From the concept--a unified retelling of Doctor Doom’s origin--Books of Doom sounds like a couple things. First, the wrongest project for Ed Brubaker and second, pretty damn bad. In the modernity, someone named “Von Doom” belongs in a child’s toy chest. When Marvel relaunched the Fantastic Four in Ultimate Fantastic Four, they renamed the character Van Damme... giving it some validity--for a second, until one remembers the Muscles from Brussels. So, when Brubaker succeeds--and he does it from the get-go--he does it with humanity. He adds so much humanity to Doctor Doom, there’s a moment in Books of Doom approaching the raining street scene from The Bridges of Madison County. Brubaker gets inside Doom’s head and fills it with love. He makes the character’s motivation a child’s love for his mother, a mother who’s weakness has cursed said child with too many smarts, but not enough.
The six issues of Books of Doom cover around thirty years, maybe more. Instead of being rushed, these issues read like comic books should read, full of content. Brubaker covers the salient developments and uses the narration to keep the book full. The issues don’t have a particularly long read-time--I read all six in around an hour, so ten minutes apiece--but Brubaker’s got them so full of stuff (emotions, not explosions--well, some explosions), each one fills the reader. It’s a lobster book. Nice and rich.
I do have some qualms with Books of Doom--obviously, if I gave it that Bridges of Madison County comparison, they can’t be particularly damning, but they’re still there. Books of Doom is not a historical piece about a brilliant gypsy boy using magic and technology to come into his own, with the Americans and Soviets clawing at him for weapon development... it’s the story of Doctor Doom. Doctor Doom’s a character from the 1960s and, in comic books, technology doesn’t look realistic. It looks pretty damn silly and, sometimes, Doctor Doom has done some damn silly stuff too. Brubaker keeps some of the silly stuff in the story, but some of it he puts in the story’s frame. The frame--Doom’s narration mixed with firsthand accounts--doesn’t work too well and always seems a little off. Brubaker explains it at the end and it’s a fine enough explanation, but it’s a gimmick explanation. Books of Doom is the first comic book I’ve read to go on too long for its own good. When I got to the last three pages, after the story was over, I was surprised to find them. They feel wrong--though I see why Brubaker has them--they don’t have Books of Doom’s voice and they flop a little on the dock, not giving the story enough a final kick. Still, they don’t detract from the work, they just remind the reader he or she has been reading a mainstream comic book about a mainstream comic book character--a condition with a certain set of rules--and it’s the first such reminder in all of Books of Doom. The rest of it transcends limitation.
