The Last Time Doom Formed his own Avengers

Avengers World #15-16
Writers: Nick Spencer and Frank Barbiere
Artist: Marco Checchetto
Color artist: Andres Mossa
Letterer: VC's Joe Caramagna (15), Joe Sabino and Travis Lanham (16)
Cover: Kalman Andrasofsky
Released: Nov. 19 and Dec. 10, 2014

The main “One World Under Doom” series has been excellent so far, but I haven't read any tie-ins outside of “Fantastic Four.” Those will probably start showing up on Marvel Unlimited soon. One of the most interesting to me is “Superior Avengers.” Aside from invoking the wonderful* “Superior Spider-Man” series, it's Doctor Doom assembling his own team of Avengers that appear to have ties to various heroes and villains.

But just like this isn't the first time Doom has taken over the world, it's also not his first time pulling together a squad to stand in for Earth's Mightiest Heroes.

It also happened in “Avengers World” #15-16, part of the “Axis” crossover event that gave us my personal favorite Carnage moment and... well... these comics we're about to cover. I'm a little fuzzy on the details of that story, but then, so, apparently, were some of the creators involved. But it did involve heroes and villains being magically inverted, bringing the dark natures of the former and the better angels of the latter to the forefront.

As such, Doom decides it's time to make right everything he's done wrong, which, as you might imagine, is a pretty extensive list. As with the Carnage subplot, and all my favorite stories where bad guys try to go good, his personality doesn't suddenly change. He tells his goddaughter Valeria Richards – who has always viewed Doom in a generously positive light – that he “will make everything right. For I am not a simple do-gooder – I am Doom.”

To accomplish this, he plans to drain the power of the Scarlet Witch, one of the inverted heroes. He's pretty confident that without a conscience she'll seek vengeance on him for him messing with her mind and powers in “Avengers: The Children's Crusade.” That wasn't even the worst thing he did in that particular story, but more on that later.

“With this power,” Doom tells Val, “I will undo my sins, one by one,” demonstrating he subscribes to a theology of works, rather than grace. Val doesn't explain that Jesus is the only one who can and will forgive him, but I'm pretty sure her parents are agnostic.

Doom has a mystical MacGuffin and a mad science device; all he needs from Val is a team of heroes. Those are in short supply, apparently due the events of “Axis,” so she goes to S.H.I.E.L.D. for help. Dismayed that Val hacked a great deal of their systems, Director Maria Hill nevertheless dispatches Agent Phil Coulson to help her.

Using a spiral diagram image similar to the graphic with which Jonathan Hickman tracked his expanded roster for this era of Avengers, Coulson and Val go around drafting former and first-time Avengers who are not exactly living their best heroic lives.

Elsa Bloodstone is recreating one of her monster hunts for a reality show; USAgent is working in a military recruiting office; Valkyrie is vigilantly and excessively defending a small business from shoplifters; 3-D Man is racing athletes he hopelessly outmatches; and Stingray is getting turned down for his offer to help firefighters.

Flashing an Avengers ID is all it takes to get them to assemble... in Latveria. There, they bicker about who will be team leader and wonder who they're going to fight until Val walks in wearing one of Doom's suits of armor. Soon, an angry Wanda Maximoff arrives in the square, and the new team ends their debut issue surrounded by a host of Vision-bots looking like the younger version that took the name Jonas in the pages of “Young Avengers.”

In issue 16, the team hacks and slashes Wanda's Vizh-bots, with Stingray taking a combat break to rescue some Latverians who fell into a river when the bridge they were fleeing on was damaged.

Wanda quickly identifies Val as the leader and relieves her of her armor, but the intervention of USAgent and 3-D Man frees her from the Witch's clutches. They lead her into the building where Doom set up his trap, then 3-D Man shuts Wanda inside. She quickly busts out before it drains much of her energy but then senses Doom has returned and leaves the team to fry that particular bigger fish. Val says they got what they needed.

The action shifts to Doom, who realizes they did not get enough power to undo all his wrongs. So he picks one of the worst – killing Cassie “Stature” Lang shortly after she and her fellow Young Avengers brought her dad Ant-Man back to life in the aforementioned Children's Crusade story. I started to suggest he might have wanted to revisit the time he killed his first love and turned her skin into demonic armor, but a) both are pretty awful and b) I kind of prefer not to think about the other one, even though it was part of Mark Waid's otherwise awesome FF run.

The last two pages are drawn by Ramon Rosas and lead in to Spencer's “Ant-Man” series that was a fun read both before and after the Secret Wars*** interruption.

The roster is great. I've been a fan of Valkyrie since the first time I read a random issue of the original Defenders series, though I was confused here by her lack of dramatic Asgardian dialogue. I don't remember if she was still trading places with archaeologist Annabelle Riggs at this point, but even then I didn't think Annabelle was actually inhabiting her body. For some reason, though, there's nary a “forsooth” or “verily” to be found in any of the word balloons.

I've thought Elsa Bloodstone was cool ever since her reintroduction in “Nextwave,” despite not being a big fan of that title. Her initial Heroclix figure was pretty awesome too. She's a character that Marvel keeps trying to make happen, though she hasn't caught on for very long.

USAgent has one of the best costumes in comics, and for a while, I found him more interesting than Captain America, though I've come around on that one. I dug the inclusion of 3-D Man since I was actively reading “Avengers” when Kurt Busiek and George Perez introduced him as Triathlon. Stingray has always appealed to me since I recall him being introduced as the Avengers' oceanographer, rather than a full member of the team.

Valeria, too, is a neat character. I'm sure Mister Fantastic and the Invisible Woman don't have favorites among their children, but I'll pick her over Franklin nine times out of 10. And I still love old-school MCU Coulson and appreciate these issues never mentioning the fact that he was secretly introduced in the comic universe a few years earlier in the “Battle Scars” limited series under the nickname “Cheese.”

But we don't get enough time with them. I have complained about contemporary comics drawing stories out too long, especially in relation to crossover events. The team is introduced at a brisk pace, then doesn't get to do much. That is, apparently, by design, but as much as we got to see each of them disappointed by where they are in their heroic careers, it would have been cool to see them lament not getting to play a bigger role or consider staying together as a team. Then again, I'm not sure that would have appealed to many people besides me, and Marvel already had at least four ongoing Avengers titles at the time, including the offbeat roster in Al Ewing's “Mighty Avengers.”

The only other gripe I have is that I think 3-D Man and USAgent have both been teammates of Wanda's, and she was probably hanging out on Hydrobase at some point while Stingray was oceanograph-ing back in the day. Everybody recognizes she's a threat but nobody references any shared history. That's probably again due to the nature of the story: Spencer and Barbiere had two issues to tell it, and that was some of the fat that had to be cut.

But oddball teams with C-list characters I love, a believable treatment of attempted reformed villainy and an endgame that's about family and righting a wrong combine to make this a fun footnote that I would love to see revisited someday. It was also cool to see the work of Checchetto years before his star turn on Chip Zdarsky's Daredevil run.

* - At least the first time around.