There’s no such thing as a stupid question. Ok there are a few, but we forgive you. This week we discuss stupid questions about Dr. Doom because DOOM COMMANDS IT.

There's no such thing as a stupid question. Comic readers come in all-ages and all levels of reading experience. As a thirty-one two year old dude with over twenty years of comic book reading credentials under my belt, it's easy to take for granted many of the useless factoids others might not instantly know.

There's an index of facts in my mind that literally serve no purpose nor enhance my life in any way whatsoever! However, I often see google autocomplete searches involving my favorite heroes that make me scratch my head. Are these basic superhero questions really unanswered for the majority of the general public? When new readers are stumped, Wikipedia can only provide so much. To fill this void I take it upon myself to answer the internet's dumb questions about comics. This guide won't make you a message board expert, but it will get you through any casual conversation at your local comic shop!

Now on to this week's month's autocomplete search featuring the villain most likely to talk in third person - DR. DOOM.



Of all the villains in the Marvel universe few are as fascinating to me as Victor Von Doom. If you take the character at face value, it's easy to dismiss him as a super-powered dictator who loves to give long-winded speeches and build death traps. Ok sure, that's all true, but the man is so much more than that! At his core Dr. Doom is an incredibly gifted and tragically flawed genius, so driven by his feelings of inadequacy that he can't bear to look at himself without a mask. Without getting all Dr. Freud on Dr. Doom it's fairly clear that his mask is just the symptom of a deep-rooted sense of self-loathing that encompasses his entire life. I think most of his issues go back to his childhood where he 'started from the bottom' as a peasant on the european countryside.

From childhood, Doom was exposed to the worlds of science and magic with a physician father and a sorceress mother. He loses both his parents at a young age and despite all of his talents and abilities, never really recovers from that. These mommy issues form a deeply rooted of insecurity in Doom, leaving him with the feeling that if there is ever anything he isn't the best at, then he's totally worthless. Victor Von Doom conquers an entire country but still seeks more power. He's one of the most brilliant men in the world but can't accept the fact that Reed Richards might be smarter. To top it all off he covers all of his insecurity with endless bravado, being the type of person who constantly has to boast and try to humiliate anyone he feels threatened by in the world (usually superheroes).

My personal 'definitive' origins for Dr. Doom are Fantastic Four Annual #2 (1963) with a little dash of Fantastic Four #278 for good measure. While I'm sure this tale has been told over and over in other issues not discussed, you really can't top Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, and John Byrne when it comes to Dr. Doom.





Why does Dr. Doom wear a mask?



Doom's life seemed to start going off the rails the moment he realized he wasn't the smartest person in the world. Sure in Latveria he's was building life size robots and impressing the locals with magic, but he wasn't really at super-villain status until he met Mr. Fantastic way back in college. After getting a scholarship to 'State' University (which makes me wonder how hard it is to get into Harvard and M.I.T. in the 616 if Victor has to go to state school) Victor immediately finds his intellect challenged by his new roommate Reed Richards. When Reed pokes around in Victor's stuff and notices some errors in his roommate's calculations, his efforts to point this out are dismissed. Predictably, the experiment blows up in Victor's face, he's expelled for the incident, and sent home scarred and shamed.

So here's where things get interesting. How badly did the explosion actually damage Victor's face? While artist depictions vary (from simple scar to Jason Voorhees meets a blender) the larger point of the mask is that Victor can't handle anything but perfection. While Kirby and Lee were content with the idea that the majority of the injuries occurred during the explosion John Byrne explored the idea that even a small imperfection was enough to drive Doom over the edge. In his retelling of Doom's origin in FF #278 we get a different origin for the majority of Doom's scars. In fact it appears that his simple impatience to let the mask cool down is what caused his burns.

Faced with even the slightest instance of self-doubt Victor goes fully delusional and decides to hide behind a suit of armor for the rest of his life. Instead of saying 'my bad' and trying his experiment again, Victor chooses to mask his shame with a literal mask! Basically Dr. Doom is like a spoiled princess at his super sweet sixteen party who smashes the cake because the frosting isn't the right color. Except the cake is his face. Now I realize Dr. Doom will occasionally fix his face through various means, only to have this plot point retconned by a subsequent facial injury but the purest version of Doom is usually scarred in some way. As far as symbolism goes, wearing a mask to cover up the ugliness that you feel inside is as literal as it can get.

Why does Dr. Doom have diplomatic immunity?

Dr. Doom has immunity because he is the ruler of a sovereign nation and "international law limits the degree to which foreign government officials and employees are subject to the authority of police officers and judges in their country of assignment". This is the same reason Qatari princes can race exotic race cars through suburban streets and Saudi Princes can commit multiple felonies without facing charges. So basically it's really hard to hold Dr. Doom accountable for any of his nonsense, and even if you want to go after him, he can always just run back to Latveria and thumb his nose at you. One of my favorite issues showing off this fact was in Marvel Treasury Edition #28: Superman and Spider-Man where those heroes teamed-up against Dr. Doom and the Parasite in one of the coolest crossovers of all time.

But let's take a closer look at this 'ruler of Latveria' thing. What's the deal with Dr. Doom's kingdom? Well glad you asked, internet! Dr. Doom is the ruler of Latveria, a kingdom located in Eastern Europe close to Transylvania and Hungary. The capital of Latveria is Doomstadt where Victor rules his subjects from the imposing Castle Von Doom. I like to imagine his leadership style as a mix between Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, and whatever shady cabal plotted 9/11 with Dick Cheney. He's evil but shrewd and manages to stay in power despite the angry mutterings of his subjects.

That being said Dr. Doom isn't close to being the worst ruler to ever control the country, although he is by far the most flamboyant. While Dr. Doom has been deposed on occasion by various usurpers, he always manages to reclaim power because the man has an army of robots and a god damn time machine.

In the grand scheme of things the United States seems to have better diplomatic relations with Latveria than they do with North Korea, allowing the country to operate an embassy in New York. They also have a representative at the United Nations which probably makes them more like Iran if you wanted a 'real world' counterpart. But despite all these comparisons Dr. Doom seems to care about the plight of minorities in his country (mostly gypsies) and you never read about him giving speeches wanting to ban abortions or stopping gay people from getting married. So really - he isn't even as obnoxious as most Republican presidential candidates. [editor's note: Zing!]

What are Dr. Doom's powers?

One of my favorite things about stories involving Dr. Doom is that he always has some trick-up-his-sleeve that allows him to gain the upper-hand. The guy has a plethora of powers to choose from as well as minions and robots galore to do his dirty-work. If it wasn't for his crippling narcissism and compulsion to narrate all of his evil plans out loud to the Fantastic Four, he might actually accomplish some real damage. But even with his tendency to self-sabotage, Dr. Doom has a serious arsenal of abilities at his disposal. There's a reason why the majority of stories featuring Dr. Doom have him fighting four people at once.

First things first, Dr. Doom is a genius capable of creating almost any weaponry he desires. Like I said earlier, he was the first person on earth to invent a time machine! That alone should make him unstoppable by being able to travel back to the moment of any of his foe's births and smothering them in the crib. But for Doom that would be too easy, and he'd prefer to play with his prey and gain the satisfaction of them knowing he's utterly outmatched them in a battle of wits. One of my favorite Dr. Doom issues has to be Fantastic Four #258 where we see the ruler of Latveria straight-up acting like a boss the entire issue and scheming in his castle.

As a result, Dr. Doom spends most of his time building Doombots that look like him and upgrading his suit of armor with various weaponry. While his armor doesn't look nearly as sleek or flashy as Iron Man's the armor has been known to unleash concussive blasts, force-fields, electric shocks, and generally use enhanced strength. Sometimes he has a little jet pack on the back of his costume that allows him to fly around. And these are just the powers he uses when he is feeling lazy!

Did you forget about the part where I said that Doom's mom was a sorceress? Doom inherited her trunk of magical items and quickly learned how to harness their mystic abilities. Later in life Doom would use these powers to great effect, becoming a sorcerer in his own right and mixing these powers with his own advanced scientific knowledge. He studied with Tibetan monks and promptly used his skills to control small demons and fire even more awesome energy blasts. This means that Doom is a problem even when he isn't in his armor!

If that wasn't enough Dr. Doom is pretty much always scheming to steal the mystical abilities of other super beings. Way back at the start of his villainous career he managed to steal the powers of the Silver Surfer and this was only the guy getting warmed up. Later on during the first major Marvel event, Secret Wars (circa 1984) Dr. Doom managed to steal the powers of the omnipotent being who had summoned heroes and villains to a mysterious planet. While Dr. Doom never manages to hold onto these powers for long, just the fact that he is able to outsmart creatures far more powerful than himself is pretty impressive.

In later years he's kept this shtick going trying to steal the reality-altering powers of Wanda Maximoff and most recently all of the Beyonders. At the time this article was published, Dr. Doom is literally the God Emperor of all existence, having taken the powers of all of the Beyonders and altered reality to suit his every whim. Not bad for a guy who didn't even finish college!



Despite the coolness of Dr. Doom, he's been pretty much played like a chump in all of his big screen appearances. Even in cartoons and video games he mostly gets punched and webbed in the face by Spider-Man and never really shown by the true genius he is at heart. Having recently watched the Fantastic Four movies I can tell you it's much better to skip that garbage and just read the comics. You might find yourself cursing Reed Richards and rooting for Dr. Doom in the end.

That's it for now! If you have more stupid questions you can check out the stupid archive featuring Ant-Man and Wolverine.