All throughout December, we will be examining comic book stories and ideas that were not only abandoned, but also had the stories/plots specifically "overturned" by a later writer (as if they were a legal precedent). Click here for an archive of all the previous editions of The Abandoned An' Forsaked.

Today we examine the odd case of how the Fantastic Four could look straight at Doctor Doom's un-masked face and still somehow not see him.

Enjoy!

In the storyline leading up to Fantastic Four #200 (by writer Marv Wolfman and artists Keith Pollard and Joe Sinnott), Doctor Doom captured Sue Richards, Johnny Storm, Ben Grimm and Alicia Masters. Doom had Alicia sculpt a statue of him as how he looked before his scars. To do so, he had her feel his face, scars and all...

Sue gets a glimpse right after that...

And then the captive members of the Fantastic Four got a ringside seat of Doom's mask-less features, these issues were the first time that they had ever seen his true face!

I know there was some debate over whether the team should have seen Doom's face but more importantly, there was debate over whether it was proper to establish WHAT Doom's face looks like, other than it was scarred.

So, in Fantastic Four #236 (by writer/artist John Byrne), it turns out that Sue had not seen his face...

When fans wrote in, puzzled, the letter column in #241 explained it all...

They didn't see Doom's face in that story. There are several theories as to just what is wrong with good Doctor's mug, but all of them would certainly elicit some kind of reaction from the members of the FF. Shock, horror, gales of laughter, but something. Yet not one of them so much as blinked at Doom's unmasking. Therefore whatever may have seemed to be happening in the pictures otherwise, they could not have seen his face.

So there you go!

If you have suggestions for future editions of The Abandoned An’ Forsaked, e-mail me at bcronin@comicbookresources.com. Don't make suggestions in the comment section.