FF #16
Well... that was pretty painful to read.
It starts out okay, with Doom posturing and trying to bargain with Scott by offering to resurrect Cassie, which Scott rejects because it would be spitting on the way she originally sacrificed herself to stop Doom getting ultimate power. Then, thanks to Scott's handwavy new understanding of Pym particles that makes him suddenly super powerful, we get about 15 pages of him completely beating the crap out of Doom, crushing his armour and ripping it off him, throwing him around and stuffing leaves down his throat, while Doom says things like "It's- it's not possible! You're just an Ant-Man!", "How are you this powerful? How?" and "No! Not the mask!", looks intimidated, and doesn't attempt to fight back physically in any way.
It's retconned that Scott's ants were around when Reed was doing the brain-transfer between Kristoff and Doom back in Hickman's run, and they copied Doom's brain patterns to share them all over the internet. Doom's mask is ripped off and his face revealed to be completely unscarred, until the Living Tribunal appears with the Watcher, judges Doom for seeking omnipotence, and declares that from now on every act of malice he makes will cause a new scar, and nothing else will be able to harm or heal his face. After they're done, Scott continues beating on Doom even more until he finally lapses into his own language and apparently surrenders, bowing his head in Scott in front of a group of his subjects.
As Scott goes to leave, Doom grabs his gauntlet and attempts to shoot Scott, only to apparently hit and kill Valeria as she and Franklin teleport in, setting up a parallel to the way that he killed Cassie. As Doom mourns her seeming death, it's explained in a rather rushed and confused couple of panels that it's some kind of mental illusion of Ravonna's that only Doom sees, and the real Valeria is fine.
Ravonna disappears, and the issue of whether she really is a grown-up version of Valeria is vaguely waved away by Franklin saying that she claimed it but he doesn't believe it because she "had the stink of Doom on her". The main story ends with Val trying to get through to "Uncle Victor" to tell him she's all right, while Scott says he doesn't believe there's a man named Victor inside the armour and there never was. (The backup story is mostly a repeat of the backup from F4 #16, with some pages told from a different perspective and others just a direct reprint from the F4 story.)
So, er. Well, it's kind of hard to think of much to say about that... Um... the art was good? The beginning and ending weren't bad? It was just the whole section in between that was... not.
I'm curious how much of this was Fraction and how much was Lee Allred, because as a basic outline, "Doom offers to resurrect Cassie, Scott rejects that as an insult to her sacrifice, and spends the rest of the story thoroughly beating the crap out of Doom until Doom's attempt at a kill shot apparently kills Valeria," sounds fine. It's just the completely OTT nature of the beating and the warping of Doom's character required to achieve it that's so dire.
Regardless, really not a great end to a series where I wasn't all that thrilled with the depiction of Doom to begin with. I loved the FF kids and the parts of the issues that focused on them, but this was really not a good outing for Doctor Doom on any level.
It starts out okay, with Doom posturing and trying to bargain with Scott by offering to resurrect Cassie, which Scott rejects because it would be spitting on the way she originally sacrificed herself to stop Doom getting ultimate power. Then, thanks to Scott's handwavy new understanding of Pym particles that makes him suddenly super powerful, we get about 15 pages of him completely beating the crap out of Doom, crushing his armour and ripping it off him, throwing him around and stuffing leaves down his throat, while Doom says things like "It's- it's not possible! You're just an Ant-Man!", "How are you this powerful? How?" and "No! Not the mask!", looks intimidated, and doesn't attempt to fight back physically in any way.
It's retconned that Scott's ants were around when Reed was doing the brain-transfer between Kristoff and Doom back in Hickman's run, and they copied Doom's brain patterns to share them all over the internet. Doom's mask is ripped off and his face revealed to be completely unscarred, until the Living Tribunal appears with the Watcher, judges Doom for seeking omnipotence, and declares that from now on every act of malice he makes will cause a new scar, and nothing else will be able to harm or heal his face. After they're done, Scott continues beating on Doom even more until he finally lapses into his own language and apparently surrenders, bowing his head in Scott in front of a group of his subjects.
As Scott goes to leave, Doom grabs his gauntlet and attempts to shoot Scott, only to apparently hit and kill Valeria as she and Franklin teleport in, setting up a parallel to the way that he killed Cassie. As Doom mourns her seeming death, it's explained in a rather rushed and confused couple of panels that it's some kind of mental illusion of Ravonna's that only Doom sees, and the real Valeria is fine.
Ravonna disappears, and the issue of whether she really is a grown-up version of Valeria is vaguely waved away by Franklin saying that she claimed it but he doesn't believe it because she "had the stink of Doom on her". The main story ends with Val trying to get through to "Uncle Victor" to tell him she's all right, while Scott says he doesn't believe there's a man named Victor inside the armour and there never was. (The backup story is mostly a repeat of the backup from F4 #16, with some pages told from a different perspective and others just a direct reprint from the F4 story.)
So, er. Well, it's kind of hard to think of much to say about that... Um... the art was good? The beginning and ending weren't bad? It was just the whole section in between that was... not.
I'm curious how much of this was Fraction and how much was Lee Allred, because as a basic outline, "Doom offers to resurrect Cassie, Scott rejects that as an insult to her sacrifice, and spends the rest of the story thoroughly beating the crap out of Doom until Doom's attempt at a kill shot apparently kills Valeria," sounds fine. It's just the completely OTT nature of the beating and the warping of Doom's character required to achieve it that's so dire.
Regardless, really not a great end to a series where I wasn't all that thrilled with the depiction of Doom to begin with. I loved the FF kids and the parts of the issues that focused on them, but this was really not a good outing for Doctor Doom on any level.