I’ve only been exposed to a very minor portion of the Doomsday stories, but didn’t see anything via a quick glance on Wikipedia either.
So it’s my understanding that Doomsday was genetically engineered or whatever on ancient Krypton, and is intended to be invulnerable to just about everything.
But if he’s from Krypton, wouldn’t he be vulnerable to magic? So why is he left to kick the snot out of whatever heroes happen to be on duty that day rather than having someone turn him into a newt?
IIRC…
He was designed to be the perfect, eternal life form. He can be harmed, but only with truly superhuman effort (that’s why it took Superman to beat him), and even if he’s killed, he returns to life after a short time. Furthermore, he can rapidly enhance his physiology in response to any attack he’s not immune to at the time (taken to its most extreme in Hunter/Prey).
He has been affected by magic (of a sort), one time even eradicating him completely, but somehow he always finds a way back.
Of course, he got seriously nerfed at some point, because that’s the only way to keep returning someone who killed Superman without him repeatedly killing Superman. (Seriously, he had the perfect battle and the perfect death…why couldn’t DC have left well enough alone just this once?)
I think the answer to this question is probably also the answer to the question: “Why was the Hulk a threat to Dr. Strange in the recent World War Hulk storyline?”
In superhero comics, magic may appear all-powerful; but it’s simply not as effective as the ability to hit someone really hard.
Which is why Thor rocks so hard; might AND magic. SWEET!
Kryptonians aren’t particularly weak against magic…they just don’t have any particular resistance to it. (The only think they’re truly weak against is Kryptonite…Magic effects them like anybody else, and red solar radiation returns them to their base, powerless state.)
There’s no real reason to think, therefor, that even if Doomsday began with the same genetic stock as Kryptonians (not the case…he was just dumped there to evolve), that he couldn’t simply evolve a resistance to it. (Hey, magic is genetic in the DCU…see the Homo Magi.)
Even if Kryptonians had a hardwired specific weakness against magic, and Doomsday was created from the same genetic stock, there’s no real reason to assume that he’d still have it, of course, as his abilities, while having an overlap in practical effect to Kryptonians, aren’t really the same - his powers aren’t powered by the yellow sun, for instance, taking away the red sun ‘weakness’.
I’ll concur with Tengu, and add that I don’t think Doomsday would evolve a generalized protection against magic - just against whatever specific magics were used to defeat him - so magic would be a good resource if you had to take him on repeatedly.
Oh, okay. I’d be willing to buy that a la willing suspension of disbelief.
I mean, obviously the real reason is “so the storyline would last longer than about a page and a half”, but I was wondering whether the writers had explicitly addressed the issue anywhere.