With Doctor Doom still dead, we have a long stretch of stories where someone else pretends to be him. Well, it’s always the same guy and he doesn’t have a lot of impact on the stories themselves, so I’m grouping together A LOT of those.
Doctor Strange, Sorcerer Supreme #62 (1994)
by David Quinn & Melvin Rubi
This is one of the most confusing comic books I’ve ever read. The cover is not a bad idea, but man is that mask rough.
We begin in Romania, where a bunch of people excavating something in a cemetery are caught on tape by a Doombot.
I’m a sucker for any Doctor Doom panel where he’s fully in the shadows. Get your Doom fix quickly, because this is the only moment in the story where we have a badass Doom image.
The excavation recovers a mystical artifact, which is why Doom was keeping an eye on it.
All of this SOUNDS like a good enough premise for a story where Doctor Doom meets Doctor Strange…
…but not only we’re not dealing with the real Doom: this is not even the real Doctor Strange.
The fight activates the artifact’s magical defenses, killing the nearby civilians and giving serious trouble to Doom. Who discovers this is not the real Doctor Strange… this is just Strange.
I haven’t read much of this period of Doctor Strange. I think “Strange” is some kind of doppelganger made of mystical energy, but good luck figuring out ANYTHING from this story alone.
“Doctor Doom” is revealed to be Nathanial Richards, a.k.a. Reed Richards’ time-traveling a##hole father. Who has never shown any interest whatsoever in magic, so WTF was he doing investigating that artifact?
Well that sucked. “Strange” has a nice design, but he’s so completely disconnected from Doctor Strange that it’s a wasted design.
Next!
Fantastic Four #386 (1994)
by Tom DeFalco & Paul Ryan
In addition to randomly looking for mystical relics, Nathaniel also takes the time to get in full Doctor Doom cosplay so that the people of Latveria believe he’s still alive.
Spoiler alert: this will go nowhere.
Fantastic Four #387 (1994)
by Tom DeFalco & Paul Ryan
At this point, for unexplainable reason the Thing was 100% sure that Doom and Reed were dead.
Seeing Doctor Doom still around makes him have some doubts, but only so much.
Turns out the only reason Nathaniel took Doom’s place was to use his technology to locate Franklin (who you might remember was turned into a teenage Cable rip-off at this point).
Throughout the DeFalco run, Nathaniel is INFURIATING. Sometimes he comes close to being an interesting character, but then quickly becomes annoying.
His whole deal is that he manipulates the Fantastic Four and their allies by giving them vague revelations about the future… only to then completely change his story.
So at this point it was already impossible to take ANYTHING this guys says seriously.
On a completely different note, this is the issue where Invisible Woman changes from her stripperific Psylocke cosplay to a version of her costume that I actually like.
Honestly it’s one of the best looks she’s ever had.
Also, because Dazzler is far from being the exception: obligatory underwear shot.
Fantastic Four #394 (1994)
by Tom DeFalco & Paul Ryan
Since Nathaniel is the only one who is not convinced that Reed is dead, Susan ends up striking some sort of alliance with him.
When Nathaniel dropped a hint about his “other son” in the previous issue, I was actually kind of intrigued. Because from a previous story we DO know that Nathaniel has another son: the ancestor of Kang the Conqueror, living in a parallel timeline.
That’s unfortunately not where the story is going. And despite the fact that Susan KNOWS about that son, she’s shocked by the revelation that Nathaniel has another son.
Fantastic Four #395 (1994)
by Tom DeFalco & Paul Ryan
See what I meant about Nathaniel being frustrating? “I know everything but I won’t say anything until an unspecified time” is his constant answer to everything. And for SOME reason Susan doesn’t realize he’s full of s##t.
Well at least she’s SLOWLY beginning to understand.
And speaking of s##t: Nathaniel also drops some serious hints that he’s also Doom’s father.
Spoiler alert: he’s NOT talking about Doom. Because you can never trust anything Nathanial Richards says. Ever.
Nathaniel’s future appearances are somewhat important for Doom’s eventual return, so I’ll cover them in another part of the intermission.
Historical significance: 0/10
The fact that Nathaniel took Doom’s place for a while goes nowhere.
90-ness: MORBIN’/10
That’s right, Morbius shows up in the Doctor Strange issue. Which is kind of refreshing since at least I can understand what Morbius is, whereas “Strange” is just baffling.
