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Review: Doomsday +1 #6

Doomsday +1 #6 cover
Cover by John Byrne

Doomsday +1 #6
Published and © by Charlton, May 1976

Title: “All the Beautiful People”
Synopsis: The Doomsday +1 team ventures to what appears to be an other-dimensional paradise – but a dystopian underbelly lurks.

Writer: Joe Gill
Artist: Doug Bevan and John Byrne (as Byrne Robotics)

Review: All good things must come to an end … and, apparently, mediocre things do, too. While Doomsday +1 started with great promise (see reviews), this series fizzled toward the end of its initial six-issue run. Joe Gill’s story crosses the line from moral ambiguity to downright icky: The team seems resigned to live in an other-dimensional paradise despite its reliance on slavery  – but just say no to a ban on monogamy. The Byrne Robotics art is wildly inconsistent; there are flashes of the legend to come but, according to John Byrne, most of this issue was penciled by an art-college colleague.

Grade: B-

Cool factor: Despite never reaching its potential, Doomsday +1 will always have a certain cool factor to Bronze Age fans.

Notable: There is also an uncredited, one-page text story titled “Another Dawn.” … This issue is reprinted, with an interior panel used as a new cover, as Doomsday +1 #12.

Character quotable: “Freedom? Freedom is illusion at best, my dear. We are none of us free!” – Jad, leader of Supreme Council of an other-dimensional Earth

Editor’s note: This review was written May 20, 2021.

2 Comments

  1. I always wondered if the altenate Earth was the Earth from Space: 1999, as it was mentioned that the planet had lost it moon so they never ventured into space. And, Charleton was publishing Space: 1999 at that time.

  2. Thanks for stoping by, Phineas.

    I hadn’t thought of that and haven’t heard any suggestions that was the case. But Byrne was working on both books so it’s certainly possible there was least a source of inspiration there.

    Cheers,
    TAW

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