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Here Nightmares Abide!
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We're back in the Dazzler storyline today, which has no links whatsover to the one happening simultaneously in The X-Me. Here we find Doom gazing at his reflection in The Merlin Stone, admiring his own cunning in capturing Ms Blaire "... or Dazzler as I believe you call yourself" to go and get him another one. Dazzler herself is being guarded by a new style of guard, called "Robotrons", who look like deep sea divers.
This is all going on in Manhattan "in one of the many fully equipped laboratories which (Doom has) secreted about", so at least it's consisent with the X-Men story in that he's in the USA. This labcontains a huge computer system which combines the powers of science and sorcery to send Dazzler into another dimension to find the other Merlin Stone.
This combination of science and sorcery was a big part of Doom's background back in the very earliest days of the character, but doesn't get mentioned so much at this point.
There's a couple of brief interludes showing Johnny Storm at the UN overhearing someone talking about Doctor Doom being involved, and then Dazzler's estranged father sitting alone in a chair Being Stern, before we return to see Dazzler disovering that her rollerblading skills come in very handy in the Ditko-ish dimension she's landed in.
Doom watches as she struggles, and reveals once again what a terrible personnel manager he is.
If he didn't think she could get the Merlin Stone for him, why did he kidnap her in the first place? Or is he maybe making excuses for his own poor judgement? Either way, he switches his monitor off, so misses Dazzler's psychological battle with her own father, a battle which she wins by using the very historically accurate battle cry "Let's go for it!"
Things go from bad to worse for Dazzler as she faces off against an evil version of herself and then Nightmare, who (like most characters in this comics) is very prone to describing everything that's going on.
Nightmare gives her The Merlin Stone just to get rid of her, and then Doom's monitoring systems (which I thought he'd switched off?) immediately bring her back to her own universe, where Doom continues in his bid for Boss Of The Year by rewarding her for her achievement by not having her beaten up.
This is just about the limit for Dazzler, who no longer finds his arrogance so appealing. She uses the music from her pocket radio again to create enough light to bounce off the Robotrons, across the lab, and then shatter the Merlin Stone. Doom is not happy.
The two square up for the traditional Big Fight, blasting each other around the room until Dazzler is knocked unconscious. However, just as Doom is about to kill her, he spots the Human Torch heading his way on a view screen, and decides that the better part of valour is to scarper.
The issue ends with Johnny Storm bursting in to pick the unconscious Dazzler up off the floor, with the promise that the story will be continued next issue "Most Definitely!!!" It's a bit of a disappointing ending with the (female) lead character being defeated, and only saved by the lucky arrival of a (male) supporting character. Still, it's also been a good reminder of some of Doom's earliest defining characteristics, such as huge keyboard-like gizmos, using superheroes to do his bidding, lots of viewscreens and, of course, running away at the end. If only he'd jumped out of a window it would have been Early Doom Bingo!
link to information about this issue
posted 29/1/2020 by Mark Hibbett
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