Posted in: Comics, Comics Publishers, Current News, Marvel Comics | Tagged: Deniz camp, doctor doom, Rovert Downey Jr, ultimates

How Will Ultimates #4 Foreshadow Robert Downey Jr As Doctor Doom?

Deniz Camp, writer on Ultimates at posted, "If you want to understand Robert Downey Jr. as Doom, you MUST read Ultimates 4 on Sept 4th"

Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! Robert Downey Jr was revealed to be the actor playing Doctor Doom in the Fantastic Four and Avengers movies Doomsday and Secret Wars. Immediately after, Deniz Camp, the big new hot writer in comics right now on The Ultimates at Marvel Comics and possibly Absolute Martian Manhunter for DC Comics' new Absolute Universe line, posted, "If you want to understand Robert Downey Jr. as Doom, you MUST read Ultimates 4 on Sept 4th. (or whenever it comes out)"

That's tomorrow. The Ultimates #4 by Deniz Camp and Juan Frigeri. With a solicitation that reads "THE FATE OF THE ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR! Doom's years of torture at the hands of the Maker finally catch up to him in this secret history of the real Reed Richards! And tensions rise among the Ultimates when Doom might be more fixated on re-creating the life he should have had than the life he's got…"

So what's going on? The Ultimates is part of the Ultimate line from Marvel Comics, that reimagines a Marvel universe if an evil version of Mister Fantastic from another universe had messed about with time and denied it of superheroes. And had taken that universe's version of Reed Richards, imprisoned him and turned him into Doctor Doom. We had seen, though, that this Doom has been experimenting with creating a Fantastic Four, using mice. And they appear on the cover of The Ultimates #4.

But what we get tomorrow is something closer to Alan Moore and Rick Veitch's all-time classic How Things Work Out that pastiches The Spirit work by Will Eisner. Set in a tenement building, it uses the structure of the building as the page of panels, each floor of the building becomes a different decade. The art style and the lettering change from decade to decade, and the comic can be read vertically or horizontally, with differently designed panel-to-panel reading experiences for each. Each story of the building has a different "story".

The Ultimates #4 doesn't quite go that far. But you do get a four-panel widescreen structure throughout, each tier set at a different time: before the Fantastic Four test flight, during and after it, years later as Reed Richards looks back on that time trying to fix things, and the present day. It can be read horizontally or vertically, and the vertical standard version links the panels with words, pictures, or themes even as they jump the years.

We have a failed Fantastic Four launch, and the effects that play out on the four as the result of the meddling of The Maker, an evil Reed Richards from a parallel universe, the original Ultimate Universe, who by changing a few digits dooms this four to destruction, external or internal…

And then, Reed Richards to Reed Richards, tortures him. Only referring to this Reed Richards as Doom, stretching his body beyond humanity, destroying him physically, forcing him into the mask, into the armour, into the name.

He is not Reed anymore. He is Doom. And, if Deniz Camp was telling the truth about the importance of this issue. might that mean that Tony Stark, somehow revived, is tortured in a similar way, until he, too, Room 101 style, is forced to believe that he too is Doom?

ULTIMATES #4
MARVEL COMICS
JUL240730
(W) Deniz Camp (A) Juan Frigeri (CA) Dike Ruan
THE FATE OF THE ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR! Doom's years of torture at the hands of the Maker finally catch up to him in this secret  history of the real Reed Richards! And tensions rise among the Ultimates when Doom might be more fixated on re-creating the life he should have had than the life he's got… Rated T+In Shops: Sep 04, 2024 SRP: $4.99

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