The poster declared that Doom was "lucky" that it was Hal and (he assumed) Barry in this fight. If it had been Kyle and Guy, came the assertion, Doom would have gotten his head handed to him.

I find this kind of thinking both fascinating and depressing. I am used, of course, to the whole "Any character from DC can beat any character from Marvel", and vice versa. But to see this kind of stratification WITHIN the same company seems very bizarre to me indeed. I remember the "Lobo can beat anybody" nonsense that burned thru fandom when that character was at his zenith of popularity (a nadir for the industry!!), but it seems somehow counter to the whole FUN part of these characters to argue that one Green Lantern, for instance, is "tougher" than another.

I guess that's where I go wrong, isn't it? It's not like "fun" is really such a big part of the equation any more!

••

Reminding me of something Roger Stern used to say back in the days of SPIDEY SUPER STORIES.

Rog was offended by the simplistic style of SSS, which was a comic done in collaboration with THE ELECTRIC COMPANY, a show supposed aimed at SESAME STREET "graduates". Everything had to be kept simple, simple, simple, and Rog complained that when he was that age, comics were not written down to the readers. "They had words like 'invulnerable'!" he would, say, not the monosyllabic, no more than five words to a balloon style of SSS. Rog would growl that this was all part of the Dumbing of America.

As a counter, he used to say he wanted to do SPIDEY INTELLECTUAL STORIES, in which Our Hero would each issue defeat the villain via debate and discourse!

The Marvel Universe is supposed to be basically identical to our own, except that there are superheroes and villains in it. Identical, in fact, to the point that Marvel Comics actually exist within the Marvel Universe. By extrapolation, then, we should assume DC Comics also exist (tho, of course, their stories would all be "fictional").

This would give Doom a tremendous edge, wouldn't it? Before attacking the DC characters, he could read up on them and discover all their weaknesses!!

(This is, of course, assuming this scene takes place in the manner of more recent crossovers between the Big 2, where an "explanation" of how the characters can cross from one "universe" to another is deemed necessary. This is not a scenario that would play if this scene takes place in the same "universe" as SUPERMAN vs THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN.)

Either way you play this cross-over, Doom would only be written properly if he had done his homework before
facing these ultra-famous heroes.

You'd have to write a pretty dumb Dr. Doom to have him not at least "win the first round" which is all we really
see here.

I'm dying to find out how everyone makes it out of this mess.

Two things sprang to mind immediately:

1) If that's what you see when you look at this image, you are WAY too old for this hobby!

2) I wonder if they think that's what George Lucas had in mind when he had Vader throttling that guy on Leia's ship in the original STAR WARS?