"The End" Week: Doom #44!

Man, I hope everyone was wrong about that Mayan Apocalypse business, since I'm writing this post in December 2011! I just didn't want to post two 2099 last issues the same week. From 1996, Doom 2099 #44, "Entangling Alliances" Written by John Francis Moore, pencils by Jeff Lafferty, inks by Russell, Rubinstein, Pepoy, and Panosian.

The 2099 books were winding down: they would be conglomerated into 2099: World of Tomorrow, which would not set the sales charts on fire. As they were released, I read Spider-Man 2099 the whole run of the book, and the brief runs of Fantastic Four 2099 and Ghost Rider 2099. I read Punisher 2099 and Doom 2099 sporadically, since even when they weren't great, they usually had their moments. Maybe.

By this point in the 2099 world, things were starting to fall apart even more than usual: Attuma (who had to be pretty old by then, since he fought the FF and Avengers of the present many times) invades the surface world, Atlantis Attacks 2099. Marvel was not cheeky enough to use that title...climate change was wreaking havok on the planet, aliens were arriving; also, during Doom's term as President of the United States, most of Latveria's citizenry were turned into a fine meat paste; so Doom had been back in time to try to instill some genetic resistance to the poisons that killed his people. Oh, and then the Borg Phalanx show up...

I think the Phalanx were of, or related to, Warlock from the New Mutants; before they became a lemon-flavored Borg knockoff. Regardless, they suck, which is why it's discouraging for the book to end with a quote from Thomas Jefferson (it includes the issue's title) as Doom makes a deal with the Phalanx. Ostensibly it's to save Latveria, and it's pretty obvious Doom'll double-cross the hell out of them, but still.

Moore had written some other books--off the top of my head, I'm pretty sure he wrote some X-Men 2099--but Jeff Lafferty brought a surprisingly...idiosyncratic style to the title. It would've been a dramatic departure from every other Marvel title on the racks at the time, but I'm still not sure it's any good...not my taste, at any rate.

Well, here's hoping this one stays fresh for a year...