Fantastic Four v6 #33 (2021)
by Dan Slott & R.B.Silva
cover by Mark Brooks
Continuing the Bride of Doom storyline, which by the cover I assume is about the Fantastic Four dressing up for a historical reenactment.
The whole point of Doctor Doom marrying Victorious is that he wants her to rule as Queen of Latveria for a while, and that requires putting up a huge show.
Not sure why it requires a huge dinner BEFORE the marriage… usually the big meal is AFTER the wedding!
Victorious isn’t so sure about this whole deal. Not because she doesn’t love Doom… but because she’s ashamed she slept with the Human Torch immediately after Doom proposed.
Joke’s on her, Doom is into that sort of thing.
Just kidding (hopefully); Doom is actually referring to the fact that Victorious isn’t Latverian by blood. Doom doesn’t care about that at all, which is perfectly in-character.
Before we can continue this issue, we need to take a brief detour to have a look at the SECOND story from the previous issue.
Which I suppose I should have covered last time, but that review was getting a bit too long.
In a short story (still with Slott writing but with Javier Rodriguez pencils) that flashes back to the university days of Doom, when Reed was trying his best to befriend him.
Doom took the offer as well as you’d expect.
Is it just me or does the artwork make him look more like how Ben Grimm is typically drawn in his university days, rather than how Victor is typically drawn?
It sure took Doom A LOT OF TIME to continue that game.
Also, this isn’t even the first time Doom continues an old chess game with Reed: the same happened the excellent Fantastic Four Special. This isn’t a contradiction, as that game was explicitly left unfinished at the time of Doom’s accident.
Doom is indeed here for a game… just not chess.
Whoever wins this duel will be bound to do whatever the winner asks.
This is OBVIOUSLY a trap, but Doom is known for keeping his word. So of course Reed eagerly accepts.
Also, why not do the chess thing anyway?
This results in two consecutive two-page spreads where we get to track the entire game.
Reed eventually wins the game.
As an extremely casual chess player, I never bothered to learn the notation, it’s a shame I couldn’t figure out a way to see whether this game actually works.
Oh, wait, I forgot I’m insane.
So OF COURSE I’m going to analyze four pages of a fictional chess game.
Reed’s first move is legit, but Doom immediately responding with “pawn takes pawn” is nonsensical… a pawn can’t take another pawn in the first move.
I’m going to consider this a weird way to say Doom is moving the corresponding black pawn, which would be pawn to C5.
Doom’s counter makes sense…
…except that’s not check. For that to be true, Reed would have needed to move the red pawn here, but
Reed responds by moving the other knight, which WOUL have defended the king if that was an actual check, and Doom this time does make a legit move to take a pawn.
After a few legit moves…
…I can no longer track this because either I missed some moves or this is turning into nonsense.
I don’t see how Doom’s knight could possibly take ANY pawn at this point, and how is Reed moving his queen to F3 where there’s still the same pawn as before!?
I give up. Either I’m not following the sequence correctly, or they made a mistake along the way, or I suck at chess even worse than I thought.
Too bad Reed was too concentrated on winning the chess game to forget he was even in a duel!!!
Maybe you shouldn’t have over-fixated on a detail that nobody cared about, Reed.
Good thing I can’t relate to that, or the whole chess analysis bit would have been pointless.
The reveal is that Doom did ALL OF THAT just to have Reed as the best man at his wedding.
Back to the supposed subject of this review, Reed decides to take his entire family to the wedding.
Good idea, no notes.
Words cannot express how happy I am by the reveal that Doctor Doom still has the pet tiger from his first story!!!
Victor Von Doom, the world’s greatest and pettiest hater since 1962.
What’s dumber than sleeping with Doctor Doom’s fiancée?
Trying to sneak into her chambers the night before the wedding when YOU’RE LITERALLY ON FIRE.
In theory, this could work if it was framed better. Johnny seems to be the only member of the FF who worries that Victorious might not be marrying Doom WILLINGLY.
I think his dialogue is still too clunky for this.
Reed is taking Doom’s peace offering quite seriously, as you would expect…
…but the twist is that Doom is ALSO being serious.
He does keep some of his toys, however. A man needs a hobby.
It’s finally the day of the wedding, which of course means there are a few guests of honor.
I’ll bet Namor will be upset that not only he doesn’t get to be the Doom’s best man, but he doesn’t even get to walk his bride.
Then again, maybe it’s for the best, she might be jealous of Namor’s bromance with her husband.
Wait, Doom has a second name? Werner, like his father? I feel like that came up once before.
At the last possible moment, Victorious decides she can’t go on with the wedding.
And it’s all because of Johnny.
This results in one of the most hilarious moments of the decade: Namor’s reaction.
While that deservedly gets all the attention… I find Reed’s reaction equally hilarious.
Doom takes this way better than I expected.
But this is also a badass moment for Doom, because he was being sincere about the non-aggression pact… in the sense that the Fantastic Four are unable to attack HIM, not the other way around.
ABOUT TIME Doom dusted off his hypnotic technology: he’s had the ability to prevent the Fantastic Four from attacking him ever since Fantastic Four #246 (and even that was building off pre-existing technology from earlier fights).
And yet this is somehow less chaotic than Reed’s own wedding.
Doom significance: 1/10
As last time, Doom’s almost-wedding doesn’t seem to have had much of an impact beyond the Slott run.
Silver Age-ness: 2/10
Victorious would be breaking off the wedding because she only kissed Johnny.
Will it stand the test of time?
#32: 10/10
If you’re not crazy enough to check whether the chess game is legit, this is great work. It’s one of the rare occasions where you can argue that Doom is being smarter than Reed: at no point he ever states that the game is important, he only talks about the duel. Reed is the one to bring up the chess game and prioritize it over the duel.
Also, one of the quintessential Doom characteristics: he wouldn’t have needed to do ANY of this IF HE JUST ASKED REED. But it wouldn’t be Doom without needlessly complicated plans.
#33: 9/10
Johnny’s idiocy is kept at a minimum, and framing Victorious having doubts through her desire to being honest with Doom… rather than her having any feelings whatsoever towards Johnny… still works. And I appreciate how Doom was actually being sincere: he WOULD have stopped trying to kill the Fantastic Four!
I have to detract a point for Doom being uncharacteristically so naïve to never notice Johnny sneaking past security to talk with Victorious. Him not spying on her 24/7 is one thing… he might be a compulsive paranoid but he’s old-fashioned… but that meeting was out in the open!
We will see next time that Doom had multiple back-up plans in place to prevent another world-wide embarassment (spoiler alert: the ceremony was not actually being broadcasted), and the way he traps the Fantastic Four at the end is amazing… but I draw the line at Doom being kind of outsmarted by Johnny Storm.