Marvel showed the second Doomsday trailer at D23 this month, and it did the thing trailers rarely do any more. It told you what the film is actually about.
Sue Storm warning everyone what is coming. Reed Richards face to face with Doom. Thor swinging Stormbreaker and having it stopped dead, then being blasted across the room by green energy. And at the end, Doom raising an army of damaged Sentinels.
Then Marvel announced the X-Men cast, and the list is a roll call of people who have not shared a screen in twenty years: Patrick Stewart as Professor X, Ian McKellen as Magneto, James Marsden as Cyclops, Kelsey Grammer as Beast, Rebecca Romijn as Mystique, Alan Cumming as Nightcrawler, and Channing Tatum finally arriving as Gambit.
Every single one of those is a line back to a comic somebody in Britain probably owns. So here is the honest version, with the issue numbers checked rather than remembered.
The film, briefly
Avengers: Doomsday arrives 18 December 2026, directed by Anthony and Joe Russo. Robert Downey Jr plays Doctor Doom, which is either the boldest casting Marvel has ever done or the strangest, depending on which day you ask me.
Around him: Chris Evans back as Steve Rogers, Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Paul Rudd as Ant-Man, Letitia Wright as Black Panther, Sebastian Stan as the Winter Soldier, Tom Hiddleston as Loki, Simu Liu as Shang-Chi, Pedro Pascal as Mister Fantastic, Vanessa Kirby as the Invisible Woman, and members of the Thunderbolts. Avengers: Secret Wars follows in 2027.
Doctor Doom: Fantastic Four #5
Victor Von Doom first appears in Fantastic Four #5, cover dated July 1962, by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Five issues into the book that started the whole Marvel age in late 1961, and they had already produced arguably the best villain in American comics.
That first issue does not do much with his backstory. He is introduced quickly as an old university rival of Reed Richards who went off into the dark arts, and the story gets on with it.
The origin everyone knows arrives two years later in Fantastic Four Annual #2, from 1964, by Lee, Kirby and Chic Stone. That is where you get the whole thing: his mother dead, his father hunted for failing to heal a member of the royal family, the scholarship to America, the meeting with Reed, the experiment that Reed warned him about, and the face he will not let anyone see afterwards.
Both are serious Silver Age money and neither is a realistic shopping list item for most people. FF #5 in particular is one of those books that, when it turns up in a UK collection, tends to turn up battered, because it was bought by a child in 1962 and treated accordingly.
The Robert Downey Jr wrinkle: Infamous Iron Man #1
Plenty of people rolled their eyes when Marvel cast the man who played Tony Stark as Doom. What most of them did not know is that the comics got there first.
In Infamous Iron Man #1, from 2016, by Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev, Victor Von Doom puts on the armour and becomes Iron Man. Not as a trick, not as an impostor plot. Doom genuinely attempting to be the hero, on the grounds that where Stark failed, he will succeed. The series ran twelve issues.
It is a modern comic, printed in modern numbers, and it is cheap. It is also suddenly a lot more interesting than it was two years ago, and it is the one book on this list I would tell a casual reader to actually go and buy, because you can afford it and because it makes the casting look like a plan rather than a stunt.
The Sentinels: X-Men #14
The trailer ends on Doom raising damaged Sentinels, which is a very deliberate image to put in front of an audience that has just been told the X-Men are coming.
The Sentinels first appear in X-Men #14, cover dated November 1965, by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Same issue introduces Bolivar Trask, the anthropologist who builds them because he has decided mutants are a threat to humanity, and who discovers fairly quickly that a machine built to decide who deserves protection will eventually get around to deciding that about you as well.
They did not look the way you picture them yet. No purple, no skyscraper scale. They were barely bigger than a person.
X-Men #14 is a mid-sixties book from a title that famously did not sell well at the time, which is exactly why the early issues are harder to find than their reputation suggests. The original run was cancelled into reprints before Giant-Size X-Men #1 revived it in 1975.
Days of Future Past: Uncanny X-Men #141
If the film is putting Sentinels in the hands of a villain who wants to remake the world, the comic it is nodding to is not in dispute.
Uncanny X-Men #141, cover dated January 1981, opens Days of Future Past, by Chris Claremont and John Byrne. Two issues, #141 and #142, containing a dystopian future where mutants are held in internment camps and marked, and Sentinels have won.
#141 also carries the first appearance of Rachel Summers, along with Senator Kelly, Destiny, Avalanche and Pyro. That is a lot of first appearances in one issue, and it is one of the most recognisable covers Marvel has ever printed.
Here is why I keep pointing at this era: 1981 American comics circulated well in Britain and were bought by people who are now in their fifties and sixties and clearing lofts. Uncanny X-Men in the #130 to #145 range is one of the single most common things I am shown, and #141 sits right in the middle of it.
The returning X-Men, and where each one started
Gambit: two books, and everybody gets it wrong
Channing Tatum has been trying to play Gambit for over a decade. He is finally in.
Uncanny X-Men Annual #14, July 1990, hit shelves first and contains a brief Gambit appearance. Uncanny X-Men #266, August 1990, by Chris Claremont and Mike Collins, came out weeks later but is set earlier, and is the proper introduction: a young Storm walks into the Shadow King's trap and a charming mutant thief pulls her out of it while robbing the same building.
The market has generally settled on #266 as the first appearance because of the chronology, while the annual gets sold as the first published appearance. Both are legitimate descriptions and they command different money. Know which one is in front of you.
Both are 1990 books, which means enormous print runs, which means condition is everything. This is the copper age problem in a nutshell: the books are common, the high grade copies are not.
Mystique: Ms. Marvel #16 and #18
Rebecca Romijn returns as Mystique. Her debut follows the same pattern.
Ms. Marvel #16, April 1978, by Chris Claremont, Dave Cockrum and Jim Mooney, has a cameo appearance in the guise of a German agent called Leni Zauber. The full appearance follows in Ms. Marvel #18, July 1978.
Of everything on this page, this is probably the best value hunt. Ms. Marvel was not a book collectors treated as important in 1978, it turns up in bulk lots, and a lot of people going through a run will not clock what #16 is.
Nightcrawler: Giant-Size X-Men #1
Alan Cumming is back as Kurt Wagner, who first appears in Giant-Size X-Men #1 in 1975, the book that rebuilt the X-Men after the original series died. It is the most consequential Bronze Age Marvel comic there is and I have written about what it is genuinely worth here, including the reprints and facsimiles that catch people out.
Professor X, Magneto, Cyclops and Beast: X-Men #1
Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, James Marsden and Kelsey Grammer all play characters who first appear in the same comic: X-Men #1, September 1963, Lee and Kirby. Professor X, Magneto, Cyclops, Beast, Angel, Iceman and Jean Grey, all in one issue.
Which is a decent reminder of how much of the modern film industry rests on about forty pages of 1963 newsprint.
Where this is heading: Secret Wars
Doomsday is not the end of it. Avengers: Secret Wars follows in 2027, and the Spider-Man: Brand New Day post-credits scene has already put Spider-Man on a blank spot near the moon, which most people are reading as Battleworld. I went into that in more detail here.
The reason Doom matters so much to that story is what he does in the original. Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars ran twelve issues across 1984 and 1985. In the back half of it, across issues #10 to #12, Doom takes the power of the Beyonder for himself. Not by tricking anyone. By deciding he is the only person in the Marvel universe with the will to hold it.
Complete Secret Wars sets are common. It was a huge seller, tied to a toy line, and bought by everybody. If you have eighties Marvel in the house there is a fair chance the twelve issues are in there somewhere.
What I would actually look for
Findable, and worth checking for
- Ms. Marvel #16, first Mystique cameo, and #18 for the full
- Uncanny X-Men #141, Days of Future Past, first Rachel Summers
- Uncanny X-Men #266 and Annual #14, Gambit
- Infamous Iron Man #1, Doom as Iron Man
- Secret Wars #1 to #12, complete sets turn up often
Serious money, rarely found
- Fantastic Four #5, first Doctor Doom
- Fantastic Four Annual #2, Doom's origin
- X-Men #14, first Sentinels and Bolivar Trask
- X-Men #1, the original team
- Giant-Size X-Men #1, first Nightcrawler and the new team
The bit I have to say every time
A film announcement moves prices. A trailer moves prices. Release week moves prices. And then, most of the time, the price drifts back down towards where it was, because the thing that actually holds a comic's value is whether people wanted it before Hollywood turned up.
Fantastic Four #5 was a great book last year. Uncanny X-Men #141 was a great book last year. Ms. Marvel #16 was a quietly underrated book last year. None of that changed because of a trailer, and none of it will change if the film disappoints.
What a film does do is bring people back to their lofts. Which is genuinely the useful part, and the reason I write these.
If you are going through a collection this winter and you find any of the above, or you find something you are not sure about, send me photographs of the cover and the spine. I will tell you honestly what it is, including when the answer is that it is a nice comic and not a valuable one, which it usually is.