Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hi, my name is Robert Lamb and this is the
Speaker 2: Monster Fact, a short form series from Stuff to Blow
Speaker 2: Your Mind, focusing in on mythical creatures, ideas and monsters
Speaker 2: in time. We've been covering some d C comics monsters
Speaker 2: of late, and today I'd like to talk about Doomsday,
Speaker 2: the brutal, spiny shouldered Kryptonian monster best known for killing
Speaker 2: Superman in the early nineteen nineties. While the superhero's death
Speaker 2: didn't last too long, it was certainly a great way
Speaker 2: to launch a supervillain's career, and Doomsday has remained one
Speaker 2: of the resurrected Superman's most recognizable foes. His creation is
Speaker 2: credited to Jan Jurgens Brett Breeding, Jerry Ordway, Louise Simonson,
Speaker 2: and Roger Stern. In d C Anatomy of a Meta
Speaker 2: Human by S. D. Perry and Matthew K. Manning, with
Speaker 2: illustrations by Ming Doyle, the author's lay out Doomsday's tragic
Speaker 2: origin story. An alien scientist named Bertron takes a humanoid
Speaker 2: child and exposes that child to the deadly prehistoric environment
Speaker 2: of the planet Krypton. The child dies but Bertron resurrects
Speaker 2: the child via advanced cloning technology and reintroduces the child
Speaker 2: to the wild with added traits to protect them. The
Speaker 2: child dies again, and the amoral Bertrron continues the cycle
Speaker 2: over and over again, using sci fi cloning technology in
Speaker 2: the place of natural selection to eventually produce an incredibly
Speaker 2: tough super being, the ultimate metahuman combatant, now virtually undying
Speaker 2: himself incapable of amazing feats of regeneration. This is the
Speaker 2: being that will become known as Doomsday. However, as Doomsday
Speaker 2: retains the traumatic memory of his many formative deaths, he's
Speaker 2: ultimately tormented by the rage so much that he eventually
Speaker 2: kills his mad scientist creator and continues to see the
Speaker 2: face of his hated creator in others and rages against
Speaker 2: them incessantly. It's a clever twist on evolution, melding the
Speaker 2: science of natural selection, the philosophy of Frederic Nietzsche, and
Speaker 2: the psychological trauma. It's also interesting when we start considering
Speaker 2: the idea of resurrection from a religious and mythological standpoint.
Speaker 2: Superman in the Death of Superman's story arc quite clearly
Speaker 2: echoes the religious motif of the dying and rising god,
Speaker 2: famously seen in such figures as the ancient Egyptian Osiris
Speaker 2: and the Christian Jesus. Doomsday is seemingly something else, though
Speaker 2: not a god who has died and come back, but
Speaker 2: a mortal who has died and come back so many
Speaker 2: times that he has become at least a demi god
Speaker 2: and a potential slayer of the divine. Though in many
Speaker 2: ways Doomsday is not so different. After all, there is
Speaker 2: a cyclical aspect to the death and resurrection of such
Speaker 2: religious figures as of Cyrus and Jesus as well, making
Speaker 2: their deaths and resurrections also quite numerable in a sense,
Speaker 2: even in cases where there is only the singular death
Speaker 2: in the singular resurrection. These events are often remembered or
Speaker 2: celebrated alongside cyclical events like the passing of the seasons
Speaker 2: and the inundation of the Nile River, but they are
Speaker 2: still singular resurrections celebrated cyclically in multitude. Doomsday, however, has
Speaker 2: experienced a multitude of deaths across linear time. In this
Speaker 2: you could argue that he is a modern secular linear
Speaker 2: perversion of the cyclical sacred and mythic and therefore a
Speaker 2: fitting opponent for the godlike Superman, but I would be
Speaker 2: very interested to hear what you think about the matter.
Speaker 2: You can tune in for additional episodes of The Monster
Speaker 2: Fact each week, and as always, you can email me
Speaker 2: at contact at Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
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