Doom family relationships and ancestry - Part 4 (continued)
[FONT=Arial Black]Continuing with the tangled character history of Kristoff Venard....[/FONT]
Kristoff Venard's life is turned upside down in Fantastic Four #278 when the now directionless Doombots decide that it is time to create a new Master for themselves and they enact one of Doom's contingency plans.
[URL=https://imageshack.com/i/pmBj15PSj][IMG]https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/xq90/922/Bj15PS.jpg[/IMG][/URL]
I thought this whole subplot with Kristoff being transfomed into a human version of a Doombot was dragged out far too long. It should have been rectified as soon as Doom's body was restored as a part of the first Secret Wars tie in with John Byrnes' Fantastic Four . This probably would have been the case had John Byrne stayed with Marvel. Kristoff/Doom attacked the Fantastic Four using the same attack that was used in Fantastic Four #6 in #278-278 and sent the Baxter Building into the upper atmosphere. The plot was thwarted and to their surprise the FF found that it was a young boy that was inside the armor that was constructed to make him appear to be adult sized. Reed decides to keep him under watch at the Baxter Building until he can figure out how to restore Kristoff's mind.
[URL=https://imageshack.com/i/pocTLfyCj][IMG]https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/xq90/924/cTLfyC.jpg[/IMG][/URL]
Byrne completes another step in restoring both characters to normal in FF #287 and #288 when the entanglement with the Beyonder is straightened out. But he left after issue #294 citing "internal office politics". This left the situation with Kristoff unresolved for quite some time and the tug of war between Kristoff/Doom and Doom himself drags out in Steve Englehart's Fantastic Four run, which is admittedly one of my least favorite runs on the title. Thankfully Walt Simonson finally resolves this entanglement in Fantastic Four #350 in just a couple of pages. But then Simonson also appears to have Kristoff killed in the famous time jumping battle between Reed and Doom in issue #352**
[URL=https://imageshack.com/i/pnE1Ns5kj][IMG]https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/xq90/923/E1Ns5k.jpg[/IMG][/URL]
** This particular issue of the Fantastic Four was revisited in a glowing article in Time magazine back in 2001. [URL="http://content.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,104312,00.html"][B][COLOR="#0000FF"]You can check it out here[/COLOR][/B][/URL]