"They Saved Doom's Face, conclusion!"

I have Marvel Legends, or Fantastic Four movie figures, that I could've used for this strip; except I just got the Marvel Universe versions, and the heads pop off those if you so much as look sternly at them. Doom's new face? It's from an A-Team Lynch figure, and may or may not resemble the actor that played him, Patrick Wilson, who played Nite Owl in Watchmen. Funny how those things loop around sometimes...

I read something, years ago, either a very early blogpost or fairly decent fan-fiction, that made a pretty convincing argument that Dr. Doom would probably be impotent. Doom doubtless wears that armor all the time (we've seen him in bed with it here before!) and touches nothing, and in turn is touched by nothing. Of course, I do recall Doom sleeping with Morgana le Fey sometime in Bendis' Dark Avengers, so maybe that theory's been blown out of the water.

Anyway, the idea for this one may have come from various Two-Face stories where he gets his face fixed...and then in short order wrecks it again, usually of his own free will, or untreated psychosis. In the earliest versions of that plot, sometimes it seems like Batman thinks that's all he would have to do: fix Harvey's face, and they'd be friends again and everything would be back like it was. The scars, of course, go deeper than that; and even if a writer came up with the perfect fix-Harvey's-face story, the end of Two-Face; some later writer would bring him back.

Hell, Doom can't even change his armor, so they're never going to change his face. I liked Walt Simonson and Mike Wieringo's redesigns, but Doom always defaults back to his usual green cloak and grey armor. Well, that's probably all right...