Is this Jonathan Hickman, or Aron, the "Rogue Watcher" (FF #330)?
1. General Remarks.
Hickman's
Secret Wars was, finally, not equal to the often excellent (and lengthy) build-up to it that he wrote quite meticulously across two
Avengers titles. (With a dismissive wave of the hand I discount that third, inferior title with Sunspot and Cannonball. Yes: two of the least interesting members of the
New Mutants are now significant Avengers. Do you remember
Fallen Angels? With the mutant lobsters. Yeah that's the one. That was the last time that Sunspot was an interesting character.
Although, remember that issue –– Brett Blevins drew it –– where he was a future fascist capitalist?
Good times. As for Cannonball, he hasn't been interesting since Bill Sienkewicz stopped drawing him as an ungainly Southern stringbean with a long thin rectangular head.)
It were to be wished that
Secret Wars had actually had scenes equal to its covers, where all the villains and heroes were in space or on a battlefield running harum-scarum at each other, fists pumping and raised and shouting, "spiked breast to spiked breast". Like, in fact, Jim Shooter's original, and routinely maligned, toy–plug ("pig-fuck") –fest
Secret Wars.
It were
further to be wished that the superheroes had all been the
actual versions of themselves, instead of (for the better part) nebulous and minor
What If? alternate universe versions of themselves. Only purists (I count myself one, admittedly) care about the
What If? universes. Instead one was left always wondering, "Are these the real versions of Galactus, Mr. Sinister, Apocalypse, or are they cheap knock-offs?" What was Galactus doing anyway the whole while –– wasn't he just a glorified light fixture? A garden ornament even.
You wondered if something more interesting was happening in a spin-off you weren't reading.
They should have set out, at least, who was who and from which universe. And: why would Doom from Universe 616 have brought back all these marginal footnote types, and not the real (sorry, "real") people from his own universe? Did Doom (and Doctor Strange) actually sit down and say, "Okay let's have a Steve Rogers from the nineteenth-century wild west, a Spider-Man who married Mary Jane Watson, "... &c. Unlikely scenario to imagine! And if they
did, surely all these characters were mere phantasms –– mere vapor –– and not worthy of our attention.
They'd have said, "Let's get the
guys from our own universe. Love 'em or hate 'em they're still our
guys." Like in the original
Secret Wars, when Wolverine famously said of Cyclops, "He may be a jerk, but he's
our jerk." Doom and Dr. Strange would have said,"
They're all jerks but they're our jerks."
I'll concede that he would have excluded Reed Richards.
2. Questions of Influence and Precedence.
A. A rather dry point this, perhaps, made from deep in the dry diggings of an academic's carrel, –– noting an antecedent for the denouement of
Secret Wars (2015). In #9 (January 2016) Hickman had everything turn on Doctor Doom's reluctant admission of his error: to concede, indeed, that he is not Reed Richards's equal.
This convinces the Molecule Man to stop bankrolling Doom's illusory (and never very well explained) Battleworld, his garden of unearthly delights. Molecule Man –– a notorious flip-flopper –– now backs Reed Richards, and they recreate the Marvel Universe (no longer numbered 616 apparently), a task for which they are apparently considered eminently qualified. Sue, Reed and the kids are written out of the story for a spell, because they are not popular with readers.
I wonder if Marvel (presumably via Hickman, the one man qualified to do it) is going to explain all the peculiarities of continuity that this whole protracted fiasco was brimming with. Most obviously, Bendis's big hash of everything,
Ultimate End. There are a plethora of smaller (although actually
cosmic) inconsistencies, if you go back to the exacting standards of Gruenwald in
Quasar (the Bible). For one: the Living Tribunal does not have a "body" that is actually him, cf Gruenwald's dimension of forms, where Eternity, Galactus and Celestials borrow bodies for various purposes. Ergo these scenes of his "corpse" on the moon are problem blunders –– I say nothing here of the
Orb of all people (why not
Paste Pot Pete?) shooting the Watcher on the Moon.
Anyway, the Dr. Doom self-criticism/self-doubt motif scene echoes a comic I read today with great delight,
Fantastic Four Annual #20, written by Englehart. I consider Englehart's phase on Fantastic Four as one of the impeccable runs. Some issues are drawn by John Buscema and inked by Joe Sinnott, for crying out loud. Also, Englehart must be one of the few writers to be able to script Ben Grimm without veering variously into repetition, bathos and cliche. Englehart managed to craft a sort of Hamlet out of the Thing. It was also obviously a run Hickman was well aware of as he wrote
Secret Wars (2015) since it is here that the subject of the Beyonoders is first properly invigorated.
The Fantastic Four (
sans Reed and Sue, NB) search for the Beyonders, with Doctor Doom in tow, and this leads to the jaw-dropping #319, where it is revealed that the Beyonder was just another cosmic cube granted sentience. Nice scene of the Shaper of Worlds –– that fan favorite.
In Annual #20, Englehart includes the crux of the identity war between Dr. Doom and Kristoff Vernard. You will remember that in the celebrated and lengthy and justly–considered
classic John Byrne run on
Fantastic Four that preceded Englehart's, Doom had quite forcibly implanted all of his memories and brainwaves (... or
something...) into the malleable brain of a small peasant boy. In the event Doom should die, this was one of his wacko failsafes for his mind to survive. A somewhat hollow victory over the Great Leveler, I'd say. Like Mr. Sinister, continually cloning himself at every turn, each time gaining less from the transaction. A faded xerox of his own bad self. This backfired when Doom came back from the dead in a
Secret Wars II spin–off story (below). Doom's copy and the original begin to be confused –– primarily by the faithful Doombots, who are attuned to the exact readings of Doom's brainwaves.
When they meet, Doom inadvisedly makes a rare admission of failure aloud –– in this case, conceding that he cannot trust anyone –– which confession convinces the Doombots standing about that Kristoff is in fact the real Doom, since Doom, that vainglorious man, would never admit to a shortcoming. As the
OHOTMU Update '89 puts it, "the real Doctor Doom admitted to a human weakness –– his inability to trust Franklin to defeat Mephisto in combat" (#2, August 1989, 33).
Weird moment of public introspection.
Poorly-chosen time to have a public bout of self-doubt, Doom old mate!
These poor guys are shattered –– their world has caved in on them!! They've lost faith.
N.B. This is also before the word "Doombot" came into common parlance.
Now it seems everybody uses the word willy-nilly.
I feel like John Byrne, who hated people calling Captain America "Cap".
Do you remember the late 80s, when people really didn't know which was the real Doctor Doom?
It was a world of illusions and mirages.
There's a great bit at the end, indicative of Reed Richard's suave, casual superiority to everybody really, when he just matter-of-factly says to Kristoff, "I don't suppose it would do any good to tell you once more that you're not Doctor Doom!"
In the next issue in continuity (#306 –– drawn by Buscema and Sinnott) Reed remarks to Medusa, in a moment of uncharacteristic, unguarded pique, "very frankly, I've had enough of people with mental problems." That's it in a nutshell. Reed Richards is sane, Doom isn't.
And yet it is worth noting –– and this was a good move by Hickman –– that the only person equal to the supreme threat of the Beyonders (hinted at ominously but never seen in Englehart's FF run) was that same wily nutcase Fiktor Fon Doom.
Those issues of the Avengers were marvelous weren't they –– real authentic classic gold –– Steve Rogers and Tony Stark brawling knockdown and drag-out on the burning Earth –– too lost in their cage-match M.A.D. mutual hatred to even care about their home planet dying around them!
I am curious to know, in the post-Secret Wars continuity: how exactly are these the same people? Did Reed Richards, Franklin Richards, Molecule Man et al re-create the Marvel Universe #616 (number retired) faithfully, to the last quark? How can it be done? (Dan Slott asked the same question well in the Silver Surfer "Last Days" issues.) Does the current post–Secret Wars [2015] continuity's Steve Rogers have a vivid and pulsating memory of that last sturm und drang deathmatch with Tony Stark, or has it been diplomatically erased by the genteel Dr. Richards?
I am unavoidably reminded of when Sise-Neg destroyed everything in existence and made it all again (Marvel Premiere #14, March 1974), and then Thanos did the same (Marvel: The End limited series, 2003). It never sits well with us –– is this really the same universe?, or are these people mere marionettes, facsimiles of their former selves?
(It is worth remembering none of this is real.)
And yet––
And yet!
B. Aside from
forcing your memories and brainwaves onto a peasant boy, another useful methodology of
avoiding death is depicted in the
Secret Wars II crossover.
On this occasion, Doom, in the thick of battle with Terrax the Tamer,
switches minds with a bystander seconds before his physical shell is obliterated by a plummeting fireball. He learnt this interesting party trick way back in continuity from the "Ovoids" (#10). John Byrne liked to go back to the
source –– a good thing we should all do more often.
Anyway, in the course of the story Doom –– by necromantic means at his disposal –– summons "the greatest power in existence" to compel it –– rather rudely –– to re-create his original body and transfer his brain into it. This being turns out to be our omnipresent, omniscient friend The Beyonder.
The Beyonder and Doom do not recognize each other.
How can it be?, wonders Reed Richards –– magically echoing the thoughts reverberating in our own heads –– since, like us, he clearly witnessed the events of the first
Secret Wars series, lovingly drawn by Mike Zeck. Nothing daunted by a conundrum or mind-teaser, Richards then brilliantly hypothesizes "how it was done."
Reed Richards, in more innocent times, speaks of "true bodies" –– as does Doom.
They hadn't been destroyed and reconstituted countless times by Thanos and Jim Starlin yet.
You want to interject –– "Why were you so keen on having Doom there, but not Doctor Strange? Or Daredevil? Or say, Madcap, or –– the Hobgoblin? He would have been good.Who cared if the Wrecking Crew, those serial rapists, were there or not?
2018 Update. Like most of my readers, I never reached the bottom of this article. Only rereading it now do I notice this. My final point –– I believe–– was that in Hickman's new Secret Wars Doom defeats the Beyonders for the same reason: they do not have power over Time.
This inevitably makes you wonder to a groaning void why the innumerable time-travellers in Marvel continuity, from Kang and Immortus to the lowly Zarkko and the mullet–headed X-Man Bishop –– heck, gosh, even Deadpool time-travels –– have mastered this interesting art, and not the supremely powerful Beyonders.
It also makes you wonder why Kang/Immortus couldn't have seized the moment –– if at this point you can speak of "moments" with any degree of conviction! –– and taken over Mayfair and Park Lane with hotels on both.
THE END?
("When you see the end in sight
The beginning may arrive."
MONKEES.)
