Doomsday +1 #6
Published and © by Charlton, May 1976
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 (see reviews), 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
Editor’s note: This review was written May 20, 2021.
I always wondered if the altenate Earth was the Earth from Space: 1999, as it was mentioned that the planet had lost it moon so they never ventured into space. And, Charleton was publishing Space: 1999 at that time.
Thanks for stoping by, Phineas.
I hadn’t thought of that and haven’t heard any suggestions that was the case. But Byrne was working on both books so it’s certainly possible there was least a source of inspiration there.
Cheers,
TAW