I might have missed the mark the last time I thought Doctor Doom appeared in the Golden age, since Leading Comics #3 actually featured Doctor Doome.
But I am not kidding around now: Doctor Doom absolutely appeared in the Golden Age!
And I’m not talking a fringe case like 1950’s Detective Comics #158. We are going straight to the 1940s for this one.
Yankee Comics #1 (1941)
by John Martin*
cover by unknown (but probably Charles Sultan)
We don’t know who worked on the story we’ll look today, since “John Martin” was a pseudonym shared by multiple people at the time.
That won’t be the cover story about Yankee Doodle Jones, quite possibly the most blatant Captain America ripoff I have ever seen.
No, we’re here for the second story that features a new hero, The Echo.
Not an imaginary tale, not a hoax, Doctor Doom really IS in the Golden Age!!!
But let’s start from the beginning. The protagonist is Jim “Echo” Carson, who just graduated.
Despite looking like he’s in his mid-30s like everyone in the Golden Age.
His father was a doctor who helped an injured gangster. Not sure why the attorney is narrating this to Echo, who was there according to the panel!!!
We’re not told how the gangster was injured, but healing apparently required completely changing his face.
In recognition of his help, the criminals burned down the house. We are not shown this.
Wait, Echo’s brother and sister trained him all his life to get revenge… and they never told him how his father died? Come to think of it, how does Echo not know that his father died because the house was burned down?
And why did they need his lawyer to tell him all this?
Especially since Echo’s father can talk to him from beyond the grave!
Echo then goes to the family home: Doom Hall.
And THIS is the first Golden Age appearance of Doctor Doom!
Turns out Doom has a sister named Cora, and Jim “Echo” Carson is his younger brother.
Wait, the lawyer said earlier that his siblings “educated Echo from childhood”, and yet it’s made very clear that this is the first time Doom meets him???
I suspect the “brother” who raised Echo was actually an early Doombot.
The “sister” could either be a different robot, or perhaps she studied magic with Doom’s mother to stay young? Speaking of which, how old was Doom’s father at the time of his death?
Doom already looks old enough to be Echo’s grandfather!
Ventriloquism is more associated to the Silver Age, but already in the Golden Age was impressive enough to be considered a true superpower.
Now I know what you’re thinking: this bears so little resemblance to Doctor Doom that it’s only a coincidence that they share the name.
To which I reply with Doctor Doom being enough of a super-genius to have built a belt of invisibility AND a paralyzing ray.
Echo infiltrates the suspect’s house “unseen and stealthily” enough to punch him.
What is even the point of ventriloquism if he can turn invisible?
Remember that Doctor Doom gave Echo a ring that can shoot paralyzing rays, by which he means that he’s going to shoot them from his eyes.
Having identified the guy who killed his father, Echo then proceeds to use his ventriloquism to convince the gangsters to drop their weapons (???) so that he can kick those out of the window (!!!).
The gangster has a bomb laying around…
…which ends up blowing up in his face.
And with his mission accomplished, Echo returns to Doctor Doom’s lair.
Doom significance: 0/10
Future writers really dropped the ball ignoring this story.
Why did they even have to go through the trouble of creating an elaborate origin for Doctor Doom, featuring him being scarred by an experiment gone wrong and obsessed about his mother’s death, when he was already injured by the murderer of his father?
And where have his younger sister and brother been during the multiple times Doom was deposed as leader of Latveria!?
Thanks to these glorious omissions, and the fact that it took years for Doom to graduate from sidekick to major character, sadly this story left as much impact as if it was really just a coincidence that the two characters share the same name.
Silver Age-ness: 1/10
The ghost of the father plays no real role in the story.
Does it stand the test of time? 1/10
There are a couple of almost creative uses of ventriloquism, but the story feels quite rushed and uninspired.
Why is Doom even named “Doctor Doom” if his brother’s name is Carson? Well, I have some theories.
Throughout the whole series (as we’ll see shortly), he is consistently called Doctor Doom. Which leads me to believe that “Carson” is just a fake last name to protect the younger brother, both from the gangsters but quite possibly also from being hunted down by the Latverian regime, considering Doom is currently hiding in America.
This was also written before the full origin of Doctor Doom was told, so this begs the question: how could this possibly be kept in continuity?
Here’s how I would do it.
This is actually a FUTURE version of Doctor Doom: after he’s grown old, he gets tired of trying to conquer the world and goes back in time to live a normal life. He gets an actual doctorate and practices medicine, building two robotic younger siblings that are not programmed to question why their older brother looks like he could be their grandfather or why he doesn’t share their last name.
When gangsters blow up his laboratory, he reprograms the robots into thinking the explosion killed their father, and becomes Echo’s sidekick.
Later he tires of these adventures, travels forward in 1950 to fight Batman (which explains why he also looks old there), and after that he travels to 1962 to fight Little Archie.
See, everything makes sense!!!
It was a Doombot all along
The sister being a robot makes way too much sense to ignore, plus as mentioned it explains the discrepancy of Doom raising the brother AND meeting him for the first time as an adult.
Crazy tech
Doom’s very first inventions seem to be the invisibility belt (ironically given the future wife of his future nemesis) and a ring that gives you the power to shoot stun rays from your eyes.
This is far from the last appearance of Echo! He appears in four issues of Yankee Comics, with issue 2 giving us a good look at what Doctor Doom drives.
And it proves why you can’t make fun of Doctor Doom for not having a doctorate.
Issue 3 is potentially the origin of Doom’s love for green cloaks, since it’s what the vampire villain of the issue is wearing.
In issue 4, Doctor Doom nearly dies in a bog. Possibly the inspiration to eventually wear armor?
The Echo then moves to Dynamic Comics in 1944, with issue 8 reprinting the previous story and issue 9 starting a new run.
In the following issues, Doctor Doom continues to be his brother’s sidekick.
He doesn’t play a big role… he’s mostly there to kick off the plot or give exposition… the sister is far more present, typically as the damsel in distress and fetish fuel.
Although Doom’s name seems to still be very much respected.
Yeah that’s about what I expected to happen when people started kidnapping Doctor Doom’s sister.
Issue 18 might be the origin of the various kind of knockout gas Doom will use over the years.
Issue 19 might be the reason why he will later go after Batman.
You have to thank Dynamic Comics #23, which I reviewed for the first appearance of Yankee Doodle Girl, for my knowledge of the existence of The Echo.
Doctor Doom has an extremely small role there: from what I could find, it’s his last appearance on the series and of this incarnation in particular.
That was a 1947 story; with the Chester publisher going out of business, publisher St. John rebranded The Echo as “Ventrilo” in 1948, on Crime Reporter #1.
Aside from changing the names, these are simply reprints of Echo stories.
The protagonist is renamed Ventrilo, the sister is renamed Vera, and Doctor Doom is now… Doctor Fate.
Don’t lie, you’re probably thinking this HAS to be THE earliest Doctor Doom I could possibly find, right?
Well, there’s this little known gem from 1937…
…but that’s a story for next year.