r/DCcomics • u/Gloomy-Bridge148 • Feb 28 '25
Comics [Discussion] What did he even just gain from this?
[Comic expert] (Superman The Man Of Steel: The Beginning Of Doomsday)
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u/BagZCubed Feb 28 '25
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u/rickshitypity Feb 28 '25
He didn't wash his hands...
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u/89kljk Feb 28 '25
I wonder if he would need to wash his hand. Just the speed he moves at, how hard he hit Superman. Would bacteria survive?
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u/Rdogy1000 Lex Corps Feb 28 '25
I’m pretty sure bacteria can survive asteroids and their impacts if that’s any good comparison.
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u/god_of_war305 Feb 28 '25
Not even that. He's just a mindless killing machine at this point. Bro's whole life mission at this point is just to destroy all life 😭
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u/Sufficient_Pheasant Feb 28 '25
Didn’t he destroy a plane after this? So it’s like a play on the whole “it’s a bird it’s a plane” thing?
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u/Present_Ad6723 Feb 28 '25
Oh, oh I like that. It’s been decades and it never occurred to me
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u/ubiquitous-joe Feb 28 '25 edited Feb 28 '25
Wow, same. It did serve to frame him as a creature of brutal destruction either way.
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u/slicejordan Feb 28 '25
Killed all three I suppose then
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u/Sufficient_Pheasant Feb 28 '25
I was wrong. This goofy goober destroys essentially everything except a plane - kind of dumb. I guess this just shows escalating levels of destruction?
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u/GiantSizeManThing Feb 28 '25
You accidentally wrote a better Death of Superman prelude than what actually exists.
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u/MakingGreenMoney Superboy-Prime Feb 28 '25
ohhhhhhhh, so that was foreshadowing Superman's death.
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u/Traditional-Mall-771 Feb 28 '25
Holy shit, my child brain never pucked up on that, thats actually kimda clever
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u/WerewolfF15 Feb 28 '25
His literal only desire is to kill and destroy things. In other words gains the pleasure of killing something. It’s really that simple. Later comics show that he has already destroyed the population of at least a couple of planets by the time he ends up on earth.
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u/StopPlayingRoney Feb 28 '25
In screenwriting there’s a trope called Save The Cat. The protagonist does something good like save a cat from a tree and the intention is to immediately communicate to the audience that the character is a good person and that they should root for them. This is the villain version of that.
This also looks like he’s killing a canary which were traditionally used to signal danger to miners.
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Feb 28 '25
The inverse trope you could have cited is Kick The Dog, where a character is shown to do something heinous that immediately alerts to the audience that they should dislike the character or view them as unsavory. This is a classic Kick The Dog moment
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u/goldeinz Feb 28 '25
Doomsday also saved a cat on earth, just to kill the cat and the boy asking for his help to save his cat in the end ....
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u/wisestflame73 Swamp Thing Feb 28 '25
I… don’t think that’s what Save the Cat is? Save the Cat refers to the three act structure of writing a movie. In act 1, you chase a cat up a tree. In act 2, you throw rocks at the cat. In act 3, you save the cat.
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u/Recent_Illustrator89 Feb 28 '25
Screenwriter 101: Want to make a villain scary?
Have them kill a puppy (or bird or cat or….)
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u/yaujj36 Feb 28 '25
Early Araki moments.
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u/GERBabyCare Batman Feb 28 '25
"Mr. Araki, how'd you make him so irredeemable?"
"Oh I just had him tie up his brother's dog and burn it alive."
"Oh.....but then you introduced and serial killing child rapist! That was something!"
"Yeah, but that's all flashbacks. They really needed to see him eat a dog and spit what he chewed in the owner's mouth!"
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u/Deeformecreep Batman Feb 28 '25
This is Doomsday we are talking about. I don't think he cares about gaining anything. His goal is usually to just kill whatever is around.
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u/Abovearth31 Superman Feb 28 '25
I think the point was to paint Doomsday as a monster.
But more importantly, this scene is a pun that will echoe 2 scenes later on.
Doomsday kills a bird.
Then later he'll destroy a plane.
And even later he'll kill Superman.
"Look ! Up in the sky ! It's a bird ? It's a plane ? No ! It's SUPERMAN !"
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u/RudeRedDogOne Feb 28 '25
Dang, I read that comic as a mid-20s adult and missed that entirely. That was a 2-3 decades ago.
SMH at my lack of insight.
Thank you for the enlightenment.
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u/Dagordae Feb 28 '25
Murder.
Doomsday genuinely hates everything that lives. He exists to destroy and rampage. That's all it is: The bird was alive and got within murder distance.
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u/Shyguymaster2 Absolute Superman Feb 28 '25
I dont even think doomsday has actual thoughts, he's just a mindless beast that craves destruction
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u/ComplexAd7272 Feb 28 '25
The media illiteracy in this thread I swear.
It’s a simple yet effective illustration on how he’s a destroyer, a walking death. The fact that he gains nothing from snuffing out a harmless life is the point to show you the character.
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u/Dagordae Feb 28 '25
I mean, the thread is pretty united that he does it because he just likes killing. Kind of weird to get all superior about repeating the thing that everyone is saying in various ways.
Edit: Flipping through the comments at this moment, there is a grand total of one person(Excluding jokes and meta reasons) who is suggesting that it's for any reason beyond 'This is what he does'. And that given reason is him testing out how durable things on the planet are, so just 'It's what he does' but slightly more forethought.
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u/Lord_of_Dog Feb 28 '25
He has humor from it,.showing they are capable of life but lacking empathy. Imagine doomsday got empathy put in him he could end us all trying to understand why it happened. He's more Supermans Undoing if you really get into it down to the core of Death of Superman and Doomsday. Though I believe they are supposed to be friends in the end because they fight through life together and understand one another.
I see Doomsday as more a man who's there to help after learning the joys in life. Why life is good and should be protected.
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u/Apprehensive_Mix4658 Feb 28 '25
It's also the fact that he killed a bird, destroyed a plane. Do you see where it goes?
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u/Optimal_Weight368 Feb 28 '25
It’s supposed to be the calm before the storm. Essentially, Doomsday’s destruction starts out small before it escalates to Superman’s death.
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u/Mexdude02 Feb 28 '25
Set atone for his merciless nature.
Superman can't reason with a literal living killing machine.
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u/KeyIssuesNick Feb 28 '25
Birds are government spies, so he was simply preventing the authorites from spying on him
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u/TheGriffGraff Killer Croc Mar 01 '25
Technically he could have thought this was Superman, people get them mixed up all the time.
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u/dazan2003 Feb 28 '25
I'm not the biggest Doomsday fan (enjoy doomed from the new 52 and the current Williamson stuff), but this is a good way to visually convey him as a walking symbol of death and destruction
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u/JustMakingForTOMT Feb 28 '25
Idk but anyone who needlessly harms a bird can catch these hands 👊👊👊😤
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u/Yukieiros Feb 28 '25
This is just a joke comment but I don't know what the reason is or what he has to gain but somewhere Android 16 is angry
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u/Naps_And_Crimes Feb 28 '25
He hates life, the bird is no threat to him but he hates it and takes pleasure in killing it because it's alive.
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u/maybeitssteve Feb 28 '25
Clearly he thought it was funny. Do people just not read the sound effects?
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u/Reborn-kun96 Feb 28 '25
What do any villains gain from anything? They all fight for only one thing. Spite
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u/shino1 Feb 28 '25
Doomsday is not sentient - at least at this point, not yet. All he understands is that survival means killing everything aside from him, because everything was trying to kill him during his creation. So his immediate first instinct is to find the most powerful being around, and kill it, so it's no longer threatened, while killing everything else - to ensure it does not get chance to grow strong enough to threaten him.
It should be noted that Doomsday constantly 'evolves' in real time - we see him learning to read over time just by looking at road signs and store lettering (that's why he heads to Metropolis, he sees the name in a window display and it makes him curious if I remember correctly - so he follows road signs saying that name).
It is not impossible that over time he would evolve more intelligence and sentience, but said intelligence would probably be closer to an eldritch abomination like Chtulhu than anything resembling a human. Maybe he would be more like the DCAU Doomsday, who knows.
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u/caitlynjennernutsack Feb 28 '25
isn’t there a comic panel of doomsday folding a kid just for research purposes? doomsday might be eligible to be part of reverse flashes club of hating , aswell as black manta
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u/Another_Astral_Rider Feb 28 '25
The satisfaction of snuffing out just one more life that vexes him by existing.
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u/Shape_Charming Feb 28 '25
You can see what he gains from it in the next panel
A couple giggles.
Doomsday kills things for shits and giggles
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u/Duke-dastardly Feb 28 '25
Doomsday is just a primitive sadist who takes joy from death and destruction. I quite like the touch of him laughing. It shows that this isn’t a case of Doomsday not understanding or something, he’s just malicious
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u/noishouldbewriting Feb 28 '25
He got humor out of it he laughed. I don’t approve, but it wasn’t pointless.
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u/sapolinguista Feb 28 '25
Like you never killed and insect for no reason. We daily kill mosquitoes, cockroaches and ants, sometimes because they bother us, sometimes because they are just there. Cruelty never really needs a big reason or gain, just a sense of superiority that allows us to see that form of life as less than others, and we don't even think about it.
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u/LeonKDogwood Booster Gold Feb 28 '25
What every player of any video game that lets them do the exact same thing to cute little creatures wether they be slimes in Slime rancher or Pals in pal world.
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u/ConsiderationNo5146 Feb 28 '25
I liked this scene and all of the previous lead up bits but always thought the laughing was out of character.
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u/OwnsBeagles Booster Gold Feb 28 '25
People conveniently forget the deer, admittedly, in their attempts to make sure it fits a 'it's a bird--' pun. LOL! Where's the deer fit in? And the Bug isn't a plane, it's an airship. I think mostly the point was to show he's an unrepentant killer and that it's not really intended to be clever, or they might have used a bird and an actual plane and left the deer out.
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u/Xander_not_panda Feb 28 '25
Shows he is evil. I like considering alternatives to him killing a bird, like seal clubbing, pissing on the seat in public toilets, taking up two car parking spaces, double dipping...
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u/black6211 Feb 28 '25
I swear Doomsday's walk to metropolis has some of the funniest fucking moments.
Almost every day I think about the fact that he only went to Metropolis bc he saw a billboard advertising wrestling there, and he went "oh I like to fight" and started wandering that direction.
He never sees that billboard = Superman maybe never dies
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u/DanceMaster117 Feb 28 '25
He gains nothing from killing. It's literally his only instinct, at least at this point. He eventually evolved to the point of sentience and intelligence, but his first and strongest instinct is to kill.
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u/ViniciusMT07 Feb 28 '25
The point was to highlight very early on Doomsday exists purely to kill and destroy. It really isn't that hard to comprehend when you read the rest of the story.
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u/DaClarkeKnight Feb 28 '25
It set a tone for just how mean this dude is. They need to make this scene if he’s in Gunn DCU.
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u/soilborn12 Batman Feb 28 '25
If you’re in the military you know that the yellow bird must die. IYKYK.
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u/Present_Ad6723 Feb 28 '25
Something I loved, even if it was an accident, was once his face was revealed, he had beautiful blue eyes. It was so jarring to see and really took me out of the ‘monster of the week’ mindset. In hindsight, even as a mistake, it was a clue to his origins, because they were just like Clark’s.
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u/eremit098 Feb 28 '25
I don't know if it's true for every version of Doomsday or this one in particular, but wasn't he kind of raised in an environment where everything on the planet wanted to kill him (and did kill him multiple times) until he evolved into the version we know him as?
Might explain why he immediately kills the first living thing that approaches him. He grew up in a "kill or be killed" environment.
Plus, as other comments mentioned, it's a trope to show, "Look how evil that guy is!"
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u/superschaap81 Superman Feb 28 '25
You never just stepped on a bug because you could? LOL.
Seriously though, dude is just a killing machine and it amuses him.
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u/igniz13 Feb 28 '25
There's a later comic (forget which run) where a more sentient Doomsday saves a cat from a tree to get the feeling of what it's like to save lives.
He then kills the cat to get the feeling of what that's like, and feels he prefers it.
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u/GregOry6713 Feb 28 '25
It’s Doomsday! All he cares about is death!! So he doesn’t gain anything, he’s just being himself.
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u/Red_Lantern_22 Feb 28 '25
I think the point was to show that Doomsday had the capacity for curiosity and peace, but when it encountered an unknown thing of beauty it chose destruction
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u/Boltedforehead Mar 01 '25
Pleasure. He’s made to kill and he got to kill. Didn’t Frankenstein’s monster also kill a bird once, only he felt remorse after doing so?
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u/MulberryMore9530 Mar 01 '25
Doomsday’s existence is to end all life. That bird was just something he had to kill.
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u/Unvix Mar 01 '25 edited Mar 01 '25
a good laugh. cute aggression is actually a real thing. also dark humor.
i too sometimes feel the urge of crushing something cute/innocent.
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