Issue(s): Thing #12, Thing #13
Cover Date: Jun-Jul 84
Title: "Doom!" / "In all the gathering gloom"
Credits:
John Byrne - Writer
Ron Wilson - Penciler
Joe Sinnott - Inker

Review/plot:
This two-parter seems to feature Dr. Doom!

The Thing gets into a fight with a pair of viking warriors.

They assume he is an agent of the Wizard. The Wizard turns out to be Dr. Doom.

He has to fight the male warrior but is able to convince the female that he's not an agent of Doom. They fight a giant Doombot.

And then they follow the trail to a giant castle that the Thing says looks exactly like Doomstadt, Dr. Doom's home town on Earth.

I ranted about this already in the entry for Fantastic Four #268, but the fact that the Thing assumes that this Dr. Doom can't be the real Dr. Doom, because he saw Doom die in Fantastic Four #260, even though he acknowledges seeing Dr. Doom alive after that during Secret Wars, rankles me to no end. Here's the quote:

We fought Doom an' a buncha other creeps in them Secret Wars. But we never did quite figger out how Doom coulda bin there, since the last time we saw him on Earth he got blown inta fairy dust.

I ain't never seen nobody get deader than that.

So this has gotta be some kinda robot or somethin'. Even on Earth Doom was always buildin' robots of his ugly self.

That line of reasoning is completely nonsensical.

Similarly, like we saw in issue #11, there's another line about how the civilization of viking-like warriors that the Thing finds in this arc can't possibly exist:

"Like how a people that I know can't have existed more'n a coupla weeks can have stories from centuries ago."

Again, there's no reason to think that this town couldn't have been picked up from whatever planet this chunk of the Battleplanet came from, all the townsfolk included. That turns out to not be the case for this story, but it doesn't seem like an impossibility any more than it was for Zsaji's race.

However the explanation for this group of people, and for Doom's appearance, is as follows:

But there was one thing I hadn't thought of. Doom, he don't like ta lose. He's always got watcha call a contingency plan.

That's what this was. He built a little gadget that projected a Doom's-eyes view of the world. Cockeyed fer sure, but somethin' else.

Doom musta tapped inta his own brain ta program the gadget. An' he tapped too deep. he tapped all the rotten evil stuff, like we all got tucked up inside our heads. Only in his case it's even nastier than most.

When the Thing smashes the device...

...the entire town and all of the townspeople disappear. Except the female warrior, Tarianna. The Thing explains her survival as follows:

You're here 'cause I want ya ta be here.

An' that's as big a surprise ta me as it is ta you.

We'll see where this goes. Part of the theory of the Battleplanet and Ben's ability to transform back and forth into the Thing (which turns out to not be true) is that it's part of the Beyonder's wish fulfillment granted to the winners of Secret Wars. So that may explain what Ben means. Or it may be some residual effect of the Thing touching Doom's device. Not sure where this is going.

Regardless of the reasons for the viking-warriors existence, i didn't love this story. The aliens in issue #11 were one thing. But viking warriors just seem a bit silly. Dr. Doom's posthumous involvement made things potentially more interesting but didn't really deliver. A lot of the problems probably relate to the fact that the world that the Thing is on doesn't really jibe with the one we saw in Secret Wars. That's probably due to the fact that Secret Wars is still being published. But it should have been coordinated better.

One thing that was kind of cute was a follow-up on the girl from issue #11.

Quality Rating: C

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: N/A

References:

• The FF saw Dr. Doom die in Fantastic Four #260.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A