July 1962: The Menace in the Metal Mask

Three members of the Fantastic Four were writhing and gasping for air in a gray dungeon, while the fourth — trapped behind a wall, tied up and invisible — agonized over her helplessness to save them. 

Overhead, on a giant television globe, a green-hooded, metal-masked mastermind gloated over his dials.

My 8-year-old self calculated that yup, this situation was definitely worth 12 cents. 

So I bought Fantastic Four 5 (July 1962) and met the greatest of the comic book super villains, Dr. Doom.

From the start, creators Stan Lee and Jack Kirby emphasized Victor von Doom’s dominant characteristic, his overweening ego, which would always be both his strength and his downfall.

The Fantastic Four’s fractious team spirit would always prevail, standing in contrast to Dr. Doom, who could never really trust or rely on anyone but himself.  

The best super villains have their own style, their own idiosyncrasies. They are distinctive. Dr. Doom would treat you to a sumptuous feast served by robots in a cavernous banquet hall — third-person lecturing you about how great he is the entire time — and then have you locked up in an elaborate death trap in the dungeon, whereas the Joker would just giggle because he’d already poisoned your drink.

Dr. Doom’s ego was the constant in his character as the decades passed. I remember thinking how fitting it was when Doom once announced that all his remarks must be recorded for posterity. Despite his horror at what lay beneath the mask, this guy saw his true love in the mirror every morning.

Dr. Doom had a distinctive visual appeal, and a later an even more famous super villain, Darth Vader, would owe a lot to it. 

Oddly enough, that same month in 1962, an alien creature with an identical mask — riveted, harsh and forbidding — appeared on the newsstands in Tales of Suspense 31 as The Monster in the Iron Mask. 

Jack Kirby knew a killer design when he came up with one.