Fantastic Four #568 (2009)
by Mark Millar & Bryan Hitch
This issue technically doesn’t feature Doctor Doom, but it’s important to understand the finale.
After defeating and murdering Doctor Doom last issue, the Marquis of Death and his much cooler-looking apprentice The Apprentice set their eyes on New York.
More specifically, they’re here to fight the Fantastic Four.
The Marquis of death is now wearing Doom’s mask, but he’s still not a fan of pants.
He’s still incredibly powerful, and the FF have a lot of trouble damaging him.
Unlike Doom, however, the Marquis has no sense of honor and he’s a pure sadist. So thanks to the Thing namedropping his Aunt Petunia, a frequent running gag for him…
So the Marquis teleports to her home and MURDERS AUNT PETUNIA.
Don’t feel bad for her. She will show up again in 2019 for the Thing’s wedding, without any explanation for either her resurrection or for looking much older.
The Marquis then moves on to psychologically torture Reed, which includes a detour that comes absolutely out of nowhere: Clyde Wyncham, from the “Marvel 1985” miniseries.
Thankfully, the Marquis summarizes the important stuff.
And there you have it. The premise of that miniseries was that Wyncham created versions of Marvel characters in a reality that didn’t have any.
I considered briefly covering it, but it’s so incredibly BORING… a complete waste of a passable premise.
The only remarkable part of 1985 was that the only supervillain copy created by Wyncham that was fully aware of being a copy was, appropriately, Doctor Doom himself.
Also, the fact that Wyncham was put into a coma by Reed is not even in the original miniseries. The closest thing was that he was supposed to be brought to the regular Marvel Universe where they know how to deal with people with powers.
But apparently there’s at least ONE alternate future where Wyncham will be corrupted by absolute power and became the Marquis of Death. I should point out that this is dumped on the reader within three pages, two of which are a two-page spread, after NO mention of Wyncham ANYWHERE on Fantastic Four.
The torture to Reed is to tempt him to execute Wyncham before he can turn into the Marquis of Death, otherwise the rest of the world will die. I assume the Marquis has some way to prevent this from deleting him from the timeline, otherwise who’s going to attack the FF?
And then the Marquis puts him against all versions of the Fantastic Four that he’s now mind-controlling and/or manipulating.
Well, more like the Fantastic 44444.
Fantastic Four #569 (2009)
by Mark Millar & Bryan Hitch
The finale of both the storyline and of the entire Millar arc earns a wraparound cover.
You have to admire Reed insulting the Marquis by pointing out that recruiting the Fantastic 44444 is not as impressive as he makes it sound.
After a bunch of shenanigans, the Thing comes up with the solution of waking up Wyncham from his coma and ask him to help.
Both are reality warpers, so this is a battle that’s almost impossible to visualize…
…so we’re not even going to try. Apparently this has significantly drained the Marquis of Death, and the Thing was as unimpressed as I was.
However, during all of this, Reed found a way to channel the powers of all the Fantastic 44444 COMBINED into the Fantastic Four.
If that doesn’t sound impressive… the Human Torch is able to reach the Planck Temperature!!!
Reed is selling the concept short. The Planck temperature is roughly 1.41×1032 °C.
How much is that in plain numbers?
141.000.000.000.000.000.000.000.000.000.000°C, or 9.4 trillion times the temperature of the core of the Sun… multiplied by yet another trillion!!!
No wonder the Marquis of Death is scared of this stuff.
The Marquis of Death is not entirely defeated yet, so this is where The Apprentice steps up…
…revealing himself to be Doctor Doom!!!
And this is the moment I’ve been waiting for. While the storyline itself has been kind of meh overall, the finale is PURE DOCTOR DOOM BADASSERY.
How did he survive being eaten by the gigantic ancestors of sharks? Basically by relentless stubbornness, presumably by using his Ovoid Mind Transfer to switch body after body.
As for how Doom returned to the present… he took the old way.
BY WAITING.
Also, remember the Watcher corpse at the beginning of the storyline? Doom killed him.
So… yeah. Doctor Doom is now millions of years old. Is this too much?
Perhaps.
But I can’t think of anything more Doctor Doom than dedicate himself to this plot for millions of years JUST TO PROVE HIMSELF SUPERIOR TO RICHARDS.
He’s also now powerful enough to EFFORTLESSLY murder the Marquis of Death.
On the plus side, he doesn’t care about the Fantastic Four anymore.
This is HUGE, right? Doom now is immensely powerful AND he doesn’t care about the Fantastic Four anymore!!!
A concept that will be explored in… uhm…
Yeah more on that soon, but this is COMPLETELY ignored by future stories.
Like the fact that Aunt Petunia was killed, or that the Thing almost gets married in this story… only to leave his fiancée at the altar because he’s afraid his enemies could kill her.
As I’ve mentioned before the Millar run is not entirely without merit… but this final copout might be one of the reasons why it’s utterly and completely ignored.
Doom significance: 4/10
The fact that Doom is millions of years old will be retconned in 2012 (we’ll jump ahead to cover that next time). Technically speaking there’s no direct retcon about him gaining a massive power increase… everyone just ignores it. My headcanon is that it was just a temporary boost.
Silver Age-ness: 2/10
Both the Marquis and Wyncham are VERY far removed from the Silver Age, sure, but the fact that one of them is randomly a future/alternate version of the other is a bit Silver Age-y.
Does it stand the test of time? 5/10
Oof, that’s a hard call.
Starting off with the Marquis of Death, he’s a massive disappointment. His introduction in the previous issues was excellent, but once he’s given the spotlight he’s so generic and boring.
Not to mention he’s revealed to be based on another boring disappointment!!!
What elevates the story a bit is its ending.
While I understand why Doom being millions of years old was later retconned, that was one heck of a moment for him. It’s also a pity that the concept of him evolving past his fixation on proving his superiority to Reed was abandoned, because there’s a lot of ground to explore there.
The fact that Doom was right by the Marquis the whole time is also awesome, but it does open a bunch of questions. First of all, you mean to tell me that it took Doom THAT long to find an opening against the Marquis? We’re talking about a guy who steals cosmic powers every other Thursday!
Also, the fact that the Marquis was one of Doom’s teachers goes completely unexplained. When did he meet him? And considering the Marquis is a complete nutjob who gets off on wasting entire civilizations to feed off their terror… why would he EVER become a teacher to anyone!?
And was The Apprentice also there when he was teaching Doom!?
Overall, the entire thing ALMOST reaches a passing grade thanks to Doom’s moment of glory… but the entire plot falls apart if you think about it for thirty seconds.
It was a Doombot all along
Doom is probably bulls##tting most of his boasts here, but it’s very unlikely this is a robot.
Times Doom has saved the world: 14
He’s the one who ultimately takes out the Marquis of Death, so I say it counts.
Times Doctor Doom has gained ultimate power: 9
It will be immediately forgotten but not TECHNICALLY retconned.
Crazy tech
Everything Doom does here is presumably magic-based.