Anyway, cover homage: Following Cerebus #2

Next to Iron Man, Doom’s a saint.

Simple: Doom.

Why? Two words: TIME MACHINE.

Lemme say that again: TIME MACHINE.

Stark’s repulsor rays can suck on it.

Black Panther

No, he appears to have independently discovered it, so far as I know. If you can point me to a story in which Doom turns out to have used Nathaniel Richrds’ designs, that’s great. At any rate, Reed himself never duplicated his father’s or Doom’s invention himself, and had to use a copy of Doom’s time machine instead. (Kang, on the other hand, used his namesake Nathaniel Richards’ device.) That said, Reed is at least Doom’s equal, and usually manages to be one or two steps ahead when it counts.

And yeah, Doom is a superior inventor to Tony Stark, having mastered not only technology but also developed a fair degree of magical ability as well, which he often incorporates into his devices. Stark hates magic, and has never really made any effort to seriously understand it.

For that matter, I’ve yet to see Tony Stark develop technology that can manipulate the Power Cosmic to the point of transferring it from being to being, construct obedient robot simulacra of himself (Stark’s various LMD doubles have invariably gone mad and tried to kill him), or make any strides comparable to Doom’s in the field of bioengineering superhuman beings like Doom ‘s creations Darkoth, Titania, and Volcana. (Clor was a joint project with Reed and Pym, for which Pym appears to have gotten most of the credit.)

In addition, it must be remembered that Doom was developing advanced
technology as an adolescent, and doing that while lacking Stark’s considerable inherited wealth or the technological resources of Stark Industries.

Doom has quite simply mastered more disciplines and technologies than Tony Stark, who tends to focus on a smaller set of applied engineering and computer science principles because of the nature of his work.

I actually prefer Eric Masterson Thor to Thunderstrike and, in fact, most other Thors (certainly ’90′s Thors, except for when Thor got corrupted during the Infinity Crusade, and there was a full-issue fight between Thor and Drax; that was pretty cool).

I think most writers didn’t know how to may Norse Thor interesting, but taking the powers of a god and giving them to a mortal — not just Masterson, but Beta Ray Bill — gets more interesting to me.

I also thought, as far as I can remember, that Masterson-Thor was the best of the “replacement heroes” of the ’90′s. Definitely better than War Machine and Ben Reilly. I think it’s because Iron Man and Spider-Man had personalities, so replacing them was tough; Thor rarely did, so a new Thor with an actual personality was better.

[I don't mean to knock Thor entirely; there have definitely been good runs. I was really surprised at how much I liked Jurgens run, which was coming at a time when I almost gave up on comics altogether.]

Even better, the page where Thunderstrike gets his costume, including the costume-woman going “I’ve always thought an earring could be sexy on the right man.” Something about the in-your-face-90sness coupled with it being written by somebody who obviously is at least one generation removed from it … it gets me every time.

http://www.milehighcomics.com/cgi-bin/backissue.cgi?action=fullsize&issue=05815547774%201%201%2F2