current / archive / issues / faq / RSS feed / twitter /
The Final Victory Of Doctor Doom
| < previous | next > |
After all the excitement in the comics, it's back to the distinctly half-arsed world of "The New Fantastic Four" with a story that's a vague adaptation of "The Final Victory Of Doctor Doom" from back in Fantastic Four Annual #2 ... only nowhere near as good.
Things get off to a poor start with an introduction to Latveria, "land of mystery and menace", using a sequence that's exactly the same as it was in the last episode we looked at. The first time I watched this episode I thought I'd got the wrong one, because it's EXACTLY the same!
Inside the castle Doom orders his soldiers (not robots this time) to prepare his rocket ship. "Prepare the Rrrroyal Rrrrocket" says the guard, rolling his r's like a Shakespearean stalwart - it looks like Latveria has moved to merry olde England this time!
Doom (very slowly, for maximum time-filling) walks to his rocket and zooms off to New York, landing in Central Park. Here he puts on his jet-powered flying harnesss and flies to the Latverian Embassy, where he knocks on the door. A guard says "None may enter by order of Doctor Doom!" Doom calls him a "fool", which seems a little unfair - I'd've thought he deserves praise for doing his job properly? Doom storms in, where he's greeted by a line-up of very dodgy-looking ambassadors.
"Hail Doom!" says the leader, but the others just stand there, almost as if animating them would be too expensive. Doom orders them to be quiet and go back to their jobs, but while he's being the worst boss ever we do get a glimpse of a portrait within the building.
"Bring me the royal projector ray!" he says - not the standard projector ray, the royal one - and when it's all set up he orders the lackeys to leave him alone. "No man may witness what I am about to do," he says.
He fires the ray into the Baxter Building, where Doom appears as a hologram once again. "Each time we have battled in the past you have managed to escape me", he says, which infers that there have been other adventures that have not appeared in the cartoon series. Both of the episodes that I've watched hint at a much wider world than that we've seen within the actual episodes, as if their creators are trying to reap the benefits of the immerseive world created in the comics without actually setting it up themselves. "This time Doctor Doom will be the victor!" he declaims, before threatening to turn HERBIE into "a whistling teapot". This upsets The Thing, but before he can clobber him Doom's image disappears. "You soon shall see what Doctor Doom will dare" he says as he vanishes, leading to a bit of self-aware commentary from the Thing. "I wonder who writes that cornball dialogue?" he says, recalling the sarcasm of the comics, before needlessly adding "Count Dracula?" This pretty much encapsulates this whole series - the memory of some great ideas, topped off with unfunny gags that nobody could be bothered to make work.
The FF set off to find Doom, running towards the lift through one of those classic cheap cartoon rooms that go on forever, so as to take up plenty of time without requiring extra animation.
They head outside and split up, where they have seperate adventures just like in the original comics, only terrible instead of good. Sue finds a couple of toy gun salesmen and HERBIE calls Mr Fantastic to investigate some secret signals which turn out to be "just the finals of the world's fastest talking disc jockey contest", so Reed suggests they all "calm down, relax - take in a movie". Sadly they all remember that they've got other appointments so can't (more time filling) and head back out to variously go bowling, get a haircut, and receive a major science award. As they leave they meet their fans, who were all there last time they left but apparently are now a problem. Luckily there's an old lift attendant who helps them out by the back exit but, once they've gone, turns to be Doctor Doom wearing a mask!
This is all very stupid, but at least it's taken from the original comic! As there, Doom has placed tracking devices on each of the FF, and once he's back at the Latverian Embassy he unleashes some "Doom Balloons" which will follow them. "And none can guess the reason why!"
These are also from the oirginal comics, but here look disconcertingly like The Thing. I wonder if this was a mistake by the colourists? The balloons do look quite similar to him, so maybe they thought they should be coloured that way too? The balloons follow the FF around, generally annouying them (and me!). Everyone goes home for a good moan about how humiliating it's all been. Meanwhile Doom feels some sympathy. "I almost feel sorry for the Fantastic Four, what chance do they have against my own power and skill?"
Doom returns to the projector - which this time seems to work more like an actual teleporter rather than an image projector - to offer the FF a chance to surrender. "You cannot fight me! You cannot even find me!" he says, and disappears again. "Doom's conceit will be his downfall" says Reed... who then works out that "the bearded elevator man" was Doom in disguise, and put the metal discs on their wrists. Well done, Mr Fantastic!
Doctor Doom, meanwhile, has gone to the Pentagon to demand that the joint chiefs of staff hand over command of the US's arms forces, or else!
The joint chiefs say no, and Doom disappears, saying "I expected that answer!" Twenty four hours later, the lights start going off across America (which makes for some very cheap blackout scenses!) as all power is shut down and "the whole nation comes to a halt, as even the cars cannot run."
"He must have invented some sort of electronic nullifier which destroys electricity", says Reed... while explaining things to HERBIE, a robot, in a fully lit room.
Did I mention that this whole thing is annoying and stupid? Reed and HERBIE then rub it in by connecting the robot's scanners into another big machine (which is also still working somehow) in order to discover where Doom's orbital base is located. At this point Reed claims he's worked out that the balloons were to record the molecules in their bodies - in the comics this lead to a terrific sequence in which Ben Grimm was briefly turned human again, allowing him to penetrate Doom's defences while undergoing a titanic struggle with the very essence of his being. In the cartoon they simply "switch some of HERBIE's circuits" and send him in. "You're tickling me!" says the awful robot, who then gets into the ship without drama or any problems and scuttles the alarms easily.
Doom is monitoring them on a screen, and opens a trapdoor which the team fall thtough ... and then get out again easily. Doom tries again with an "anti-gravity" device, but Sue sends a force field through a wall "where I think his controls will be", turns them invisible, and... er... somehow this turns off the anti-gravity and lets them confont Doom in his control room.
I did mention how terrible this all is, didn't I?
"Fools! I have just begun to fight!" exclaims Doom, which is bad news for those of us who just want it all to be over. "Anyone can fight with normal weapons" Reed replies, talking to a Doom whose hood has suddenly turned brown. It looks like a colourist thought it was meant to be hair and nobody bothered to correct it, a feat of half-arsedness which is instantly outdone by the next shot.
Either Mr Fantastic has grown into a giant, The Thing has become tiny, or maybe, just maybe, somebody put the animation cels the wrong way round so that the foreground figure is in the background. Either way, it's awful!
The sotry now follows the original from the comics again, as Reed challenges Doom to a battle of wits, using a "brain machine" that measures their intelligence. Doom readily accepts, and the battle royale commences... and then ends about two seconds later, with Doctor Doom victorious and Reed Richards slumped across a table.
"I've beaten him at last!" says Doom, who tells the others they are free to go, while he gets back into his rocket ship and clears off home. "With the defeat of Reed Richards I no longer care about taking over the American armed forces", he says as he goes.
But hang on... Reed Richards is fine! It was all a trick! Somehow! "The only way to be rid of him forever was to trick him into thinking he was the victor!" he says. There's no explanation how he did it, I suppose it was just lucky that he had that brain machine hanging around.
And that's the lot, apart of course for the traditional "joke" at the end. "What do we do for an encore?" asks Ben, and he and HERBIE laugh their heads off. I remember hating the cheapness of these sort of cartoons when I first saw them as a child - even at a young age the lack of effort that had gone into them was insultingly obvious, and it turns out that time has not made them any better. As you can probably tell, these two cartoons have been the most painful texts to get through in this whole project!
Don't worry though, there's a whole MONTH of fun to come now as tomorrow we embark on about two year's worth of cameos, flashbacks, alternative universes and puzzle books in what we could only descibe as "MINOR APPEARANCES MONTH!" See you there!
link to information about this issue
posted 19/11/2019 by Mark Hibbett
| < previous | next > |
Comments: