Doom comic

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Front cover of the 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 and lettering by Edd Fear, 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 [1], 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:

  • The original edition is printed on whiter paper than the id Anthology copy, which gives it more contrast.
  • The original edition's front cover looks somewhat paler.
  • On the original edition, the issue number on the front cover is italicised, while the warning text at the top is not. These are opposite on the reprint, with a normal issue number and italicized warning text.
  • The advertisements are different. In the original edition, there are ads for Hexen for PlayStation on the inside front cover, PlayStation Plus on the inside back cover and Final Doom for PlayStation on the back cover. The id Anthology reprint has ads for Final Doom for PC, Hexen for PC, and various Windows 95 versions of id Software games in the same locations.

Quotes

Extract from the Doom comic
  • "Who's a man and a half? I'm a man and a half! A berserker packin' man and a half!"
  • "I'm a 12.0 on the 10.0 scale of badness!"
  • "Rip and tear rip and... TEAR RIP AND TEAR... RIP AND TEAR YOUR GUTS! YOU ARE HUGE! THAT MEANS YOU HAVE HUGE GUTS! RIP AND TEAR!"
  • "Here comes the Night Train!"
  • "Now I'm radioactive! That can't be good!"
  • "Sweet Christmas! Big-mouthed floating thingies!"

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." [1]
  • 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.[2]

Sources

External links

Fan tributes

References

  1. Doomworld (10 December 1998). "5 Years of Doom - Interview with Ty Halderman." Retrieved 11 November 2014.
  2. id Software (24 July 2014). https://twitter.com/idsoftware/status/492359373063471104. Retrieved 25 July 2014.