Bring on the Bad Guys: Doom #1

History

The 2025 series was announced at ComicsPRO in February 2025, positioned explicitly as a celebration of the nearly five-decade legacy of Stan Lee's 1976 Fireside/Simon & Schuster trade paperback Bring on the Bad Guys, which collected Silver Age origin stories of Doctor Doom, Green Goblin, Abomination, Loki, Red Skull, Dormammu, and Mephisto — the same roster of villains chosen for the 2025 event. Emmy Award-winning writer Marc Guggenheim serves as the event's architect, scripting both the Doom #1 opener and the concluding Mephisto #1 one-shot, as well as writing backup strips in each intervening issue that progressively reveal Sister Sorrow's origin; Stefano Raffaele provides art on the Doom installment, with Neeraj Menon on colors and Lee Bermejo supplying the main cover.

Trivia · 8 facts

• First appearance of Sister Sorrow (real name: Sorana), a Latverian-born sorceress who sold her soul to Mephisto to save her father and was transformed into his immortal emissary; confirmed as a new Earth-616 character created by Marc Guggenheim and Stefano Raffaele.
• Part One of a seven-issue villain-spotlight crossover event (Doom → Green Goblin → Abomination → Loki → Red Skull → Dormammu → Mephisto), each issue also containing a Guggenheim-written backup story expanding Sister Sorrow's backstory.
• The event is an explicit tribute to the 1976 Fireside Books trade paperback Bring on the Bad Guys — edited by Stan Lee, with a cover by John Romita Sr. — which collected origin tales of Doctor Doom, Dormammu, Loki, the Red Skull, the Abomination, the Green Goblin, and Mephisto, and was an early pioneer of the collected-editions format.
• The issue's central MacGuffin is the Soul Forge, an ancient artifact powered by six Soul Daggers — relics forged from the spirits of six sorcerers called the Lords of Darkness — which Mephisto seeks to gain dominion over every soul on Earth.
• Emil Blonsky / Abomination appears in a supporting role: Doctor Doom covertly observes Blonsky handing a Soul Dagger over to Sister Sorrow in Berlin, then confronts her directly after Blonsky departs — establishing the Abomination as an unwitting instrument in Mephisto's larger scheme.
• The main story is written by Marc Guggenheim, with art by Stefano Raffaele, colors by Neeraj Menon, letters by VC's Travis Lanham, and editing by Mark Paniccia; the main cover is by Lee Bermejo.
• Multiple variant covers were published for the issue, including editions by Mike McKone (homaging John Romita Sr.'s original 1976 painted cover), Leirix (a Sister Sorrow-focused variant), Kevin Eastman, Alessandro Cappuccio (design variant), and Netho Diaz (Nuff Said variant), among others.
• The issue was released on June 18, 2025, with a cover date of August 2025, and was rated T+ by Marvel.

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Variants (9)