| Doomsday | |
Doomsday Annual #1 (1995). Art by Dan Jurgens. |
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| Publication information | |
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| Publisher | DC Comics |
| First appearance | Superman: The Man of Steel #17 (Nov. 1992) |
| Created by | Dan Jurgens |
| In-story information | |
| Place of origin | Krypton |
| Team affiliations | Secret Society of Super Villains Suicide Squad |
| Notable aliases | The Ultimate, The Armageddon Creature, The One Who Killed Superman [1] |
| Abilities |
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Doomsday is a fictional character, a supervillain that appears in comic books published by DC Comics. The character first appears in Superman: The Man of Steel #17 (Nov. 1992), and was created by writer-artist Dan Jurgens. Doomsday is known throughout the world as the only supervillain to have successfully killed Superman.[2]
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Doomsday was created in the distant past on Krypton, long before the humanoid Kryptonian race had gained dominance over the planet. It was a violent, hellish world where only the absolute strongest of creatures could survive (at the time, the world's dominant lifeforms were said to be the most dangerous creatures in the universe).[3][4] In an effort to create the ultimate lifeform, the alien scientist Bertron sent an infant who was born in vitro—in order to make it develop resistance to the harsh environment—to the surface of the planet where it would be promptly killed by the vicious creatures inhabiting it.[3] Its remains were harvested and used to clone a stronger version of it, a process repeated countless times as a form of accelerated natural selection.[3] The agony of these deaths were recorded in his genes driving the creature to hate all life.[3] Eventually, it gained the ability to adapt to overcome what killed it in its prior life without the need of Bertron's technology.[3] "The Ultimate" hunted and killed all of the lethal creatures that then inhabited Krypton, including Bertron, who he had come to identify as hostile due to his research having "killed" him hundreds upon hundreds of times.[3]
The Ultimate escaped Krypton via a ship that regularly came to deliver supplies to Bertron - who wanted little contact with the planet's natives - and went on a killing spree across several planets. It began 245,000 years ago on Bylan 5, where Darkseid was about to wed a princess (in order to obtain that planet's chemical deposits for Apokolips' weapons factories). Just as the Ultimate and Darkseid were to meet in combat, Darkseid was forced to flee, as the battle had caused the planet's atmosphere to become toxic and therefore worthless to Apokolips. The Ultimate hitched a ride on an escaping shuttle, which crashed on Khundia. The warring Khundian clans united in order to build protective armor for a warrior named Kobald, who was hoped to survive long enough to force the Ultimate onto a rocket. Once the rocket was in space, the Ultimate killed Kobald and the resulting explosion sent him hurling through space.
It next came across the path of a Green Lantern named Zharan Pel. The Ultimate took the Lantern's power ring and sensing the power of the Guardians of the Universe, made his way to them. Hundreds of Green Lanterns were sent to stop it and were killed. It continued to Oa where a single Guardian sacrificed himself in battle to defeat it. But the release of energies by the Guardian caused a tear in space through which the Ultimate fell. Eventually coming to Calaton, it tore that world apart for three years.[3] With only the capital city left, the royal family combined their life forces into a single energy being, The Radiant.[2][3] The Radiant killed the Ultimate with a huge blast of energy (laying waste to over a fifth of his planet in the process).[3] In common Calatonian burial procedures, the Ultimate's seemingly-dead body was shackled and masked to prevent his spirit escaping into the afterlife, and he was shot into space due to his murders making him unworthy of burial on Calaton.[3] Eventually, it landed on Earth, the force of the impact driving the casket deep underground.[3]
In his first encounter with the Justice League, shortly after breaking free from underground, Doomsday defeated the entire team of superheroes in a matter of minutes, which in turn attracted the attention of Superman.[2] Most notable is the fact that the creature fought the entire time with literally one hand tied behind his back, yet still was able to lay waste to all opposition and much of the surrounding area. The only Justice Leaguer who could even defend herself against Doomsday was Maxima. Also at that time, his naming occurred when League member Booster Gold stated how the rampage resembled "the arrival of Doomsday". The comment subsequently reached the broadcast media and thereafter led to the creature's accepted name.
During his rampage, Doomsday took interest in billboards and television spots advertising violent wrestling competitions held in Metropolis, which appealed to his bloodlust and thus enticed the otherwise mindless creature to head towards the city. By counterattacking, Superman quickly found that his opponent's awesome power was a match for his own, and so he realized that if Doomsday actually reached Metropolis, the resulting battle could conceivably destroy the city and kill millions of innocent people. Simultaneously, Doomsday developed a strong desire to murder Superman in particular. That desire was later explained in the Hunter/Prey miniseries: from the agony of continually dying during his creation process, Doomsday developed in his genes the ability to sense anyone Kryptonian, plus an overriding instinct to treat any such beings as an automatic threat (however, it remains unexplained why Doomsday did not also react with this specific type of malice towards the Cyborg Superman, who at one point possessed Kryptonian DNA; it is at least an indication that his abilities are partly metaphysical).
In the space of only a few issues of the Superman comic book series, Doomsday battled Superman in a titanic struggle, leading the hero to conclude that the creature would only continue to attack relentlessly and endlessly, with no urge for surrender. It all culminated in Superman (vol. 2) #75, where in an act of self-sacrifice, Superman refused to give up despite taking serious wounds and running low on stamina. The fight raged to the bitter end, where the two combatants each struck a simultaneous, fatal blow, leaving both of them lifeless in front of the Daily Planet building in Metropolis.[2]
In the aftermath of Superman's apparent death, no fewer than four super-beings appeared in his wake, two of them declaring themselves to be the "real" Superman. One of these four, a half-man/half-machine who greatly resembled Superman with cybernetic implants where he had sustained the greatest amount of damage from Doomsday's blows (and who would later become a dangerous villain called simply "The Cyborg") took custody of Doomsday's apparently lifeless body. After strapping the creature to an asteroid with an electronic device attached (a device later revealed, in the Hunter/Prey books, to be a backup of the Cyborg's essence), the Cyborg flung Doomsday into deep space, on a trajectory supposedly certain to never intersect any other planet. The issue closed with an image of an awakened and laughing Doomsday, still strapped to the asteroid but otherwise in good condition.
Eventually, after passing through a wormhole, Doomsday's asteroid was accidentally found by a deep-space scavenger ship. Upon closer examination of the peculiar-looking drifting rock, the ship's crew retrieved the object hoping to find something of value. The scavenger vessel happened to be on a route to Apokolips, the home of the powerful tyrant Darkseid. Doomsday was fully rested and, after slaughtering the crew of the salvage ship, found himself landing on the harsh world. This was to be the setup for a final showdown between Doomsday and Superman (similarly resurrected, in the meantime), who had been uneasy about the possibility of Doomsday's resurrection. With the help of his JLA contacts, Superman procured a Mother Box, a thinking computer, after Darkseid's servant Desaad contacted Earth about a problem on Apokolips. Unknown to Superman, Doomsday had faced and beaten Darkseid himself in single combat (even surviving Darkseid's fabled Omega Beams) and was laying waste to Apokolips. Unfortunately, before Superman could deal with Doomsday, Desaad opened a boom tube to Calaton—the first world where Doomsday was successfully defeated — and sent Doomsday through to what he believed was his defeat at the hands of The Radiant. However, Doomsday was able to adapt and overcome any opponent because of the process by which he was created (he was always stronger than he had been prior to his last death), so, although the Radiant had defeated him once, he would not be able to defeat him again. Likewise, even though Superman had killed Doomsday once before, he would be unable to do so again. Superman, while knowing this - having been filled in on Doomsday's history thanks to the actions of Linear Man member Waverider - was obsessed with stopping Doomsday and traveled to Calaton. He fought Doomsday again with the help of the Mother Box, but, despite it providing him with extra weapons such as an ultrasonic gun and an energy sword, Superman met with defeat. He was forced to use one of Waverider's time travel devices to leave Doomsday stranded at the End of Time, where Doomsday met the one force he could not overcome: entropy.
During the "Lifeline" storyline that ran in Wonder Woman, an imperfect duplicate of Doomsday was created by an artificial intelligence based on the son of scientist Doctor Julian Lazarus, who was attempting to bring his son back after being responsible for the accident that killed him. The AI based on the child had already created short-lived copies of Barry Allen and Sinestro, but he simply didn't realize that he was creating an actual monster; he thought he was simply playing a computer game. The duplicate originally possessed the same strength as Doomsday, but grew more powerful with each step. The Doomsday clone was eventually defeated when the power supply that provided him with energy was turned up to such a degree that Doomsday's bony spurs grew to cover his body, essentially turning him into a statue that Wonder Woman was able to shatter.
In an attempt to understand death, Mister Mxyzptlk created a temporary copy of Doomsday — which he called "Bada-Bing-Bada-Boomsday"—in Superman: The Man of Steel #75, who subsequently killed Mxyzptlk in the fight. However, Mxyzptlk was resurrected that same issue following a meeting with the Supreme Being, and removed the Doomsday duplicate from the fight once again.
Doomsday returned yet again in the mini-series The Doomsday Wars. In this series, Prin Vnok, an underling of Brainiac uses his technology to travel to the End of Time to retrieve Doomsday in order to combine the beast's massive power with Brainiac's formidable intellect (this was later revealed to have taken place due to the timeline's reconstruction following the events of 'Zero Hour', when the former (at that time) Green Lantern Hal Jordan, presently known as Parallax broke down creation and the heroes were forced to trigger their own Big Bang to stop him; the reconstruction of time meant that Brainiac was able to change the outcome of Doomsday's defeat).
Doomsday's will proved too strong to override completely with psionics, and he reacted too quickly for any chemical process to eliminate his simple mind, so Brainiac attempted to use a human host to genetically engineer a Doomsday body without the mind while temporarily lodging in Doomsday's head. He chose to use Pete Ross and Lana Lang's newborn baby, born eight weeks premature and transported by Superman to a hospital. Brainiac intercepted Superman during the attempt and stole the baby to hurt his long-time foe, correctly deducing that it was the child of someone close to Superman. In the end, Superman thwarted Brainiac's plot by driving him out of Doomsday's body via the use of a telepathy-blocking 'psi-blocker'. He then lured Doomsday to the moon, where he placed Doomsday in a kind of stasis with four Justice League teleporters; perpetually transporting between those four booths, Doomsday would never be more than 25% integrated, and thus unable to 'think' of a plan to escape.
Following these events, Doomsday was released by Lex Luthor's Suicide Squad to battle Imperiex, a threat that was judged to be even greater than Doomsday himself.[2] Once freed, Doomsday slaughtered the Squad, and then went on to battle Imperiex's numerous probes (his mind having been altered to regard them as the threat he normally perceived Superman to be), which had thus far managed to seriously injure or kill most of Earth's heroes. Doomsday tore through numerous probes with seemingly little effort, while aided by Superman — the only time the two enemies would come close to teaming up — before finally confronting Imperiex himself. Imperiex proved too much for Doomsday; he blasted him, reducing the creature to a glowing skeleton.
Just a little while later, Superman (vol. 2) #175 commemorated the 100th issue since the death of Superman in battle with Doomsday by staging a re-match. It is shown that Doomsday's skeleton was retrieved and his flesh regrown by Lex Luthor (by using Superman's Kryptonian DNA), who handed Doomsday over to Darkseid (Luthor's aide in the retrieval, repair, and improvement of Doomsday) to repay Earth's war debt to Apokolips. By this time, Doomsday had evolved intelligence and sentience. Luthor arranged for the Joker to set Doomsday loose in Washington D.C. to demonstrate that he was "in good working condition." It also happened to be the anniversary of the day that Superman had died while stopping Doomsday. Despite being weakened by kryptonite exposure when Luthor attempted to exploit Doomsday's Kryptonian origins, Superman's heart was restarted by Black Lightning and he reached Doomsday just as the monster was struggling with the Martian Manhunter. Learning from J'onn that Doomsday wanted to kill Luthor because he blamed Luthor for his 'death' in the Imperiex War, Superman managed to defeat the creature by using his newfound sentience and intelligence against him:
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You're different now. You can think for yourself. So think about this. Before, you were a mindless thing. Nothing could hurt you. You couldn't feel pain, much less understand it. But once you have felt it — it changes you — forever. And you'll begin to understand something new. Fear. I've lived with it all my life. You don't want to die again, do you? The agony of what's happened to you affects your speed — your strength... and that little bit of doubt — that you cannot win today — grows. You understand now, don't you? You will never hurt me again. You will never kill me again. Never again! |
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Darkseid attempted to replicate Doomsday, producing an army of Doomsday "clones". Darkseid was not able to duplicate perfectly the creature in all its raw power, possibly as a result of the creature's complex DNA, and they were defeated by a combination of heat vision and Batman's explosive batarangs during an attack on Paradise Island while Darkseid kidnapped the newly-arrived Kara Zor-El/Supergirl.
When Superman travelled to Apokolips to reclaim the life of Steel, Darkseid's wife Mortalla ordered his troops to release Doomsday (or perhaps a more perfect duplicate) in an attempt to help Darkseid. Doomsday's short freedom was quickly halted by Irons in the Entropy Aegis, an armor with incredible power that had been built out of the remains of an Imperiex probe. Doomsday disappeared and was seen wandering the harsh lands of Apokolips.
With his newfound intelligence, Doomsday managed to escape Apokolips and return to Earth. Upon his arrival, Doomsday encountered a series of emotions previously alien to him — love, compassion and kindness. Exploring the full abilities of these new emotions, Doomsday made his way to Metropolis once more, though not in the destructive manner he had before. Upon his arrival in Metropolis, Doomsday found Superman at the brink of death at the hands of Gog and intervenes to help Superman in an ultimately futile fight against Gog's army. In a new future, Doomsday was remembered as one of Earth's greatest heroes, who continued Superman's legacy by leading an army under his name against the army of Gog. This new timeline ended when it was revealed that Superman was still alive, trapped and tortured with kryptonite for two centuries by Gog. Ultimately, Superman manages to convince Gog of the error of his ways. Gog offers to correct the past by returning Doomsday to an earlier point in the timeline, but in the process Doomsday would lose his intelligence and humanity. Returned to the present, an unconscious Doomsday is transported away by a younger version of Gog to an unknown location for an unknown purpose.
During Infinite Crisis, Doomsday was freed from captivity in a cavern near the center of the Earth by Doctor Psycho and Warp. He was then mind-controlled by Doctor Psycho and used as the "spear-carrier" of a supervillain assault on Metropolis. Just as he came into full view in front of Green Arrow, he was stopped by Kal-El and Kal-L, who made quick work of the villain as, for the first time, the two Supermen acted as a team.
Doomsday returns in the final page of Superman (vol. 1) #681, crashing in Metropolis shortly after the representatives of Kandor meet with the President. Where he came from is currently unknown. Doomsday was then apparently killed on Earth's moon when Superman, Supergirl and about fifteen or so Kandorians teamed up on him and punched him to death in Action Comics #871.
Doomsday was created and evolved through cloning an infant and having it killed over and over again by one of the most dangerous species of the universe and in one of the harshest habitats in existence, prehistoric Krypton. As such, he returns to life and becomes resistant or immune to what killed him before. After the Radiant killed him the first time they fought, Doomsday grew immune to the former's energy-projection, and even managed to withstand Darkseid's full Omega-Effect. The amount of damage dealt to Doomsday determines the length of time it would take to fully recover. During his outwardly undamaged death at Superman's hands, he only needed some days to recover, but when Imperiex reduced him to a skeleton, it would take months.
Doomsday can also develop/evolve resistance from ordinary injuries. In the Superman/Doomsday: Hunter/Prey series, Superman used a sound gun to greatly discomfort him, but Doomsday's auditory canals closed up, making him impervious to Superman's weapon. Waverider once paralyzed Doomsday with chronal energy, but the second attempt backlashed. In essence, Doomsday gradually turns more invulnerable if not injured beyond his ability to recover, which is so far undefined. Doomsday has also developed weapons and abilities that counters the powers of an opponent. He managed to cancel out the pure-energy Radiant by slamming into him, and greatly extend his claws and develop a poison to strike Superman in flight and reel him in (also in Superman/Doomsday: Hunter/Prey) or breathe flames against the fire-sensitive Martian Manhunter.[5] Doomsday is covered by bony spurs providing protection to his few vital organs (brain, eyes, nervous system) and acting as weapons on his hands, elbows and knees.
Doomsday possesses extreme physical strength that even rivals that of Superman, at one point enabling him to effortlessly stand his ground against the entire Justice League, including Superman and Orion (The Doomsday Wars). He was able to break Superman's left arm with limited effort, as well as outmatch and beat Darkseid unconscious in physical combat (Superman/Doomsday: Hunter/Prey). He is immensely resistant to heat, cold, and conventional damage, allowing him to survive on the most inhospitable worlds, or in the vacuum of space. Doomsday possesses seemingly inexhaustible stamina, and was not noticeably slowed down from fighting Superman for an entire day. His reflexes and speed are vastly beyond what's expected for his bulky size, and has been able to match Superman in this regard. He cannot fly, but rather travels by leaping miles at a time. Superman took advantage of this in their first battle by trying to keep him airborne, as the sky was his element.
Doomsday has a highly accelerated healing factor that allows him to quickly regenerate from most damage. When his side was cut by Superman with a plasma sword, it closed within moments. As a result of his engineering, Doomsday does not need to eat, drink, breathe, or sleep, and his body is almost solid mass with few vulnerable organs.
Doomsday is now genetically part-Kryptonian due to his genes having been spliced with Kal-El's, however with the exception of his flame-breath, he has displayed no additional abilities. In fact, he was shown weaker than previously when he was singlehandedly beaten by Superman, which should not have been possible given previous accounts. This was due to intelligence that he developed, causing him to fear the death that awaited him if he lost. He soon however lost his intelligence when sent back in time, reverting him to his original state of fearlessness.
Due to his Kryptonian DNA, he is susceptible to Kryptonite. Unlike Superman, it causes him pain, but cannot kill him. This was done to render him controllable.
Despite his ability to adapt to any attack, Doomsday is not invincible. In Superman/Doomsday: Hunter/Prey, Superman and Waverider sent Doomsday to the End of Time, where Waverider stated that even he could not survive, and Doomsday was shown to disintegrate and cease to exist. However, at a later point, Brainiac's associate Prin Vnok traveled to the End of Time and rescued Doomsday just before this moment had the chance to occur (The Doomsday Wars). A blast from Imperiex reduced him to a skeleton during the Our Worlds At War storyline, but he eventually recovered. After this death, Doomsday's body was recovered in a joint venture between Lex Luthor and Darkseid, and was spliced with Kal-El's DNA, giving him greatly improved intelligence, being able to communicate and analyze in regular manner, and displaying a form of flame-breath. The drawback being that he was no longer free of fear, due to coming so close to truly dying, with almost nothing left to regenerate from, and displayed no signs of his former evolving ability, enabling Superman to conclusively defeat him for the first time. Doomsday's durability has been great enough to withstand the full force from Darkseid's Omega Beams, but he can nonetheless be injured. Superman has, in order of occurrence, been able to snap one of his knee protrusions, temporarily kill him with a blow to the head, cut through his body with his heat vision, and knock him out.
Doomsday appears in the Justice League animated series and the successor Justice League Unlimited voiced by Michael Jai White. In this series, Doomsday is an imperfect clone of Superman, genetically engineered by Project Cadmus and indoctrinated into hating Superman. In his first appearance, Doomsday fights the Justice Lords (a tyrannical version of the Justice League from a parallel universe), and is lobotomized by the alternate-universe Superman's heat vision. Doomsday's brain regenerates, and Dr. Achilles Milo, a Project Cadmus member, releases Doomsday to kill Amanda Waller, explaining that his hate of Superman was manufactured. However, Doomsday instead kills Milo and goes to fight Superman. Like his comics counterpart, he has evolved a heavy skull-plate to prevent the same trick from working twice. Doomsday is disabled when Superman throws him into an active volcano, encasing him in lava. The Justice League then sentences him to life imprisonment in the Phantom Zone since he's too dangerous to imprison anywhere else.
Doomsday also appeared in the Legion of Super Heroes animated series episode "Phantoms," where he is shown as a phantom prisoner within the Phantom Zone, along with many other Phantom Zone villains.
Doomsday appears on Smallville as a main villain for the show's eighth season,[6] played by Sam Witwer. This version of Doomsday has a human alter ego called "Davis Bloome," a likeable paramedic struggling with a growing darkness inside him.[7] Davis mutates into the more recognizable bony Doomsday form and blacks out for the periods when Doomsday is active.
In the episode "Bloodline", Faora, the wife of General Zod, explains that she and Zod created Davis from the genetic material of the strongest creatures they could find on Krypton and sent him to Earth with Kal-El's ship to become Earth's "Ultimate Destroyer," a title which Jor-El and Brainiac likewise give him. She determines that he is not yet strong enough for this task, and stabs him through the chest with a metal pole she ripped off a gurney. She then whispers in his ear, "that which kills you makes you stronger." Davis awakens in a pool of his own blood and attempts to stab himself as a test, only for the knife to shatter on impact, like his comic counterpart's ability to recover from fatal wounds with an immunity to whatever killed him the last time. Following this, Davis' blackouts become more frequent, culminating in him transforming into Doomsday and kidnapping Chloe during her wedding. Doomsday places a curiously smiling Chloe in the Fortress of Solitude, now under Brainiac's control.
Doomsday appears in the 2007 animated direct-to-video film, Superman: Doomsday. His origin is simplified, with Kryptonian records reporting him as an improperly programmed biomechanical supersoldier. After going on a killing spree, Superman battles him throughout Metropolis. Doomsday is finally defeated when a severely wounded Superman flies him into outer space and brings them back, slamming him into the pavement, killing him. The blast also results in the mortal wounding of Superman, though his death ends up being temporary. Unlike the comics, there is nothing to indicate Doomsday returns from the dead.
Doomsday serves as a boss in the Death and Return of Superman video game for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and Sega Genesis, as well as Justice League Heroes, where he is voiced by Charles Gideon Davis. He is also set to appear in the upcoming video game DC Universe Online.
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