When I decided that the Doom retrospective would get into the 90s and beyond, there was one review that I dreaded so much I seriously considered skipping it.
It wasn’t Onslaught (which is very soon after this one).
It wasn’t Heroes reborn (which is right after that).
It was the storyline that remains a blight on one of my favorite series of all time… Doom 2099.
Which, in case you don’t know, was a series following a time-displaced Doctor Doom who found himself in the year 2099 to contend with a new generation of heroes.
Not only Doom wen through lots of character development there, but that series contains some of my favorite Doom moments ever. I unabashedly LOVE this series!!!
ESPECIALLY during the Warren Ellis run…
…where Doom staged a coup and made himself President of the United States.
It was also a golden opportunity for us to have ANY idea of how Doom runs a country in a (relatively) realistic way.
Doom 2099 was typically far more composed than his 20th century counterpart, more willing to admit his mistakes and learn from them, and generally more humane.
Sometimes the mask slipped, though.
The identity of Doom 2099 was a mystery for its entire first 25 issues (written by John Francis Moore), helped by the fact that Doom was dead in the present day during most of the run.
There were A LOT of theories, the most popular being that Doom 2099 was actually Kristoff, but we later discovered he really was Victor Von Doom.
As a massive fan of both the classic Doctor Doom and of Doom 2099, you can imagine how eagerly I waited for them to meet.
For the longest time, the closest thing we got was this hilarious simulation from issue 6.
But the Ellis run had its perfect ending (certainly a better ending than the embarrassing debacle that actually happened to the 2099 line), with a great examination of Doom’s character.
But I’ve rambled enough. How do you completely screw up the meeting between Doctor Doom and Doom 2099?
Doom 2099 #40 (1996)
by Tom Peyer & John Buscema
The two main Doom 2099 armors (the original blue one and the “presidential armor”) are among my favorites. His third armor leaves much to be desired, and even John Buscema seems to have trouble making it look cool.
We begin with Namor, of all people, witnessing a giant underwater vessel sucking up all sorts of life forms from the ocean, of all things.
Then we move to Latveria, where Doom is worried about a rogue planet approaching Earth’s solar system. This basically goes nowhere in this storyline, and in fact I’m not clear what that is supposed to be… in the following issues the villain of 2099 is the alien race Phalanx, so I suppose it’s them.
Okay so I get trying to revitalize the title by bringing in the original Doctor Doom, and I understand tying things to Namor since he has tons of history with Doom.
But WTF is Daredevil doing in this storyline!?!?
After we lose a lot of pages with Doom needlessly worrying about some mysterious damages to his castle, it’s finally time for Doom 2099 to show up. And keeping in line with earlier comments he made against the simulation, he has little patience with his counterpart.
Doom 2099 summarizes the events of his series, and most importantly explains his reasoning for going back in time: when he was deposed as President, the entire country of Latveria was murdered by “necrotoxins” that liquified the people (!!!), and he wants to change history.
That’s not a bad starting point for the story. But unfortunately Doom is in full “written by DeFalco” mode (even if he’s not writing him now), so he doesn’t believe Doom 2099 is his future self (WHY!?) and the two fight for basically no reason.
To differentiate the two Dooms, the 2099 one then frees one of Doom’s minions that was imprisoned for simply interrupting his master. That’s not a bad characterization of Doom 2099: he was still capable of being a cruel monster at times, but he refrained from this kind of pettiness.
The boy turns out to be significant. Because thanks to him, Doom 2099 uses the crabs he recovered from the ocean (the Namor scene, remember?) to take over a drug company.
Spoiler alert: this won’t make sense and basically goes nowhere.
Doom 2099 #41 (1996)
by Tom Peyer & John Royle
cover by Humberto Ramos
If you think the story was bad so far and that the cover’s artwork is terrible… you haven’t seen anything yet.
The artwork is in fact WILDLY inconsistent between issues. For example, the Latverian boy that Doom rescued looked nothing like this before, and Doom randomly switches to an alternate version of his presidential armor:
The reason why Doom stole all of those crabs is that they are supposed to be used to make Latverians immune to the necrotoxins that will kill them in 2099. More importantly to the story, the crabs secrete a venom that is HIGHLY addictive.
Most of the story follows the fight between Doom 2099 and Namor, with Daredevil caught in the middle because he was investigating the crab trafficking.
I still cannot believe this storyline centers around freaking crabs.
Namor eventually frees the original Doom, who vows to destroy Doom 2099 because… because.
God is this crossover stupid.
Doom 2099 #42 (1996)
by Tom DeFalco & Jeff Lafferty
cover by John Buscema
At last, this storyline gets a nice cover…
…but once you open this book OH GOD, WHAT HAPPENED TO THE ARTWORK!?
And not only that, but now we have Tom DeFalco writing. And since he doesn’t understand Doctor Doom, I’m not surprised that he doesn’t understand Doom 2099 AT ALL, since he’s even more ruthless and cruel than his 20th century counterpart.
I know I keep repeating myself, but this plot is unbelievably stupid. You mean to tell me that Doom’s solution to save the Latveria of the future is to make the entire population addicted to drugs for a full century!?!?
This might just be the worst story I have ever reviewed. I’ve done several so bad it’s good stories, but this one is so bad it makes me physically ill.
Why does the fight between Doom and Doom 2099 revolve around f####ing crabs!? Why is Daredevil still here!? Why is Doctor Strange involved now? And WTF IS THIS ARTWORK!?!?
“Four Freedoms Plaza”? That is clearly the Baxter Building! The Four Freedoms Plaza has A FREAKING GIANT 4 ON TOP, HOW DO YOU SCREW THIS UP!?!?
Of all things, DeFalco decides to link this clusterf##k to Fantastic Four #361 (perhaps the only halfway decent Doom he’s written in his run), because Doom 2099 is using as his headquarters Doom’s older base from that story.
We’re sorry, Comics Archeology is currently unavailable thanks to an aneurysm caused by sheer stupidity and bad artwork. Services will resume after all copies of this abomination have been burned.
GAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!
No. Just... just no.
So we wasted two issues with Doom playing around with freaking crabs, because now the entire venom supply has been destroyed… with the exception of the last dose that Doom 2099 has injected into his veins.
And the story ends with Doom 2099 in the sewers. There’s a metaphor somewhere, but I don’t want to be too harsh on the sewer system by comparing it to this story.
Sorry, just… just give me a second to recover after this one.
Fantastic Four #413 (1996)
by Tom DeFalco & Paul Ryan
Words cannot express my joy at seeing some freaking normal artwork again!!!
Unlike the previous parts at least I can understand WTF is going on in this story (which doesn’t sound like much, but seriously, the previous story is unreadable).
Although the premise is questionable at best! You mean to tell me Doom doesn’t have the ability to analyze the crab venom on his own and has to rely on Reed’s tech!? This would be absurd if we were talking about regular Doom, but it’s even WORSE for Doom 2099 who has access to even more advanced technology!!!
Heck at the end of the Ellis run he had mastered nanotechnology to the point of being able to rebuild entire cities, but he can’t analyze a crab venom!?
And DeFalco STILL manages to screw this up! Because now that we finally have Doom 2099 at the FF headquarters… he doesn’t interact with Reed, AT ALL, because he’s busy with the Hyperstorm plot (!!!!), so Doom 2099 only meets the Thing and the Human Torch.
On top of that, it’s an extremely generic fight AND it’s made stupid by the fact that Doom 2099 has downloaded the data he needs into his mask. (WTF!?!?)
And we end this travesty with Doom 2099 being captured by Doom and Namor.
Doom 2099 #43 (1996)
by John Francis Moore & Jeff Lafferty
Good news: the original Doom 2099 writer is back.
Bad news: OH GOD THE ARTWORK!!!
At least Doom 2099’s internal monologue feels in character again. I’d be willing to say it’s actually well-written if I could stare at this artwork for more than five seconds before throwing up.
Even Doctor Doom is quick to point out the story so far has been unbelievably stupid.
Also John Francis Moore gives us a believable reason for why Doom doesn’t think this is his future self: due to complicated reasons happening in the first 25 issues, Doom 2099 doesn’t have the same face of his counterpart.
However, Doom 2099 also spells out why Doom focusing so much on his face is flimsy at best.
Doom even unveils a new invention, the very painful Memory Leech™.
Does it also erase memories? Because I have a couple comic books I wish I could forget existed.
Before he can use that, however, Doom 2099 takes control of Doom’s ship and we have what would’ve been an awesome moment with a different artist.
If it wasn’t clear enough, Moore is VERY quick to leave behind the whole crab nonsense and send Doom 2099 back to his time.
This has very strong “let us never speak of this again” vibes.
Since Doctor Doom drops out of the story, I no longer have to suffer through the artwork.
For what it’s worth, Doom 2099’s effort partially succeeded in changing history, so SOME Latverians are still alive.
Let us never speak of this again.
Doom significance: -5/10
The negative score is reserved for special occasions, when the story absolutely breaks the established canon or characterization. The Doom retrospective has earned a negative score twice before: the -5/10 of Super-Villain Team-Up #7 and the -1/10 of Micronauts #41.
While this is not as bad as implying Doom is a rapist like SVTU #7 did, the fact that including this story screws up the history of the Doom 2099 series it gets the same treatment.
Silver Age-ness: (ʘ_ʘ)/10
Doom himself is EXTREMELY Silver Age in this one, but everything else is so horrible I can’t in good conscience give it a real score.
90-ness: WTF!?!?/10
2090-ness: SHOCK THIS COMIC/10
Does it stand the test of time? -15/10
Negative scores in this category are reserved for stories with horrible messages or damaging characterization. So far, the ONLY Marvel story with a negative score had been Super-Villain Team-Up #7, which implied that Doom rapes Latverian brides and warranted a -20/10.
Again this is not as bad as a concept, but boy do I have my reasons for being this harsh!!! Doom deciding to save his people by turning them all into drug addicts!? As if that wasn’t enough, this storyline is filled to the brim with subplots that either don’t go anywhere, are completely dropped, or straight up make no sense. Doom 2099 taking over the drug company somehow manages to do all three at once!!!
Doom 2099 is completely out of character until John Francis Moore comes back at the very last moment, but then it’s too little too late.
And oh my god the artwork on this!!! Everyone is completely off-model and it makes it nearly impossible to follow anything.
Be thankful I don’t give a quality score, or this would probably get the lowest negative score possible. It’s not just easily the worst story I’ve reviewed so far, it’s among the worst I ever read.
In short:
It was a Doombot all along
If it’s any consolation, I can’t find any indication that this is the real Doctor Doom.
To my despair, however, this really has to be the same Doom 2099 of those awesome stories. How the might have fallen indeed…
Crazy tech
The Memory Leech™ is a neat idea. Wish it was used in a better story.