The "Doctor Doom" of 1950s DC!

A decade before Marvel had one of their own!

Wait, Doctor Doom?

That guy’s Marvel, right?

In 1950, DC would have you believe Doctor Doom is their guy (if only because Marvel wasn’t really a thing, yet). Detective Comics #158 features a villain by that name, but he’s inconsequential enough that eventually Marvel could get away with their own Doom. 

But in the 50s, the only Doom was this one! In April 1950, we see Batman and Robin celebrate their “1000th” case (implying being active for at least a thousand days, so like 3 years minimum, but this is before any slide of any time scale). 

As the story centers around those trophies, and what happens when they’re turned against the heroes, we meet an ingenious foe who also got super lucky. When Doctor Doom, an older man who is head of a smuggling ring, is caught, he manages to fake his own death and hide away in a sarcophagus, which is then taken to the Batcave as a trophy for the Dynamic Duo. 

From there, with access to the Trophies in the Batcave, he crafts a many-part ambush, forcing the heroes to contend with a massive number of things they’d previously fought and defeated at once. This proves difficult for a few pages, until they’re able to corner Doom and well and truly trap him, forcing him to submit to an arrest because he has no alternative. 

To most, this is an utterly nothing story no one needs to care about. And to be honest, it’s one of the ones I would consider skipping if I were ever to do this project again, after laughing at the name coincidence for a brief moment. However, there’s a couple secret gems of interesting significance if you give it a bit more energy, that might push it over the edge into something I’d take the time for.

First, there’s the element of “relic from before time was more consistently handled” of it all. A modern story set back here in Detective Comics timeline would never claim “a thousand cases”, mostly because of how cases are understood to work in modern comic consideration of Detective Comics.

But also, many if not most patrols of Batman and Robin could end with a few muggers or bank robbers getting caught and no supervillains or major trophy-worthy cases. It’s understood both nowadays and back in the time of Detective #150 that we don’t see every night Batman is out, but now they aren’t inflating anything to make the time the character has been around full of cases. In 1950, somehow Batman has both been around for 12 years and also Robin (who’s been there most of that time) is under 16. That makes this a relic of a time before a lot of clean up and aging to make things make more sense was done. In that sense, it’s so valuable as something to read. 

Also, can you imagine this kind of switch going the other way? 

Imagine a Black Talon in more recent DC making the name have a better legacy/example than the weird and racist one from old Captain America comics in the Timely era? Can you imagine a one-off dolphin themed Namor foe getting out-named by an enemy of Jackson Hyde in a post-Rebirth DC comics?

I can. It’s kind of delicious, actually. 

Which one-off villains from Marvel or DC do you think, name-waste or not, could do with a switch up from the other company?

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