Newsarama inteview with Christopher Cantwell

[nomadicwriter]

Newsarama has another interview with writer Christopher Cantwell about the new Doctor Doom series. A few small spoilers in there for what's coming up, including some characters who are going to be making appearances. (Thanks again to ladyvictorious for the link!)

Comments

[used_songs]

Thanks for the link!

[ladyvictorious]

What I find encouraging when I read this is all the ideas that Cantwell is putting out there. It looks like he's going to play with as many toys in the Marvel box as they will allow and I like his choices do far.

I really like the dynamic he is setting up with Zora. She really wounded him, and I suspect a bit unwittingly, when she asked if he was responsible for the destruction of the space station and the Antilon project on the moon. That Doom didn't immediately strike out at here says a lot. He still wants her loyalty and her companionship? I always think back to Lancer from the Heroes Reborn planet. She would also question Doom and yet always stayed loyal. I have no idea what has happened to her. I think Franklin's HR planet was destroyed so it could be that she no longer exists. The population of that planet seemed to consist of strange doppelgangers of their counterparts on Earth Prime, created by Franklin. I suppose he could have wished them away.

[nomadicwriter]

Yeah, I like the character choices so far - some less obvious picks in there, but with interesting connections to Doom, rather than too much just a selection of the author's miscellaneous faves (like Bendis taking up so much page-time with the Hood and random line-up of minor villains Doom had no reason to care about, sigh).

And, yes, I really liked that moment with Zora as well. It's an interesting mix of that rare bravery to question Doom, yet also at the same time making it clear that she doesn't really understand him at all. (Launch an unjustified attack that kills lots of innocents? Possibly. Deny responsibility and surrender to retaliation, nope.) Now I'm far more intrigued by where things might evolve from here. Between that, him asking Petra's opinion and getting his own parroted back, Boris's health and Doom feeling he's losing his foresight, I feel like there's a bit of a theme of Doom maybe actually wanting some pushback against his judgement for once, when at the same time he's made it so everyone's too afraid or too distanced from him to actually give it. That could be an interesting potential direction to take post-hero Doom: genuinely ready to let go of the reins a little and let other voices be heard, when at the same time his reputation is so established that he can't fix that dynamic of people treating him as the volatile tyrant they have to agree with even if he's trying to change.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, I agree that Doom still having difficulties adjusting to his post - SW life. He tried the hero thing with Infamous and never got much respect for it, except from Stephen. He's got to be thinking "I saved the universe and hardly any one knows or cares. what do I have to do to get people to see I am not the same man I was before?" Well, he's still got a little too much of the old Doom....just ask Steve. Maybe the tiger never really can change his stripes. He's to be at a loss as to what his next move should be and the journal he's keeping expresses this lack of certainty. Time passes in this story, we see captions like "several weeks later". This is a quiet time, probably with not a lot of activity. He's not making any plans for the future because he doesn't know what is future should be. He ruled the multiverse as a god for 8 years.....what do you do for an encore?

It makes me curious as to what the source of these visions are of having a family. Is this Mephisto tormenting him with a new tack? He's found a new point of vulnerability, something he lost when Doom's mother was redeemed.

[ladyvictorious]

Ooops....that was me again

[nomadicwriter]

Ooh, Mephisto is a good suspect, yes. I was thinking there had to be an external source, but wondering how any sort of telepathic or brainwashing attack from his villain enemies could get past his famous mental defences. Mephisto is definitely the most believable source for that, even with Doom at a low point. Though I feel like he'd have to have mortal allies, since missile launches aren't really his style. Mephisto pulling the strings to bring together some sort of large-scale team-up of Doom's past enemies?

Morgan Le Fay seems like a possibility as well: actually, if she's reaching through time to orchestrate things, that could explain why Kang keeps getting caught up in the effects around Doom. Though at the same time she's kind of a fickle wildcard who could be an ally to him too. Same goes for whether Kang's actually part of the plan or genuinely neutral and not involved. This is definitely keeping me guessing! I feel like Cantwell's picking a good line-up of characters who, aside from Mephisto, could believably go either way as allies or adversaries.

[ladyvictorious]

You make a good point about Doom's mental defenses but I think an argument could be made that Mephisto would be powerful enough to do it. It could be that it is an illusion, which he did do in Triumph and Torment IIRC. There's a scene where Doctor Strange was fooled by one that showed Doom defeated by some of the other demons in his realm.

We see Doom being attacked on two fronts. We know of a secretive cabal mentioned in Cantwell's interview. This is where the Leader and his Intelligencia would be a strong suspect. This would include Red Ghost, M.O.D.O.K, Wizard, Egghead (the first of them to die in it's early history) and the Mad Thinker. The Mad Thinker is a wild card in that he has worked both for and against Doom and Reed at various points. The only catch in that is the Intelligencia were never known to employ soldiers. Who exactly were those armored figures the news cameras picked up, and holding the Latverian flag? I suppose they could be robots. We just don't know a lot about them at this point.

Are these two forces working together? It's possible. Or it could be that with Doom's many enemies that there's more than one actor in this who sees an opportunity and is making their play? Take over his powerbase in Latveria? What is Symkaria's stake in all this?

I am looking forward to seeing what role Morgan plays in this. This is another time traveler added to the mix. She once tried to kill Doom by traveling to his childhood days and was going to kill him as he lay sleeping. Wasn't the last time they crossed paths in Dark Avengers where he sent her back to a prehistoric era as payback for attacking him? I'd like to see them come to a truce or something. She could be an ally but not a very trustworthy one.

[nomadicwriter]

Yeah, I think Mephisto is the most plausible to be behind the visions, since we've seen Doom face down a lot of powerful mortal mind-manipulators without much trouble. My first assumption was that those and the moon base attack must be connected, with the visions of disaster being to prompt him to speak out publicly and make himself a suspect, but now I kind of wonder, given Doom's musings on losing foresight and his efforts at meditation, whether he's been deliberately opening himself to visions to try and get a grip on his uncertain future, and Mephisto or whoever is taking advantage of that. Maybe that one image he sees of the black hole is a genuine glimpse of the plan in motion against him, but the false visions are flooding out any ability to see it clearly. In which case it could equally well be coordinated attacks, or two different enemies choosing this more vulnerable moment to strike and muddying the waters where neither plan might have been as effective in isolation.

[ladyvictorious]

I am really looking forward to seeing this all unfold. I still have a fondness for Bendis's Infamous Iron Man, even with the frustrations with Amara and the Hood being in there far too much. I have to give him credit for being faithful to what Hickman did at the end of SW and that was giving Doom a fresh start. It was never going to be easy and I think this is the most interesting thing done with the character in years.

For a relative beginner in comic book writing, I really like what we have on our plates now.

Issue #2 due in stores on November 6th. Really looking forward to that! This one is back to the $3.99 price

https://www.previewsworld.com/Catalog/SEP190882

[nomadicwriter]

Agreed - there are so many interesting ways this could go, and I feel like even if Cantwell isn't directly referencing Infamous Iron Man, Doom's state of mind still follows on from that really well. After Slott's F4 I was pretty much grimly resigned to having all those years of character development dropped to go back to the usual irregular cheesy villain appearances, so it was already a fantastic surprise that they announced this series at all, and with this setup it's looking extremely promising. I hope it lasts long enough to become a proper ongoing, or at least has enough success to convince Marvel to keep doing Doom solo stories. (I feel like it's already a great sign that they launched this one relatively soon after Infamous Iron Man.)

[ladyvictorious]

Yes, I think the announcement of a Doom series at SDDC caught me by surprise at least. That Marvel chose to do it at just about the biggest venue there is tells me they are really backing this. I really felt the same as you did after Fantastic Four, that we were in store for a dull regression of the character. I'm also glad Marvel put some new talent (for comics that is) on the writing. I mentioned a while back how I picked up the War Scrolls issue mainly because the solicitation said Doom was in it. That story impressed me for someone who worked film industry and was now trying his had in comics.

By the way, since were are getting towards the end of the month, keep watching out for the solicitations for January comics. They might be out in the middle of this week. I never know for sure. I'd like to see the cover for issue #4 and if there are any clues as to where things are heading. Marvel and I suspect DC also likes to give one site an advance drop of all the titles before giving it out to all the sites. You never know where because it changes. I just search Google for "Marvel Solicitations (month) 2019" to find them.

Doctor Doom #1 sold out

[ladyvictorious]

I saw this reported only on the Bleeding Cool site so far. Their will be a second printing on November 20th. Hot damn! I never know for sure what determines this. I assume that retailers have sold all their copies and have enough of a demand to request another printing. I am guessing the source might be the Diamond Distributors site which handles the majority if not all the major publishers' distribution, other than a digital site like Comixology.

Here's the link but there isn't much detail

https://www.bleedingcool.com/2019/10/17/doctor-doom-1-and-cult-classic-creature-feature-1-sell-out-go-to-second-printings/

Re: Doctor Doom #1 sold out

[nomadicwriter]

Oh, neat, that sounds promising! Even if they're jumping the gun a bit to drum up sales, sounds like they're definitely backing it.

Re: Doctor Doom #1 sold out

[ladyvictorious]

That's what I think too. I think it unlikely that every shop sold out but enough probably under-ordered or simply ran out so that a second printing became feasible. I doubt they would do it for less that a thousand or so issues in total. It has to be worth sending back for another smaller print run. It was a pretty tough week in competition from what I've seen. There was Hickman's X-Men stuff, a special issue of Spawn (never read that) etc. I could only tell from looking at the Marvel digital shop where it ranked but they never tell you the numbers. But it was in the top 5 at the Marvel site and I think the top 20 at Comixology. The digital sales are always an unknown quantity. I will be curious to see how it ranks for the month.