Spider-Man : Doom's Day Trilogy
Book One: Rampage by
Danny Fingeroth and Eric Fein
Book Two: Sabotage by Pierce Askegren and Danny Fingeroth
Book Three: Wreckage by Eric Fein and Pierce Askegren
These novels were written
in 1996, when teaming up with loner Spidey was still cool. Unlike
the current titles, that have to have a guest star every issue.
Ok my rant on Mackie will not delude this trilogy of books. So as
Peter David's column reads," But I digress."
The setup of the first book was that Doctor Doom schemed to take
control of a powerful formula that increases a man's strength. A
scientist by the name Hildebrant created this formula and these individuals become Hulk like. Infact Spidey's friend Flash
Thompson becomes one of these Hulking creatures. It was a fun
read seeing my two favorite characters team up in book one.
In the background of all three of these books, a new organization
named SAFE was created headed up by agent Sean Morgan. This
organization plays an important role in these novels and many of
the other Marvel novels.
Book two has Spidey teaming up with Iron Man to thwart Hydra, AIM and Doc Doom. These three are after Tony Stark's new invention
titled the "Infinity Engine," which would become a
great source of power for whoever controlled it. The novel had
Stark hiring Peter Parker to work on the project. The only
problem I had with this novel was the outer space aspects. I've
said it before , Spidey is an urban hero, not a cosmic one. Iron
Man works great fighting evil in outer space or on his space
station, but not our webbed wonder.
Book three involved Spidey teaming up with the Fantastic Four.
Doctor Doom busted Doctor Octopus out of jail to help him
control the powers of the Negative Zone and rule earth. Lofty
goals if I've ever heard it, but we're talking about two wacked
out doctors . This book was about the same quality as the
previous three, but they all lacked one thing. Spider-Man.
In any team up, the main character takes a back seat to the guest
star. In a comic book, 22 pages are then cut into 11 pages
staring said hero. Then the reader feels cheated they only received half a book containing their hero. This trilogy did
better than most comics in that aspect due to the amount of pages
available to the writers. So in this case of the 300 pages, 150
were devoted to Spider-Man. I'm giving this trilogy two and a
half web heads out of four. A fair reading ,but not the best of
the marvel novels.