Doctor Doom teams up with other Doctor Dooms to fight the Avengers

Some ideas are just as unexpected as they seem in comics. It was both unexpected and retroactively evident when Jonathan Hickman, Dale Eaglesham, introduced the Council of Reeds. This interdimensional body is made entirely of Mister Fantastics. Reed Richards, a superintelligent scientist god, would naturally seek out peer collaboration with his multiversal peers.

He AvengersJason Aaron has made a great deal of comical jokes about the idea of parallel selves cooperating. First, with the innocuous-named Council of Red, an interdimensional alliance of Mephistos. Aaron presents another this week with Jim Towe (artist) and Guru-eFX (programme). What is the Council of Doom? Perish the thought — Doctor Doom has no peers, be they man or god.

Yes, it is not a Doom strong enough to subjugate all other Dooms. Doom using brainwashed parallel Dooms rather than Doombots. Doom Above All Dooms. Doom of all Dooms. Surprising? Yes. But. What could be clearer than a Doom that refuses to rule Latveria (or the world) and is determined for the multiverse?

Were there other things happening within the pages of comics we love? We’ll tell you. Welcome to Monday Funnies, Polygon’s weekly list of the books that our comics editor enjoyed this past week. It’s part society pages of superhero lives, part reading recommendations, part “look at this cool art.” There may be some spoilers. You may not have enough context. However, there will be many great comics. This is the latest edition.

Image: Jason Aaron, Jim Towe, Guru-eFX/Marvel Comics

Aaron’s AvengersThrows ideas at walls with such speed it is sometimes dizzying. But I’m only human. You show me a the Doom Above All Dooms, whose base is a freakin’ You can’t escape the Living Planet Doom? This is the rule. It’s just math.

Image: Zack Kaplan, Guilherme Balbi/Image Comics

I decided to take a chance. Metal Society#1. I had no idea what it was before entering and it pulled me in to a post-apocalyptic world in which robots rule. Of course, the central story of a bareknuckle brawl between One Human Woman Who Doesn’t Respect Robot Dominance and A Robot Specifically Engineered to Kick Box helped.

Image by Vita Ayala and Darryl Banks/DC Comics

With the close of War of the Amazons comes a special issue just for Nubia’s ascendance as queen — it’s an anthology structure from multiple writers and artists, but far and away my favorite bit was a flashback to Nubia and the Martian Manhunter discussing their feelings on being a Black superhuman in Man’s World, and what to do about it.

Image: Steve Orlando, Nyla Rose, David Cutler/Marvel Comics

It’s no secret that Professor Xavier and Magneto’s Krakoan “experiment” has its flaws as a utopia. Rather, it’s very much the point, and the various creatives working under the X-Men umbrella over the past few years have delighted in exploring them. But one of my favorite wrinkles in the whole “the X-Men found their own nation and invent their own national identity” is the obvious fact that not all mutants feel divorced from their human cultures, and some of those human cultures also know the struggle for a nation that has been denied them.

Which is just to say that every time creatives from those backgrounds come to work on Krakoan era comics — as in Thunderbird: Giant-Size X-Men, an oversized oneshot about James Proudstar, one of X-Men’s most infamous dead mutants — I relish it.