"Hedge against senility," huh?

Supposedly, that was one of the reasons for me doing this blog, so of course I hate it when I misremember something, even if it's only a little something, because I really specifically misremembered it! From 1991, Fantastic Four #350, "The More Things Change...or, It's the Real Thing..." Story and pencils by Walt Simonson, inks by Allen Milgrom. (We briefly blogged a piece of this issue years back, but it deserves a bigger post!) 

The Doom vs. Kristoff war had been running since Steve Englehart's Fantastic Four Annual #20 in 1987: when Doom had been believed dead, his fail-safe Kristoff was activated and programmed with Doom's personality and memories. (Up to around FF #6, when Kristoff-Doom decided launching the Baxter Building into space would've worked if not for the Sub-Mariner's interference.) When the Beyonder returned the original Doom, Kristoff and his Doombots refused to accept him, and had most of Doom's resources to use against him. Today, with a small unit of reprogrammed Doombots, Doom makes his final push against Kristoff...which is interrupted by the sudden arrival of a third Doctor Doom? Another impostor? Unlikely, this silver armored Doom speaks as though he had just returned from "an extended leave of absence" to find the kid and the babysitter trying to shank each other to death...Although impressed with the "greatest of my Doombots," nu-Doom still shreds the one we thought was the real one, saving the head for later inspection. (Just now, I wonder: did the Beyonder bring back a robot Doom? Is that all he had ever seen?) The trigger word "Ouroboros!" deactivates Kristoff, making him a loyal subject again, and Doom also deactivates his other Doombots. But, bigger fish, as Doom intended to catch up on events, saying he had "made the occasional sojourn home" but again, seemed to have been gone for some time. A plan quickly forms...

Back at Four Freedoms Plaza, Ben reads an account of Doom's return in the paper. Sue wonders why he has his feet on the table (and smashes a chair to underline her point!) but also why he was wearing his Thing exo-suit: he was trying to make Sharon Ventura feel better, since she had recently briefly returned to human, and missed it. Sharon is not swayed by Ben's attempt, and wonders why Reed hasn't cured her: Reed admits it's difficult, and that he wasn't even sure Ben was permanently cured. She stomps off, much as Ben used to, but is immediately picked up by a limo offering assistance, which brings her to a masked man in a dressing gown: casual-wear Doctor Doom! He offers to cure her, not out of the goodness of his heart, but for money: ostensibly, to get Latveria's economy back in gear after its recent troubles. That is of course a lie, something Doom needed to sugarcoat his offer; but he cures Sharon quickly and apparently easily. Kristoff asks how he managed to do something Reed never could; Doom advises he was on thin ice there, but explains he had science and magic to work with. (This may be the first hint of it, but it becomes readily apparent Doom does not see Kristoff as an equal, he barely sees him as an asset.)

Of course, in the best tragic romance Marvel tradition, Ben decides he can't let Sharon be a Thing alone, and secretly opts to blast himself with cosmic rays. Reed is furious, but Sue immediately realizes why Ben did it, and Reed apologizes. Ben was weakened, but not completely changed, when a robot messenger from Doom arrives to tell them Sharon was safe at Castle Doom, and would remain so for the next four hours. "After that...who can say?" Doom doesn't have any grudge against Sharon; that almost feels like a non-threat, he just wanted the Four. Then again, he would doubtless kill her in an instant if it would benefit him, wouldn't he?

Arriving at the castle and facing some Doombots, Ben is quickly revealed as the Thing again, then they are faced with four passageways. With only fifteen minutes left on the countdown, they are forced to split up, and are hit with four specifically-created traps. (How Doom knew which door each would take...they had to be moveable somehow.) Johnny is trapped underwater, with a breathing device, but stuck; similarly Sue fights off a number of robots but not an invisible gas. Reed's trap closes doors behind him, then lowers, leaving him squozen flat. Ben finds Sharon, but also Doom, who wants revenge for his "humiliating defeat at the battle of the Baxter Building!" That was FF #40, which Ben rightly points out, "wuz a zillion years ago!" (I thought Ben said it was "a hunnerd years ago," I'm getting forgetful in my old age!) Doom has "an anti-matter extrapolator" to take out Ben, but Ben had an unexpected ace up his sleeve, mutating from his traditional Thing look to the spiky armadillo one! "The worse I look, the tougher I get!" Ben has Doom on the ropes, until Sharon hits him from behind with a "thermo-lance" and about "a million mega-volts," giving Doom time to recover and zap him. He barely has a moment to gloat over the possibly-dead Ben, before Reed arrives, somehow freed from his stone trap, and seemingly more than willing to kill Doom if Ben was dead.

Doom scoffs at Reed's unexpected arrival, claiming he would have freed him for their final confrontation anyway: a battle to the death, with "null-time sequencers," moving back and forwards through time! A battle, the next issue box promises, "...so titanic, so overwhelming, so difficult to capture on paper (!) that it won't be ready next issue!" FF #351 would be a fill-in...which I'm not positive I've ever read? And I may have had a subscription at the time! #352 would be the Doom/Reed fight, and it's a good one. Simonson's run on Fantastic Four is an all-time favorite of mine; with my only complaint that it was all too short. That and his new status quo and look for Doom was so good, yet completely ignored going forward! (I could argue it makes maybe one other appearance, but that's iffy.)