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The Fearful Secret of Bucky Barnes!
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Doctor Doom cameos in this issue and, as it's written by Stan Lee, he's shown as a pompous despot who'll fall for anything if it means proving his own genius.
In this case he's drawn into a very complicated plan whereby MODOK, head of AIM, has convinced another supervillain to use a body double of Captain America's old sidekick Bucky to try and confuse him (Cap) enough to be defeated in battle. This plan fails, but it turns out that that was all part of MODOK's own scheme, which was to convince Cap that this double was the real deal long enough for him to reveal that - aha! - he was a robot all along, designed to kill him, either by hand or, in the last resort, using an Automatic Destruct Control. Of course, as any long-term comics fan would guess, the plan fails because the robot has Bucky's memories and can't bring himself to murder his hero. Come on MODOK, you've got a massive brain, surely you could have thought this all through beforehand?
The bit involving Doom happens in a flashback when MODOK decides to think back, "to enjoy the success of my plan," which is jolly handy for the reader. He recalls how he recently inflamed student demonstrations past the usual point of disagreement, into a riot very similar to the one seen recently in Thor.
In this case Captain America turns up, and places himself firmly on the side of The Kids.
This gives MODOK the idea for his Exploding Robot Duplicate plan and he decides, sensibly, to get the help of the world's greatest Exploding Robot Duplicate manufacturer - Doctor Doom. This is an interesting example of the way that the wide Marvel Universe was used by now - there's no real need, story-wise, for it to be Doctor Doom who builds thr robot, why having him on hand and in continuity means that Lee don't need to bother creating a new character to do it.
Of course, they don't really need to show the robot being built at all, but the flip-side is that, with a great character like Doctor Doom available, you might as well.
MODOK uses the oldest trick in the book to get Doom to work for him, issuing him with a challenge and then suggesting that it's impossible, forcing Doom to go odd in a strop, determined to prove him wrong.
We then get a wonderful Mad Science montage of Doom building the robot which, "thanks to the genius of Dr. Doom" will have "the personality of his human counterpart as well." That definitely was not in the specifications - so it turns out that MODOK's plan collapses because Doom did his work TOO well. This is a neat little touch which, I have to admit, I only spotted myself on the second reading. I guess one can get too used to Stan Lee dashing off stories full of plot-holes and weird turns, so that when he's as clever as he is here, it's easy to miss.
Doom's part in the flashback ends with him handing over the goods, communicating as ever by video.
And that's that for what turns out to be a very clever, perfectly in character (or Stan Lee's version of the character at least) version of Doctor Doom. The next time we see him it'll be back in the current continuity, still under Stan Lee's guidance, and back in Latveria.
link to information about this issue
posted 9/10/2018 by Mark Hibbett
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