Doom · Marvel Comics · From 1996 · 2 issues
Marvel's two-issue Doom comic adaptation (1996), promotional material packaged with id Software's game, became an unintentional classic of internet meme culture through its unnamed Space Marine protagonist's absurdly hyperbolic violence and the immortal line "Rip and tear until it is done."
The Doom comic was produced in 1996 by Marvel Comics as a promotional item — a two-issue limited series packaged with copies of the game rather than sold through standard comics channels. Written by Steve Behling and Michael Stewart with art by Tom Grindberg, it was intended to dramatise the player's experience in the game: a nameless Space Marine battles demonic forces on a Martian moon base, killing everything in sight with escalating enthusiasm. The comic fulfilled this mandate so aggressively that it became, in retrospect, a document of 1990s extreme excess rather than a coherent narrative. The protagonist — identified only as "the Marine" or "Doomguy" in subsequent fan usage — delivers a continuous internal monologue of self-aggrandising violence throughout both issues. He seizes a chainsaw with the declaration "I'm the Marine, and this is my BOOMSTICK!" (apparently confusing properties), hurls monsters into each other, consumes health packs with unhinged enthusiasm, and at one point picks up a monster and beats another monster with it while screaming. The writing's escalating hyperbole, combined with Grindberg's expressionist artwork, created an unintentionally comedic tone that was the opposite of the atmospheric horror id Software's game had achieved. The line "Rip and tear your guts! You are huge! That means you have huge guts!" — typically shortened to "Rip and tear" in internet usage — was a punchline for years before id Software retroactively incorporated the phrase into the official lore of Doom (2016), in which the antagonist's initial briefing reads "The slayer's rage — a burning reminder that alone stands between the armies of Hell and the last remnants of humanity. You must make his rage your weapon. Rip and tear, until it is done." The phrase that had been a joke became canonical, and the joke-made-canon became one of the more affectionate relationships between meme culture and official franchise lore in gaming history.
The promotional two-issue comic whose "Rip and tear" monologue became a gaming meme so pervasive that id Software incorporated it into the official lore of Doom (2016).
The Doom comic's ascent to meme status followed a specific trajectory: scanned and shared on early internet forums in the late 1990s as an example of extreme comics excess, it accumulated ironic appreciation that gradually became genuine affection. The comic captured something real about the experience of playing Doom — the player character's implied invincibility, the joyful aggression of the gameplay — even as its written expression of that experience was objectively absurd. The unhinged protagonist was, in a sense, a more honest representation of the player's psychological state than a serious narrative would have been.
The moment Doomguy picks up a Soul Sphere power-up and shouts "I'm HUGE! I'm INVINCIBLE!" while punching a demon into a wall — a panel widely reproduced in gaming discussion — articulates something genuine about the power fantasy that id Software's game delivered, even if the delivery is laughable. The comic is bad in a way that reveals truths its creators did not intend.
The incorporation of "Rip and tear, until it is done" into Doom (2016)'s official lore was one of the more unusual franchise decisions of the decade: id Software acknowledged a piece of derivative material so low in the official canon that it had been forgotten for twenty years and elevated it into the game's central thematic statement. The phrase, spoken by the fictional UAC's analysis of the Doom Slayer, became the reboot's emotional thesis — that the player character's violence is not mindless but purposive, directed against Hell with the specific intention of its eradication.
The meme's incorporation changed how the comic was retrospectively discussed: it moved from "embarrassing promotional artifact" to "prophetic document that anticipated the reboot's themes." This reframing was not entirely serious — the comedy of the comic remained unchanged — but the official acknowledgment gave it a canonical status that transformed its cultural position. "Rip and tear" is now quoted in the context of the reboot as often as in the context of the comic, a full reversal of the hierarchy between the derivative and the original work.