Fantastic Four Special #1 (2006)
by Dwayne McDuffie & Casey Jones
cover by Leinil Francis Yu
I don’t understand why Marvel stopped calling these things “Annual” and went with a variety of different titles; it just makes it much harder to track.
That being said, this is a great story by the late McDuffie; I won’t cover much of his underrated run because Doom doesn’t have a huge role there.
As usual in this period, the cover has absolutely nothing to do with the story. I usually like LFY’s artwork, but that is one ugly Thing.
We begin with Reed reminiscing about his first meeting with Doom, going as far as recreating the artwork of Fantastic Four Annual #2 and adding his narration. Neat!
Reed feeling guilty for what happened to Doom never made much sense, since all he did was trying to help. But McDuffie puts this into a different perspective, which still doesn’t 100% work but I think this makes a lot more sense.
The flashback adds a tiny detail to Doom’s origin: after the explosion that scarred his face, Reed sneaked back into the lab and took something from there.
(is it just me or he looks exactly like a Ditko-era Peter Parker?)
Reed has been narrating all this to Susan to explain why he accepted Doom’s invitation to have dinner together. This was published while Doom was still in Hell, but I’m placing it immediately after he goes back on the throne.
Which means Reed really changed his mind about the guy since the last time they fought in the Waid run!!! What a difference a change in writer can make.
It’s really a shame that the McDuffie run was rather short, because I think he’s one of the writers who understood Reed the most. To me he’s on the same level on John Byrne when it comes to writing Reed, which believe it’s HIGH praise from me.
Although I think we’re all agreeing with the Thing and the Human Torch.
But Reed is set on doing this, so he leaves the team with a memo on how to handle things.
Weirdly enough, Doom is identified as “Supreme Regent of the Republic of Latveria”.
At first I thought this made little sense, but… if this is immediately after he took power again, maybe Latveria hasn’t switched back from the new civilian government to an absolute monarchy. At least not officially yet.
This is a special day for Doom: it’s the anniversary of his mother’s death. Which I’m going to assume was ALREADY a public holiday and he just changed the theme.
Why do I get the feeling this will be the first and last time Latveria celebrates a “rapprochement festival”? If Doom keeps this up, he has A LOT of people he needs to reach out for.
Doom is really putting on a show for Reed.
You just have to love the way McDuffie writes Reed’s sarcasm.
But of course he’s Reed Richards, so all of Doom’s charm doesn’t distract him.
The rest of the Fantastic Four are guarding something that Reed firmly believes is Doom’s real target, and supposedly there are only 3 places in New York that can keep Doom at bay.
One is in the Baxter Building, where the Thing is staying.
One if Avengers Tower, where the Human Torch is now hanging out with Captain America and Spider-Man.
Another one is Damage Control. A bit of a stretch, but it’s no wonder it shows up: McDuffie created it, plus they’ve dealt with Doom before.
As you might have guessed, all three locations are attacked by Doombots.
Meanwhile, Doom and Reed are keeping themselves busy continuing a game of chess they left unfinished during college.
Showing the parallels between Reed and Doom is typically hit-and-miss, but this works.
Doom really didn’t send his best material to fight the rest of the FF.
That’s probably because the real focus is on the conversation between Doom and Reed, with the latter figuring out what Doom is after while casually inching towards a victory in their game.
The way Reed integrates his victory into his explanation on how he’s deduced what Doom is after AND the defeat of the Doombots is masterful.
Reed is also surprisingly genre-savvy today.
In the very last scene, we have the revelation of what exactly Reed thought about Doom’s experiment.
That’s a hilarious quote, Reed, but come on you’ve waited from 1962 to 2006 for this!
By now you’ve probably deduced that Reed didn’t take a part of Doom’s equipment, but something that used to belong to his mother.
And that’s how we end things. Too bad this didn’t turn into a regular thing, it could’ve replaced Doom’s annual fight with Mephisto.
Doom significance: 0/10
Sadly it seems Doom was right: this really did change nothing between him and Reed.
Silver Age-ness: 0/10
Not really.
Does it stand the test of time? 10/10
A criminally unknown masterpiece that should be required reading for anyone writing a story featuring Doom and Reed. Its only weakness is that the action is an underwhelming afterthought, but since it’s not the main focus I’m not penalizing it for this.
It was a Doombot all along
For some reason comics in this period are under the impression that Doom has blue eyes instead of brown as established, but I can’t imagine Doom giving such a personal task to a robot.
Crazy tech
Doom has used teleportation to move back and forth from Latveria many times, but it seems to have evolved into a very casual thing.