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A Past Gone Mad!
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Doctor Doom's been co-starring in various versions of "Super-Villain Team-Up" for a while now, but this is his first appearance in the more popular "Team-Up" series. Spider-man's shared this title with various anti-heroes before, including Namor, Werefolf By Night and Son Of Satan, but Doom is the first outright supervillain to star. And is that a Jack Kirby Doom at the top right?*
(sorry for the poor quality picture - this issue isn't on Marvel Unmlimited so I had to source it elsewhere!)
The previous issue ended with Doom saying he's come to make an alliance with Spider-man in order to save the world, but this one starts with him admitting that he's been drawn here by the power of The Dark Rider. The Dark Rider claims to have been expecting this, deliberately luring Doom here out of interest in the magic powers Doom inherited from his mother, and this leads into a rather natty double page spread by Sal Buscema which gives a pretty swift recap of Doom's origin (missing out the attempts to save his mother from hell) while, around them, Spider-man and The Vision are attacked by the Rider's familiar.
This is all a distraction, as The Dark Rider is draining Doom's mystic powers for himself - another example of Doom's old plots being used against him, in this case the comfy chair which drained the power cosmic from the Silver Surfer - but Doom, as ever, refuses to be beaten, and fights back.
The action cuts to a fairly straight re-telling of the historical story of the Salem Witch Trials, before we return to find Doom and the Rider still fighting. Spider-man and The Vision leap in to help, with the latter getting zapped. The Scarlet Witch revives herself enough to zap back, but then she too collapses, leaving Doom and Spidey alone. At which point the former makes a slightly less than truthful statement:
Not "the first time", surely? Doom takes control of the situation, giving orders to Spider-man, but it's all for nothing and, when the issue ends, Doom's worries turn out to be true.
It seems significant that Doom is the one the Rider is holding as the final trophy - the last one to fall, showing his heroism once again. It's all very exciting, and we don't even have to wait a month until we find out how it all ends!
*UPDATE - it looks like the picture of Doom was taken from an advert, spotted back in Captain Marvel #21!
link to information about this issue
posted 11/7/2019 by Mark Hibbett
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