Doom comic

The Doom comic is a sixteen-page comic book, written in 1996 by Steve Behling and Michael Stewart, with art and color design by Tom Grindberg, all credited with purposely gory nicknames for the occasion. It was produced by Dana Moreshead, for Marvel Comics, as a giveaway for a video game convention.

The story is based on that of Doom, and revolves around a marine searching for powerful weaponry in order to defeat a cyberdemon. The strip includes many well-known Doom monsters, including zombies, imps, cacodemons and spectres. Several of the weapons from Doom are featured, including the shotgun, chainsaw, chaingun, plasma gun and BFG9000.

The comic was not originally very well received, and was quietly forgotten for nearly five years after its release. However, it gained a large amount of attention in 2001 when Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka reviewed the comic on PlanetQuake, and later received exposure again in the 10 Years of Doom special at Doomworld in December of 2003, where it was published online. Original art from the project was put up for auction on eBay in April of 2004. The over-the-top character of the Doom comic has made it rather notorious within the fan community.

Printings
There are two known printings of the comic. The first is the original giveaway printing and the second a set that was produced for the id Anthology collection. When compared to the better-known id Anthology version, the giveaway printing features the following differences:
 * It is printed on whiter paper than the id Anthology copy, which gives it more contrast.
 * The front cover looks somewhat paler.
 * The issue number is italicised and the warning text is not.
 * The advertisements are different; Hexen for PlayStation on the inside front cover, PlayStation Plus on the inside back cover and Final Doom for PlayStation on the back cover.

Trivia

 * The Doom comic was used by id Software as part of the swag given to participants in the Final Doom project. TeamTNT coordinator Ty Halderman referred to it as "rather lame."
 * Lines from the Doom comic form the names of achievements in the Xbox 360 version of Doom II.
 * The Doom comic was referenced as an inspiration by id Software during the aftermath of the Doom 4 QuakeCon reveal in 2014.

Fan tributes

 * A dramatic audio rendition of the Doom comic, released in September 2005
 * A video version of the Doom comic, incorporating scans and the dramatic renditon audio.