Admittedly, it felt like a week reading this one.

Even though I know I didn't, it feels like I read all of one comic last week. Oh, and another volume of Chainsaw Man, but too bad for you, we're looking at 2000's Heroes Reborn: Doom #1, "Doom" Written by Chris Claremont, pencils by Mike McKone, inks by Mark McKenna, letters by Richard Starkings and Comicraft. So many letters...

I was trying to sort out where this one fell: a gazillion years ago, we saw the Chuck Dixon/Leonardo Manco Doom mini-series, where Victor ends up stranded without armor and weapons on the Heroes Reborn earth that had been created by Franklin Richards: I had to look it up, that's after this series. We also saw a bit of continuity backfill, in a Thor annual, explaining what happened when the other heroes returned to regular Earth-616; that maybe doesn't work because Doom has his armor back there, but whatever. By this point, Doom is conquering the hell out of the largely hero-less earth--who did they have left? Proto-Iron Man Rebel? Girl Bucky? While Doom had a crew of hitters, most of whom are seemingly terrified of him but still betray him; but he had a few that were maybe loyal so far: a really murdery Lady Dorma, the Celestial Ashema, and Lancer. Seeing Lady Dorma is mildly interesting: she had of course been dead in regular continuity for years, and wasn't quite considered a saint like the likewise passed Gwen Stacy, but close. Somehow, Claremont seems to be implying that Namor was a humanizing influence on her (and the other Atlanteans there) and without him Dorma could be a monster.

I also had to look up Lancer, since I remember her appearing at Doom's side for a bit there; but I wasn't sure what happened to her. Narratively, it would make the most sense for her to be loyal to Doom until he eventually went too far, or used her up entirely: arguably, she would have been a creation of Franklin Richards and not necessarily "real," but that would hardly matter to Doom either way, he'd still see here as just another tool for him to use as needed. I don't think her story was really resolved, and neither was her world's: the thrust of this issue, is Doom uses an attack by the Dreaming Celestial to get the power to move the Heroes Reborn earth out of its pocket dimension and into the real world, on the other side of the sun, where the High Evolutionary's Counter-Earth used to be, taking that name. It may or may not still be there to this day? I've noticed this before, but I'm still surprised: so in the 616 universe, today, there's probably at least four earths around somewhere: the regular one, this one, the High Evolutionary's (that got stolen some time back) and the New Universe one that was sealed off. Suck on that, Hodgkin's Law of Parallel Planetary Development!...that might be the nerdiest reference we'll ever make here.