A sugarcoated take on an old comic adapted from the Doom video game
Rock Paper Shotgun wrote a puff piece about a comic adapted from the Doom video game first introduced 3 decades ago, which Marvel co-published in the mid-90s:
There was a time when Marvel did do dark thrillers with class and gave what to think about. That time was the Bronze Age/1970s, and Tomb of Dracula was well made as an example of its genre. And much as I can't stand most horror genre tales, I won't say it's impossible to write up a good thriller with monsters of this sort. But when a comic like Doom's adaptation is presented in such cheap, sensationalized context, something is awfully wrong, and cashing in on that kind of smut is exactly what brought down comicdom. I don't consider such crude sludge essential reading at all.
"Consider yourself warned! This book contains scenes of graphic violence!" These are the words that adorn the Doom comic book, which was originally released for promotional purposes during 1996's E3 by GT Interactive and Marvel Comics. "Knee-deep in the dead!" is the next bit of text below the logo, referencing the name of the first shareware Doom episode and beautifully describing the blood-soaked cover illustration by Tom Grindberg, who was apparently tickled enough at the thought of drawing this monstrosity to take time away from working on 2000 AD.Well, I guess one can't be too shocked they'd take such an accepting view of a gorefest, one which proves Marvel was little different from DC at the time, recalling the latter published something similar with the rock bottom Bloodlines crossover just a few years earlier. Interesting how here, 1990s "tropes" are described and alluded to in a positive way, something they might not do if you were to discuss ladies with sexy costumes from the times. Sorry, but I don't consider this kind of sensationalized nonsense "essential" reading, since gore and evisceration were superfluous long before the 1990s. That's what really gave a new meaning to dumbing down entertainment back in the day. But surely the worst part was the failure to make any distinctions between violence and sex as concepts to be promoted into orbit. And then, the writer proceeds to say:
The cover is an accurate peek at the gore and demonic entrails that lie within this epic work of sequential storytelling, which required the writing skills of not one, but two gentlemen - Steve "Body Bag" Behling and Michael "Splatter" Stewart. Both Behling and Stewart have a decent body of work between them at Marvel, where they've penned more civilised fare starring the likes of Ant-Man and The Hulk. The Doom comic, in comparison, seems to have been a thing that was written in a fever dream, and DoomWorld, which lovingly hosts scans of this brisk read to this day, describes it appropriately: "Some time in 1996 a couple of guys got together and smoked what was apparently a large amount of crack and then injected pure heroin into their eyes and then proceeded to create what is now known only as 'the Doom comic.'"
That's an accurate summary, but let's not take this the wrong way. Frankly, the Doom comic is an essential read that exemplifies every nutty 90s comic trope imaginable, combining them together in a big wad of Cacodemon excretion wrapped in a bright bowtie. Doomguy talks to himself excessively like every other comic book protagonist of the era, except he comes across as more unhinged, yelling out phrases like "DYNAMITE!" and "NOW I'M RADIOACTIVE! THAT CAN'T BE GOOD!" He's sort of like a modern day streamer, except that no modern day streamer is quite as entertaining, and his best line - "I'M A 12.0 ON THE 10.0 SCALE OF BADNESS!" - is some pure Duke Nukem poetry.
Then there's Doomguy's mission, which is to obtain the raddest gun he can find - the BFG9000. In the beginning of the book, after cleaning Imp spinal fluid from his fists, he declares, "GUNS ARE FOR WUSSES," but promptly changes his mind after his steroids wear off and he's unable to punch his way through a Cyberdemon. Such character development! Once Doomguy acquires said firearm, he lovingly strokes it, cries tears of joy, and hears the sound of angels. Whenever I read this, I'm reminded of Chain Gang War, a similarly nonsensical DC Comics publication from 1993-'94 that featured another testosterone-obsessed dude who also whispered sweet nothings to his gun. All that's missing is a bunch of Rob Liefeld-style pouches on Doomguy, and he surely would've become a towering figurehead of the mid-90s comic book landscape.Something's also gone terribly wrong when lugubrious Liefeld is fawned over by extension. It's pretty ironic how somebody can seemingly admit a story like this is absurd, yet otherwise fully approve of it as entertaining, apparently because the bloodletting is that brilliant. No, I don't think so. There's cheese, and then there's stale cheese, which this decidedly is. And if memory serves, Marvel largely stopped publishing comics based on licensed merchandise after 1998, and it'd be many years before they developed such projects again.
There was a time when Marvel did do dark thrillers with class and gave what to think about. That time was the Bronze Age/1970s, and Tomb of Dracula was well made as an example of its genre. And much as I can't stand most horror genre tales, I won't say it's impossible to write up a good thriller with monsters of this sort. But when a comic like Doom's adaptation is presented in such cheap, sensationalized context, something is awfully wrong, and cashing in on that kind of smut is exactly what brought down comicdom. I don't consider such crude sludge essential reading at all.
Labels: dreadful artists, dreadful writers, licensed products, marvel comics, msm propaganda, technology, violence
