Fantastic Four vol5 #12 (2014)
by James Robinson & Leonard Kirk
This series was intended to act as the last Fantastic Four adventure for a while, and one of the many reasons why it failed might be that Doctor Doom wasn’t really all that involved with it.
We meet him in Latveria, still damaged from the attack from the Invisible Woman in the previous Annual. This ignores the various times Latveria has appeared after that, from Loki to the whole AXIS crossover.
You might be forgiven for thinking this is set before all those stories, but it can’t be because NOW Valeria decides she wants to go back home. She was Doom’s sidekick throughout those adventures.
Also Doom might still be feeling the effects of the “Inversion” that temporarily made him a good guy.
You can read this as either Doom lying to himself to convince himself that he doesn’t need Valeria, or that he really doesn’t care for her and was just toying with her feelings.
The latter is probably the intended characterization, because all this time while Valeria was trying to change Doom’s ways to be more altruistic… he was actually using her to better conquer the world.
“Or perhaps worlds”, as he put it.
I’m going to assume this was supposed to tie to other plots that were dropped, because as it is it doesn’t lead to anything and doesn’t make all that much sense… all Valeria had Doom do was move some resources around, how does THAT lead to conquer multiple realities???
Doom significance: 0/10
It’s not just forgettable, it arguably makes his previous appearances worse. Just skip it.
Silver Age-ness: N/A
Does it stand the test of time? N/A
Not a real review. Doom is completely wasted in this series, which as you can see basically ignores his other appearances in this period. What a disappointment for what was intended to be the end of the Fantastic Four.
Speaking of disappointments, the MASSIVE conspiracy that ruined the Fantastic Four throughout this entire series is eventually revealed in #14 to be caused by a guy who used to stalk Susan.
Yes, the Big Bad Guy who (temporarily) destroyed the Fantastic Four is a guy we never met before but SOMEHOW is able to manipulate events behind the scenes for YEARS, including working with Psycho-Man of all people!
This guy called himself The Quiet Man. Technically speaking I suppose he’s still around somewhere, but why would anyone want to bring back this Villainous Mary Sue Chameleon wannabe?
This Fantastic Four run ends in 2015, right before Secret Wars. They won’t get a regular title until 2018.
And that was the last Doctor Doom story before the new Secret Wars REALLY kick in.
But before we tackle that, we’re going to take an extended intermission as a breather, going back to the 2000s for Doctor Doom’s various appearances in the two lines intended for a younger audience: Marvel Age and Marvel Adventures.