We begin our look at Doom’s origins with a couple of rather unusual continuity inserts.
It’s going to be pretty hard to top how early these take place: Doom isn’t even BORN yet!
BLADE vol.4 #2 (2006)
by Marc Guggenheim & Howard Chaykin
cover by Marko Djurdjevic
This is one of the coolest Doom covers I have ever seen. And he’s not even on it!
The story is told out of chronological order, but to concentrate on Doom I’ll avoid jumping around in time. Doom recruits vampire hunter Blade with his usual methods.
Blade is smart enough to know that he’s absurdly outmatched.
Still, the Doombots don’t give much of a fight: this is actually the way Doom sent his invitation!
I think this might be the first time we ever see anyone take a plane to Latveria. And willingly, too!
Blade easily reaches the castle and even meets Doom face to face. You have to admire his guts.
But, I mean, come on.
Doom explains why he wants Blade’s help… he’s apparently to save Doom’s life before he was even born.
The idea that Doom’s memory goes all the way back to when he was still in his mother’s womb will also be referenced in the “Books of Doom” miniseries. We’ll cover that one as well, eventually.
Since Blade is half vampire, Doom offers to cure his vampirism if he does his job. And being Doom, he doesn’t wait to see if Blade accepts before sending him back in time!
Once Blade is in the past, he goes to look for Doom’s mother in the castle’s prison. Except when he finds her:
1) She’s already kicking ass on her own
2) She knew Blade was coming!
Yep. This is definitely Doom’s mom.
Blade and Cynthia Von Doom team-up against the Latverian vampires, and she definitely knows more than she’s willing to admit.
Having saved Doom’s mom, Blade returns to the present.
And Doom delivers: he actually has a cure for vampirism ready at all times!!!
Blade ponders whether he’ll take the elixir, since it would also take away his powers and make him a less effective vampire hunter. But that’s well beyond the scope of this retrospective.
Astonishing Tales: Dominic Fortune #4-6 (2009)
by Dean Motter & Greg Scott
This a limited series starring detective and future pulp-style hero Dominic Fortune.
The story is told as if this was actually happening during WWII, so its placement in continuity is dubious at best, but it does have some interesting stuff relevant to Doom.
For starters, it’s the only story where we are given a reason for the name Latveria’s capital.
Doom renamed it Doomstadt (what else), and in other stories we’ll be told that its name was originally Hassenstadt. Which doesn’t make any sense, so we get this:
Dominic Fortune’s reasons for being here are complicated and way beyond the scope of this retrospective, but it has something to do with Wakanda.
Something interesting about this series is that, since we’re playing loose with continuity, we can get some details that we typically don’t, such as detailed locations for fictional countries.
Dominic and his customer Amanda have to escape from some Nazis, and she twists her ankle. A mysterious stranger offers to help.
At the end of issue 4, we learn that this is Doom’s father.
Dominic learns more about the Von Dooms and how they are persecuted under the Nazis who are slowly taking over Latveria.
Wakanda’s connection comes form an extremely familiar-looking mask under Werner’s possession.
A pity that this series is in such a continuity niche, because this would otherwise be a very cool connection.
Unfortunately for this review, that clue leads Fortune to Wakanda for the entirety of the rest of the series, where he also meets Black Panther’s father T’Chaka.
The ONLY connection to Doom is at the very end, where we are shown the birth of both Doctor Doom and Black Panther.
This is stretching it quite a bit even without invoking the sliding timescale!
A date birth of 1937 would mean that Black Panther would’ve been 29 years old in his first appearance in 1966, so that checks out.
But it would also mean that during his first appearance in 1962 Doctor Doom was only 25 years old, and that doesn’t work. AT ALL.
Doom significance: 0/10
It was pretty neat to see Doom’s parents outside of a flashback, but still this won’t have any effect.
Still, unless someone writes a story about Doom’s conception, it’s fairly impossible to set a Doom appearance earlier than the Blade story!
Silver Age-ness: 1/10
No effect whatsoever is made to make this feel like stories published in earlier times. Still prevented from being a complete 0/10 by the idea that Doom’s memory goes back to his womb and that Black Panther, Doctor Doom and even Red Skull (he shows up later) are randomly connected.
Does it stand the test of time? 7/10
Blade’s story would’ve been fine if it wasn’t for its confusing out-of-order beginning; believe me, I’m doing you a favor by telling the story chronologically. Despite that, it’s a neat little story that uses Doom and even his mother very well. Chaykin’s are here is… an acquired taste, to be gentle.
Dominic Fortune’s miniseries is great, despite the chronological hiccups, even if having only 9 pages for each issue really hurts it. I highly recommend checking it out.
Number of superheroes who have fought Dr. Doom: 37
Adding Blade to the list. Obviously Doom doesn’t “meet” Dominic Fortune since he’s not born yet!