Warning: Spoilers for Savage Avengers #7 ahead!Nothing emphasizes more just how much readers expect out of their supervillains these days than comparing original Batman villain Doctor Death may have been a terrifying prospect to early comics readers, he can't hold a candle to the nightmarish foes that subsequent stories have dreamt up. Step aside, Doctor Death: there's a new D.E.A.T.H.D.O.K in town.
Debuting in 1939, Doctor Death was the first recurring villain to square off against Batman, and one of the earliest supervillains in comics. Karl Hellfern may be a brilliant scientist, but as Doctor Death he uses his knowledge to poison wealthy individuals and then extort them for the antidote. Later depictions make him a much more ghoulish figure: a disfigured man behind a lab coat and gas mask, his expertise lies in terrorizing Batman with gas attacks and biological warfare, with horrific bone growth as the calling card of his vile concoctions.
Doctor Death is a despicable villain, but he's nothing compared to the foe encountered by the Avengers in David Pepose, Carlos Magno, and Espen Grundetjern's Savage Avengers #7. Time-tossed to a dystopian, Ultron-ruled 2099, the Savage Avengers must break into Ultron's prison to free a prisoner who may be the key to their safe return home. To do so, however, they have to contend with the prison warden: the grotesque Deathlok/M.O.D.O.K hybrid known as D.E.A.T.H.D.O.K.
Introducing M.O.D.O.K 2099
The undead M.O.D.O.K's capabilities have been vastly augmented through his being fused with Deathlok technology. The Digitally Enhanced Augmented Telepathic Host Designed Only for Killing is a psychic powerhouse, fending off the Savage Avenger’s brutal powers with force fields and debilitating them with psionic agony channeled directly into their nervous systems. This "Death Doc" is less of a traditional doctor and more of a Frankenstein-esque nightmare of the worst elements of the Marvel Universe combined.
The connection between D.E.A.T.H.D.O.K and the original Doctor Death may be more wordplay than any deeper relationship, but the disparity between the two characters does a strong job of highlighting the power of a supervillain's name and the level of threat that is expected to hold the attention of modern audiences. For all of his gruesome moniker, villains such as Doctor Death have struggled to maintain relevance in Batman's world, having gone through multiple revisions and redesigns to try and keep him as a credible threat to the ever-implacable Dark Knight. Doctor Death may have been one of DC's original terrors...but when compared to Marvel's undead psychic war cyborg, he can't help but come off as a little pathetic.
Savage Avengers #7 is now available from DC Comics.
