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Dreadknight And The Daughter Of Creation
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This time we're looking at a brief, but important, cameo from Doctor Doom in what turns out to be a very mid-70s issue of 'Iron Man', in that it features Frankenstein's monster, Jack of Hearts, characters who cross the line between heroes and villains, and of course a script written by Bill Mantlo!
The main story sees Iron Man being attacked in Castle Frankenstein by an armoured baddy called The Dreadknight, who has turned up on a mutated version of the original Black Knight's flying horse to steal the secrets of Frankenstein from his great granddaughter, who is currently using his discoveries to nurse some "dwarfish mutants" called The Children. As I say, it's very mid-70s Marvel!
Doctor Doom appears in the middle section when we learn the origin of The Dreadknight, who appears to have been called Bram Velsing.
I'm a big fan of Bill Mantlo's work, but I have to admit he could have worked a bit harder thinking up a name!
Bram Velsing works for Doctor Doom who, like so many bosses, tells him off for daydreaming on the job. Unlike so many bosses, however, Doom is at least honest about who does get to daydream.
Bram Velsing rapidly gets sick of this, and decides to steal back his inventions and take over Latveria for himself. His girlfriend Maria begs him not to as its too dangerous and is proved right when Doom himself appears.
Doom orders his men to take Maria back to her family unharmed - she was, after all, trying to warn Velsing not to defy him, so it makes sense from his point of view to let her go home and repeat the story to others. It's very much in line with Doom's current characterisation as a reasonably sane-ish dictator, but then things rapidly change when Doom reveals Velsing's fate.
(note, by the way, that George Tuska includes Doom's ring on his gauntlet - something which is almost always missed out and is a lovely bit of non-essential detail here. Also Velsing does not actually say Doom is ugly, he's just surprised that he's not like the stories - tying in nicely with Kirby's preferred interpretation that Doom isn't really that scarred at all).
The mask is fixed to his face using a "bio-fuser" which means that it can never be removed. Doom says this will make them alike, but we've seen on the same page that Doom CAN take off his mask! This is more in line with the alternate tradition of Doom as utter lunatic - there's no possible gain for him in punishing Velsing in this way, nor any reason why he should have such a mask to hand or why it should have giant wings on it.
Velsing staggers away, apparently set free, and staggers for "days - weeks" (he's not sure) to Castle Frankenstein (keeping the geography sensibly vague) until he's rescued by Frankenstein's great grand-daughter, who happens to have found and mutated the original Black Knight's flying horse and gives it to him as a present.
Doom does not reappear, and the Dreadknight ends up being injured in battle and is left in the care of Frankenstein's Monster and The Baronness, who have fallen in love with each other over the course of the story. Once again - very very mid-70s Marvel!
link to information about this issue
posted 2/10/2019 by Mark Hibbett
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