Friday Fiends: Green With Greed

This installment of Friday Fiends is brought to you by the letters M D D. What do they stand for? An obscure but nevertheless enduring character in the Archie Comics mythos.

Mad Doctor Doom first appeared in the fall of 1962 as a foil for a Little Archie. Accompanied by his boy sidekick Chester, Doom (not to be confused with Victor Von at a Marvelous competitor, who appeared around the same time) continued to bedevil the lad eight additional times before graduating into the big time... and modern day... when he took on a grown-up Mr. Andrews under the alias of Captain Pureheart the Powerful. At times assisted by Pureheart's frienemy Reggie "Evilheart" Mantle, Archie's alter ego had to enlist the aid of his fellow heroes Superteen and Captain Hero to tackle the pair.

Not only was old Doom green with envy, thirsting for world domination (or at least, Riverdale rule) over on Archie's Earth, on the parallel Earth-MLJ where a golden age Archie and his gang rubbed shoulders with the likes of the Shield, another green skinned gone similar to the mad doctor arrived on the scene. Dueling with Steel Sterling, the Monster Master started out a normal scientist until his super-computer transformed him into something more hideous and heinous. And then, of course, Earth-Four had the Preying Mantis who also turned green while battling the Blue Beetle.

It was refreshing to see that Archie, Mighty, and Charlton Comics each decided to focus a bit of attention to that most ignored of minorites... the greenskins. Think it had anything to do with yet another scientist, a Mister Robert Bruce Banner, perhaps?