The Doom Comic: Rip and Tear

Since it’s Doom’s birthday today, I thought I would post about this.

Recently I read the infamous Doom comic book called “Knee Deep in the Dead” (after the first episode in the game), also known as “Rip and Tear”, or simply “The Doom Comic”, after I was searching for comics based on video games.

DoomWorld originally posted scans of this limited edition comic book back in 2003, on Doom’s 10 year anniversary. According to the date, it was published in 1996, and although it’s been around for a while, not many people know about it. I think according to the people who have read it, they tried to bury it, forget it, and completely deny its existence, or so they say.

I’ve seen part of it and heard of it before, but only got to see the full thing the other day.

The illustrations aren’t too bad, could be better, even at the time, but the “writing” was rubbish. Anyway, if you haven’t ever read it, here’s your chance.

This space marine is on a quest to get the big gun, which is obviously the BFG 9000, and on the way, he kills all sorts of things including zombies, imps, something which I think is supposed to be a Hell Knight or Baron of Hell, with weapons like his fists (berserker mode), chainsaw, double-barrelled shotgun, chaingun, plasma gun, and finally after obtaining the BFG, he goes after the Cyberdemon. The only weapons seemingly left out here are the regular pump-action shotgun, and the rocket launcher.

I will say a few things, and you might notice these yourself:

• The face of the marine, like the one above, looks similar to the guy from the cover of the Playstation version of Doom.
• The stance of the zombie guy on the cover is similar to the one of doomguy on the cover of Doom II: Hell on Earth.
• Seeing as this was published in 1996, there’s a line in there that not only pays homage to Army of Darkness, but possibly parodies Duke Nukem 3D, released that year: “Groovy!”

The Doom Comic: Rip and Tear