Upon reading ‘DAYS OF DOOM’ by Sanford Greene and Jonathan Hickman, I couldn’t help but keep thinking about what they were metaphorically alluding to. The core of the story rests on the idea of getting used to stagnancy before being hit by a sudden wave of change, after all – but what does that entail on a wider scale?
Of course, there’s always the possibility that I’m reading too deep into it. Maybe it’s just a cool book doing cool things, and that’s perfectly fine – in which case this is the meaning I’ve decided to interpret from it. But I respect both Greene and Hickman too much as creatives to think it ends there and isn’t about something more, which is why I’ve been sitting and interrogating it for a while, reading it cover to cover. It took a little bit, until a lightbulb turned on in my brain and I had an epiphany.
‘DAYS OF DOOM’ is a story about the creative process, especially in regards to someone who has been working – creating, for a while now.
I think at some point as you keep making art, there comes a point where you feel like you’re running in circles. You’ve created so much and you’re still working hard but instead of it being challenging, you’re just going through the motions. Doctor Doom in this story represents the ‘artist’, and Galactus represents the ‘art’ in a sense. Galactus’ sudden shift from being a ‘constant’ – or in the case of the metaphor – ‘going through the motions’ – to suddenly being a hungry world-eater bent on eating everything to me feels like a very fresh new idea finally taking form, breaking from the mundane-ness of the creative process and doing something new, it represents ambition.
It’s ambition that ends up taking over and almost kills Doom, and does kill everyone else – it’s the idea that not everyone can necessarily survive a drastic shift in their creative process in order to do something new. Even Doom, he couldn’t really do it alone, not until Valeria helped him – similar to how if you’re going to undertake a bold creative venture, maybe doing it alone isn’t the way to go, you should have someone who’s going to have your back all the way through.
Galactus’ universe killer and universe creator represents giving up too. Why keep trying and cracking at something when you can just hit the reset button, throw the idea away and come up with something new? That’s why Doom and Valeria fighting to protect the universe even as everything is gone makes sense, because it represents not giving up on the idea.
From this angle, the almost ‘vague’ ending makes sense to me. Even in creative cycles, you need to keep going instead of accepting defeat. You need to at least try, because trying’s the best we’ve got.
