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Blog Archive: April 2020
The Doctor Prescribes DoomAfter a bried hiatus for PhD Tasks (thanks very much to everybody who took part in the survey!) we're back to normal today as we take another look at the Surprisingly Quite Good Fun "Spider-man" series from 1981. This episode takes its inspiration from a story in the Spider-man newspaper strip that we looked at a little while ago, although it's also weirdly similar to the Dr Doom Master Of The World episode of this same series, in that all three heavily feature the United Nations.
It all starts off very calmly and spookily, with a man on the street being kidnapped by a passing van and replaced with... himself again? After a brief interlude where Spider-man saves a young girl from falling off a balcony (which surely required a call to social services - her mother wasn't even watching!) we switch to an office building where someone else is kidnapped and replaced with an identical duplicate. What's going on?
"Morning ambassador" says a security guard as the duplicate heads into the office building, which turns out to be ... the United Nations! Looking the same as it did in the last episode with Doom! Surely we can't be seeing the same plot again can we?
As if to say "You betcha!" we go straight over to Latveria, where a very comics-adjacent version of Doom's castle looms out of the darkness.
Interestingly, this does not then lead to a shot of Doom, but instead to the streets of Latveria itself, where a young peasant is using a pair of horses to try and free his father from prison. The noise attracts the attention of two robots - identical to the ones we saw before - but before they can investigate the lad sends his father away, saying "Do not speak of the tyrant! One day I will defeat Doctor Doom and free Latveria once and for all!" He's captured by the robots and is led away yelling "Doom is a monster!"
We won't see this peasant again (or his dad, who is captured in the woods by a whole platoon of robots) in this episode and there story is left unresolved for now, making this very much like the comics, with an ongoing sub-plot which (spoilers) will continue in the next episode we look at.
After all that we finally go inside the castle to find Doom sat in a funky chair at a control desk very much like one we've seen before in the comics.
He's there with Boris, who looks much younger than he did in Spider-man And His Amazing Friends recently. Together they're putting the final touches to another duplicate, this time of the secretary general of the United Nations. Doom fondles a globe thoughtfully. "Soon the world will be mine", he says. It really IS the same story again!
After all this Doom action, the show, which is after all called "Spider-man" rather than "Doctor Doom", finally catches up with Spider-man, or at least Peter Parker. He's in a meeting with J Jonah Jameson, who tells Robbie Robertson that "The world needs more leaders like Doctor Doom! Strong! Decisive", in exactly the same way that he did in the newspaper strip. It's lovely to see all these characters from the comics popping up, Betty Brant's there too!
Jonah, Betty and Peter head to the UN, where they pass an Ominous Looking Black Diamond. Hmm, I wonder if that might be a part of the plot?
The Secretary General of the UN arrives, and then Doctor Doom takes to the lectern and demands that the United Nations elect him as master of the world. "There will be no debate! Vote! Now!" he says and the delegates all agree. "Doom! Doom! Doom!" they chant.
Only one delegate protests - the member for "Bokland", who declares that "the freedom-loving people of Bokland will never accept the rule of a tyrant!" and Doom responds by blasting a hole in the ceiling. With that bit of business over, Doom abolishes all newspapers and TV - "none must be able to criticise me!" he says.
Does this sound eerily familiar to anybody?
Betty Brant protests, so Doom does the ceiling trick again and Spidey has to leap in to save her, revealing himself to Doom who tells his army of delegate-duplicates to "destroy Spider-man".
Spidey flies off and... er... that's it for the day. Doctor Doom takes over the world and it seems that everybody just carries on as normal, with Peter Parker arriving at the Daily Bugle for work the next day as if nothing's happened. That doesn't last for long though, as he notices little oddities in the otherwise perfectly calm first day of Doctor Doom's dictatorship - Jonah is nice to him and the ambassador for Bokland refuses to hear a word against Doom. We, the viewer, can guess that they've both been turned into duplicates, but surely not everybody in the world has? Shouldn't there be at least some tutting about the overthrow of democracy?
Again, does this sound eerily familiar?
Peter heads to college (which is carrying on as normal too) for a lecturer where somebody mentions robots. "Robots!" he says, finally realising why all those UN delegates voted for Doom, and heading off to finally do something it, unaware that he's being watched from a distance.
Watching from a distance is, of course, one of Doctor Doom's big signifiers!
Spidey tries to raise the alarm at the Bugle, and ends up thinking he's killed Robbie Robertson while failing to get away from from Doom's goons. Fraught with grief, he manages to escape from the back of their van just as it turns up at the UN, only for Doctor Doom to turn up and attack him using a giant dart throwing helicopter!
Spidey falls into a handy fountain, managing to hide underwater using his "spider power" to hide his breath long enough for the nearby goons to wander off.
Later that night, while Peter Parker is learning all about Robot Electronics (a long night, but apparently do-able) Doom has sent the secratary general into work to steal the Ominous Black Diamond. He uses his "mechanical finger" to unlock the case and then replaces it with a fake and wanders out. What this diamond is doing at the UN, we're never told!
Meanwhile, as suspected, Peter has cracked All Robotic Technology, but before he can use his new expertise to save the world Aunt May comes in with a bowl of soup. Jaunty music tells us that this is a Comedy Interlude. Once he's finished his supper he heads to college where a Professor quickly knocks up a Device. "We won't know if it works until we test it", he says, but Spidey has no time for that!
The next day (Doom has now been ruler of the planet for at least two days!) Spidey spots some news of a Latverian ship in port. "Of course!" he says, and swings over to discover all the duplicated people lurking in the brig. He's delighted to discover that Robbie is still alive, once we've had some slightly daft business where ripping Robbie's shirt off proves he's human. Or something.
Back at the UN Doom is making a speech, stating that all armies are under his command and all world leaders answer to him. As I say, it's been two days, how come he's only just getting round to the admin?
Spidey swings in, presses a button on his device, and all the delegate duplicate robots explode! He was right - it didn't need testing at all! The fact that this happens on telly also, apparently, proves Doom's treachery, which I would have though people might have spotted a bit earlier due to it being Doctor Doom and him taking over the world, but what do I know?
We then get two more Great Doom Signifiers, firstly with Doom exploding to reveal that he was a robot all along!
Secondly, we see the real Doom watching events on-screen from his aeroplane, from where he issues a threat as he flees the scene. "You and I have a score to settle, Spider-man!"
And that's the end of what's been a fun episode packed full of Doom's trademark motifs, including Latveria, Boris, The United Nations, robots, video screens and even a Doombot. With all that going on it's no wonder it all seemed a bit familiar!
Next time there's another episode in this series, in which we discover the name of that peasant lad, and hear some very dodgy accents!
posted 24/4/2020 by MJ Hibbett
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Survey Update
A huge thank you for everyone who has taken part in my Doctor Doom survey - so far it has had over 200 responses, which is way past what I ever expected! This has come about largely because of the many podcasters and comics creators who have very kindly tweeted about it, via the Marvel Age Doom twitter account, so a very special extra thanks to them!
The only slight disadvantage to all of this extra material is that it's likely to take me much longer to extract the data from it than I expected! Those who have taken the survey will know that the first half is very text-based, with a series a questions basically asking people to list Doom's characteristics, and this is going to take a bit of work to tease out and categorise. However, I'm not complaining - I've had a look through what's there and there's loads of ideas that I've never considered, so it's going to be an extremely rich dataset!
The second half of the survey asks more straightforward questions, so I'm planning to do an analysis of that first of all, and then report the results here (as well as emailing them to everyone who's joined the mailing list). I'm hoping to do that after Easter, so there's plenty of time to take part if you'd like to. The survey takes about twenty minutes and can be found here:
http://www.mjhibbett.co.uk/doom/survey/
Thanks again to everybody who's taken part, or is planning to do so - normal service will resume here next week!
posted 8/4/2020 by MJ Hibbett
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Doctor Doom Survey
As you may be aware, this blog is being written as part of the research for my PhD thesis, which is (currently!) called "Doctor Doom In The Marvel Age: An Empirical Approach To Transmedia Character Coherence". I'm trying to read through every appearance by Doctor Doom in all narrative media from his first appearance in Fantastic Four #5 up until Thor #383, the last comic with Doom in it with Jim Shooter as editor-in-chief. I wrote a (rather long-winded) explanation of why those are the dates when I began all this a couple of years ago, but the short version is that that's what I'm calling "The Marvel Age".
The reason for reading them is to help me find out who Doctor Doom "is", as much as a fictional character really "is" anybody. Part of my methodology is to generate an empirical approach to this, so that it can be re-done for other characters, and as part of all that I'm doing an online survey to try and find out what other people think Doom's core characteristics are. Hopefully this will be a way to get a starting list for his characteristics that doesn't just rely on my own ideas of who Doom is, as well as maybe pointing me in the direction of some aspects I haven't noticed before.
I'd be very grateful to anybody who wishes to take part - the link to the survey is here:
http://www.mjhibbett.co.uk/doom/survey/
It's completely anonymous, but you can also leave your email address at the end (unlinked to the main survey) to get updates on how it all goes if you'd like. It should only take about twenty minutes to complete, and is very much Not A Test - I'm as interested in finding out what aspects of Doctor Doom people don't know about as the aspects they do!
The more responses I can get for this the better, so do feel free to share this with other people who might be interested!
posted 1/4/2020 by MJ Hibbett
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