Who dares to place a cover of this comic book?
Doctor Doom is a 2019 Marvel comic book by Christopher Cantwell and Salvador Larroca, starring Doctor Doom (duh... did you expect Richards?).Reed Richards and Tony Stark created a machine, the Antlion Control Center, that solves the problem of global warming. Dr. Doom was interviewed in TV about it: he is sure that the project will fail in a spectacular way. In no small part because it involves making a black hole in the moon. For reasons unknown, Latveria's missiles are fired to it and to another city, causing massive casualties. Unsure of who is framing him, Doom surrenders.
The series ended after 10 issues, with Cantwell going on to write Iron Man (2020, Ongoing), though Cantwell would later write a team-up between Doom and Iron Man as a King in Black tie-in.
The character himself can be found here.
Tropes
- Blade Enthusiast: Victor von Doom attributes his interest in swordplay to the works of Alexandre Dumas and claims to have over 50,000 swords on display in his sword hall. A flashback shows him using one of his swords to kill Katarina Karkov.
- Brick Joke: Whenever someone thinks of Doom needing Fruzsina, a meteorologist, all they can think is that he needs her to create an ice storm inside the Baxter building.
- Character Development: The series is the odd case of negative development, as it tracks Doom spiraling from his flaws into even worse acts, grand and individual, of megalomaniacal cruelty.
- Chekhov's Gun: The Ultimate Nullifier, which destroys entire realities, finally gets used in the final issue.
- Circular Reasoning: The monk Larin is not about to question whether God would kill his brother monks, because Doom did, and as far as Larin is concerned, Doom is God.
- Continuity Nod: Kang mentions that he has spent time in the year 2099, and says it's both futuristic and dated at the same time.
- Downer Ending: The entire series ends with Doom seemingly shutting the door on the possibility of redemption, destroying a utopian universe and, for good measure, killing the father of his-alternate universe wife for no apparent reason.Kang: I see that you are well and seated atop your throne. I thusly assume you are in good spirits?
Doom: There is no good in me, Kang. There never was. And there never shall be. - The Dragon: Victorious still follows Doom around with blind loyalty.
- Enemy Mine: Doom and Kang cooperate briefly. They insult each other constantly, but respect each other's intent to kill the other at some point.
- Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: In Issue #9, Doom genuinely believes that Reed Richards would sabotage a plan to save the world from disaster just to keep Doom from looking like a hero. This leads to Doom ruining his own plan. He blames Richards, of course. Ironically, the beginning of the issue shows that Reed has complete confidence that Doom's plan will work, to the point that he's more concerned about the inevitable victory speech Doom has planned afterwards.
- Evil Is Petty:
- Doom ordered the kidnapping and torture of a TV anchor who dared to interrupt him... multiple times.
- In Issue #10, Doom murders his other self and destroys his entire universe, because he cannot stand his other self's humility and his suggestion that he should befriend Reed Richards to be a better person.
- And in the end he orders Fruzsina's father executed.
- Exact Words: Played with in Issue #9. Doom's plan is set to go and is guaranteed to be a certain success... when Reed calls Doom up to congratulate him and wish him good luck. Doom, however, cannot stop himself from reading unintended slights in Reed's choice of words (which are clearly just harmless platitudes) to the point where it devolves into Doom getting petty over semantics, Reed hanging up the call in annoyed frustration, and Doom accidentally ruining his own plan.
- Fictional Flag: Latveria has a flag consisting of horizontal black-and-red cross on a green field, with a stylized Odal rune in its intersection.
- Flashback Episode: #8 is a series of journal entires by Doom, Victorious, and Blue Marvel.
- Foreshadowing:
- When Death frees Doom from Hell, she says that Doom will be her greatest servant. In the final issue, he murders billions, if not trillions, of living beings.
- When Fruzsina Markovitch rejects his proposal, citing Doom's imprisonment of her father as a reason, Doom declares that imprisonment was too merciful for telling him he was wrong. In the final issue, he orders the man to be executed.
- Hero Antagonist: Blue Marvel is tasked with capturing Doom after the latter is forced on the run. He eventually works with Doom in an attempt to fix the singularity, only to get sucked into it and get caught in the middle of the conflict between our Doom and Alternate Doom.H.E.R.B.I.E.: Dr. Richards ran simulations pitting you against Doom and you were victorious three out of five times.
Blue Marvel: What kind of simulation?
H.E.R.B.I.E.: Chess.
Blue Marvel: Okay. Well... I'll still take those odds. Two colleagues of mine died on Antlion Station. Friends. - Horse of a Different Color: When he returns to his loyalists in Latveria, Doom rides in on a giant bear.
- How the Mighty Have Fallen: While on the run, Doom is deprived of all of his resources and weapons, including his armor. He's reduced to wandering the streets of New York City and sleeping on park benches like countless other homeless people. Fortunately for Doom, Morgan Le Fay finds him and has a nearby apartment and offers him food and shelter. But he's forced on the run again later and is reduced to dumpster diving.
- Hypocrite: In Issue #9, when musing on what he intends to do after saving the Earth, Doom decides that he intends to atone for his actions and become a hero, which will in see him rule over Earth "with great humility... with humility the likes of which the world has never seen." The contradiction in that sentiment should be clear, and is a pretty big clue that Doom's intentions of changing his ways are not as sincere as he may like to think.
- Ironic Echo: In Issue #6, Kang asks Doom how one can destroy a black hole, describing it as invincible. At the end of the issue, he tries to destroy Doom's will, and realizes you can't destroy the invincible.
- I Surrender, Suckers: Subverted. Dr. Doom had decided to turn himself in without resistance. Union Jack shows up and picks a fight anyway. Dr. Doom utterly defeats him… and then surrenders.
- Kick the Dog: Kang demonstrates a futuristic weapon by shooting H.E.R.B.I.E. with it... right in front of Blue Marvel. Blue Marvel retaliates by blasting Kang with an anti-matter pulse.
- Like a Son to Me: Doom privately admits that Victorious is closest thing that he has to a daughter.
- Meaningful Name:
- The sons Doom keeps seeing in his visions are named Costin and Doru. In Romanian these are words for "constant" and "longing".
- Fruzsina means "joy".
- Never My Fault: In Issue #9, rather than admit he saw plotting in Reed's honest wishes for luck and sabotaging his own plan, Doom spends the last moments before its catastrophic failure ranting about how Richards was to blame.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Reed makes the mistake of telling Doom that he thinks Doom's plan to save the world will work. This causes Doom to doubt himself and revise his plan until it's ruined. Though it's arguably deconstructed; Reed's words are clearly sincerely meant, and it's only because of Doom is incapable of taking Reed's well-wishes at face value and obsessively reads unintended slights into harmless platitudes that things go wrong; while Reed may have technically 'broke' the situation, it was only because Doom is fundamentally incapable of overcoming his personality flaws such as his insecurity and paranoia.
- Non-Answer: Kang shows up in Doom's private library (just because his machines are malfunctioning). Doom asks, now that he's there, if the black hole will save the world or not. "It depends. I don't know what timeline I'm in."
- Not Good with Rejection: When Fruzsina rejects Victor's marriage proposal because he imprisoned her journalist father when she was 13 (and he's still in prison) for speaking out against him, he angrily responds that he should have executed her father and that him "only" being imprisoned for life was due to Doom feeling bizarrely humane at the time.
- Not Me This Time: Someone arranged things to look like Dr. Doom attacked the space station. And, Doom being Doom, nobody has reasonable doubts about it.
- Omnicidal Maniac: Doom destroys an entire universe and everyone in it in Issue #10 without a shred of remorse. In doing so, he becomes Death's greatest servant just as she said he would in the third issue.
- Other Me Annoys Me:
- Doom has visions of himself, scars healed, behaving like a regular family man, and it annoys him to no end.
- And when they finally meet, Doom hates his other self even more.
- Pet the Dog: As part of Doom's reformation, he lets Steve out of prison. That's the news anchor who dared interrupt him in the first issue.
- Reed Richards Is Useless: Averted. Reed Richards and Tony Stark use their genius to solve the global warming problem.
- Rejected Marriage Proposal: Victor proposes to Fruzsina within five minutes of meeting her. She replies that she would never even consider marrying him.
- Remember the New Guy?: When Doom finds out he has a traitor in his midst, the options are:
- His adopted son Kristoff.
- The last of the Tibetan monks that helped him forge his armour.
- His oldest assistant, Boris, and his daughter.
- His recently-appointed herald Victorious.
- A General who had recently been in correspondence with the country that attacked Latvaria's borders and had not been seen before this series.
- Self-Made Orphan: As a test of loyalty, Victor orders Victorious to kill the mastermind of the coup against him, which happens to be Victorious' own mother. The deed is done, but this backfires on Doom since it causes Victorious to start doubting him for the first time. Even Doom realizes that he crossed a line demanding this and fears that their bond has been permanently damaged.
- Shout-Out: Some unfortunate idiot calls Doom "Steely Dan".
- Then Let Me Be Evil: Subverted. The idea that his own world is the hellish nightmare to the other dimension's heavenly dream of a world has Doom commit to evil like never before out of conviction that he's damned anyway.
- Timey-Wimey Ball: Kang's time travel is very non-linear. He claims he got a Doom mask and gloves from his own future self in two hundred years' time and instructed himself to deliver it to Doom so he could conquer the world so Kang could conquer the world.
- Too Dumb to Live: Alternate Victor von Doom thinks it's a great idea to mock his alternate self's personal issues. You don't have to be him to notice the dangerous looks.Alt Doom: I was once tortured and broken. Filled with greed, hate, delusion...
Doom: I AM NOT BROKEN! - Truce Trickery: In "Doom Service", Spider-Man gets on Doom's bad side and is subjected to a Curb-Stomp Battle, managing to get his life spared by swearing to help recover an heirloom Doom was tracking. While engaged in combat with the doomsday cult that had taken the gem, Spidey is surprised when Doom arrives. While Spidey is initially concerned Doom is going back on his word, Doom clarifies that the promised time limit has passed. Fortunately, Doom's presence so unnerves the cult that they flee, allowing Spider-Man to recover the gem and fulfill his agreement with Doom.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Watch the opening of the black hole? Dr. Doom has better things to do with his time!
- Villainous Breakdown: In Issue #9, Doom completely loses his composure when Reed calls him and wishes him good luck with his plan to save the world. The conversation quickly devolves into a petty argument over semantics, leading to a fed-up Reed to end the conversation and wish Doom luck again. Doom then smashes the monitor in a fit of rage and second-guesses himself into failure.
- Villain Protagonist: Dr. Doom is the main character, so yeah.
- You Killed My Father: Why Fruszina rejects Doom's marriage proposal. More like "imprisoned him for life for speaking out against you", but still. He does end up killing him, eventually.
