nomadicwriter: Doctor Doom shooting fireballs (blast radius)
[personal profile] nomadicwriter posting in [community profile] doomfans
The first of two Doctor Doom appearances this week!

The issue opens with the scenes shown in the preview, and Ben worrying that his attempt to get back at Victor by messing with his stuff in college might have been the cause of the lab accident. He and go back in time to observe, using tech to make themselves invisible to the college versions of themselves, but discover others are doing the same thing - multiple versions of Doom from across the multiverse who are here to observe the 'nativity'.

Reed inspects Victor's lab equipment and is sure Ben's actions did nothing to damage it, continuing to place the blame on a flaw in Victor's calculations. Ben isn't so sure, worried that he ruined the magic rather than the machine. Reed is dismissive of that, insisting that magic is just science they haven't understood yet. (I actually really like Fraction's take on Reed here - he's very much in his own blinkered perspective, not willing to entertain anything outside of science and so unable to believe in an explanation other than Victor screwing up the math.)

Unfortunately, Ben can't stand by and watch Victor blow himself up, so he intervenes, pulling Victor out of the machine and smashing it. Victor recognises him as Ben even his Thing form, and accuses Ben of being obsessed with him and harassing him. (I am amused to imagine all this creating a new timeline where Doom believes Ben is his evil stalker.) I also really like Bagley's art choices for this scene: his Victor looks quite adult and mature in the earlier pages, but here when he's startled and being manhandled by Ben he suddenly looks more like the teenager he is. It's a nice touch.

Ben's interference with the 'nativity' rouses the ire of the multiversal Dooms. Reed grabs teen Victor to protect him while Ben throws down with the Dooms. Reed asks Victor what he was hoping to accomplish, and Victor says he's "I would think it obvious - and I would think it a success. In the end, I wanted greatness." Reed tries to carry him to safety, but Victor's not having it, saying that Doom cowers from no man. He punches Reed in the face to get away from him.

Victor demands silence and asks everybody what is the meaning of this incursion into his studies and research. He asks who they are and why they've come; the Dooms ask him he really needs to ask, and he says with a smile that he doesn't. He orders Reed and Ben out as intruders.

Reed appeals to Victor, and Ben asks if this was his fault

Later, Ben tells Reed that he doesn't feel any better. Reed makes a metaphor about road accidents, and whether you can blame yourself when your tapping the brakes was only one piece of complicated chain of events. He says that it was wrong of Ben to mess with the lab, but it was a 101-level mistake for Victor not to have checked and caught it; he also says that it could be considered his own fault, given that he knew the math was wrong but gave up trying to correct Victor when Victor was high and mighty to him, but ultimately concludes that: "You could've broken everything in his lab and I could've walked him through his work step by step and the man still would've gone through with his experiments. Because Victor is insane, Ben."

(I find everything about Reed's attitude here incredibly arrogant and dickish, but it's arrogant and dickish in such an in-character way that I kind of love it.)

He goes on to say that Doom is inevitable, while we see scenes of the teenage Doom being given his mask by the collection of multiversal Dooms.

Hmm. So. This was an issue of two halves for me. I'm surprised to find there's actually a lot that I like about it. I think the retcon of Ben potentially playing a part in Doom's creation is actually executed well and fits in pretty seamlessly. And I really love Reed's attitude throughout: I find it fundamentally wrongheaded and short-sighted about a lot of things, but in a way that's so perfectly Reed that it really works for me.

I also really like Bagley's art in this issue. Sometimes his stuff comes off a bit rushed, but he's obviously put his all into this one, and it's as good as any of his Ultimate Spider-Man issues. I like his take on all the ESU trio as college boys, and Paul Mounts' colouring is as fab as ever.

On the other hand, the 'nativity' angle didn't work for me at all. Firstly, the idea of Doom celebrating his lab accident as a rebirth is nonsense to me. The day he put the mask on and became Doom, absolutely, but not the accident. It's his biggest mistake, the day he couldn't save his mother, and the thing that broke him; the failure he couldn't face, and the source of the scars he can't look at because of the reminder of that failure. Add to that the fact the multiversal Dooms make less sense the more that you think about it - why are they all observing this Doom? What is he, Doom Prime? If this is somehow the source of all branching timelines, then how come Ben messing with things doesn't change everything? What was that bit about the Dooms replacing the monks? It's all a bit of a mess, and completely unnecessary to the main story, IMO.

All in all, though, I felt like it was a worthwhile issue, and much better than I'd hoped. If you just ignore all the stuff with the nativity, then the Ben retcon, the take on Reed's attitude, and the portrayal of Victor all work pretty well, and it makes a decent entry into the ESU college days genre. Not too bad!

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