Enter the Door Man!
A couple weeks ago, the Planet Money podcast attempted to license a Marvel superhero to jumpstart their own movie empire (of you haven’t listened to it or the sequel episode, they’re worth a listen).
Public radio budgetary constraints necessitated aiming low…like, really low. They eventually settled on an uber-obscure character: Doorman, from the *cough* Great Lakes Avengers.
Doorman first appeared in West Coast Avengers Vol. 2 #46, which as a shameless collector of all things 1980s Marvel I’m proud to declare I possess!
Picture a dude in all black, who stands next to a wall’ owhich allows his compatriots to zoom thru said barrier and stop evil-doin’.
Yeah, pretty dumb stuff.1 But at least for NPR, it’s a bonafide MCU option!
Door Man of Earth Prime
Speaking of dumb, let me tell you about my super hero also named Door Man.
During high school in the early 1990s, I played a variety of role-playing & war games. Things like Mechwarrior, AD&D 2nd Edition, Middle Earth Role Playing, and GURPS.
One I really enjoyed was Champions, a superhero-themed game made fun by its combination of subject matter and excessive amount of required dice. My usual method of playing Champions was dropping by my friend Matt’s house and portraying whatever random character / NPC was not currently employed by someone else.
One day, I was assigned to portray Strong-Man, who gained his namesake strength by injecting a self-made serum he stored within his waistband. Rather generic stuff, so I decided to make hay.
Our super team was in South America to stop a madman before he unleashed chemical world warfare. We busted into his hideout and eventually found the laboratory, hiding behind a giant steel door which another teammate was able to crack. We entered, and now our goal was to destroy the scientist’s work before it got loosed onto the world’s citizens.
By this point, I was rather bored. So I began to ret-con Strong-Man to my liking.
I rewrote my character on the fly, adding a glaring weakness: the more serum used at once, the more berserk he would grow. And in this case, I decided to inject all the serum at once.
Strong-Man went into a massive rage. To his side, he saw the giant metal door they’d just opened. He ripped it off the hinges and began to swing it to-and-fro like a baseball bat. Scientists flew left, they splatted right. I punched a hole in the door’s center, so I could see thru it while I bulldozed the Ph.D’s to oblivion. When I was done, everything in the room was a raw pulp.
The team left to find the main bad guy. I followed, with door in hand. I had a new weapon, an aegis against evil. I also had new identity: I was no longer Strong-Man…I was Door Man!
For several adventures, I carried the door with me like Captain America’s shield. And in between adventures, I would pound out the dents, flatten the bends, wipe it clean of carnage, and rejoin my never-ending battle against evil.
I only drew Door Man once. Ignore all of the words, as my art-school-era sketchbooks back then were full of journaling & observations. Instead, focus on the door — it still possesses its electronic lock, as momento of the epic battle described above. Through its hole one bares witness to his chest logo. Cool sheet metal obscures his face, preserving his secret identity. Each individual dent the impression of an evil-doer’s face.
Based on this visual and the above origin, I’ll let you know when Planet Money comes knocking at my door.
Fun Stuff
The following entertained & sobered me the past few weeks:
Mars landed another rover onto Mars, and this time they filmed it in 4K!
On the same day, we learned that the designer of NASA’s “Worm” logo passed away earlier in February. For Christmas, I received this excellent book about the logo’s design & implementation which I recommend.
Grab a tissue: our own NICU experience was emotional & devastating, but I can’t imagine going through it during a pandemic
Comics being comics, Doorman actually evolved to have an interesting history and influence far beyond his cheesy GLA days.