Warning: SPOILERS for Doctor Doom #1
Marvel Comics has just revealed its own creative solution to global warming, born of the brilliant Tony Stark and Reed Richards… and then promptly destroyed it. Marvel has always prided themselves on operating in “the world outside your window,” just like our own–with superheroes. That means while the Marvel Universe is inhabited by Norse gods and monsters, it’s also a world facing problems like global warming.
It’s a problem that seems odd when fans stop and consider it, given the Marvel Universe has super-scientists like Reed Richards and Tony Stark. And Reed leads the Fantastic Four as a technocentrist, who believes science can solve all the world’s ills. He even established the Future Foundation, a school dedicated to training the next generation of scientists, using their intelligence to save the world from issues far more mind-bending than climate change. And in Marvel’s universe, he officially unlocks the answer.
Doctor Doom #1 reveals that Reed Richards has solved the problem of global warming. After working closely with Tony Stark to develop the Antlion Center on the Moon, the facility is tasked with extracting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere using unknown technology (with a 35% reduction in just the first year). Much of the carbon dioxide will be converted to hydrogen fuel, but unfortunately the process will produce a byproduct thirty times more toxic than nuclear waste. To deal with that material, Reed Richards and Tony Stark have created a controlled black hole waste depository. Think of it as a toilet in space-time!
This is exactly the kind of comic book pseudoscience that wouldn’t work in the real world, but is refreshing to see it applied to an actual problem readers recognize. Interestingly, Doctor Doom himself opposes this project, insisting it will lead to a disaster of interstellar proportions. Doom insists there’s no way to safely create, much less ‘control’ the power of a black hole so close to Earth. Doctor Doom #1 is deliberately ambiguous about whether or not he’s right; even Doom wonders whether it’s his own ego getting in the way, and he just doesn’t want to admit someone else solved global warming before he was able to.
Tragically, it doesn’t actually end up mattering, because the Antlion project is doomed (pun partially intended). A mystery enemy hacks into Latveria’s defense grid to launch a devastating missile strike at the lunar base, killing all 3,000 scientists on the station. A mysterious terrorist cell is pictured standing amid the wreckage, flying the Latverian flag and leading the entire world to blame Victor Von Doom for the tragedy. Doom, for his part, actually seems devastated. Although Doctor Doom is a supervillain, he doesn’t want the world to be ravaged by global warming, and he even hoped he was wrong. Now the world will never know… and the reason for climate change on Marvel’s Earth is officially set in stone.
Doctor Doom #1 is on sale now from Marvel Comics.
More: Marvel’s Fantastic Four Should Come Well Before The X-Men
