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Today, we look into whether Marvel 2099’s Doom 2099 was actually the REAL Victor Von Doom or not.
This is “Provide Some Answers,” which is a feature where long unresolved plot points are eventually resolved.
This one is a bit tricky because the writer who resolved the story was the same writer who STARTED the story, but you might have noticed that I’ve allowed certain exceptions for when the same writer started and finished a story where it is pretty clear that the resolution was not what they had come up with when they started. In other words, there’s a writer starting a story and then resolving it (like, say, Ed Brubaker’s Winter Soldier stuff, where it all clearly was meant to go to a certain resolution) and there’s a writer introducing a story (like David Michelinie having Peter Parker’s parents show up in Amazing Spider-Man #365) without any knowledge of what he was going to someday write as the resolution of that story (like David Michelinie writing the revelation that Peter’s parents were actually robots sent by the Chameleon to learn Spider-Man’s secret identity). Here, it sure doesn’t seem like John Francis Moore had an end game in mind when he started his two-year run on Doom 2000 at the end of 1992, so I’m counting it for this column, even though Moore ultimately resolved the mystery.
Okay, to set the scene, 1992’s Doom 2099 #1 (by Moore and Pat Broderick) shows Doctor Doom pop up in the year 2099, totally confused as to how he got there…
Doom discovers that Latveria is now ruled by a villain known as Tiger Wylde (you can’t be a 1990s creation if you don’t have a Y where an I should be in your name). Doom tries to take Wylde down, but Doom’s armor is just not up to the task. Doom is unmasked and Wylde’s people are shocked to discover that Doom is A. not scarred and B. clearly way too young to be Doom. They scar up his face for fun…
One of Wylde’s lieutenants is a Romani, like Doom, and she decides to not kill the injured Doom and instead work with him to take Wylde down. Doom then receives a new armor that involves him being injected with nanobots, as well…
Doom quickly overthrows Tiger Wylde as leader of Latveria.
In a recurring plot in the series for the next year or so, Doom would try to rediscover his memories, but fail, like in Doom 2099 #9 (by Ernie Colon, writing and drawing the story), the conclusion of a trippy story where Doom enters the internet, basically, and battles with symbols of a number of fictional characters like Sweeney Todd, Professor Moriarty and Jacob Marley (as well as a real life killer in Jack the Ripper)…
Around this point in time, the present day Doom seemingly died, leading people to believe that the explosion that seemingly killed Doom really sent him to the pages of Doom 2099 #1…
The present day Doom eventually showed up in a whole other resolution of that plot (I discussed it last week. It involved Hyperstorm. You might be better off not knowing), so it had nothing to do with Doom 2099 (ironically, after making it clear that the Fantastic Four’s stories had nothing to do with Doom 2099, THEN Doom 2099 guest-starred in Fantastic Four!).
In Doom 2099 #13 (by Moore and Alcatena), Doom sees a mysterious woman who he recognizes named Margaretta von Geisterstadt…
We would later, in Doom 2099 #19 (by Moore, Broderick and inker John Nyberg), Margaretta is working along with another mystery figure while seeing her refer to Doom 2099 as a false Doom…
Around this same time, people were telling Doom that there was ANOTHER Doom out there, in the shadows. Doom didn’t believe these rumors as, well, they certainly just sound like the sort of thing that you tell people to create fear, ya know? However, could it be that the mystery figure with Margaretta was the REAL Doom?
Things came to a head in Doom 2099 #24 (where Warren Ellis now joined the book as the scripter over Moore’s plots), when Doom defeated a returned Tiger Wylde and discovers that he is an android, seemingly created by…
the REAL Doctor Doom!!
The other Doom explains that he is a lot older than Doom 2099, so obviously HE’s the REAL Doctor Doom and he has been hanging out with Margaretta all of this time, enjoying watching Doom struggle with his lot in life…
Margaretta, though, then sends the two Dooms on a trip through time.
Eventually, they discover the truth, about ten years earlier from 2099, where we see that Doom and Margaretta have had a “game” where they go back and forth messing with each other. Doom returned home after being injured by one of Margaretta’s games…
She then had him sort of switch minds with another man and also alter Doom’s appearance to make him appear ten years young and no longer scarred…
So Doom now knows the truth, he IS the real Victor Von Doom…
He was not a fan of Margaretta’s games, so he plays one last game and kills her and the fake Doom (I guess that means he won the game?). Now secure in his knowledge of who he is, Doom 2099 decides to then take over the United States, which is the start of Warren Ellis’ acclaimed run on the series.
Of course, by REAL Doctor Doom, we mean the real Doctor Doom of this possible future, but still, close enough.
If anyone else has a suggestion for a comic book plot that got resolved after a few years (I tend to use two years as the minimum, as otherwise, you’re probably just in the middle of the actual initial reveal of the storyline, ya know? But I’ll allow exceptions where a new writer takes over a storyline and has to resolve the previous writer’s unresolved plots), drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!
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