Appearance Spotlight: Doctor Doom

Let's talk about Secret Wars. Like Super Powers for DC, Secret Wars was one of Marvel's first action figure lines (1984) and they promoted it heavily. DC did so by rebranding Super Friends, while Marvel made one of the first Comic Book Events to capitalize on it.

But even with that being the case, the miniseries did not very well reflect the toy line. Characters often appeared in one but not the other, none of the vehicles or accessories made their way into the comics, etc. In fact, it sometimes seems like, at the time, the toy line only impacted the comics in one way. Read on to find out how!


When they were designing the first wave of Secret Wars toys, they felt that Doctor Doom looked too medieval. They may have been on to something.

I don't know why this was a problem, but they felt it was, so they gave him a more futuristic appearance, including a pretty-ahead-of-its-time thigh pouch belt.

This doesn't have anything to do with this article, but I'd like to point out that the Doctor Doom and Iron Man figures in this line share arms and legs.

Anyway, Doctor Doom was the main antagonist in the Secret Wars miniseries, but he had his classic look. That is, until his armor was destroyed in Secret Wars #10 (December 1984).

By #11 (January 1985), he had new armor that resembled his action figure (and a new face)

which you can see more clearly on the cover of #12 (February 1985).

Just A Small Little Thing: Starling City

In Bizarro #2 (July 2015), Bizarro and Jimmy Olsen visit a town called Starling City:

Starling City (now called Star City) is, of course, the home of Arrow (now called Green Arrow) in the show Arrow. It first appeared in "Pilot" (October 2012). The "You Have Failed This City" refers to a repeated phrase spoken by Arrow on the show, and the arrows and their color should go without explanation

Now, let's be honest. This is mainly just a gag and we'll probably never heard about Starling City again. BUT, this series was in-continuity, which means somewhere out there is a Starling City in the DC Universe that has ties to something involving green arrows.