Doomsday (DC Comics)

• 1. Introduction

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  Doomsday, the DC Comics supervillain created by Dan Jurgens, got his name from a note scribbled on a wall chart. In 1991, the editors and writers of the Superman comics held their annual brainstorming session. Some writers had noticed a pattern. Most of Superman's enemies beat him with technology or cleverness, or came with some natural advantage against him. They wanted a new foe who could simply match him in physical power. Several writers suggested that Superman might die at the hands of a "bestial foe". Editor Mike Carlin jotted "doomsday for Superman" on the chart, and the phrase became the monster's name. IGN would later place him at #46 on its list of the Top 100 Comic Book Villains of All Time. So where does such a creature come from? Why does death never seem to hold him? And how did one scribble grow into comics, television, films, games and toys?

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• 2. Evolution By Death

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  Before the humanoid Kryptonians took command of their world about 250,000 years ago, the planet was a violent, hellish place where only the strongest creatures survived. An alien scientist named Bertron set out to exploit that cruelty. His goal was the perfect living being. He placed a humanoid infant, born in vitro in a laboratory, onto the surface, and the environment killed it almost at once.

  Bertron collected the remains and cloned a stronger version. The cycle ran for decades, a deliberate shortcut through natural evolution. Every death left a record in the being's genes. The accumulated agony drove it insane and planted a hatred of all life. Its first name was "The Ultimate".

  In time, the child could endure the high temperatures and the searing atmosphere, only to be slain by the planet's vicious predators. Then it moved beyond Bertron's technology. It learned to live on solar energy, with no need for food or air. It could return to life and adapt to whatever had killed it before. The Ultimate hunted the predators of Krypton to extinction, and then it killed Bertron, whom it had come to see as an enemy.

  Bertron had wanted little contact with the planet's natives, so a ship regularly arrived to deliver his supplies. That ship would soon carry his creation off the world.

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• 3. A Killing Spree

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  The first stop on the rampage was the planet Bylan 5, 245,000 years in the past. There the Apokoliptian prince Uxas, who would become Darkseid, was about to marry a princess. The marriage would give Apokolips the chemical deposits it needed for its weapons factories. The Ultimate killed Uxas' ally Master Mayhem almost instantly, and Uxas fled in fear. The rampage poisoned the planet's atmosphere, which made the chemicals worthless to Apokolips.

  On the planet Khundia, the warring clans united to build protective armor for a warrior named Kobald. They hoped he would survive long enough to force the creature into a rocket. Once the rocket reached space, the creature killed Kobald. The resulting explosion sent it hurtling across the void.

  A Green Lantern named Zharan Pel was the next to cross its path, and he was beaten to death. The creature took his power ring and sensed the power of the Guardians of the Universe. Thousands of Green Lanterns died trying to stop it. At Oa, a lone Guardian lured it away from the planet. Fearing the creature would absorb the other Guardians' powers, he turned his own energies on himself. The blast tore a void in space, and the creature fell through it.

  On the planet Calaton, it ravaged the world for three years. When only the capital remained, the royal family merged their life forces into a being of living energy called the Radiant. The Radiant killed the creature with a huge blast, laying waste to over a fifth of the planet. Calatonian custom called for the body to be suited and shackled so its spirit could not escape into the afterlife. Its murders made it unworthy of burial on Calaton, so the body was shot into space. The metallic casket eventually struck Earth hard enough to drive itself deep underground.

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• 4. The Death Of Superman

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  One freed arm was enough to break the buried vault open. The creature went on a rampage across Midwestern America and met the Justice League. It defeated them in a matter of minutes, even though ancient burial cables still bound one of its hands. It could not introduce itself, so when the League member Booster Gold called it "Doomsday" in an off-panel scene, the name stuck.

  Five Leaguers, including Superman, combined their energy powers into an attack meant to kill it. Doomsday shielded himself with the last of his burial cables. The blast destroyed the cables and freed his second hand. In publishing terms, he had barely arrived. His cameo came in Superman: The Man of Steel #17 in November 1992, and his first full appearance followed in issue #18 in December 1992.

  Billboards and television spots advertising wrestling competitions in Metropolis caught the attention of the otherwise mindless creature, and it headed for the city. Superman found that Doomsday was more than a match for him and was growing stronger. In the original story, Doomsday ignored Superman whenever possible. The later Hunter/Prey miniseries changed that. It said his painful creation had given him a genetic ability to sense Kryptonians, and an instinct to treat each one as a threat.

  In Superman (vol. 2) #75, the two beat each other to death in front of the Daily Planet building in Metropolis. Four super-beings then took up Superman's mantle: Superboy, Cyborg Superman, Eradicator and Steel. Two of them declared themselves the real Superman. Cyborg Superman strapped Doomsday's body to an asteroid, attached an electronic device and flung it into deep space on a path that would pass no planet.

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• 5. Return Engagements

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  A deep-space scavenger ship bound for Apokolips found the drifting asteroid after it passed through a wormhole. Doomsday was fully rested. He killed the crew and landed on Apokolips, where he beat Darkseid in single combat, even though Darkseid was empowered by the Omega Force. Darkseid's servant DeSaad then opened a Boom Tube to Calaton, hoping the Radiant would destroy Doomsday again. It could not, because Doomsday adapts to whatever has beaten him.

  Superman knew this from Waverider, but he was obsessed with stopping the creature and followed him with a Mother Box. It gave him an ultrasonic gun and an energy sword. Doomsday's evolution answered each weapon. New bone growths sealed his ears, and his knuckle-bones shot out of his body to pin Superman in the air. With a compound fracture in his left arm, Superman used one of Waverider's time travel devices to strand Doomsday at the End of Time. There the creature met entropy, the one force he could not overcome. The Mother Box healed Superman and then "died". Darkseid, battered nearly to death, became fascinated by Doomsday.

  In the miniseries The Doomsday Wars, Prin Vnok, an underling of Brainiac, retrieved Doomsday from the End of Time. Brainiac wanted to pair the beast's power with his own intellect. Drugs could not erase Doomsday's mind, so Brainiac chose to grow a clone without it. His host was the newborn baby of Pete Ross and Lana Lang, born eight weeks premature. Superman drove Brainiac out with a telepathy-blocking psi-blocker and rescued the child. He then placed Doomsday in stasis on the Moon, cycling between four Justice League teleporters so that he could never be more than 25% integrated.

  In the Our Worlds at War storyline, Manchester Black's Suicide Squad released Doomsday to fight the cosmic entity Imperiex. He slaughtered the Squad and tore through Imperiex's probes beside Superman. Imperiex was too much for him and reduced him to a skeleton.

  Superman (vol. 2) #175 marked 100 issues since Superman's death by staging a rematch. Lex Luthor regrew Doomsday's flesh using Superman's Kryptonian DNA and gave him to Darkseid. By then Doomsday had become sentient, and he blamed Luthor for his "death" in the Imperiex War. Luthor had the Joker release him in Washington, D.C., on the anniversary of Superman's death. This time Superman knocked him out, and the world saw that Doomsday would never be his equal again.

  In Infinite Crisis, Doctor Psycho and Warp freed Doomsday from a cavern near the center of the Earth and mind-controlled him. Superman and his Earth-Two counterpart defeated him. In Superman #681, Doomsday crashed into Metropolis shortly after the Kandor delegates met the President, and Superman, Supergirl and the Kandorians killed him. Sam Lane then claimed the corpse and asked Lex Luthor to upgrade it.

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• 6. Doomsday Reborn

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  The milestone Action Comics #900 closed the Reign of Doomsday storyline. Its trail ran through a Steel one-shot, Outsiders (vol. 4) #37, Justice League of America (vol. 2) #55, Superman/Batman Annual #5 and Superboy (vol. 4) #6. A broader, adapting Doomsday abducted Steel, Cyborg Superman, Eradicator, Supergirl and Superboy. It was all a plot by Lex Luthor. On a cloaked satellite, Superman found the apparently inert Doomsday and three clones, each with a different set of powers.

  A cyborg-like Doomsday clone called Doomslayer then appeared. Luthor had made him from a DNA sample, and he had evolved inside an infinite tube. Doomslayer treated the original Doomsday as an infection and Earth as its ground zero. He planned to destroy the planet from the inside and erase all knowledge of Doomsday. Eradicator, in control of the original's body, joined the fight and warned that Doomsday's mind was beginning to awaken. At the end, Eradicator threw a weakened Superman out of the tower and let himself be trapped with Doomslayer as it teleported away.

  In September 2013, the New 52 reboot gave Doomsday an official debut during Villains Month, in Batman/Superman #3.1. In that version he attacked Krypton long ago, when Lara was still a lieutenant in the military seminary. Colonel Zod fought him in ancient warrior armor, and thousands died. Zod apparently sent him to the Phantom Zone. A later story had Doomsday escape and take a deadlier form, in which every living thing nearby died. Superman dragged his body to Venus and incinerated it, but Doomsday teleported to Earth. Superman sliced him in half and inhaled the ashes to contain them. He began to change into something like Doomsday himself. The Phantom King, Xa-Du, had released the monster at Brainiac's urging. Superman held the fury in check long enough to drag Brainiac's ship into a black hole.

  In 2016, DC Rebirth restored the pre-reboot continuity. Doomsday burst from a coffin carried above Metropolis and attacked trains and civilians as diversions. This Doomsday showed some strategic planning. Superman trapped him with the Phantom Zone projector, but an unknown group led by Mr. Oz intercepted the beam. Later, Tim Drake opened every cell in Oz's prison. Doomsday escaped, and a version of Drake from the "Titans Tomorrow" timeline lured him back inside by chasing a hologram of Superman.

  The DC All In era brought a twist. Time Trapper appeared and revealed himself as a future Doomsday who could evolve no further. He asked Superman to help him rule eternity, and Superman refused. In the DC K.O. storyline, Time Trapper learned he was created to destroy Darkseid, and he sacrificed himself to empower Superman. Doomsday's power of resurrection, the story said, represents second chances.

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• 7. Powers And Limits

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  After the Radiant first killed him, Doomsday grew immune to its energy-projection. Eventually he could also withstand Darkseid's full Omega-Effect. His recovery time depends on the damage. After his death at Superman's hands, which left him outwardly undamaged, he needed only some days. After Imperiex reduced him to a skeleton, it took months. Burial in total darkness underground had cut him off from solar energy and greatly slowed his first resurrection.

  His body is almost solid mass with no internal organs. Masses of bone-like material cover it, acting as both armor and weapons. His strength and durability surpass Superman's.

  When Lex Luthor regrew Doomsday, he enhanced him with Superman's DNA. The creature gained no new abilities and picked up Superman's vulnerability to kryptonite. Unlike in Superman's case, kryptonite is not fatal to him.

  During a confrontation with Steel, Doomsday spontaneously developed flight. He also grew metallic armor that could resist Steel's paralyzing nanites. Against the Outsiders, while seeking the Eradicator, he absorbed energy from attacks by Looker and Halo and sent it back in a massive burst. When Cyborg Superman tore through parts of his body, they were replaced with bionic parts of the Cyborg's own, giving him vast technopathy.

  In the DCU revamp, Doomsday was said to grow in stages. When he killed Superman after the reboot, he was only in a larval stage. During adolescence he built a giant clump of his own biomass as a makeshift cocoon and fed on the wildlife around him. His strength even lets him breach the space between dimensions, which gives him access to the Phantom Zone.

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• 8. Many Doomsdays

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  The bone of Doomsday turned a construction worker named Lloyd Crayton into a four-armed monster called Doombreaker in Infinite Frontier. Crayton had witnessed Superman's first fight with Doomsday and later obtained the bone. Lois Lane found the fragment in his apartment. Superman used his heat vision on it and returned Crayton to normal.

  Other versions abound. In Superman/Batman, a soldier named Joshua Walker was infused with Doomsday's DNA in a government experiment led by Amanda Waller. In Dark Nights: Metal, the Devastator merges Doomsday with a Batman from Earth -1, who keeps his mind and can return to human form. In Convergence, Doomsday's spores turned a S.T.A.R. Labs intern named Reiser into Doomed. Elsewhere, Jimmy Olsen became Doomsday in All-Star Superman through a formula from Leo Quintum, and Faora did in DC Comics Bombshells after injecting herself with Raven's blood. A Flashpoint version was built by Sam Lane and the military and controlled by a helmet. The metahuman Alexandra Gianopoulos killed it by forcing it to tear itself apart.

  The television Doomsdays took stranger forms. In the eighth season of Smallville, Doomsday was a Kryptonian creation that arrived on Earth with Kal-El's ship and became the paramedic Davis Bloome, played by Sam Witwer. In Krypton, he began as a Kandorian named Dax-Baron. In Superman & Lois, he was a version of Bizarro, played at first by Tyler Hoechlin. Lex Luthor turned him into Doomsday. In the DC Animated Universe, Michael Jai White voiced an altered Superman clone built by Project Cadmus. Writer Paul Dini refused to include him in Superman: The Animated Series.

  In Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Robin Atkin Downes provided the voice and motion capture. Lex Luthor made this Doomsday from his own blood and the body of General Zod. The monster kills Superman again before Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman defeat him. Animated films include Superman: Doomsday, the DCAMU film The Death of Superman and Superman/Batman: Apocalypse, where Darkseid sends an army of clones against Themyscira. In the 1994 game The Death and Return of Superman, Doomsday is a boss. Later games made him playable, including Injustice: Gods Among Us, voiced by Khary Payton, and Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham. He has also become an action figure, with versions from Mattel, DC Direct and DC Collectibles.

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