Doctor Doom’s participation in the Infinity Gauntlet saga is the first time he shows up in a crossover without being one of the bad guys… kind of.
While Infinity Gauntlet is not anywhere near as complex as Secret Wars or Crisis, I’m only going to focus on Doom’s scenes and in his cameos in other titles.
INFINITY GAUNTLET #1 (1991)
by Jim Starlin & George Perez
It has a huge competition, but I think this one of the best covers ever done by the late George Perez.
Doom himself doesn’t actually show up in the first issue, but let’s recap the basics.
Basically the only thing you absolutely need to know is that Thanos is now omnipotent thanks to the Infinity McGuffin…
…which resulted in him being friendzoned by his love Death…
…despite killing off HALF THE UNIVERSE with a snap of his fingers.
INFINITY GAUNTLET #2 (1991)
by Jim Starlin & George Perez
Doom finally gets involved when his instruments discover that whatever caused half the people to disappear is located on the other side of the Galaxy. Considering how rarely Doom goes into space, that’s quite remarkable!
He’s also able to trace a connection to Doctor Strange, because at the moment he’s talking to Adam Warlock who himself has a connection to the Infinity Gems (looooooooooong story there).
Doctor Doom has rarely looked this good.
The other Doctor Strange connection is that he’s currently nursing Silver Surfer back to health (well is IS a doctor) after an encounter with Thanos.
Weirdly enough we’re not shown Doom’s attack on Strange… when Silver Surfer wakes up, Doom is already there.
Unfortunately for Surfer, Doom knows how to treat him. Especially when Surfer is injured.
This is Doom at his most ruthless. Remember that half of Latveria disappeared, though, so it’s perfectly in character.
Before he can attack, the newly resurrected Adam Warlock shows up and recruits everybody.
DOCTOR STRANGE, SORCERER SUPREME #32 (1991)
by Roy Thomas, Dann Thomas & Chris Marrinan
Before Doom can join the fight against Thanos, he has to waste some time with Doctor Strange fighting one of his lamest villains.
Upon discovering he’s suddenly in a Roy Thomas story, Doom needs a drink.
Can you blame the guy?
INFINITY GAUNTLET #3 (1991)
by Jim Starlin & George Perez
By this time the heroes have gathered to deal with the situation, and like they do in 99% of Jim Starlin stories involving his cosmic characters… the superheroes stand around doing absolutely nothing until Adam Warlock shows up.
Doctor Strange teleports more and more heroes at the Avengers HQ. Once he’s done, the only thing left to decide is who will be the leader… not that Doom has any questions about that.
Captain America says Adam Warlock should be the leader, which is… a little questionable.
Very few of the people around know Warlock personally, and even those who met him before his death… well Warlock is not exactly a people person. It would’ve made more sense if Doctor Strange was the one pushing for this, but Cap is the one to propose it.
I do like the fact that he’s the only one with the balls to speak to Doom like this!
After a lot more subplots, once we return to Avengers HQ a fight is about to start. I guess it was inevitable with so many superheroes surrounding Doom.
Iron Man is not exactly wrong, but Doom has done nothing wrong! Well, he’s done PLENTY wrong of course, but not TODAY.
Jim Starlin has the tendency to write most superheroes as idiots itching from a fight. It’s relatively restrained here, and it does make a little sense that there would be tension with Doom since he has history with nearly everyone here, but still…
…Warlock is basically treating all superheroes as babies. That’s Doom’s job!!!
INFINITY GAUNTLET #4 (1991)
by Jim Starlin, George Perez & Ron Lim
This is the big “everyone fights Thanos” slugfest. One thing that is often forgotten is that Thanos has complete control over the fight on the very first page, thanks to the Infinity Gauntlet.
The ONLY reason it’s a fight is that Mephisto convinces Thanos to switch off five of the gems, so for the rest of the story he’s only going to use the Power Gem.
Or at least that’s what he says. The comic itself doesn’t seem to follow that idea, because he displays a plethora of powers he doesn’t usually have, like shrinking the Hulk…
…trap Namor and She-Hulk in some kind of super-spore…
…or suffocate Cyclops with a force field…
…or transmute Nova into Legos.
Thor does manage to land a solid hit, which Doctor Doom exploits in an attempt to get the Infinity Gauntlet for himself.
In a truly astounding show of his technology, however, Doom survives a point-blank blast from the Infinity Gauntlet itself. That is SOME force field!!!
In fact Doom is back for a second round, after Thanos totally doesn’t cheat using the Reality Gem to turn Wolverine’s bones into rubber.
Okay, Thanos does have SOME level of manipulating matter… in one of his earlier 70s appearances he transformed a guy into stone, so MAYBE he was using the Power Gem to juice up that power.
But once he throws Firelord and Drax into the past, there’s absolutely no way he’s not using the Time Gem.
All heroes don’t have a particularly great show in the fight. With the sole exception of Captain America, who gets one of his most Captain America moments: standing up to Thanos despite having less of a chance than everyone.
Turns out the ENTIRE fight was just a gigantic gambit from Adam Warlock to distract Thanos so that the Silver Surfer could steal the Infinity Gauntlet… and it fails.
Sure was a great idea to choose Adam as your leader, Cap.
DOCTOR STRANGE, SORCERER SUPREME #34 (1991)
by Roy Thomas, Dann Thomas & Dan Lawlis
Sorry Doom, apparently it’s in your contract to have a Doctor Strange crossover and you didn’t even try last time.
The only people who survived the assault against Thanos are Doom, Doctor Strange, Silver Surfer, Adam Warlock and Scarlet Witch.
That’s particularly impressive for Doom because Scarlet Witch was saved by Strange, who in turn was away from the battle, like Surfer and Warlock. This means that Doom is the only one to fight Thanos and stay alive on his own. Everyone else was either killed or exiled.
To be fair, it’s a bit questionable whether Doom is currently alive or not. The main series itself treated him like he survived thanks to his tech, but apparently Thanos did something weird to him.
Strange and fellow mystic Doctor Druid take Doom to the monastery where he got his armor in his origin story. It’s surprising how rare these guys actually show up!
I know I frequently blast Roy Thomas’ writing and his unnecessary continuity links, so let me praise him for a bit of clever writing.
Druid, Strange and Doom all share a very similar origin story involving a stranger going to a monastery in the Himalayas. Doctor Druid is often considered a precursor to both Strange and Doom (he was even called Doctor Droom in his first story!).
Thomas finds a way to integrate the connection into the story and even leaves open the possibility that Strange himself was also a test run. Nice touch!
So the way to treat Doom from whatever Thanos did to him is BURN HIM ALIVE INSIDE A FURNACE.
Sounds legit.
So of course the outcome is for the good aspects of Doctor Doom to solidify into a black figure. Wait, WHAT!?!?
This leaves open the possibility of keeping the two parts separate, effectively redeeming Doom… but apparently having Doom around is SO instrumental on saving Earth that Doctor Strange decides to fight the “good” version!!!
This is all kinds of stupid. There’s no real reason to fight here!!!
Apparently Doom is so badass that his “good” side is powerful enough to single-handedly backslap the Sorcerer Supreme! Who wrote this, Doctor Doom!?
Then the real Doctor Doom shows up and is like “WTF are you guys doing!?”.
And so Good Doom is defeated by Bad Doom and his friends.
Also apparently Good Doom wasn’t the good part of Doom, but he was actually ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
INFINITY GAUNTLET #5 (1991)
by Jim Starlin & Ron Lim
This is the big “Thanos fights every cosmic being” issue, which is a treat if you’re a huge of the cosmic side of Marvel like me, but has no impact on Doom.
The important thing is that, thanks to a series of shenanigans, Thanos’ not-really granddaughter Nebula gets the Infinity Gauntlet for herself.
So Thanos is recruited by Adam Warlock, together with the exiled heroes that Doctor Strange managed to rescue in another issue of his own series.
I have no idea why the heroes are STILL trusting Adam Warlock at this point: unless they read the script, they should be even more suspicious than Doom considering how shady Warlock has acted.
While they don’t interact very often, Thanos and Doom actually share something: they both tend to lose because they give their adversaries what they need.
Thanos is expressly defined as doing this because he doesn’t feel worthy of winning; I wonder if the same could be said for Doctor Doom.
SILVER SURFER #59 (1991)
by Ron Marz & Tom Raney
Thanos was resurrected by Jim Starling on the Silver Surfer title, and he was for a while his nemesis. So it makes perfect sense that Silver Surfer would be the most vehemently opposed to working together with him.
Since Starlin is not writing the story, someone other than his pet characters is allowed to be the voice of reason. And it’s Doctor Doom, of all people!!!
And it does make some sense that Doom would propose a duel.
So the rest of the story is about Silver Surfer and Thanos fighting each other in a dream dimension wearing ridiculously metal armors.
It’s surprisingly enjoyable, but Thanos has no sense of style when it comes to armors.
INFINITY GAUNTLET #6 (1991)
by Jim Starlin & Ron Lim
In the previous issue, an assault against Nebule didn’t go as planned.
Now Nebula uses the Infinity Gauntlet to erase everything that has happened so far from history.
This means everyone is returned where they were before issue 1; some will remember what happened and some won’t. More on that later.
Warlock interferes with the Infinity Gauntlet through some cosmic nonsense, causing Nebula to drop it…
…and eventually Adam Warlock ends up gaining the Infinity Gauntlet.
And that’s about it. Thanos fakes his own death, which all the heroes are stupid enough to believe because they’re written by Jim Starlin. Except Warlock who is the only one to have figured out everything because he’s written by Jim Starlin.
Doom significance: 2/10
The event itself is erased from the memory of nearly every character… and of nearly every other writer, since future stories completely ignore the tact that nobody is supposed to remember half the universe disappeared!!! The reset button is utterly inconsistent. Multiple characters will make reference to the disappearance, but it seems nobody remembers much of the direct assault against Thanos. Doom himself never references the details of anything.
Having said that… it’s the first time that Doctor Doom shows up together with Earth’s heroes during a crossover, so it does have SOME small significance for him.
Silver Age-ness: 7/10
Since I’m only counting the Doom scenes this was going to be very low… until Roy Thomas brought up the literal manifestation of Good Doom, except maybe not? The whole thing is very confusing.
Does it stand the test of time? 8/10
Again: I’m only talking about Doom himself. And it’s good stuff! He’s incredibly competent, yet he keeps his trademark arrogance throughout the story. Him going for the Infinity Gauntlet is treated as a personal flaw… and yet in the end doesn’t Adam Warlock do the same?
Still, while this is easily the best of the “Infinity Trilogy”, some of the flaws of the future parts are already creeping up. Jim Starlin has the nasty habit of writing all other heroes as complete idiots and to have exclusively his pet characters, especially Thanos and Warlock, being the only reasonable ones. It’s not too distracting here, but you can see shades of it.
It was a Doombot all along
Considering how he survives, and especially what happens during the Strange teamup, there’s absolutely no way this is a Doomboot.
Times Doom has saved the world: 5
I wasn’t going to give this one to Doom, considering that he doesn’t accomplish much. But the entire point of the Doctor Strange teamup was that Doom was absolutely essential, so it counts.
Number of superheroes who have fought Dr. Doom: 76
There’s a few heroes around here that Doom hasn’t met them, but since he technically doesn’t fight anyone… in fact he’s an ally… I’m not adding anybody.
Crazy tech
Roy Thomas nonsense aside, Doom’s armor withstood a direct hit from the freaking Infinity Gauntlet!!!