Manic Labor Day--A Kinder, Gentler Doom?

With just a little nudge, history could have been so different...

Physic Professor John Norgate has vanished from the university!! Authorities are baffled, until a mysterious shadow being makes contact with Norgate's brother! He manages to commuincate with the shadow, Ouija-style, and discovers...

In a "darkened basement" at the university, they find:

Hurray!!

Wait...young, supremely arrogant super-genius...conducting forbidden physics experiments at the university...that sounds soooo familiar...

Well, this isn't going to end well, is it?

Ohs, nos, what has Von Doom Snelby done?

"Irresponsible scamp"???

You know, turning yourself into an immobile stone giant just might be worse than hideously scarring your face...

Fortunately for Snelby, Norgate doesn't hold grudges:

Well, see how easy that was? An understanding mentor, forgiveness, a handshake, and the world was spared a megalomaniacal super-genius reigning terror upon it. The situation was much better handled by Norgate than by this jerk:

Thanks, angry college official, because we all know how that turned out:

Say, I wonder if Von Doom ever went back to visit Mr Expulsion? Or if, realizing what he had done, he became a drunken recluse, crushed by the guilt of unleashing Dr. Doom on the Earth...

Snelby's story is from Black Cat Mystic (a.k.a. Black Cat Mystery) # 60 (1957). The Doom mummy look is, duh, from Fantastic Four #5 (1962). The Doom Kicking The JLA's Ass is a John Byrne commission someone posted on Photobucket, and man, you want to read that story more than anything else in the world right now, don't you?