Avengers vol6 #7 (2017)
written by Mark Waid & Jeremy Whitley
pencils by Phil Noto
cover by Alex Ross
It was only a matter of time before Doctor Doom met with other heroes in his new heroic phase.
The Avengers currently have an unusual roster.
We have familiar faces like Vision, Spider-Man and Hercules, plus the Jane Foster version of Thor (long story short, the hammer grants her Thor’s powers and a divine form), the Sam Wilson version of Captain America… and the character that will take center stage in this story: the new Wasp, Nadia Pym.
She’s the biological daughter of Hank Pym and his first wife, and she grew up in the same Red Room where they trained Black Widow.
Shortly after her debut, she’s basically been adopted by the original Wasp and they both operate in different teams.
This could have been a mess, but Nadia was given such a unique personality (as you’ll see shortly) that even as a massive fan of the original Wasp I love them both.
Doctor Doom, or I should rather say Iron Man, shows up to save the team from a throwaway magic threat…
…and to recruit the Avengers.
While the rest of the team reacts to his arrival as you’d expect…
…Wasp has the opposite reaction.
You see why I love her, right?
The thing about Nadia is that she’s a socially awkward supergenius who grew up in complete isolation and who really, REALLY idolizes any superscientist.
This makes sense, right? If you had next to no knowledge of Doom’s crimes and only knew his technological achievements, who wouldn’t geek out?
The rest of the Avengers are UNDERSTANDABLY suspicious.
I wonder why they’re learning about Doom’s new status quo JUST NOW… I can believe Maria Hill and S.H.I.E.L.D. haven’t informed them, since they currently don’t have the best relationship at the moment… but surely the Thing would’ve said something?
Heck MARY JANE WATSON knows about Doom’s new direction, and even if they’re not married anymore because of the dumbest decision in the history of literature reasons, you’d think she’d mention it to Spider-Man.
As soon as the Avengers agree to look into the situation, Doom teleports them without their consent.
Turns out the reason Doom recruited the Avengers is to infiltrate the last place where you’d expect to ever find Doctor Doom.
Nadia is worth the price of this book.
As weird as the situation is, Doom’s explanation makes sense: he’s not exactly great at staying out of the spotlight.
She’ll manage.
I suppose Doom could have used that illusion spell on himself to sneak into the girl camp, but… yeah it’s best if we don’t think about THAT.
Nadia infiltrates the camp and befriends some girls, which would have been the hardest part for Doom.
Love the background bit of Thor and Hercules arm wrestling.
The speed at which Doom and Nadia understand each other is astounding. The similarities between the two are there, but the biggest difference is that Nadia was forced to grew up without friends whereas for Doom it’s very much a choice.
I don’t know what Doom was worried about, this place looks fine.
They really do have badges for everything, don’t they?
Doom lets the Avengers fight the teenage mages… because of course he does…
…there’s the problem of getting rid of the demon they’re summoning without killing the girls.
The solution is to combine their superscience to banish the demon.
As you do.
Doom still has a loooooong way to go before he can get his hero badge.
You might have thought that Doom’s focus on Nadia was weird, but he was actually planning to continue the actions from his regular series: he’s been killing evil scientists, and he wanted to make sure if SHE was one as well.
Proving his good intentions to the Avengers is just a bonus.
And that’s it for Doom’s involvement, besides an off-panel mention of him suggesting to Wasp a few candidates for her think tank of girl supergeniuses.
I wonder if he had something specific in mind? Valeria Richards is the only one that would make sense for Doom, but she’s currently outside the universe and he thinks she’s dead.
It’s a real pity that the new Wasp hasn’t had a real breakthrough. She’s around, but she deserved to be more prominent… in fact, if it wasn’t for Kamala Khan and Miles Morales getting tons of (deserved!) praise for being a breath of fresh air in the superhero genre, I bet that SHE would have become the breakout new Marvel teenage hero.
Avengers vol6 #8 (2017)
written by Mark Waid & Jeremy Whitley
pencils by Phil Noto
cover by Alex Ross
Doom liked that appearance so much that he hangs around for one more issue.
The Alex Ross cover is gorgeous, it goes without saying, but am I the only one thinking he draws Sam Wilson way too old?
Doom shows up relatively late in this issue. The villainous Avenger X has been freed from her prison, and since her power is to drain superpowers she quickly knocks everybody out except Wasp.
Leave it to Doctor Freaking Doom to not only have a badass entrance…
…but also consider her little more than a nuisance.
Despite the fact that at this point she has absorbed the powers of Spider-Man, of Hercules and of a woman channeling the power of Thor.
Absolutely not a fair fight.
But this is still an Avengers book… even though this has been the Nadia Show so far… and she gets to prove herself by shrinking Avenger X.
And she traps Avenger X in the Microverse with a neat trick, providing the explanation for how people know which atom they’re supposed to land on.
Fortunately for Nadia, she has another way to get back home.
And that’s it for this team-up!
If you knew anything about Doom, Nadia, you would have offered him wine.
We know he can’t help himself with a good goblet of wine.
Doom significance: 0/10
Much to my displeasure, Nadia doesn’t become a close friend of Doom after this.
I kind of understand why, since Valeria does already act like Doom’s slightly more normal supersmart confidante, but a superhero beign a massive superfan of Doom’s technological prowess is unique to Nadia.
Silver Age-ness: 0/10
Not really.
Does it stand the test of time? 9/10
I only have two criticisms: I really don’t like the artwork, and besides Wasp the rest of the Avengers are barely supporting characters. I did skip a couple of minor scenes with them, but not much.
Other than that, this was fantastic!
Despite Waid being one of the staunchest proponents of Doom being an absolute monster during his FF run, he does develop Doom’s attempt to be a good guy rather well.
Granted, Waid is not the ONLY writer, but I’m not familiar enough with Jeremy Whitley to judge how much of an influence he had over this point.
Doom is still very much as scheming as he’s always been, but he does strike a personal connection with the absolute star of this two-parter.
It’s also pretty clear that Doom didn’t REALLY need Wasp to deal with this incredibly minor magic threat. In fact, I’m not even entirely sure whether he CARES about the girls summoning the demon; he certainly didn’t care for them to survive.
The rest of the Avengers should have known better, but I’m cutting them some slack: the only one who has more than superficial experience with Doom is Spider-Man, and even he hasn’t encountered Doom all that much.
Doom showing up in the second issue to deal with a mostly unrelated threat (Avenger X’s return is weakly linked to the demon, but it’s so minor it wasn’t even worth mentioning) makes me wish that Doom’s time as a good guy lasted longer… but aside from a Gwenpool story and a minor Spider-Man appearances, he will only interact with Iron Man, Ironheart and the remaining Fantastic Four members before he returns to his Doctor Doom persona.
Number of superheroes who have fought Dr. Doom: 136
Since the new Wasp is fighting WITH Doom, she’s not in the count.
Crazy tech
Doom can pinpoint Captain America’s shield even when it’s been shrunk into the Microverse.
Do you think Von Doom might have proposed Dr. Perera as a potential member for Janet’s group G.I.R.L. ?
I don’t know which are the membership requisites, but she seems to be significant enough in his current supporting cast.
As for the girl camp mission, I get the feeling that he genuinely wanted to have the Avengers on hand to learn a bit of hero behavior and protocols from their input and example. Mainly Nadia, but also the others to some extent.
Is the bit about Susan (why Storm instead of Richards?) being dear to Doom foreshadowing? I would expect him to describe Susan as someone who earned his respect, not necessarily endearment. Maybe he has more in common with Namor than we realized.
If I remember correctly the rules were quite loose, so while everyone else was a teenager I wouldn’t put past Doom to propose her.
Possibly it’s so old that Susan hadn’t married yet when the camp was established?
I’m not sure how much of a role Jeremy Whitley played in these Avengers issues but he was the writer of Nadia’s Unstoppable Wasp series, which may be why she took center stage with Doom.
“One demi, one secondhand” is such a good line. (I might have said “Yeah, but they’re both the kind that just hit things really hard rather than the ‘alter reality’ kind.”