DOOM WATCH...

Images copyright MARVEL COMICS

Behold - DOCTOR DOOM - whose image The FANTASTIC FOUR (well, three of them anyway) can see by means of a spherical screen, transmitted from elsewhere in the Latverian monarch's castle stronghold.  Got that?  It's a TV pic, yet there's REED RICHARDS, supposedly the brightest man on the planet, stretching out for that image and saying "I've got to reach him!"  Why?  What good would it do for Reed to touch the televised visage of the villain who's trying to destroy them?  No good at all, surely.

Is Reed hallucinating in his oxygen-bereft state?  Does he think that he sees the real Doom before him - even if it's only a giant head and shoulders shot of the evil arch-fiend?  The picture as dialogued just doesn't make any sense.  Ah, but that means it's the dialogue that's at fault, which suggests STAN LEE is to blame for the absurdity, not JACK KIRBY, you say.  Well, Stan's merely giving voice to what Jack drew, which is Reed reaching out to touch a giant, globular television screen, so Jack's equally culpable in this instance.

Or, I suppose, we could say it's merely symbolic and therefore not meant to be taken literally and let it go at that.  Oh, I dunno though...

What do you think?   

Posted in: Cartoons