What If? Secret Wars

What If? Secret Wars (2009)
by Karl Bollers & Jorge Molina
cover by Giuseppe Camuncoli

One last What If before we return to the regular Doom retrospective, and I’ve saved the best for last. ESPECIALLY that cover!

In addition to being supremely awesome, it includes a direct visual reference to Secret Wars #10.

We begin with Doctor Doom ready to face off an impossible challenge.

Specifically, he’s picking up a fight with the Celestials. You know, the Space Super Gods that treat regular gods look like insects.

The rest of the story is an extended narration by Doom revealing how we got here.
And since it’s a What If, it has the luxury of being able to give us an actual time frame!

The origin follows closely what we have learned over the years.

At least in this story, Doom is explicitly 10 years old when his mother dies and 21 when he goes to the Empire State University.
As far as I know, this is the ONLY story that ever gives us Doom’s age at the time.

Doom’s description on the way he hates Reed Richards is pure Doom.

Also, when attempting to rescue his mother from Hell he’s “armed with over twenty-five binding spells”.

He should’ve brought more.

He reaches the Tibetan monastery 1 years later, and studies there for 9 years.
Which results in Victor becoming Doctor Doom when he’s 30 years old.
That sounds a bit young, but there isn’t anything that can directly contradict it. It’s often assumed that Doom and Reed are the same age, but I don’t think it’s never said outright.
So Reed could be a bit older; we know from other sources he already had a degree BEFORE he went to Empire State.

While the diverging point from the main timeline hasn’t happened yet at this point, there IS one thing that is different already: the world knows about Doom’s takeover of Latveria immediately after it happens. Which was 1 year after he became Doctor Doom, in this story.
That’s not what happened in the main timeline, when the first time we saw Latveria the fact that it was ruled by Doom wasn’t public knowledge.

The reason he gives for refusing to give fair elections to Latveria is just classic Doom.

Doom’s first fight with the Fantastic Four is given as a little less than a year after the takeover of Latveria.
Which, if you’ve been keeping track, means that Doctor Doom was about 32 years old in his first appearance.

His first fight with Spider-Man is rather close to it; the same year, in fact.
Amazing Spider-Man #5 had a cover date of October 1963, by the way.

So up to this point the compression from publishing time to comic time isn’t much: two years of real time has been reduced to less than one.
But then apparently Doom meets the X-Men four years later. If this is supposed to be Uncanny X-Men #145, that’s a 1981 story. Which would mean we squeezed 18 years into 4 years.

So by the time Doctor Doom “dies” in Fantastic Four #260, he’s 35 years old.
If that’s correct for the main timeline, then Reed absolutely must be older because there’s ABSOLUTELY NO WAY he was only 35 during the Byrne run!!!

But now we have reached the divergence, and the reason why this story is titled “”What If Doctor Doom Kept the Beyonder’s Power?”.

Doom doesn’t just kill all the heroes in this version, he also kills the essence of the Beyonder that was hiding inside Klaw’s body.
Notice his description of Enchantress: “a male fever-dream worshipped by dead Vikings”.

So what DOES Doctor Doom do once he has supreme power and no enemies left?
He wants to turn the entire world into Latveria.

As it was the case when the original Secret Wars was being published, Invisible Woman is heavily pregnant and Tony Stark has succumbed to alcoholism.
This is past the Iron Man movie though, so he’s shown to have the Arc Reactor in his chest when that was absolutely not the case at the time this story was set.

The remaining heroes try to resist Doom, but he’s already using the Beyonder’s power so well that he can already be in multiple places at once.

Some fights are more personal. He defeats Iron Man by making Tony Stark permanently drunk, something that even for Doom is a low blow.

He has slightly more respect for Doctor Strange, but it’s still not even a fight.

Shockingly enough, though, Doom isn’t killing anyone!

It’s also yet another timeline when he saves Susan from dying in childbirth, although I don’t think that this time he gets to name the baby.

It looks like Doom is not being as tyrannical with Earth as he was with Latveria, because we only hear good things about his reign.
Then again, this is being narrated by Doom himself, so I can imagine he could be skipping some nasty stuff.

It’s at this point that I should point out the obvious: this story has the same structure of Watchmen #4, the issue where Doctor Manhattan recounts his origin story.
And I don’t think Bollers would deny the direct inspiration, considering he blatantly paraphrases one of the most memorable quotes of that issue.

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We have now reached the point in the typical “Doom wins” story where he faces his ultimate enemy: boredom.
He then picks up a hobby: waging war against the entire universe.

But once he wins THAT, he has a new hobby: assemble the Infinity Gauntlet.

And only NOW he goes to Hell to free his mother! Which is a bit weird: the power of the Beyonder SHOULD have been enough to deal with Mephisto.
Kind of weird that Doom went through the trouble of getting the Infinity Gauntlet first.

Throughout the story, Doom has been talking about the upcoming fight with the Celestials. Which is apparently due to him experiencing all of time all at once.

That fight with the Celestials? DOCTOR DOOM WON.

And Earth lost.

Doom doesn’t have anything left to do at this point…

…except saving the planet.
So Doom WILLINGLY gives up the power of the Beyonder in order to restore Earth.
Apparently the fight against the Celestials burned out most of the Beyonder’s power, and I have to assume the same must be true for the Infinity Gauntlet.

And so we end the story with Doom becoming a man once again, joining society as a regular human.

Presumably with the intent of conquering the place and returning to his former glory, because he’s Doctor Freaking Doom.

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Did any of this show up in continuity?
Kind of, during the new Secret Wars. He doesn’t give up his power willingly there, but he does go through a somewhat similar journey.

Silver Age-ness: 0/10
Despite a small part of this being set in the Silver Age, no.

Does it stand the test of time? 10/10
This is my favorite What If about Doctor Doom, and one of my favorite Doctor Doom stories in general. The fact that it’s based on my favorite issue of Watchmen is a bonus.
It’s one of the best showcases of what a force of nature Doom can be, and it gives a good context for how Doom sees the world.
From the perspective of a Doom scholar, as mentioned it’s also a useful source to give a timeline for Doom’s life. The years given by this story work for his origin, but it compresses the rest waaaaay too much. Attempting to give a precise timeline of a comic book series is always a futile attempt, but if I had to do what this issue did I would add AT LEAST eight to ten years to the age Doom is supposed to be at during the original Secret Wars.
Then again, this is a man who has time traveled so much that I am of the firm belief that Doctor Doom himself doesn’t even know how old he is at this point.
It could be argued that the story is a little too pro-Doom… the idea that he doesn’t kill anyone is laughable… but as with all the stories that are being told from Doom’s perspective, however, we have to consider him an unreliable narrator.
And for all his talk about being beyond pettiness… the way he deals with Tony Stark shows he’s far from above it all.
Plus that cover is just a work of art.