Fantastic Four 537

Hi, I'm Gary, sometimes I go by the name of Dingo.
I will be helping out Mike and Jess, or Smax and Pog, depending how you look at it, with occasional reviews of comics.

So here we go...

Abandon hope all ye who enter, for spoilers lie ahead...

Fantastic Four 537


Joe Michael Straczynski, from here on in referred to as JMS, is 80% of a good Fantastic Four writer. There are five tests of a Fantastic Four writer. He passes on Reed, Sue, Ben and Johnny with flying colours. He 'gets' what makes them all tick and manages to present them all well. His failing point is Doom. He just hasn't seemed able to get Doom's voice right. This isn't particularly suprising. Not many writers get Doom right. Stan Lee did, John Byrne did and Walt Simonson did. To my money though, just about everyone else has been close but no cigar. They probably have a support group or something, "writers who can't write Doom". It may not be surprising, but it is certainly very disappointing. I had such high hopes for JMS too.

So where doesn't he get it? Simple. Doom admits he is wrong. That never happens. Not ever. Never. And certainly not so openly as he does in this issue.

It all starts with Doom in hell, where we last left him. Apparently Ragnarok, the nordic version of Armageddon, has breached the dimension of hell. This little trespass is all Doom needs to ensure his own escape. This is a very convenient way to get Doom out of hell and connect it with Thor, which was probably editorially mandated, but it was also lazy writing. It is not like there isn't ample precedent for Doom to have prepared a contingency plan for being trapped in hell. Any man that has his own vital signs monitored so that a small child can be reprogrammed with his mind in the event of his death, is going to have contingency plans up the Yingyang. I mean, think about it, he was entering into a bargain with some demons. You can practically rely on a demon to double cross you. They are proverbial for it. And you don't think Doom would have a half dozen contingency plans for when (not if, when) they turned on him? Please.

So Doom get his nice bit of unnecessary serendipity, and then decides to go home for a bath before going and finding Mjolnir. It doesn't seem right to me, but I grant it is not necessarily out of character. For some reason Doom keeps referring to it as Thor's hammer, which is annoying since when written well, Doom will never use a small word when a big one will do. He is a bit like Reed in that respect. Once Doom reaches Mjolnir, he can't pick it up. Now if you have seen the cover to Fantastic Four 537, you would know it shows Doom clearly weilding Mjolnir with the FF taking a nap on the floor around him. I don't know who to blame for this: the artist, the writer or the editors, but it is very annoying. My favorite type of comic cover is a cover that depicts a scene from the comic, next comes S.A.L.T. covers (standing around looking tough), then strange covers with artistic merit but no connection to the comic, then damaged comics with no cover, then comes misleading covers. Why do it? It serves no purpose other than to provide conversational fodder for internet fans.

So Doom can't lift Mjolnir, in spite of the cover, so what does he do? Says he was wrong and goes home. That is not the Doom I grew up with. Oh well. Better luck next writer.