Marvel’s Mission To Make Doctor Doom An A-Lister is Getting Ridiculous
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Doctor Doom has used the same strategy in Marvel Comics ever since the 80s – and it’s getting old.
Warning: SPOILERS for Avengers Forever #13
Marvel’s Doctor Doom may be one of the company’s most famous villains – but fans are catching on to the fact that he plays the exact same role in nearly every story. Victor Von Doom has unimaginable power, lords over an entire country, and seeks nothing less than the conquest of the Earth. But Avengers Forever #13 reveals that Doom’s plan is getting old – as the characters and the readers are well aware.
While Doctor Doom started out as a villain in Fantastic Four adventures, he soon emerged as a greater-scope villain in the Avengers books. Doom even begrudgingly teamed up with other villains like Magneto and the Red Skull, though he despised the latter (with almost the same ferocity as Magneto). But it wasn’t until Doom took control of the nation of Latveria and ruled as a dictator did he obtain enough diplomatic power to be taken as an incredibly serious threat. As a public leader, Doom cannot always be attacked – but Doom himself has no restraint when it comes to the same principle. Notably, he has never desired to outright destroy the world – only to rule it.
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In Avengers Forever #13, written by Jason Aaron, Aaron Kuder, Mark Farmer & Frank Martin, the three teams of Avengers face off against Mephisto and his army of variants in the space between universes. A sudden airstrike of an infinite number of Thor’s Mjolnir Hammers, dropped from the sky, destroy Mephisto’s ground forces and the Avengers have seemingly won the day. Unfortunately, their victory celebrations are short-lived: Doom the Living Planet crashes through Avengers Tower, and Doctor Doom (calling himself the “Doom Above All” commands an army of Doom variants in a bid to seize the Tower’s power for himself. The Avengers are surprised, but the readers are not – this is hardly the firs time Doom has used this strategy.
In the original Secret Wars, Doctor Doom waited while the other characters attacked each other; he set his sights on the power of the Beyonder, and took it for himself midway through the story, thus setting himself up as the true villain. The sequel story, Secret Wars 2015, involved Doom committing to the exact same strategy, replacing Kang as the true villain. Avengers Mech Strike: Monster Hunters and 2022’s Midnight Suns also involved Doom biding his time, and now in Jason Aaron’s Avengers, once again Doom replaces the first villain as the true enemy. Now in 2023, this “twist” is no longer surprising or even remotely terrifying – it is simply predictable.
If Doctor Doom is destined to become a major threat, he must change up his strategy. Marvel is somewhat reticent to paint Doom as an outright villain; he is more of an antihero in the 616 continuity than anything else, but this Doom Above All is clearly not him. Doctor Doom’s new plans must include at least a modicum of surprise and haste – otherwise, they’ll be foiled before they come to fruition.
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