by Marv Wolfman
Six months passed before he could move. And then his progress was astonishing. One day he was paralyzed; the next day he could walk. Doctors certified he would never again speak, that his vocal cords were frozen. Then, in a thick, heavy voice that sounded like roaring cannons, he’d order those same doctors to leave him alone.
Seven months to the day of the explosion, Dean Collins entered the darkened hospital room. The shades were drawn; only a small candle provided light.
“What do you want, Collins?” Doom demanded.
“To tell you that I am expelling you from school. You’re uncontrollable, Doom—a menace to us, and a menace to yourself. I’ll not put up with it any longer.”
For perhaps the first time in his long, grim life, Doom laughed. “There is nothing more you dolts can teach me, anyway. You had outlived your usefulness long before the accident occurred. Now, get out! If I ever see you again, I swear you shall feel my unending wrath!”
Four
It was almost winter before the bandages were removed and in a mirror he saw the hideous mockery his face had become. His flesh was torn and scabbed, his hair missing and clumped in disgusting patches. Deep scars traced his face like the lines on a roadmap, and it was more than the proud Victor Von Doom could stand.
“God, I’m ugly—disgustingly ugly!” he cried, tears burning the welts that pockmarked his face. “What have I done to myself? What?”
A powerful fist smashed the mirror into a thousand cursed reflections, and blood ribboned down his torn hand. “It is too disgusting, too horrible. No other eyes must ever see my face again.”
He took to Asia and the mountains of Tibet. His mother’s diary told of an unknown sect of monks whose mastery of the Dark Arts made Cynthia’s knowledge pall in comparison.
The winter was especially harsh, bitter winds whipped around every peak, and Doom could only curse the gods for the freezing temperatures and the foul game that occasionally dared the icy snows. But Doom pressed on, remembering another wintry trek he had made with his father. He refused to be defeated then; nothing could stop him now.
The snow blinded him and for days he plodded forward, never knowing if his next step would take him toward his destination, or plunge him into a deadly crevasse.
His throat was parched, his muscles ached, and his bare skin would be cut and blood would instantly freeze to the wound. Hunger drove him mad and demons plagued his nights, yet nothing could stop him. He was Victor Von Doom. He would continue.
Until he dropped.
The snow was a warm blanket that gently covered his unconscious form. In his mind’s eye, he saw the seashore and proud horses, and Gypsies singing around the campfire. He saw his tall father holding his medicine bag tightly to his chest, laughing with the others, singing his bawdy songs.
And when the festival seemed to be at its zenith, he saw only blackness and he knew he was dead.
They spotted him in the snow, his bandaged face buried in a high drift, his parka ripped beyond usefulness, his provisions gone.
Four of them lifted him and brought him to their cave to be warmed by the fire. One robed figure motioned to the other: “Bring me the herbs and remedies.” He said nothing but was instantly understood. A third man removed his dark hood and sat cross-legged before the fire. The legends had foretold that one day “a faceless man will be your master.” Surely this man whose features had been ravaged was the man they had been promised.
For two months Doom slept in a coma; his pains had been eased by these strange, silent monks who prayed to the Dark Gods for his recovery. On Walpurgis Night, the day of Doom’s own birth, the fever which held him passed, and his eyes opened, and he picked himself off the straw cot and proudly stood before the monks, who bowed to him, chanting, “Master . . . master . . . master.”
Doom was satisfied. He was home.
A month later, he was strong. “There is much for me to learn. Your dark sciences and your most ancient secrets must be mine.” The monks bowed in acquiescence. They had awaited his coming for two thousand years. They were his to command.
By fall, there was nothing he did not know. He had mastered their sciences and sorceries with amazing ease. But something still nagged at him. The outside world had probably thought him dead. That insult could not be allowed. He had to return to life.
Then the awesome job began. Using the mouth of a giant idol as a makeshift furnace, the Gypsy son forged the most dreaded battle armor the world would ever see.
Within an unshatterable steel shell, he molded every weapon his mad mind could conceive. His servants took careful measurements: the arms, the legs, the chest . . . they all had to perfectly fit Von Doom.
Intricate computer circuitry was placed in the heavy iron glove, and on the right index finger a small ring was hidden which would unlatch the dreaded mask . . .
. . . that great gray skull-like face that would cover Doom’s own demolished visage.
“Does the armor pain you, Master?”
“Pain? That is for lesser men! What can pain mean to Victor Von Doom? Now—place on the mask!”
“But, Master, it has not completely cooled.”
“Say no more, monk.” Doom’s voice was seething with anger. “I will tolerate no further delay. I cannot wait a moment more.”
The great iron mask, still burning red with flame, was brought by heavy tongs toward Doom. His dark, brooding eyes glowed hungrily as it was placed on his face. “Never again will mortal eyes gaze upon the hideous countenance of Victor Von Doom. From this moment on, I shall be known as—DOCTOR DOOM!”
He stood tall and silent, a nightmare in gray, as a frightened monk approached him with the great green robe of Godhood, which he draped over Doom’s powerful shoulders. Gold-spun cord held by two golden disks fastened the flowing cape in place.
Yet even as he stood proud and regal as a King, Doom knew this iron armor was not yet enough. He needed power . . . the power of a country . . . to give him the immunity he required for his total scheme to be realized. And what better land to rule than the simple Bavarian country of his birth.
He had fled Latveria as a frightened child. But he would return as its absolute Monarch.
Years passed, and Doom gazed out the castle window watching his subjects scurry like mice far below him. They accepted him as ruler as he knew they would. His power assured that simple fact.
They were his people, and he treated them well, and he made their land more prosperous than it had ever been before. He asked little of them except total blind obedience, and his robot guard patrol would assure that.
Doom had his country, but he still wanted more.
“Tomorrow is the date, Master,” the old voice informed him. Doom turned from the window toward ever-loyal Boris. “Tomorrow is the date, sire.”
Doom’s own voice was deep and rumbling. “Yes, tomorrow the first step in realizing my true destiny will be taken. Prepare for my journey to America, Boris. I wish to arrive fashionably late for the festival.
“And I wish to see Reed Richards’s face when I do.”
With that, Doctor Doom threw back his great iron-clad face and laughed a cold, bone-chilling laugh.
Five
As he straightened his tie and stretched an arm into the jacket of his new blue suit, Reed Richards said, “Ready, Sue?”
“What do you think of this, darling?” Sue asked, leaning into the doorway of their Baxter Building apartment. She wore a gold strapless evening gown cut low in front and plunging to her waist in back. The shimmering gown hugged her perfect figure where it was supposed to, and Sue looked every inch the model she had been before she had met Reed.
Appreciative, Reed circled his slim wife and whistled. “You’ll be the center of attention in that—dare I call it a dress? Is there enough material in it to legally call it a dress?” His eyebrow arched upward in mock seriousness.
Sue pouted. “Do you like it or not? And, please, don’t leer. It just doesn’t become an internationally known sci
entist such as yourself to leer so salaciously. After all, what if our son saw you like that?” She tsked him with a broad smile, then turned away with great flourish.
Reed crossed the room and took Sue into his arms. “I can ask the same, darling. Mothers didn’t look like you when I was growing up.”
He smiled a broad smile and lowered his voice to a whisper. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you lovelier: not when we first met; not when we got married. Maybe I’m going crazy, but as you get older you get more and more beautiful.
“You don’t have an old painting aging in the closet by any chance, do you?” He laughed, then bent his head low to kiss her, not the mild kiss of a long-married couple familiar with each other, but the passionate kiss of a couple newly married, still anxious and fresh. It was long, fierce, and warm.
He felt her warm shoulder sway in his arms, and he was unable to remember ever caring about anyone before he had met her. Perhaps he had never even cared about himself.
He had always thought of himself as rather stiff and cold, all too logical. He had been raised in an orphanage and couldn’t remember what it must have been like to be loved and to love someone else in turn.
Work was all he busied himself with: the logical doings of the mind, he always told himself. The endless limit of his imagination could extend itself, should extend itself. He submerged his emotions, thought about nothing but his work.
Then he had met Sue, and she was always warm and laughing. So much the opposite of himself, yet he was fanatically drawn to her—not so much for her subtle beauty, but for how she acted when they were together.
She would readily listen to his hopes and dreams, and somehow she would always say something that would spur him ever on. She understood little of his work, but she cared about what he did because she cared about the man.
Sue Storm was able to make you the whole of her concern; nothing but you mattered while she was with you.
But she didn’t live for you alone. She had her own full life. She had been a model and at one time her all-American face was featured on every woman’s magazine. She was an actress who many considered a natural—“the new Hepburn!” the critics had called her. Her miraculous sensitivity somehow was reflected on the silver screen fifty times larger than life itself.
Yet she left the movies as unfulfilling. “I don’t need to play-act,” she said in one interview. “I have my own life I want to lead; I have things to do.”
At a White House reception for the sciences, Sue Storm spotted a tall, awkward-looking man sitting quietly in a dark corner, scribbling on a paper napkin with a blunt pencil, obviously oblivious to the social function he was attending.
The man was somewhat handsome, his brown hair already gray at the temples. “Excuse me,” she had said. “This seat taken? Your wife here?”
Reed Richards glanced up from his paper, somewhat confused. “Uh, no. I’m not married.” His stare returned to the paper and he continued to scrawl a complex formula on the napkin.
She sat next to him. “Let’s see, now. I take it you’re not one of the caterers working out the cost for this party. Am I right?” Once again Reed glanced up, confused. She was smiling broadly, and he then realized she had been watching him for ten minutes as he wrote down the formula for a non-fossil fuel he was trying to develop.
Her smile was contagious. “I’m sorry, Miss. I didn’t know I was being rude. It’s just that I had thought of substituting an alcohol-base compound for—I’m doing it again, aren’t I? I—”
“Don’t apologize. I was bothering you. My name’s Susan Storm . . .” He listened, not connecting the name, or perhaps he had never heard it before.
He put out his hand and took hers. “Richards, Reed Richards. I’m with the institute.”
“Well, do you like it or not? You still haven’t said anything.” Reed shook the cobwebs from his mind and grinned.
“Let me put it this way, Sue. If I had never known you before, I would fall instantly and madly in love. Yes . . . I like it. Does that make you feel better?”
Sue threw up her hands. “A romantic! I married a man as romantic as Swiss cheese. What did I ever see in you, Reed Richards?”
Reed shook his head, wondering. “I don’t know, but if I ever find out, I’m going to package it and sell it as a guaranteed aphrodisiac. By the way, have you seen Ben and Alicia?”
“If ya didn’t, ya just didn’t look in the right places.” Ben’s gravelly voice boomed from behind them and they turned to see the orange-skinned Mr. Grimm dressed in an ill-fitting black tuxedo, a flourished white shirt, and absolutely no shoes at all. He looked like a bizarre grotesquerie created for a comedy film by Mel Brooks.
“Whadda ya laughin’ about, Stretcho? Ya know it ain’t easy ta find a tux in size two-hundred gorilla.” Indignant, Ben looked at Alicia. “Ya believe the nerve o’ them, kid? Sheesh, I tell ya, with friends like these . . .”
Alicia smiled. “I’m sure if I could see you, Ben, I’d probably have the same reaction. From how Reed describes you, you probably are a rather strange sight.”
Ben grumbled. “Just ’cause I look like a monster, everyone’s gotta pick on me—even my gal.” Ben’s voice seemed disturbed, but he knew better. Despite his gargoyle appearance, Alicia loved him—and not because she was blind and couldn’t see his monstrous features.
Alicia was a sculptor, perhaps one of the best in New York. And her blindness only enhanced the empathic sensitivity her work displayed. She had created many statues of Ben in the years she had known him, and they all portrayed his strengths and virtues, somehow clearly apparent even over his seemingly brutish appearance.
She was the stepdaughter of one of the Fantastic Four’s earliest foes, yet she loved Ben and his friends though they had to battle her father time and time again. If only her father, with his two sighted eyes, could see them as clearly as she could, blind.
Ben was sweet, gentle, kind, and giving, and there was something tragic about him that brought out her love even more.
He had been turned into something inhuman, his temper was at times ferocious, and his power was enough to level a city block with apparent ease, yet he could take a wounded bird in his thick, brick-like hands and shed a somber tear when the bird had died.
He may be a monster to some who can only see his thick orange skin, but he had more humanity in him than almost anyone Alicia Masters had ever known.
“Well, we leavin’ or stayin’? I gotta get this monkey-suit back ta the shop by mornin’.” Ben reached for a large cigar and stuck it in his wide mouth. “C’mon, I ain’t got all day.”
Sue turned toward the monitor screen and pressed for Johnny’s room. “Hold on, I just want to say good-bye to Johnny.” The viewscreen flickered and Johnny’s face appeared on it. “We’re going, Johnny.”
Her brother smiled. “Have a good time, Sis, and don’t worry about anything here. Franklin’s off with Agatha Harkness and I’ve got a date. Just enjoy yourself, okay, Sis?”
Sue nodded and flicked off the image. Agatha Harkness was their son’s tutor and sitter, a strange woman who lived in an old mansion in upstate New York, in a place called Whisper Hill. When they hired her, they thought she would merely be a baby-sitter. They didn’t learn until much later that she fit into their extended family better than they could have expected.
Agatha Harkness was a witch, and she was damned good at it.
Six
“Reed Richards! My God, it’s been years. How are you, lad?” Dean Collins had a broad smile as he shook Reed’s hand. “You’re our most famous alumnus, Reed. You don’t know how pleased I am you came.”
Reed smiled, happy to see the older man. Dean Collins had been his mentor throughout his four years at E.S.U. “I’m glad I could make it. You know my wife Sue, of course.”
Sue Richards nodded at the retired Dean. “I’m happy to finally meet you, Mr. Collins. Reed has told me so much about you that I feel I know you personally.”
Dean Colli
ns took her hand and kissed it. “And you’re even lovelier than your photographs picture you to be, my dear. Come, let me introduce you to some of the others.”
Dean Collins led her into the large crowd of people milling about the bar. Reed smiled. Retirement hasn’t aged him one bit. Good for him.
The room was a converted gymnasium, with the bleacher seats rolled back, decorations hung, and tables hastily set up with food and drink. A portable bar was manned by professional bartenders who carefully poured drinks for the joyous crowd. Reed estimated more than three thousand schoolmates jammed the large gym.
Ben Grimm stiffly picked at his collar. “Sheesh, Collins didn’t even give a hello. Ya think he didn’t recognize me, Stretcho? Ya don’t think I changed that much since college, eh?” Reed suppressed a growing smile.
“Dean Collins and I worked together for several years, Ben. He got me my first job with the Science Institute. You were here on an athletic scholarship.”
“Sure, sure. He just didn’t realize who I was, right? I mean, ya seen one orange-skinned monster an’ they all get ta look alike, don’t they? Sheesh.
“Alicia, ya want me ta get ya a drink?” Alicia smiled sweetly. “Yer regular, babe?”
Ben plodded over to the bar, where several of his old classmates toasted one another. One of the women saw him first and gasped. “Oh, God, what is he? Look at him! He’s a . . .” She couldn’t say “monster” as Ben stared into her eyes.
“I’m the school nurse, blondie. Ya wanna make somethin’ of it?” His coarse voice thundered in the woman’s ears. Frightened, she backed away from him and clutched her husband’s arm.
The man gulped in horror. He had to say something. He had to protect his wife from the . . . the thing that stood no less than three feet from him. “Wh-why did you scare Madeline like that? She didn’t do anything to you.” His knees wobbled in fear. What would the creature do?