The Dr. Fate story from COUNTDOWN TO MYSTERY #1-8 is collected in this sequel to the hit miniseries DAY OF VENGEANCE. The new Dr. Fate must master his strange new powers in time to battle the dread Devourer of Souls!
Steve Gerber graduated from the University of Missouri with a degree in communications and took a job in advertising. To keep himself sane, he wrote bizarre short stories such as "Elves Against Hitler," "Conversion in a Terminal Subway," and "...And the Birds Hummed Dirges!" He noticed acquaintance Roy Thomas working at Marvel, and Thomas sent him Marvel's standard writing test, dialoguing Daredevil art. He was soon made a regular on Daredevil and Sub-Mariner, and the newly created Man-Thing, the latter of which pegged him as having a strong personal style--intellectual, introspective, and literary. In one issue, he introduced an anthropomorphic duck into a horror fantasy, because he wanted something weird and incongruous, and Thomas made the character, named for Gerber's childhood friend Howard, fall to his apparent death in the following issue. Fans were outraged, and the character was revived in a new and deeply personal series. Gerber said in interview that the joke of Howard the Duck is that "there is no joke." The series was existential and dealt with the necessities of life, such as finding employment to pay the rent. Such unusual fare for comicbooks also informed his writing on The Defenders. Other works included Morbius, the Lving Vampire, The Son of Satan, Tales of the Zombie, The Living Mummy, Marvel Two-in-One, Guardians of the Galaxy, Shanna the She-Devil, and Crazy Magazine for Marvel, and Mister Miracle, Metal Men, The Phantom Zone, and The Immortal Doctor Fate for DC. Gerber eventually lost a lawsuit for control of Howard the Duck when he was defending artist Gene Colan's claim of delayed paychecks for the series, which was less important to him personally because he had a staff job and Colan did not.
He left comics for animation in the early 1980s, working mainly with Ruby-Spears, creating Thundarr the Barbarian with Alex Toth and Jack Kirby and episodes of The Puppy's Further Adventures, and Marvel Productions, where he was story editor on multiple Marvel series including Dungeons & Dragons, G.I. Joe, and The Transformers. He continued to dabble in comics, mainly for Eclipse, including the graphic novel Stewart the Rat, the two-part horror story "Role Model: Caring, Sharing, and Helping Others," and the seven-issue Destroyer Duck with Jack Kirby, which began as a fundraiser for Gerber's lawsuit.
In the early 1990s, he returned to Marvel with Foolkiller, a ten-issue limited series featuring a new version of a villain he had used in The Man-Thing and Omega the Unknown, who communicated with a previous version of the character through internet bulletin boards. An early internet adopter himself, he wrote two chapters of BBSs for Dummies with Beth Woods Slick, with whom he also wrote the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, "Contagion." During this period, he also wrote The Sensational She-Hulk and Cloak and Dagger for Marvel, Cybernary and WildC.A.T.s for Image, and Sludge and Exiles for the writer-driven Malibu Ultraverse, and Nevada for DC's mature readers Vertigo line.
In 2002, he returned to the Howard the Duck character for Marvel's mature readers MAX line, and for DC created Hard Time with Mary Skrenes, with whom he had co-created the cult hit Omega the Unknown for Marvel. Their ending for Omega the Unknown remains a secret that Skrenes plans to take to the grave if Marvel refuses to publish it. Suffering from idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis ("idiopathic" meaning of unknown origin despite having been a heavy smoker much of his life), he was on a waiting list for a double lung transplant. His final work was the Doctor Fate story arc, "More Pain Comics," for DC Comics'
Um, wow. I was expecting very, very little from these Countdown to Final Crisis companion series, largely because Countdown itself was such a dissappointment. But Countdown to Mystery is actually quite a bit better than Countdown itself had been. In fact, it's actually very good.
The helm of Doctor Fate has fallen to a disgraced former psychologist, and he's completely unprepared for it. He's an interesting character, not quite self-pitying enough to be insufferable. There's a lot of very good groundwork laid here. Sadly, Gerber passed away with the series unfinished. He had plotted #7, which was scripted by Adam Beechen. For #8, DC had four writers (Beechen, Mark Evanier, Mark Waid, and Gail Simone) each write their versions of how they thought the ending of the miniseries would play out. Of course, they're all too brief to be truly satisfying. I think I liked Simone's best, though, since the ending was actually pretty funny.
The only thing I had to add is how nice it was to read an actually good comic after all the other Countdown books. So very, very nice.
After encountering Dr. Fate in the pages of Injustice, I wanted to know more. So I started with the only volume my library system had, and boy what a start! Gerber writes Kent Nelson as a very realistic flawed protagonist, and it's a shame he didn't stick around long enough to see his ideas through. Four endings are written as a tribute to Gerber, who passed away from pneumonia while battling idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, but they all wrap up the story in a handful of pages each and likely pale in comparison to what Gerber himself would have planned. Nevertheless, as a reader who is entirely unfamiliar with Dr. Fate or any of his backstory, I was pulled right in to this one. Now am I not only eager to read more of Dr. Fate's history, but I'll also be seeking out more of Steve Gerber's writing.
Steve Gerber's final stories, collected in "Countdown to Mystery: Doctor Fate," show the iconoclastic writer never lost his touch.
In "Countdown to Mystery,” the new Doctor Fate is Kent V. Nelson, a psychiatrist related to the original Doctor Fate. With the art team of Justiano and Walden Wong, Gerber introduces a new Fate in a world where the rules of magic have changed.
Nelson has hit rock-bottom as the series begins. After failing in his duties, Nelson succumbs to depression and alcoholism. When the mystical helmet of Fate finds him, he's lying in a Dumpster after being beaten in a filmed bum-fighting bout.
The helmet doesn't immediately turn Nelson into a hero, however: He still must battle his own demons before he can face external evil threats.
The original Doctor Fate was created by Gardner Fox and Howard Sherman in "More Fun Comics” No. 55 in 1940. Gerber titled his story "More Pain,” in homage to the original character, and reflective of the difficult path the new Fate must traverse.
After Gerber's death, Adam Beechen, Mark Evanier, Gail Simone and Mark Waid each wrote possible finales for the series. Gerber made Doctor Fate both original and personal, while also setting the character up well.
Definitely not the best origin story I've read. Sadly, Steve Gerber died before finishing this, and four different writers came up with their own endings. Of these four, Mark Waid's is not only the best, it's the only one that's worthwhile (skip the other three).
Steve Gerber, was one of the most original thinkers in the world of comic books. Dr. Fate is one of my favorite DC characters, so reading this was a no-brainer for me. I really enjoyed it. The story was strange and interesting. And the art, my God the art was fantastic!
It is a worthy send off for Mr. Gerber and his immense body of work. I would also recommend Gerber's run on Howard the Duck, and Manthing.
I picked this up because I'd read about the current Islam themed Dr Fate - and looked for more after reading the first volume. This is an earlier incarnation of Dr Fate (though not the original) - very interesting and kind of a cliffhanger since the artist Gerber died before continuing. But fabulous art and an interesting story.....
This is the final work of Steve Gerber and indeed unfinished as he died while it was still ongoing. The final confrontation in this collection is written four times by four writers, Adam Beechen, Mark Evanier, Mark Wair and Gail Simone, each working with different artists. The material collected here was part of a series called Countdown to Mystery, which featured not just Doctor Fate but also The Spectre and Eclipso, but this book only collects the Doctor Fate material by Gerber and his team.
The story concerns Kent Nelson, a down-on-his luck psychiatrist living in Las Vegas, who through the whims of fate becomes the new Doctor Fate, receiving the mystic helmet after it gets tossed through the fabric of spacetime during one of those DC Comics fracas that I can’t really keep straight enough to tell what was going on at the time. Long ago, when Gerber was writing The Defenders, he employed Dr. Strange as an almost therapist-like figure for the loose coalition of that team, and now that he’s writing Strange’s counterpart at DC he goes a step further and makes the new Dr. Fate a straight-up psychiatrist, which enables him to dwell into the psyches of his characters more naturally.
Kent Nelson has no experience with magic, all his incantations must be told to him on the fly by the helmet as he fumbles around, trying to figure out this world he didn’t even believe in previously. While it’s entertaining to see a hero wield magic he has no mastery over, unfortunately this also means we have no hard cap on what Dr. Fate is actually able to do, and therefore we don’t know how dire a strait any particular battle lands him in. For a series this short, there’s really no time to explore the limits of powers.
What we do explore though is Kent Nelson himself, how he ruins his marriage and his career, loses his family and becomes a drunk homeless man whose first instinct after discovering the power of the helmet he’s been saddled with is to pawn it, then when this isn’t viable on the long term he uses magic to cheat at a casino. He’s not heroic by any means, merely forced by fate into circumstances where fighting the forces of darkness is really his only option. He hates it.
Among the main cast is a woman called Maddy who runs an occult bookstore and becomes Nelson’s mentor once he wanders into her store. She introduces him to a book of incantations written in the language of computer code, a neat idea about how the manipulation of reality can be understood in our current age. True to form for a Gerber book, Nelson goes on a journey to his inner landscape to learn mystic and psychological truths. Tom Sawyer playing the role of the ferryman instead of Charon is a cute touch, but by and large there’s little new ground covered there.
Another major character is Inza, who saves Nelson from drowning after he falls into the water in a drunken stupor (some hero, right?) Inza is the author of a comic book called Killhead, the story of a “lesser incubus”. A quick glance at his design and the incubus-lite looks a lot like Hellboy. The scars on his face and the leather of his outfit call to mind Pinhead from Hellraiser. The ridiculously shallow violence and the title “PAIN COMICS” seem to be ribbing more on the early days of Image comics. He’s fun to look at and fun to read, the one issue of Killhead that Nelson reads almost reminds me of Sam Kieth and William Messner-Loeb’s The Maxx in its focus on the psychology of its characters.
The villain Dr. Fate is dealing with is Negal, a being who feasts on the souls of the despairing. A thematically fitting opponent for a former psychiatrist, but not terribly interesting. Despair and depression are both things Nelson is dealing with on a personal level as well as professionally, so forcing him to confront the embodiment of such things as his first foe after becoming a mystic champion of order is certainly ripe with potential, and the major characters and their lives all head to an inevitable confrontation the final outcome of which is left up to a disappointing multiple choice due to the author’s death.
It’s a common refrain when talking about Gerber’s work, but I just wish this had gone on longer, there’s so much potential here. Gerber sketched these characters very quickly with a small page count and Nelson, Maddy and Inza all feel rounded enough to be worth reading more about.
Rest in peace Steve Gerber, your special touch will be missed.
I'm not sure what happened here or what the goal was. The DC magic universe is so hit or miss and its a big miss here. Dr. Fate knows nothing, no one around him knows anything, and the readers end up knowing nothing. Justiniano is the only saving grace. Great artwork. Overall, this does nothing for the character.
Dr. Fate is one of those heroes that I remember always seeing as a kid and thinking "He is so cool". But as far as I can remember I've never read a comic with Dr. Fate in it. So it was fun to finally get to know him. I tend to enjoy magical superheroes more other types because they usually have some kind of fantasy plot going on and I'm a fantasy fan. This one didn't disappoint.
The helmet of Fate lands on a drunken ex psychiatrist who doesn’t really want it. This was just starting to get great, with some interesting characters and twists when it all came crashing down with the death of Steve Gerber. The last issue, with 4 different writers giving their own 4 page endings is terribly unsatisfying and leaves you wondering what if. RIP Steve Gerber.
I picked this up to do some research on Doctor Fate. Never got around to reading any, but this one was recommended. Steve Gerber's last work and in fact he wasn't able to complete it, so there are five alternate endings by other writers who knew him.
I don't know that character that well, so I'm basing this just on the story itself. I really like that Fate was a psychiatrist and that this applied to the story. He's broken, like Doctor Strange was, but has to quickly take on the role instead of having years of practice to temper himself and master the mystic arts. The helm whispers the magic to him when he needs it.
It's great how the helm helps him see his own problems and let's him impassively see what he needs to do. And beyond not being instantly cured, he backslides, he blames other people for problems he sees in himself, anger and frustration at his own problems being mirrored back to him.
It actually reads and feels sometimes like an independent comic. I found myself a couple times comparing it to Mage or Cerebus. And yet it's got that DC world it's living in.
The alternate endings were mostly unsatisfying and tried to wrap things up too neatly in a short amount of time. I think this is mostly due to space constraints. There are some cool ideas here, but it didn't have the same feel. Inspires me to come up with my own ending though. Could be fun.
The legacy character is an old staple of DC Comics. Most of the time it was handled very well, with new characters being interesting and living up to the names they had taken. Such was not the case with those who came into the power of Fate after Kent Nelson. The Mystery was missing from all of them; we got to know them all a little too well. Yes we knew the original was Kent Nelson and we knew his background and his origin, but there always seemed to be so much more going on beneath that golden helmet than could ever be written or illustrated on paper. Subsequent "Fates" sorely lacked that Mystery, and were less interesting in the role. Leave it to Steve Gerber to find a way to bring the Mystery back. This new Kent Nelson not only does not fully understand the power of Fate, he doesn't seem to know himself very well. Along with that, the story is everything we should expect from Gerber: characters who are not entirely black and white and heavy doses of social commentary. The four possible endings are all nice tributes to Gerber and all equally usefully inconclusive.
Steve Gerber's last contribution to the DC universe is a re-imagining of Doctor Fate for the Tenth Age of Magic. Compared to similar books of its era (such as The Trials of Shazam), Countdown to Mystery is a gem; Gerber delivers complex characterization, balancing scientific skepticism with high psychedelia.
Gerber died before completing the script; of the four "alternate endings" suggested by his colleagues, Gail Simone's is probably the most compelling. Celebrating Gerber's life and work by leaving this last chapter unfinished was a wise move on DC's part; the superhero genre has rarely pulled off the elegiac tone as well as in this book.
Justiniano is up to the task of depicting the series' extreme weirdness; it's regrettable that this innocent book will suffer from its association with his name.
Writer Steve Gerber died while working on this series, leaving the story without a conclusion. An unheralded genius, Gerber penned long runs on Daredevil, The Sub-Mariner, Omega the Unknown, Defenders, Man-Thing, and his seminal creation Howard The Duck. Though creating nothing as lasting nor as important as Howard within, Gerber successfully reintroduced Dr. Fate, the Golden Age mage, into the contemporary DC universe. In a gutsy move, DC allowed four different writers to create possible endings while emulating late author's style. In Dr. Fate.: Countdown to Mystery, Gerber used his trademark elements of the fantastic and topical intertwined with the goofy and terrifying. The book serves as a fitting tribute to Steve Gerber and his reality-bending stories.
This really was the Dr. Fate book I was looking for after learning about the character. I thought the character has so much potential for great stories but, the ones I had read from the early days and then again around 1989 where just ok. This one was really building to what I had hoped the character would become. Sadly the author died before it could be completed so we will never know. Fingers crossed that the new run for this character that started in 2015 is a good one.