Penance: Relentless #4 (2007)
by Paul Jenkins & Paul Gulacy
Doctor Doom mercifully skips Civil War, but unfortunately he gets involved into one of the dumbest things to come out of it: Penance.
We do get an amazing cover, at least.
Norman Osborn is currently the leader of the new Thunderbolts, and he gets summoned by SHIELD so that he can look at Invisible Woman’s boobs.
Also, the Thing looks strangely short.
Classy. I know he’s the bad guy, but come on.
Penance is a member of the Thunderbolts now, but he’s gone rogue and decided to attack Latveria.
Which, needless to say, is a bad idea almost as much as turning Speedball into Penance.
Also Tony Stark is the director of SHIELD now. He’s also not the biggest fan of Osborn, to the point that in order to force him too cooperate he injected him with truth serum.
Osborn’s Thunderbolts work for the US Government, not for SHIELD, so Stark can’t exactly fire him… but I’m not entirely sure this is the best way to deal with him.
Also, WOULD a standard truth serum work this well on Osborn, considering he still has the Goblin Serum in his blood?
The situation is pretty bad because SHIELD in this period is definitely a United States organization (nevermind that it makes no sense with SHIELD’s history), and Penance has stolen a highly armed ship.
But why would Penance do this? Let’s hear it from the man himself.
Tony is understandably worried about this escalation. We get a brief mention of Doom cutting a deal with Namor; that’s from one of Doom’s cameos from this era that gets rarely mentioned.
The FF completely fail to convince Penance to abandon the mission.
Once Penance lands in Latveria, we learn why he’s here: Doom has kidnapped and imprisoned Nitro, the exploding supervillain who was responsible for murdering a bunch of people at the beginning of Civil War.
Reed decides to take the situation directly to Doom, and their conversation is quite interesting.
It’s not often that Doom can accuse someone else of being hypocritical and being 100% correct, but SHIELD really did screw up royally this time.
The might just be the most overtly political Doctor Doom scene ever. And not an unrealistic reaction from a foreign leader around 2007.
There is a truly bizarre artistic decision: Doom is transmitting this message from a surprisingly low-tech station. This would be a nice contrast with the image he projects and would work great FOR ANYONE BUT DOCTOR DOOM.
And speaking of scenes that would work great with other characters: Penance walking through the Latverian army like a horror monster would be excellent…
…except when you remember this is freaking Speedball!!!
Penance then makes his formal request to Doom: give up Nitro.
Well that’s how Doom SHOULD react to such a threat, but he’s shockingly polite about this.
To get on Doom’s best side, Penance reveals that there’s a CIA satellite about Latveria.
According to him Doom doesn’t know it’s there, but COME ON.
Doom humors Penance, proposing a duel between them to decide the fate of Nitro.
Penance decides to start the match by backstabbing Doom while he’s giving orders to his guards to stay out of the fight.
I’m a Doctor Doom superfan so perhaps I don’t count, but… would ANYONE be rooting for Penance in this fight? Especially after that cheap shot?
Doom goes all out against Penance, but SOMEHOW his mask gets damaged.
I suppose Penance reflected part of the attack back to Doom? I didn’t cut any panel in this sequence, so you tell me.
And now, ladies and gentlemen, is when the story gets really really dumb.
Yes.
NOW.
Because Penance SOMEHOW knew that the fight would cause Latveria’s nuclear reactor to fail. Presumably because of the damages caused by Doom’s weapons?
That’s not the dumb part. Well it IS dumb, but it’s not THE dumbest.
No that title goes to the fact that Doctor Doom is afraid the United States might invade Latveria if they discover that the country is almost ready to have nuclear power.
WHAT!? I’m supposed to believe Latveria doesn’t have nuclear power ALREADY!?
Even when Doom’s armor is ROUTINELY described as nuclear powered? Even when Super-Villain Team-Up #6 was explicitly about Latveria having nuclear weapons!?
And if THAT wasn’t stupid enough… Doctor Doom decides to surrender rather than risk an invasion from the United States.
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Bendis will soon write a much better Doom reaction to an invasion.
He also offers Penance to grant him asylum in case the Thunderbolts don’t want him back.
The panel showing Doom’s perspective from his mask makes me wonder: how the heck does Penance see anything!? What a stupid character design.
And so we end with Penance finding Nitro.
The following issue is the last of the series, which ends with Penance torturing Nitro by making him feel the pain caused by his own explosions.
Surprising nobody, Nitro will eventually come back like nothing happened.
Doom significance: 0/10
Silver Age-ness: 0/10 
Does it stand the test of time? 3/10
Some of the artwork is great, although there are some truly baffling decisions here and there and the facial expressions often feel very off. And I did enjoy Doom’s talk with Reed.
But the rest of it… what a pretentious piece of crap.
It was a Doombot all along
So we can all assume this is a rather inferior Doombot that didn’t realize Doom already knew about the satellite and that accepted Penance’s request because his programming had no answers on how to deal with the situation, right? There is NO WAY the actual Doctor Doom would act this way.
Number of superheroes who have fought Dr. Doom: 94
Adding Penance, but under the name Speedball since I refuse to acknowledge that idiocy.
Crazy tech
Doom seems shockingly low-tech for his standards.