Doomlord used to scare the shit out of me. I have vivid memories
of my Uncle Gerry chasing me with a Doomlord mask on. The
comic originally appeared in The Eagle in fumetti form and that's
what freaked me out. Back in those days the camera didn't lie. I
thought it was real.

Last year Padraig O' Mealoid was telling me about how some Irish
dude acquired the rights to Doomlord and was reprinting them.
It intrigued me, first because the idea of 'owning' the rights to my
favourite characters is a lifelong dream and secondly, I felt I
had to confront my fear of Doomlord.

The man responsible for the ressurection is David McDonald from
Mayo. A lifelong comics fan, David was contacted by Titan Books
to see if they could scan some of his vintage comics for a re-issue.
This put the seed in his head and he inquired about getting
permission from the copyright holders to reprint Doomlord.
They approved and he was in business.

He's done a tremendous job on the clean-up, really flawless and
crisp work. I got my copy this week and thanks to the concise
synopsis of the previous stories I finally knew what was happening.
I could never figure out if he was a goodie or a baddie and I know
now he's more or less a goodie. He kills a homeless dude in the
opening pages but that was so he could assimilate his knowledge.
So there.

The story and art are really top notch, Doomlord has been sent to
Earth to suss out if we're worthy enough to continue existing.
He conducts his ongoing studies of the human condition by morphing
into humans and sucking their memories and thoughts out. He
disobeys his superiors orders and refuses to let earth be destroyed
and kills the next Doomlord sent to retreive him. He ultimately
ends up protecting Earth from his own race who send down
hitmen to smoke him.

The one element of the story which I love the most is how he spends
his time as a mild mannered lodger in a normal household under
the guise of Eric Plumrose. The family see him not in his spooky
Doomlord form but as a normal man thanks to alien hypnosis, there
are some classic scenes where he's slouching up to his room with
the weight of the world on his shoulders and the woman who runs
the place is asking him if he'd like an nice cup of tea.Then she
asks him if he'd like to go to Butlins with her and the kids who
are now beginning to see Eric Plumrose as a father figure. Classic.

The art is dynamic and concise, compositionally amazing, each episode
is only three pages long! The way the panels flow in such a compact
layout is annoyingly efficient.

I was going to interview David but my main man over at fustar already
nabbed one so read it here

Go on, order this 72 page gem. It's only 7 Euro and worth every penny.
If you have vague memories of being freaked out by an Eagle comic
in the 80's you owe it to yourself. Or are you a pansy or something?