I originally planned to give the “Acts of Vengeance” event its own page, but after going into it Doctor Doom has a smaller role than I remembered. So we’ll going through the whole thing in batches and I’m placing the event under the 80s page, even though it bleeds into the 90s.
While the event affected nearly the entire Marvel Universe, it begins and later ends as an Avengers story, so… let’s go through the Avengers stories first.
AVENGERS #311 (1989)
by John Byrne & Paul Ryan
For some reason Doom is not addressed by name in the story, although it’s clearly him.
The same mysterious man who recruited Doom in Thor #410 is summoned to a secret meeting; we won’t learn his true identity until the end of the event, but he’s mostly addressed as “lackey” or “minion” as each of the big name villains believe he’s working for them, while it’s pretty much the other way around.
The only other recruit we see this time is the Mandarin, who also is not named, and who is wearing his awful 80s costume (and amazingly it’s not his worst design).
Out of all the big name supervillains he’s probably the one to interact the least with Doom.
Which is a shame because, even by this brief interaction, you can see that they work rather well together.
Doom’s “part” is provide an army of robots that sink the then-current Avengers headquarters, the artificial island Hydro-Base.
The base is defended only by Quasar and by the Avengers supporting cast. Considering my rule allows for the hero to be counted if they fight a Doom minion… this counts to add Quasar.
And no, it’s not just because Quasar is one of my favorite Marvel heroes.
This is a huge victory for Doctor Doom: he manages to completely sink the Avengers base without even showing up. And they don’t even learn he was behind it until much later!
AVENGERS #312 (1989)
by John Byrne & Paul Ryan
At this point the Avengers have figured out the gimmick behind Acts of Vengeance: supervillains attacking heroes they don’t normally fight.
The title of the issue applies to any superhero story ever, though.
This where we’re introduced to the cabal of supervillains gathered by “lackey”. They’re referenced as “Prime Movers” in the handbooks but I don’t recall ever seeing the name in a comic.
It’s a good moment to pause to reflect on this formation, because it has pros and cons.
Let’s address the elephant in the room: the Nazi Red Skull in the same team as the holocaust survivor Magneto. Reportedly the idea came from John Byrne who didn’t see the unfortunate implications behind this decision (!!!!), leading Mark Gruenwald to write a Captain America story where it’s revealed that the whole reason Magneto joined the “Prime Movers” was to make sure this was actually the real Red Skull and not an impostor (as the Nazi was supposed to be dead at the time). The story where Magneto opens a magnetic can of whoop ass against Red Skull is AWESOME, but that doesn’t exactly redeem the decision.
Red Skull’s presence also causes some problems with Doom, who should be really upset at him for conquering Latveria… twice… but it’s not really addressed.
Plus there’s the fact that Wizard feels really out of place in that team. Perhaps he takes the place of the Leader, who would’ve made a lot more sense but decided not to join (or presumably Peter David, who was writing Hulk at the time, didn’t agree… reportedly he wasn’t a big fan of the event).
Having said that I really like the idea of Marvel’s big bads having a very loose alliance; it also allows Kingpin to show what he’s made of when he’s able to stand up with villains of MUCH higher caliber thanks to his wits alone.
And finally there’s the issue of having so many egomaniacs in the same room: they can barely go two panels before they start fighting.
The only reason they remain allies for more than five minutes is the intervention of the “lackey”. It makes sense that he’d be able to manipulate them once we learn his true identity, although I still find it forced that the others agreed to work with Red Skull.
The rest of the story is about the Avengers fighting the Freedom Force (the seemingly reformed Brotherhood of Mutants)… which is a very weird decision considering the Prime Movers are NOT behind this. The whole idea of Act of Vengeance was that heroes would switch villains because of the event, why would you randomly include a different reason!?
CAPTAIN AMERICA #365 (1989)
by Mark Gruenwald & Kieron Dwyer
Since I’ve talked about the role of Red Skull, here’s how he’s recruited. Interestingly he agrees mostly based on the idea that Doom and Magneto have also joined the cabal, plus he’s impressed by the “lackey” showing magic powers.
The rest of the story is about Captain America fighting a mind-controlled Namor and the Controller. Good story, but it nothing to do with Doctor Doom.
CAPTAIN AMERICA #366 (1990)
by Mark Gruenwald & Ron Lim
Hey, the Prime Movers are not trying to kill each other every other panel! That’s progress!
AVENGERS #313 (1990)
by John Byrne & Paul Ryan
Since he barely interacts with Doom I won’t be covering the Mandaring much, but keep in mind that THIS is nowhere near his worst look.
He decided to attack the Avengers mansion on his own, in broad daylight. Doom is NOT amused!!!
Doom is, well he’s Doom, but he’s not exactly wrong here: the entire idea of the Acts of Vengeance was to use pawns and hide the big players behind the scenes, so Mandaring showing up like that goes completely against what they agreed.
Was there ever ANY doubt that Red Skull would be the one to screw the entire alliance?
This is obviously not the same thing as Magneto kicking Red Skull’s ass (seriously, read Captain America #367, it’s great!) but this is soooo satisfying.
Still, as much as we all love to hate Red Skull, he’s among the top supervillains for a reason.
Kingpin, of all people, is the voice of reason!!!
We’ll catch with the Prime Movers soon, but first we have to deal with Wizard being the first one to be captured by the Avengers and revealing the existence of the alliance.
And as I’ve mentioned earlier, just like every other member of the Prime Movers he thinks the entire thing was HIS idea.
The real identity of the “lackey” is supposed to be a mystery for a little bit longer, but seriously, the second he namedrops Midgard is there really ANY doubt about who he really is?
The story ends with the Prime Movers learning that Doctor Doom has actually been a Doombot the whole time.
There are still two Avengers stories worth covering, but since they’re the ending and the epilogue of Acts of Vengeance I’ll leave them for last.
Doom significance: 0/10
This could’ve been significant, as the first time he meets the Mandarin and could have a rematch with Red Skull… but nope.
Silver Age-ness: 4/10
Each villain being certain he’s the mastermind is a little Silver Age.
Does it stand the test of time? 7/10
To clarify, I’m talking ONLY about the Doom scenes, not the rest of the story or the whole crossover. They’re fine if more than a little contrived.
It was a Doombot all along
One of the most egregious examples. We’re left to doubt if the real Doom was involved in any of the tie-ins; we’ll see on a case-by-case, but in these stories specifically he’s certainly a Doombot.
Number of superheroes who have fought Dr. Doom: 65
Adding Quasar. Since Doom doesn’t sanction any of the other attacks shown in these issues, they don’t count.
Crazy tech
The robots sinking Hydro-Base are clearly inspired by the ones from Fantastic Four #85, but they REALLY overcame their weakness to water!!!
Acts of vengeance was not a bad idea to get heroes out of their comfort zone (but would have been more effective for groups of villains to ambush heroes “Masters of evil” style).
The Red Skull really is the ultimate marvel villain, as he is completely evil. Villains like Doom, Magneto, even Kingpin have some redeeming features but the skull is straight up evil. That said, he was pretty badarse taking out Doom, even if it was a robot “Learn that, Herr Docktor!”