Invincible Iron Man #593-600

After the disappointing finale of the Infamous Iron Man series, let’s speed through the remaining Doctor Doom appearances on the follow-up series.
These are not the LAST stories featuring Doom in Iron Man’s armor, but I’m getting these out of the way first because… believe it or not, but this is EVEN WORSE than the previous botched finale.

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Invincible Iron Man #593 (2017)
by Brian Michael Bendis & Alex Maleev

Irritatingly, the series is all over the place because it jumps around between scenes dealing with Tony Stark’s return, scenes with Ironheart taking his place, and scenes focusing on Doom because Bendis didn’t manage to end his own plots in the Infamous Iron Man series.
In this issue, there’s a huge prison break of supervillains.

Doom shows up to investigate. A later panel suggests that he used magic to enchant the guards so they wouldn’t bother him, but I feel like Doom would just have investigated without bothering with them.

The Thing is also there, so at least we have ONE character that Bendis seems to be able to write in-character.

It is interesting to see that Doom is taking personal responsibility, because the supervillains that escaped are the same ones that he put in jail.

The Thing also makes it abundantly clear that, unlike other characters in the previous series, he will NEVER accept Doom’s redemption. And he does this in a cool panel!

It’s telling that Doom doesn’t respond to this, suggesting that the Thing really did get to him this time.

And that’s the ONLY Doom scene in the book. See what I told you about being irritating?

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Invincible Iron Man #594 (2018)
by Brian Michael Bendis & Alex Maleev
cover by R.B. Silva

Hey at least Doom makes it to the cover this time!

We see Doom fighting against third-rate supervillain Chemistro.
Technically this is the THIRD Chemistro, brother of the original. I have a really hard time believing Doom has ANY kind of respect for his work, though… isn’t he just a petty criminal who got his hands on his brother’s physics-breaking gun?

Chemistro is just bait, though…

…because ALL the supervillains that Doom put in jail have sworn revenge, and will now gang up on him.

More on who is in this team in a minute. It’s a shockingly difficult fight for Doom.

The VAST majority of these people are so much below Doom’s level that the fact this team lasts more than two pages against him would be a joke if it wasn’t for just a couple of people.
One of them is Centurius, a supergenius debuting on Nick Fury of all series. He’s tougher than he’s usually given credit for, but the idea that he can sabotage Doom’s technology THIS easily is not very believable when people like Richards, Stark and Black Panther struggle with it.

He’s also old enough to have received a Nobel Prize in the 1930s, according to his first appearance, so he’s yet another occasion of Bendis completely ignoring a character’s background to make him talk like any other Bendis character.

I mean he talks the same way the Wrecker does, and that’s supposed to be just a common thug who just happened to be given magic super-strength.

And then Doom JUST LEAVES!?!?

Don’t get me wrong, I love stories where Doom is taken down a peg and exposed as a human instead of the force of nature that he believes himself to be… but THAT HAS TO BE EARNED!!!
Yeah THESE GUYS are taking on Doctor Doom and apparently winning.

You know who IS in this team, by the way?
The Hood is going to show up later, but for now the complete roster (who is not even shown well here, most of them are barely visible):

• Answer: any power convenient to the plot (I’m kind of serious)
• Armadillo: half-human half-guess, superstrong
• Centurius: as mentioned, supergenius with mind powers
• Chemistro: has a gun that transmutes matter
• Constrictor: has electrified Adamantium tentacles
• Crossfire: super-marksman
• Cutthroat: good at throwing knives
• Deathwatch: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
• Griffin: half-man half-monster
• Jigsaw: a regular gangster with no powers
• Living Laser: turns into pure lasers
• Razor-Fist: a martial artist with swords for hands
• Shockwave: martial artist with an exoskeleton
• Slug: a regular gangster who is supposed to be too fat to move
• The Brothers Grimm: can conjure up weird magic weapons
• Vermin: half-man half-rat
• Wrecking Crew (Wrecker, Thunderball, Piledriver, Bulldozer): all superstrong, maybe half as strong as the Thing each on their worst day

That’s 21 supervillains, sure, but:

• 2 are regular humans with no weapons (what are Jigsaw and Slug doing here???)
• 8 are humans with weapons or powers typically handled by street-level heroes (9 if you include Deathwatch, who I know next to nothing about)
• 2 are kind of strong but nowhere near heavyweights (Armadillo and Griffin)
• 2 are the Brothers Grimm, who would give trouble to non-magic users but should be a cakewalk for Doom

So 14 to 15 of these would BARELY be cannon fodder to Doom.
I would say that Centurius, Living Laser and the Wrecking Crew are the only ones who could possibly give him ANY trouble. Take out at least one of these three and I’d say that Iron Man alone could take on the entire team.
And they’re the ones that will take out Doctor Doom?

Sounds legit.

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Invincible Iron Man #595 (2018)
by Brian Michael Bendis & Alex Maleev
cover by R.B. Silva

By this time, Tony Stark has been resurrected. Will he actually meet Doom?

Despite fleeing for his life in the previous issue, Doom is instead gone to talk to Dr. Amara Perera.

She still wants nothing to do with this plot, or with him, and she is YET AGAIN DRAWN COMPLETELY DIFFERENTLY.
I swear if they revealed that this was actually Mystique in disguise I would have bought because she is NEVER drawn the same way TWICE.

That was the opening scene of the book. Doom then proceeds to skip the ENTIRE rest of the issue until the very end, where he’s ambushed in his house…

…by the Hood, who is the leader of this team of losers. To which he has added the Corruptor, a guy with mind manipulation powers we will see again shortly.

So with his privacy invaded by a guy trying to kill him, Doom just… teleports away with magic?

You know I’m starting to get the feeling Dr. Perera is not the only character trying to escape this plot.

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Invincible Iron Man #596 (2018)
by Brian Michael Bendis & Alex Maleev

No, I was mistaken, Doom didn’t teleport away. He magically summoned some narration to explain to the reader what the heck he’s doing.

Okay taking out Living Laser makes perfect sense, sure, but why not target everybody else?

Good thing for that narration, otherwise I wouldn’t have guessed that Doom is mind-controlling Hood to shoot himself. Not sure why he’s doing THIS instead of the million other ways he could deal with those losers with magic, though.

The Corruptor’s power works the same way of the Purple Man’s, who we famously saw in Emperor Doom could not control Doom.
Maybe if the Purple Man was lamer, it could have worked.

In what is possibly the only bit I liked in this entire storyline, Doom not only resists the Corruptor’s power but he also STILL mind-controls Hood into killing him.

I know that Doom is currently in a no-kill phase, but I find it unbelievable that he’s teleporting Hood to a safe location and not straight into jail.
Also, highlighting that this entire scenario is utterly unbelievable does not make it any more believable.

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Invincible Iron Man #597 (2018)
by Brian Michael Bendis & Alex Maleev

As if the writing didn’t make me mad enough, Doom then travels to Latveria to his mother’s grave (which is apparently in the middle of nowhere)…

…but it also has Doom curse his mother for making him what he is!?
HAVE YOU EVER READ A DOCTOR DOOM COMIC IN YOUR LIFE, YOU HACK!?!?

If you missed the Bendis dialogue, the Wrecking Crew is roaming the ruins of Castle Doom.

Wait wait wait.
Doom has abandoned the castle for weeks, during which it was under custody of S.H.I.E.L.D. for a significant part of the transition… and they DIDN’T find the time travel technology!?
Worst still, THE WRECKING CREW found it???

Well the place is STILL swarming with Doombots, so I guess EVERYBODY sucks at their job in this universe.

Don’t get me wrong, the Wrecking Crew is tough, but they’re not “taking on Doom alone” tough.

Citation needed, much?

Doom takes down the Crew with ease…

…until Hood and his team show up.
The Hood’s magic bullets manage to incapacitate Doom enough for the rest of the team to gang up on him.

This feels COMPLETELY unearned. Hood is powered by Dormammu, sure, but Doom is the kind of guy who could probably fight Dormammu directly for a couple of rounds… it REALLY feels that the only reason Hood is this successful is that he’s blatantly the writer’s pet.

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Invincible Iron Man #598 (2018)
by Brian Michael Bendis & Alex Maleev

The Hood can apparently block Doom’s access to magic, something that Doctor Strange himself has never been able to do.
Sounds legit.

A couple issues ago we had a whole page with Doom explaining why he’s taken the Iron Man mantle and I still don’t quite get it.

Notice that Hood, who has apparently made it his life’s goal to get revenge on Doom, has not given a single thought about his current status.
Not surprising, since last issue he didn’t know about the powers of the guys he took with him to fight Doom.
There are plenty of stories where I like the Hood as a character, but I swear every single time he becomes Bendis’s pet he gets dumber.

This is one of the most embarrassing defeats Doom has ever suffered, and he swears revenge on Hood. But I’m guessing this entire storyline left such a sour taste in everyone’s mouth (UNDERSTANDABLY) that he never actually gets around to it.

And then Doom just teleports away. This is what, the third time in this arc?

Specifically he teleported to Dr. Amara Perera AGAIN, and apparently he’s aware that she’s pregnant with his child.
SOMEHOW, since I’m still not sure when exactly they slept together.

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Invincible Iron Man #599 (2018)
by Brian Michael Bendis & Alex Maleev

Honestly I wouldn’t have put past Doom to also already know the child’s gender.

Hey Doom might be an absolute monster, but he does pay child support!

However, when you get down to it, there is still a glimpse of classic Doom beneath his benevolent façade. Despite his words of support, he is still exploiting Amara for his needs and doesn’t give a crap about the fact that he’s clearly ruining her life.

And that’s apparently romantic? This is probably Doom’s most toxic romantic relationship yet.

And I remind you that the precedents are a) the witch who tried to compete with him about who could out-villain the other best b) the childhood sweetheart that he sacrificed to Hell.

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Invincible Iron Man #600 (2018)
written by Brian Michael Bendis
pencils by Alex Maleev (Doom sections only)
cover by Chris Sprouse

This is The Big Return of Tony Stark as Iron Man, plus the conclusion to the entire Bendis run and technically of the Infamous Iron Man series as well… and Doom BARELY interacts with Tony.

While it’s well outside of the scope of the retrospective, I should point out that the rest of the book is completely bonkers.
Without any further context: it has Leonardo Da Vinci working with Blade.

The credits don’t specify who drew what page, but in addition to Maleev we have also: Stefano Caselli, David Marquez, Daniel Acuña, Leinil Francis Yu, Jim Cheung, Mike Deodato Jr., Mark Bagley and Andrea Sorrentino.
I don’t know if any of them decided to draw Graviton as one of the Hood’s villains or if it was in the script; at him giving trouble to Doom WOULD have made sense!

Since this is the finale, we have a Big Dumb Battle between the Hood’s gang, an army of Doombots and one of Iron Man armors.
Most of which are there to fight Jigsaw and Slug, I’m sure.

The big Doom-Stark interaction we’ve been dying to see.

And then we have this overwritten narration about Doom from the point of view of… someone. You might think this is Mephisto from the phrasing, perhaps Dormammu, but I promise that it will make way less sense.
It’s also once again COMPLETELY misunderstanding his relationship with his mother.

There is the tiniest bit of insight hidden in that monologue, which could have been explored on Infamous Iron Man if that series didn’t self-destruct in a disappointing finale.
Because if Doom’s entire journey was always supposed to be about him trying to fix his own screwed up life by performing good deeds, and ultimately failing because he’s a fundamentally broken person… it WOULD have been a great story, but I honestly don’t see it AT ALL on the pages.

It also doesn’t help that his plot is COMPLETELY disconnected from anything Stark does in this series, to the point that he barely notices Doom disappears to take on the Hood personally.

Hood is trying his best to corrupt Doom into joining forces…

…and if that sounds out of character for Hood, it’s because at some point Dormammu has taken over. This comes COMPLETELY out of nowhere.

Doom is using some kind of forbidden spell to do… something, I guess?

Unless you’ve had the misfortune of reading this, I cannot emphasize enough how utterly disconnected from everything else Doom’s involvement turns out to be.

In fact we close with Doom having defeated Hood, at the price of his face… and perhaps his soul, I guess?

He also does… something to Castle Doom. Given future appearances, I’m guessing he uses magic to repair it perhaps?

In the end we learn who was doing the narration about Doom’s relationship with his mother… and it was the Tony Stark A.I. that assisted Ironheart in the previous run.
I have absolutely no clue how he knows anything about Doom.

And we finally, FINALLY end this trainwreck with a scene set in the future, where a bunch of mutants talk to Sorcerer Supreme Tony Stark.

This future is revised in the X-Men Annual that I mentioned has a Rawhide Kid cameo, and has had a couple of minor appearances later.

It’s not just the departure of Bendis from Iron Man, it’s his leave from Marvel itself… and it has two whole pages celebrating his 18 years writing for them.

You won’t see Bendis on this site for quite a while, potentially not until he gets around to ruining the Legion of Super-Heroes.

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Doom significance: 5/10
Exactly two things from this have repercussions. One is Dr. Perera being pregnant with Doom’s child, which believe it or not is only mentioned ONCE after this.
The second is that this restores Doom’s facial scars that had been healed by the latest Secret War.
I don’t think any other issue has brough up HOW he was scarred exactly, since I’m not sure anybody could figure out what happened in that final scene.

 Silver Age-ness: 0/10
Even the Silver Age would have made Doom losing to these idiots more believable.

Does it stand the test of time: 0/10
This was absolutely exhausting, both to read in real time when it was being published and to review. I kept expecting Bendis to do something, ANYTHING with the Doom plot… and he just d-r-a-g-s it out without ever finding a point.

What a colossal disappointment: the first half of the Infamous Iron Man was dripping with potential and it was giving us genuine insight into Doom’s redemption… and it devolved into this crap.