Checking And Mating Once More — Reviewing ‘One World Under Doom’ #7

Victor Von Doom and Reed Richards. Once contemporaries, they’ve spent decades battling each other across time, space, and everything between.

With Doom’s proverbial mask revealed, the world-controlling Sorcerer Supreme only has everything to lose as One World Under Doom #7 intensifies the fight for Earth. The third-to-final chapter of the Marvel Comics event comes from Ryan North, R.B. Silva, David Curiel, and Travis Lanham.

-SPOILERS FOLLOW-

After the predictable turn last issue, the world reacts to Doom’s dark secret of control. Naturally, much like our own world, there are those who choose to keep backing (whether because of fear or support) the metal-plated dictator. Others fight back as Doom’s fist tightens and he goes full power-hungry despot on everyone.

As I’ve said before, I understand what North was going for here.

I support the overall idea of the event, while still questioning the execution and delivery of such a story. Nothing poignant is really being explored or said here. Not that every comic needs to say such things, but for being such a big event that should have far-reaching consequences, this still feels so hollow.

Even having Reed become the Scientist Supreme to fight Sorcerer Supreme Doom (and lose ridiculously quickly) feels cliché at this point. A smart fight on pape,r but it feels so scripted in a non-surprising way that it’s hard to truly care what happens. Aiding that sensation: the rest of the Marvel Universe also doesn’t care about what is happening! This book covers actual months of in-universe time and no other book — save a few labeled tie-ins — seem concerned with a Doom-controlled world.

Much of that isn’t on North. Marvel, as a publisher, has quickly moved away from caring about their long history of character connections and the shared universe. Despite fueling half of their publishing line on nostalgia, their overall comic book output feels more segmented than ever. Few books connect outside of their lines, key moments are forgotten, character relationships disjointed or overwritten in books being published at the same time.

Whole events are published with no actual impact on anything, including on the rest of the books in the connected lines.

What could have been a contained, shorter, and more concise arc in Fantastic Four instead has been dragged out across most of a year. And that’s for seemingly little reason other than Marvel has got to publish a shiny event book yearly even if they do little-to-nothing with that event. Yeah, I’m talking about you, Blood Hunt, and your status-quo-shifting vampire lore that no book cares about.

Anyway. As usual, this looks amazing.

At least Silva is getting to draw the hell out of the Marvel Universe since a sizeable chunk of the Handbook of the Marvel Universe is popping up in this thing. It’s slick, dynamic artwork that really showcases the grand nature of these characters and what they can do. At the same time, Silva has no fear of minimizing various characters to really hammer home the spectacle of everything with big panels featuring destructive things happening. The technique eschews the detail of the characters for the painful detail of the harmful moment.

Silva also captures a bevy of emotions across the greatly expressive faces and bodies, choosing to really mix up the way that panels work, leaning on close-up shots often in a very effective way. And letting those panels slide over the full panels of imagery behind them. It gives that cascading series of events a sort of feeling at times, while really setting up a sequence of events well in others.

Darkness and heaviness are part of the overall aesthetic here. Curiel taps into that so well each time these pages come to him, leaning into more vibrant spectacle colors across the way as all these colorful characters come into play. Mixing in the starker and weightier contrasting colors for emphasis and aesthetics to match the tones of the story itself. It keeps the slickness of the art itself, while providing some more texture to the proceedings.

A lot of speeches and monologuing-at-one-another goes down here. Tons of the caption boxes really do a “tell us what we’re already seeing on the page” thing, spewing character thoughts out. Lanham makes it all work on the page even as it feels a bit too much in other respects. It’s colorful, contained, structured, and built in a way to try and tap into the emotional spectrum. Does it succeed?

That’s hard to fully say with how hollow the overall story feels at times, but visually, it’s working.

At least this book has the visual, artistic energy on point. It’s otherwise lacking in quite a few other ways, sadly. I’m curious how it all goes down. I have a morbid fascination with such things and, despite my issues with the publisher, I’m still a Marvel guy. For now.

One World Under Doom #7 is now available from Marvel Comics.