—MeltdownOkay tin man, I know what you came for -- a heart! Too bad no one warned you about the heartache that comes with it.
Appearing in "Wish You Were Here"
Featured Characters:
- X-Force (Main story and flashback)
- Meltdown (Tabitha Smith) (Main story and flashback)
- Siryn (Theresa Rourke) (Main story and flashback)
- Shatterstar (Benjamin Russell) (Main story and flashback)
- Rictor (Julio Richter) (Main story and flashback)
- Cable (Nathan Summers) (Main story and flashback)
- Sunspot (Roberto "Bobby" Da Costa)
- Warpath (Jimmy Proudstar)
- Caliban
Supporting Characters:
- Dimitri Fortunov ⏵ (First appearance)
- Nathaniel Richards (Main story and flashback)
Antagonists:
- Doctor Doom's Servitor guards
- S.H.I.E.L.D.
- G.W. Bridge
- Colin Muldowney (First appearance)
- Theresa Petty (First appearance)
Other Characters:
- Graydon Creed (Mentioned)
- C.N.N. (Mentioned)
- Tabitha Smith's father (Referenced)
- Doctor Doom (Victor von Doom) (Mentioned)
- Fantastic Four (Mentioned)
- Mister Fantastic (Reed Richards) (Mentioned)
- Avengers (Mentioned)
- Sinsear (Mentioned)
- Mojo (Mentioned)
- Louis Richter (Mentioned)
- King Vladimir Fortunov (Mentioned)
- Zefiro Clan
- Sofia Rosikon (First appearance)
- Esmeralda Rosikon (First appearance)
- Oskar Rosikon (First appearance)
- Lila Cheney (Mentioned)
- Puppet Master (Phillip Masters) (Mentioned)
- Sergei, Fortunov's friend (First appearance) (Corpse, skeleton or other remains)
- United Nations (Mentioned)
Races and Species:
- Mutants (Main story and flashback)
- Humans (Main story and flashback)
- Cyborgs (Main story and flashback)
- Robots (Only in flashback)
Locations:
- Earth (Main story and flashback)
- Europe
- Latveria (Main story and flashback)
- Doomstadt
- Castle Doom (Main story and flashback)
- Doomstadt
- Latveria (Main story and flashback)
- New York, United States (Mentioned)
- Europe
Items:
- Synthe-Clones
- X-Uniforms (Main story and flashback)
- The Twilight Zone (TV show) (Mentioned)
- Siryn's Wings (Main story and flashback)
- Shatterstar's Swords (Main story and flashback)
- Time Displacement Core (Mentioned)
- Doctor Doom's Time Platform
Synopsis for "Wish You Were Here"
Liddleville
Meltdown wakes up in the middle of a street in Liddleville. She feels like she was drugged and is the only one around in the town. She goes into a nearby drugstore and still cannot find anyone. As she leaves, she notices a policeman standing nearby and tries to get his attention but soon discovers that he is nothing but a mannequin. She then encounters the only other real person around who surprises her. She immediately reacts and kicks him to the ground. He tells her he has been stuck in the town for a week and that his name is Dimitri Fortunov. He tells her that he was in Castle Doom and then woke up in this town all alone. Meltdown then remembers that she was in Castle Doom prior to her waking up in the street.
Flashback to Castle Doom
X-Force had arrived at Castle Doom to attempt to secure Doctor Doom's time platform before someone else does in his absence since he is believed to be dead following the Onslaught attack in New York. They are met by Nathaniel Richards who reveals to them that he knows the castle as he once stood in for Doctor Doom. They then enter the lower levels.
They first come across lasers guarding the entrance. Nathaniel has Meltdown blow up their power source and they press on through the tunnels. Then, Doctor Doom's Servitors attack. X-Force quickly takes care of the first couple. Meltdown takes out a third and starts running down the hall. She then falls down a trap door and a larger Servitor awaits her at the bottom of the shaft. She then wakes up in Liddleville.
Liddleville
Meltdown asks Dimitri why he is in Liddleville. He tells her that he is the grandson of the baron who originally owned Castle Doom and that Doom deposed him when he took over Latveria. Dimitri planned to take over Castle Doom and then use Doom's robots to help build a democracy in Latveria. They both then get into a car and Cable contacts her telepathically. He tells her to look up and she sees that Cable is a giant, hovering over the town.
Latverian Gypsy Camp
Warpath, Caliban and Sunspot stand together near a gypsy caravan. They all watch as a young gypsy girl named Sofia walks up to them and asks if they might have American music for her to listen to as Doom never allowed Western influence to come into Latveria. Warpath hands a Lila Cheney CD to Sofia and she is overwhelmed by a shock that knocks her to the ground.
Castle Doom
Cable and Nathaniel Richards stand above a model of a town. They realize that Doom once used this same machine to put the Fantastic Four's psyches into smaller versions of themselves. They then shut down the neural-link that was keeping Dimitri and Tabitha in their synthe-clone bodies in Liddleville, allowing their minds to return to their real bodies. As they recover, Dimitri sees that his friend Sergei, who accompanied him into the castle, was killed during the transfer and his body lies on the machine nearby.
In a nearby corridor, a team of people rush toward Cable and his team. They are looking directly for Cable and the other mutants. Meanwhile, Cable finds Doom's time platform. As he is about to dismantle the machine, the figures in the corridor show themselves to be G.W. Bridge and two other S.H.I.E.L.D. members. Dimitri grabs a grenade and tells them all that he's not going to allow anyone to take something that rightly belongs to the people of Latveria. However, Theresa Petty reacts by shooting him, sending him flying back into the time machine's control console even as Cable grabs the grenade and disarms it. Then a light begins to glow around them all, caused by the activated time platform, but the temporal field continues to extend outward, indicating that something's gone wrong.
Latverian Gypsy Camp
Sofia lays on the ground and is picked up by her mother, Esmeralda. Sunspot wonders if she had an epileptic spell and her mother tells him no, that she instead has the gift of prescience. When she touched Warpath's hand as he gave her the CD, it means she saw something in his future that was so overwhelming that it knocked her out. Suddenly, Esmeralda's son, Oskar, runs up to them and tells them that Castle Doom has vanished.
Notes
- Nathaniel Richards mentions how he successfully impersonated Victor von Doom during Doom's previous absence. This was in Fantastic Four #382.
- Richards states that "Doom didn't marshal an army to take over Latveria — he simply built one." This is a slight overstatement, as shown in Books of Doom #5–6.
- The Liddleville that appears in this issue is not the same tiny town that first appeared in Fantastic Four #236. That Liddleville was located in Doom's American castle and Thing #4 showed that it had been smashed into fragments.
Trivia
- Siryn is misnamed "Theresa O'Rourke" in this issue.
See Also
Links and References
- The Unofficial Handbook of Marvel Comics Creators - accessed on 06/27/2010