall is pretty unusual for Marvel; I can't think of another example, although DC did it several times. Doom has Lee summon Mr Fantastic to his office. From the context, we can see that the FF has licensed Marvel to publish their adventures. When Reed arrives, Doom kayos him with a sleeping gas and they vanish together.

Dr Doom explains his survival to Reed awhile later in his laboratory. He was rescued from the meteor by some aliens in a ship. He stole their technology, including this:

And Doom switches bodies with Reed. The concept of body-switching dates back at least to the John Carter of Mars series by Edgar Rice Burroughs; it's a major plot point in Mastermind of Mars.

The rest of the FF arrives (summoned by Lee and Kirby) and quickly subdues Doom (really Reed as we know). He tries explaining what's happened, but Reed (really Doom) reminds them of what a tricky character he is. They put him in an airtight chamber (Reed assures them he will have enough air to survive, but he's lying).

Later, Reed (Doom) tells the FF of his latest experiments. He plans to reduce them in size, while they retain their full powers. Then, when he enlarges them again, their powers will have grown tremendously. Johnny will be able to flame on for longer, while Ben will be able to change back and forth into the Thing.

We learn that his real plan is to shrink them out of existence. Meanwhile, Doom (Reed) has escaped from the airtight chamber and heads to Alicia's apartment. He pleads with her, not knowing that Sue is sneaking up behind him to bash him on the head. Johnny and Ben arrive and the three of them take Doom back to Reed's lab. Frantic, Reed (Doom) tries to get them in front of his reducing ray, but:

Johnny and Ben smell a rat, and the Torch causes a mirage of a stick of dynamite to appear in the room. This reveals the true characters of the two men:

In the shock of being revealed, Doom releases his mental control, and Reed and he switch back to their normal bodies. He tries to shoot them with the atomic blast gun in his finger, but all he does is turn the reducing ray on himself:

And he vanishes into nothingness.

Commments: Excellent story, one of the strongest so far in the FF series. Doom has clearly become the FF's greatest enemy by this time.

More about →

Fantastic Four Fridays: Let The Supervillain Team-Ups Begin!

Supervillain team-ups had been rare in the DC Golden Age. Batman had two that I'm aware of; in Batman #2, The Joker Meets the Catwoman was published. However, it was not really a team-up as such, just a story with two different villains. Then, in Batman #25, came Knights of Knavery, featuring the Joker and the Penguin. This was a real supervillain team-up; oddly it was not repeated. Superman #77 had a story featuring Luthor, the Toyman and the Prankster, and of course there were several supervillain team-up stories in All-Star Comics tales of the Justice Society of America. The famed Flash of Two Worlds (published exactly one year before FF #6) had featured the talents of the Fiddler, the Shade, and the Thinker.

So team-ups were not unheard of, but they were uncommon. Of course, Marvel changed all that. As the story begins, the FF is reading their fan mail. Reed discovers that a young fan is recuperating in a hospital nearby, and stretches over to meet him. This gives Stan the opportunity to explain how Mr Fantastic's uniform elongates with him (some mumbo-jumbo about unstable molecules).

The fan mail segment also features the first mention of the Yancy Street Gang, a long-running gag in the series. As you can see, they specialized in tormenting the Thing:

This gives Ben the opportunity to muse that he longs for a villain worthy of his great strength, like Dr Doom or the Sub-Mariner. And speaking of that duo, Dr Doom is, at the same time, encountering Subby:

Doom is determined to goad the Sub-Mariner into resuming his campaign against the surface world:

We also learn that the Sub-Mariner is still sweet on Sue, and that his feelings for her are returned:

But almost at that moment, Namor enters their quarters, having flown through an open window. We know from an earlier scene that Namor is carrying a device that Dr Doom will be able to use to pull virtually anything on Earth to him, and that anything in this case is the entire Baxter Building:

But this is a double-cross on the Sub-Mariner, too, as we learn here:

Dr Doom tugs them out into space, apparently intending to suffocate them. The FF put on a bunch of fishbowls (although there are no apparent oxygen tanks attached to them), as does Subby. The Torch is unable to fly, and Mr Fantastic finds that the cold of space reduces his stretching power. Ben's strength and Sue's invisibility are useless. So what can be done?

Well, not to spoil the drama, but the Sub-Mariner swims around in a pool of water for a bit, then makes a leap through a meteor shower to Doom's ship. Doom tries to electrocute him, but:

In his haste to escape, Doom hitches a ride on a passing meteor, to his (apparent) death in the vastness of space. The Sub-Mariner returns the Baxter Building to its original position. Namor flies off in Doom's craft, leaving the FF in something of an awkward position:

Comments: Something of an offbeat story; the FF only survives because one of the "villains" prevents the other villain from winning. This became a common theme in the Marvel team-ups.

More about →

Fantastic Four Fridays: Von Doom

What do Dr Doom and the Green Goblin have in common? Answer at the end of the post.

As the story begins, Johnny is acting like a normal teenager:

As you can probably guess, Johnny makes a wisecrack about how the Hulk looks something like the Thing, and this precipitates the usual fight between the various members of the FF. But while they struggle, the lights go out as Dr Doom has already struck:

He calls out to the FF via a loudspeaker in his helicopter, and Reed recognizes the voice. It's Victor Von Doom, a former college classmate of Reed's who was into black magic. Reed tells the story of how Von Doom's experiments went awry, disfiguring the latter's face.

Back in the present, Doom demands that the FF surrender Sue as a hostage. They initially resist, but it becomes obvious that the villain has all the cards, and Sue submits to his control. Doom demands that the other three members of the FF go back into the past and retrieve Blackbeard's legendary treasure. They agree, but only after he promises to free Sue if they do not return.

They quickly obtain some costumes and are shanghaied:

I suppose we're not supposed to notice that teen-aged Johnny swills his grog just like Reed and Ben. They awake aboard a pirate ship. But with the Thing taking some initiative, it's not long before they're running things. And after their first battle:

Yep, the famed pirate Blackbeard turns out to have been none other than bashful Benjamin all along. And since they have have control of the treasure, it seems like there's nothing left to do but bring it back to Doom. But lawyer Reed Richards remembers carefully the task they were assigned:

Oh, did you say, "treasure chest", instead of "treasure"? Reasoning correctly that there must be something powerful within the chest, Reed distributes the treasure to the men, while filling the chest with worthless chains. But there's one slight hitch; Ben has discovered his true calling as a leader of pirates and doesn't want to go back to the future. But when he sets Reed and Johnny in a lifeboat and sails into a hurricane, the three of them end up on a deserted island with the treasure chest. And so Doom calls them back to their own time.

But when he learns that they have only brought back chains, they have a mini-fight, in which Dr Doom is revealed to have only been a robot duplicate. Things look pretty grim:

Hence the cover image. But Sue manages to cause a short circuit, and then locates the switch to open the door to the airtight chamber in time to free the rest of the FF. But Doom escapes and in the end:

Comments: Everything works well in this issue, although for the most part the Marvel heroes eschewed time travel stories, a marked distinction between them and the DC lineup. Coming up next: the first super-villain team-up of the Marvel era!

Answer: Doom and Gobby both start out determined to defeat their respective superhero enemies. Most other villains start out as simple crooks and only when defeated by a superhero decide to exact revenge.

More about →

The Crack of Doom

What do you see when the Fantastic Four's worst enemy bends over?


Dr Doom was far from an original character. The name, Dr Doom, had commonly been used in comic books for villains. The concept of a man hiding his tragically disfigured face behind a mask goes back at least to the Phantom of the Opera.

But in other ways, Dr Doom was truly unique, one of the great villains of the Marvel Silver Age. He first appeared in Fantastic Four #5, and right from the start he showed his difference from most other villains. For starters, Doom was honorable, after a fashion, as Reed notes here:



In that same story, we get the first telling of Doom's oft-repeated and frequently embellished origin:



Lee and Kirby often ended stories with Dr Doom apparently dead; this was something of a nod to the Golden Age Batman tales with the Joker always dying at the end and yet returning again.







In Fantastic Four Annual #2, (Summer 1964), we learn the full history of Von Doom. His parents had been gypsies. His mother (a witch) died when he was young, and his father (a healer) was persecuted and blamed for the death of a princess he failed to save. We get a slightly revised version of the accident, with Reed the (almost) savior:



We also learn that Doom is the ruler of a distant European land called Latveria in that story; this will become a longtime plotpoint in the Marvel Universe.

More Doom to Come!

More about →