Fantastic Four #5

Meet Doctor Doom

By Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Joe Sinnott

Villains: Dr. Doom

Guest Appearances: none

So, What Happens?

Dr Doom leaves his vulture infested castle and heads off in his helicopter (painted with a cool shark design) to fly into the city and capture the FF. They are bickering away in the Baxter Building totally unaware of their impending problems when the power cuts out and they realise that the building has been covered in a giant net.

Doom announces that he has a job for them and that he wants to take Sue hostage to ensure their co-operation. Reed recognises Doom from his voice and realises he is a student he knew from college. He remembers him as a scientific genius but obsessed with the occult and injured when a bizarre experiment backfired. Despite this the team agrees to hand over Sue as a hostage and to be taken to his castle in upstate New York.

Here Doom and his pet lion keep them occupied while he tells them that he has invented a time machine and needs them to go back in time and retrieve Blackbeard’s treasure chest. He sends them back to the days of the Spanish Main and they soon manage to outfit themselves as pirates.

The Thing particularly likes his eye patch and black beard and wants to spend his time chasing serving wenches in a nearby tavern. They are soon spotted by press-gangers and given drugged drinks until they pass out. They wake up on a pirate ship.

When they wake up they use their powers to make easy work of the crew only to find themselves under attack by another pirate galleon. They lead the remnants of their crew in boarding that ship and deal with its inhabitants as well. As they plunder its treasure Ben is proclaimed as Blackbeard by the crew.

With the fame going to his head and unwilling to go back to being a freak in the 20th century Ben turns on his teammates and attempts to set them adrift in a rowing boat. Unfortunately for him a twister destroys both boats and deposits them all, with Blackbeard’s treasure on a desert island. Ben breaks down when he realises his plans had come to nothing and he had, yet again, turned on his friends.

Reed remembers that he had only promised to retrieve Blackbeard’s treasure chest and replaces the all important gems with some old chains. Doom retrieves them and loses his temper when he sees Reed’s trickery, he had been hoping for mystical gems that once belonged to Merlin.

The Thing turns on him but a well placed punch reveals they are dealing with a robot. The real Doom contacts them from another room and informs them that he has them trapped in an inescapable room and that the oxygen is being drained away. Luckily Sue manages to invisibly sabotage some of his equipment and then set her teammates free. The team free themselves from the castle but Doom escapes on a jet-pack. Johnny’s attempts at pursuit end when his flame runs out and he falls to earth. Johnny worries about how safe they can be with both Namor and Doom free.

So is it any good?:

Yes, the pirate sections, although bizarre (and not at all what you would expect if you came across the issue looking for the first appearance of Marvel’s premier villain), are very well drawn and a lot of fun.

The shipboard battles allow for really inventive uses of the team, especially Reed’s, powers and the Thing’s pirate outfit is superb.

Although Doom doesn’t feature for large chunks of the story, and is by no means the finished article, it is very interesting to see those aspects of him that are there from the start. He is clearly a scientific genius, Reed’s intelligence has yet to be really played up in the series so there isn’t yet any real rivalry, in fact Reed talks of Doom in rather hushed, impressed tones.

His very first panel features a book called Science and Sorcery and his use of a time machine to hunt for a magical treasure gets to the heart of his twin threat right away. It is also clear that his college accident is an attempt to use a scientific machine to break through occult barriers. A throwaway detail in this story, it doesn’t really amount to much but obviously the basis for so many stories.

His bandaged face after the accident and the haunting panel of him striding through the Tibetan snow in search of dark secrets are there from the first for writers to come back to and expand.

He even uses his first Doombot, setting a pattern from the start of always being one move ahead of anyone who thinks they have defeated him. There is, as yet, no sign of him being in any way royal other than the castle.

The heart of the story is in fact the time travel and Doom is largely there solely to expedite it, his deathtraps and jet packs are quite clichéd and not yet anything special but Stan and Jack piled enough ideas into the background of this story that he could grow into Marvel’s greatest villain without really changing much of this story.

As for the team; Reed is still being written largely for his physical powers rather than intellect and I really liked his battles on the pirate ship and the way he pulled sections of castle wall down by twisting around the barred windows. Very inventive use of his powers and something that was toned down when his intelligence was highlighted. While the Baxter building is full of cool technology that presumably came from Reed he hasn’t actually invented anything in the stories yet or displayed the almost super human intelligence of later stories.

Ben is still ready to attack his teammates for the slightest thing and despite Lee’s attempts to show his sadness he is very rarely shown in any kind of positive light.

Sue is just taken hostage and sits out the whole time travel adventure. While she saves the day here she does so by invisibly knocking over a machine and finding the button that opens the door. She remains sidelined and without any force field powers; she can only really hide from an occasionally surprise an enemy.

So, a good issue for the visuals, the high adventure of the pirate section and the clear potential in Doom. While I am wondering why the rest put up with Ben it is also interesting to see his genuinely quite nasty beginnings.

Are there any goofy moments?

I’ve been noticing the similarities between the early Thing appearances and the Hulk. So has Johnny who reads the first issue of Hulk in this issue and brings it up with Ben to a predictably violent response.

Sue breaks up Ben and Johnny’s fight by turning her vacuum cleaner on her brother and extinguishing his flames. This at once brings out her role as the mother of the group and is possibly the most sexist moment for her yet. It’s no surprise later when she has to sit out all the action as Doom’s hostage.

I can’t decide whether Doom having crocodiles in his moat counts or if it’s just cool. The vulture in his library y and shark-copter are possibly a little too far, I think most readers will have got that he is EVIL from the creepy mask and book on Demons he has on his table.

Seconds after Reed announces they need some period costumes they come across some pirates fighting over a bundle of stolen clothes.

Trivia:

Latveria wasn’t shown until Doom’s origin story in Fantastic Four Annual 2. Until then he tended to be based at his castle in upstate New York that allowed him to have his feudal trappings, complete with crocodile infested moat, without actually making the ruler of a country yet. As the site of his time machine it featured in stories otherwise unconnected to Doom such as Avengers 56.

Johnny worries that Namor will find the all important magical jewels but in fact he didn’t and Doom was still looking for Merlin’s magic gems in Dazzler 3 and 4. The early 80s pre-Byrne FF weren’t really Doom’s best period.

Given the connection to Merlin it's worth noting that Doom did meet King Arthur in Iron Man 150 but Merlin wasn’t around at that point.

Is it a landmark?:

Yes, Doom seems to interest writers a lot more than the FF themselves and he has been almost as important to the Marvel Universe.

Where can I read it?:

The first Fantastic Four Essentials and Masterworks and Omnibus volumes.