Doctor Doom #2 with SPOILERS in which John, Paul and Richard III are discussed

[Iron Maiden]

Chris Cantwell knocks another one out of the park here as Doom is visited again by Kang, finds sanctuary with Morgan Le Fay and ends up in Taskmaster's lethal crosshairs.

This creative team of Cantwell and Larocca is really clicking IMO. Cantwell gives us an exciting narrative that covers a lot of ground. It starts off with a disarmed Doom is being escorted by Stephen Strange, Silver Sable and a new iteration of H.E.R.B.I.E. to a waiting aircraft that will take him to New York. Once there he was to be incarcerated while awaiting trial at the United Nations .

But as luck would have it, Kang picks this time to drop in on Doom again, who is alone in the hold of the aircraft. Kang has also seen this future where Doom has a family and is the leader of Earth. He figures this version of Doom would be easy to defeat so he agrees to help Doom escape. Kang just lets him freefall on his own and leaves the rest of the details to Doom.

There rest of the issue takes place in New York as Doom encounters his old flame Morgan Le Fay. She's a time traveler like Doom and Kang so one is never quite sure which version we are seeing. She lives in a rent controlled apartment in Queens and she is definitely not the angry Morgan that Doom encountered back in Bendis's Mighty Avengers. This interlude is a lot of fun as Doom gets frustrated by a chatty Morgan who asks Doom who his favorite Beatle is (John)

We also see another player enter the game as Dr. Adam Brashear gets a visit from the new H.E.R.B.I.E. What's funny is that he's also annoyed by Reed and the new H.E.R.B.I.E. Hmmmm....are we seeing a pattern here with Reed? He also told Hank Pym once that he knew more about Pym Particles than he did.

Things go very bad for Doom at the end as he meets with a new actor on the scene called the Witness, who he hopes can tell him more about his death in the Future. But this is when Taskmaster makes his move.

I liked this issue just as much if not more than the first. IMO Cantwell avoids something that Bendis did in Infamous Iron Man where his overuse of the Hood got to be pretty annoying after a while. Cantwell keeps throwing different characters at Doom and the encounter with Blue Marvel is overdue. He shows us that Victor is not completely ignorant of pop culture while also having him recite a passage from the dream sequence at the end of Shakespeare's Richard III, a fitting choice since at that point of the play all of Richard's enemies are gathering at Bosworth Field.

I hope that Sal Larocca stays on this title for a while. I think an experienced artist like him is a good match for someone who's new to writing comics.