You Dare to Ignore Dr. Doom? You DARE?

Okay, Dr. Doom’s name still causes the uninitiated to snigger a little.

Let them.

It remains the name of the greatest super villain in comic book history.

A clear inspiration for Darth Vader, the metal-masked, cloaked and hooded schemer cuts an unforgettable brooding dark-green figure, thanks to artist Jack Kirby. And writer Stan Lee invested Doom with a personality more nuanced that that of previous super villains, one dominated by overweening vanity.

Doom will reject even a victory if it would somehow offend his pride. That same vanity can trip up his plans and even make him amusing when he’s not being murderous and merciless.

Given to grandiloquent “You dares!,” Doom observes matter-of-factly that his every utterance must be recorded for posterity because he is, of course, the most important thing that ever lived.

Lee also gave Dr. Doom the unique status of being a national ruler. Though a despot, Dr. Doom is not utterly evil like Captain America’s Nazi archenemy Red Skull. He’s sly and devious, but also admirably courageous, unblinkingly facing down even Galactus or the Man of Steel in his quest for unlimited power.

Unimpressed by the Superman’s threat to peel him out of “that tin suit,” the menacing monarch drily replies, “Bah! I am standing here on Latverian soil! Here, I am the LAW, alien! Are you not sworn to uphold the laws of men?”

The villains in immensely popular superhero movies are now routinely given understandable and even sad motivations for what they do, a practice that can be traced directly to Fantastic Four Annual 2 (September 1964), featuring the origin of Dr. Doom.

Lee and Kirby pretty clearly borrowed the story of Doom’s early life from the legend of another alliterative wonder worker, Count Cagliostro — specifically from the 1949 film Black Magic starring Orson Welles (an adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’s novel Joseph Balsamo).

The scenes in which the boy’s Gypsy parents are falsely accused of practicing witchcraft and condemned to death are markedly similar to the comic book story, and both boys grow up to be vengeful, power-hungry masterminds for reasons with which the audience cannot help but sympathize. In both cases, the audience is swept right up in the emotional power of the melodrama.

Doom’s mother was a sorceress executed when he was small, and his kindly Gypsy healer of a father died protecting him from exposure while fleeing from a vengeful baron who blamed the elder von Doom for failing to save his terminally ill wife.

The murder of his parents galvanizes the boy, just as it did Bruce Wayne — but in the opposite direction. Seeing where his father’s compassion had gotten him, young Victor vows to obtain power over his enemies, and everybody else.

The lab accident that disfigures von Doom puts him on the final leg of his transformational, on the same route that Dr. Strange took — to Tibet, long a central clearing house for super powers in the comics.

It’s tragic irony that this greatest of all super villains has not yet been portrayed effectively on screen.

I mean, Hollywood producers DARE?

They DARE?

The Marvel Universe Grows as the FF Shrinks

I must have reread Fantastic Four 16 (July 1963) more often than any other issue, and now I think I know why. For me, this was the issue that really cemented the crowd-pleasing concept of what we would come to call the “Marvel universe.”

Two years into their run, the now-familiar and well-loved title characters were joined by another favorite superhero, the Astonishing Ant-Man, to oppose that prince among super villains, Dr. Doom. The Fantastic Four had already met and skirmished with the Hulk and Spider-Man, but this time, confronted by the peril of miniaturization, they called on Ant-Man for help.

Calling in the expert would have been a natural move in the real world, but was still a relatively rare one in comics, where — despite the existence of the Justice League and the World’s Finest teams — superheroes often seemed to pretend that other superheroes didn’t exist. In her own title, for example, Wonder Woman would fend off an alien invasion by herself, with never a thought for the heroes who might help.

With an eye on the insiderish fanboy thrill that crossovers gave readers, Stan Lee was also certainly aware that bringing newer characters into contact with the company’s most popular heroes would be a great way to provide them with wider exposure.

“And there is a lot to tell in this issue — from contacting Ant-Man, to discovering a hidden world, to helping the royal family which Doom has imprisoned to take back their throne,” comics historian Don Alsafi observed. “And yet, as we’ve come to expect, there are wonderful little details as well. For instance, before they embark on their micro-journey, Reed tracks down Ben at his girlfriend Alicia’s apartment to test out a new serum, one that he hopes will be instrumental in someday changing the Thing back to human, permanently.

"Meanwhile, Sue is grappling with the problem that while she can turn invisible, she can still be identified by creatures with a strong sense of smell, such as dogs, and so is seen experimenting with different kinds of perfumes in an effort to ‘deaden’ her own scent. Even Johnny gets a bit of attention when Pearla, the princess they save from Doom's clutches, sends a few flirtations his way before the FF leave their realm. Any hopes that this could be a potential love interest for the Torch are for naught, however, as Pearla’s next Marvel appearance would take 19 years to occur.”

Suicide Has Rarely Been This Much Fun

As instantly recognizable as its superhero titles or its science fiction anthologies, Silver Age DC Comics offered another genre that became familiar to its readers — the “uncanny team” comic book.

Actually, the heroes were canny while the menaces they fought were uncanny — alien invaders, giant monsters, mad scientists, what have you. Without super powers to support them against these fantastic foes, the heroes had to rely on their wits, their uniformly dauntless courage, some mid-century high tech and each other. Being miniaturized or propelled into other times or dimensions were not uncommon experiences for them, certainly no cause for panic. In the idiom of the day, they were cool cats.

Such uncanny teams included the Challengers of the Unknown, the Sea Devils, Cave Carson’s intrepid band of spelunkers, Rip Hunter’s temporal explorers and — borrowed from Quality Comics — the World War II military fliers the Blackhawks, re-enlisted into the fight against extraterrestrial enemies and super villains.

Often, the team consisted of the main hero, his strong pal, a young guy and the girl — a configuration borrowed by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby for what was arguably the most significant team of the 1960s, the Fantastic Four.

And in Brave and the Bold 25 (Aug.-Sept. 1959), writer Robert Kanigher and artist Ross Andru introduced us to the Suicide Squad, a/k/a Task Force X, a team headed by pilot and military intelligence officer Col. Rick Flag (clearly a hero from the “Mike Hammer,” “John Shaft” and “Peter Gunn” School of Coincidental Naming).

The team included physicist Jess Bright, astronomer Hugh Evans and military nurse Karin Grace, “all the last living members of their respective crews, all willing to die to save the world and uplift their lost friends’ legacies,” as C. David noted. “They’re basically a crew powered by pure survivor’s guilt.”

They proved to be just the kind of plucky people you might hear say, “Never thought we’d be trying to save a whale from a flying dinosaur!”

I Sing the Body Elastic

The sharp-eyed and thrifty producers of comic books rarely permitted a long-running, profitable superhero concept to remain abandoned for long.

Thus, within a handful of years, the lightning-born magical superman concept passed from Fawcett’s Captain Marvel to Marvel’s Thor, and the shrinking crime-fighter concept from Quality Comics’ Doll Man to Marvel’s Ant-Man and DC’s Atom.

And then there was Quality Comics’ immensely popular Plastic Man, created by writer-artist Jack Cole for Police Comics 1 (Aug. 1941). DC Comics acquired the character when Quality Comics was shut down in 1956, but unlike Blackhawk, they did not continue publishing him.

Nevertheless, by 1961 three new versions of the stretchable superhero had already been created — Elastic Lad in Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen 31 (1958), Elongated Man in Flash 112 (1960) and Mr. Fantastic in Fantastic Four 1 (1961).

A crime-fighter who is essentially made of chewing gum stretches the already absurd concept of superheroes to its campy limits, and the talented Cole, understanding that, leaned into the humorous angle of the character. Jimmy Olsen’s super powers were played as much for humor as heroics (presumably in part so that he wouldn’t threaten Superman’s status as the real hero of Metropolis), and even the amateur detective Elongated Man had his touch of whimsy (when Ralph Dibny “smelled” a mystery, his rubbery nose twitched).

But Stan Lee and Jack Kirby did the unexpected and played against type. Far from being amusing or charming, the FF’s Reed Richards was something of a pedantic bore.

From one angle, the innovative and ground-breaking Fantastic Four can be seen as a recycling of popular concepts. Reed Richards is Plastic Man. The Thing is another of those transformed monsters Lee and Kirby turned out for science fiction titles. The teenaged Human Torch evokes Timely/Marvel’s android Human Torch, one of the most popular superheroes of the 1940s. And the Invisible Girl is Invisible Scarlet O’Neil, one of the first female superheroes. Published by the Chicago Times, her newspaper strip ran from June 3, 1940, to 1956.

The Inevitable Arrival of the Diabolical Duo

By their sixth issue (Sept. 1962), the groundbreaking superhero team the Fantastic Four faced the foes they’d inevitably been fated to meet — a super villain team. Stan Lee even extended the parallelism to alliteration — a “Diabolical Duo.”

It took six issues because the FF had to meet some villains before they could team up. As an 8-year-old, I’d already read — devoured, really — the third and fifth issues of the title, so I was delighted with Dr. Doom’s immediate return.

The Sub-Mariner I’d never heard of. But even to a child, it was clear that Namor was more hero than villain (I didn’t know the term “antihero” yet).  A kind of seagoing Superman, he boasted an impressive array of superpowers of which flight and super strength were only the most obvious.

As Mike of Comic Book Curios recalled, “The story reaches a climax when the team is forced to put on astronaut suits and attack Doom’s ship in the middle of space. Everything seems hopeless, until Namor decides to help out. He jumps into a conveniently placed tank of water, gathers up enough energy to shoot out of the building, bounces off of a conveniently approaching meteor storm, and then throws himself onto the hull of Doom’s ship. Namor reveals that he has the powers of all underwater creatures combined, and chooses to use the power of an electric eel to shock Doom through the walls. Finally, Doctor Doom flees, jumping aboard one of those passing meteors - NEVER TO BE SEEN AGAIN! (We all know better than that though!)”

“In fact, the theme of the issue seems to be how these larger-than-life characters are viewed by others,” Don Alsafi wrote. “On the one hand, you have a troubled Namor — just now beginning to see the error of his ways — cajoled into further villainy by Doom, who sees him as nothing more than an easily manipulable pawn. And the issue opens on a crowd in awe of the Torch flying overhead, and a courier at the Baxter Building flustered at a chance meeting with the Invisible Girl. And then Stan and Jack further invite us to think of the Fantastic Four as real people, as we see an expanded cutaway of their headquarters, first seen in #3 ... and the FF answering their fan mail! In fact, when Reed gets a letter from a hospitalized boy, he stretches out the window and across several city blocks to pay him a visit. More than a few letter-writers after that must surely have been thinking of that very same scene!”

Jack Kirby’s art really was fantastic, with those three-panel progressions he used to convey dramatic and emotional power and those breathtaking splash pages. I can’t count the number of times I savored that issue.

The Treasure I Left on the Newsstand

Fantastic Four 2 was the first issue I spotted on the newsstand in late 1961. I debated picking it up. But I was unsure if this intriguing new comic was about superheroes or some kind of a battle between various monsters. Had the Human Torch been fully ablaze on the cover, he might well have lighted my way to a purchase.

I had only a quarter a week to spend, and that usually had to be devoted to two superhero-related comics — say a Justice League, a Lois Lane or a Flash, maybe an Adventures of the Fly (a title also created by Jack Kirby) or a Space Adventures (featuring Steve Ditko’s first superhero, Captain Atom).

At the half-priced used comic book store, with the means to buy five whole issues for 25 cents, I might be able to expand my horizons and indulge my taste for a Strange Adventures, a Tales to Astonish, a Gorgo, an Archie’s Mad House with its funny monsters (or even, on some rare occasion, John Stanley’s Little Lulu, providing it featured Witch Hazel or Tubby as the crime-fighting, suspicious, always-in-error Spider).

So sadly, I didn’t risk my dime on that Fantastic Four 2. But when Fantastic Four 3 appeared, with the heroes finally in costume and airborne in a bathtub turned flying saucer, I was certain what they were, snapped it right up, entered the Marvel Age of Comics and never exited.

Looking at the early Marvel art now, I’m struck by its paranoiac quality — all stalking and shadows, fear and anger and angst. Despite the protection afforded by superheroes, Marvel’s world was edgy and uncertain where DC’s was sunlit and secure. Both had their attractions.

Empowerment and Super-Empowerment

The Invisible Woman of the Fantastic Four. Art by Stuart Immonen

The relations between the sexes still leave something to be desired in superhero comics.

For example, in a 2007 issue of Ultimate Fantastic Four, Reed Richards has been abusively addressed by his father and refuses to discuss it with Sue Storm. As he walks away, Sue forms a force field and slams Reed into it face first. Hardy har har.

Reverse the situation. If Sue had asked for privacy and Reed had instead slammed her into a force field wall, the readers would be livid. As well they should be. Writer Mike Carey appears to have confused empowering women with turning them into bullies.

Yes, Sue was a something of a shrinking violet when the Fantastic Four began in 1961, but overcompensation is not the answer.

And yet the attitudes of all the superhero comics in 1961 were not as retrograde as people think. Check out the Julius Schwartz titles at DC — Flash, Green Lantern, the Atom and Hawkman. Iris West, Carol Ferris and Jean Loring were all independent career woman focused on the own accomplishments, not on their boyfriends and certainly not on the weird costumed heroes who operated at the margins of their lives. Hawkgirl and Hawkman were married, and full partners in crimefighting.

And not one of them needed to slam her man’s face into a wall to make a point. The real point that should be kept in mind, I think, is mutual respect.

The First Time I Saw the Fantastic Four

The first time I saw Fantastic Four I was 7 years old, at a newsstand in late 1961, looking at the cover of the third issue of “The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine.”

Actually, I had SEEN the previous issue of the FF. I remember looking at it uncertainly, a mixture of monsters and aliens and a stretching guy and a transparent woman wearing street clothes. What were they? A bunch of monsters? My quarter-a-week allowance was largely reserved for superheroes.

To make his team stand out, Stan Lee had tried to eliminate as many of the conventional trappings of superheroes as possible, including costumes. But reader response informed him that costumes were a must, so he quickly corrected course.

An unpublished version of the cover.

And that’s why the cover of the third issue was irresistible to me. These were clearly superheroes with colorful uniforms, a bucket-like flying car, an orange monster pal (At 7, I loved the color orange) and, best of all, a flying, flaming teenager with an intriguingly blank face. I’d never heard of the Golden Age Human Torch who’d inspired this one, and I was inclined to love any hero who could fly.

Inside, even more fun — heroes with a cool array of super powers, a seemingly omnipotent caped villain in command of a giant monster, a superhero team headquarters in a skyscraper (complete with diagram), a “Fantasticar” that could split into four separate flying sections, a rocket helicopter. Everything a boy could want for his dime.

These heroes bickered and fought with each other, something that was unsettling to a boy accustomed to the perfect gentlemen and lady of the Justice League of America. In fact, I recall writing a letter to what would become Marvel Comics suggesting that I would continue to read the comic if they stopped fighting so much. Thankfully, Stan failed to take my advice. But they sent me a nice card in reply thanking me for my letter. Wish I’d kept it.

My First Spidey: The Web of Memory

In 1963, this didn’t make sense.

The Fantastic Four were fighting some weird character named “Spider-Man,” but the comic book wasn’t about them. It was about him!

I had to know what the heck was going on here, so I invested half my 25-cent weekly allowance and hauled Spider-Man No. 1 home from the downtown newsstand in Effingham.

I had missed Spidey’s actual debut in the last issue of Amazing Fantasy months before, but I was already familiar with this then-small and unnamed but distinctive line of superheroes. Only the FF, the Incredible Hulk and the not-yet-costumed Ant-Man had preceded Spidey, and Thor debuted simultaneously with him.

And I was already familiar with the artwork of Steve Ditko, from my favorite Charlton monster titles Gorgo and Konga and from his only previous superhero feature, Charlton’s yellow lamé Captain Atom with his contrail of little atomic symbols.

I didn’t know Ditko’s name, but even at age 8, I knew his work — unpretty and unmistakable, all those angular body positions and strained faces and unique storytelling innovations, like the half-masked face that symbolically underlined a character who had a secret identity.

Couple this with Stan Lee’s storytelling (much better than Charlton’s), and you had a finely wrought lure for a boy. Spider-Man was a skinny kid who nevertheless had formidable super powers. His motives for showing up unannounced at the Baxter Building were mercenary — he demanded the FF’s “top salary.” He was a mysterious-looking figure who was targeted and opposed by another who was equally mysterious, the Chameleon.

And then there was that final plot twist — after the superhero had risked his life to save John Jameson from certain death in his space capsule, he learned in the last panel that Jameson’s father’s newspaper still branded him a menace.

How mean! How unfair! How irresistible!