BRONZE AGE MINUTE: Doomsday +1 #6

Charlton; May 1976
Cover by John Byrne

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, 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

Copyright ©2023 Off the Wahl Productions, all rights reserved. Each week, T. Andrew Wahl offers up a Bronze Age Minute. For more reviews like this one, check out Wahl’s website, offthewahl.com.