Spoilers!
Ahead of Avengers: Doomsday in December, I wanted to learn more about Doctor Doom, and I was told Ed Brubaker’s 2005-2006 standalone collection, Doctor Doom: Books of Doom, was a great villain origin story. They were right! In Brubaker’s hands, with Pablo Raimondi’s incredible artwork, Doom’s villain story is like any great villain story: sympathy up to a point, and it’s that point in which the character turns bad. That said, in this collection at least, there’s nothing particularly troublesome that would at least warrant the attention of a formidable group like the Avengers. It’s more so, you can see the groundwork for the evil Doctor Doom will court in the future. Unfettered arrogance compounded by a complete absence of humanity or empathy is the nexus of Doom’s evil, his ultimate undoing, and his clash with the Avengers.
Victor von Doom grew up in the fictional European nation of Latveria, with Romani parents, Cynthia (a witch!) and Werner. Their roving Gypsy clan was continually accosted by the local Barron, but it didn’t help that Cynthia was dabbling in the dark arts. So much so that she summons the wrath of a demon. The demon aided her in defeating a slew of the Barron’s soldiers, but in exchange, all the children of the village were killed. Cynthia was chased down and died by a soldier’s blade. She now spends eternity in Hell at the pleasure of a demon. Victor was only 4. Him and his dad were then cast out by the Gypsy clan for being too much of a liability, especially as the Barron’s men hunted them down. Fleeing into the cold mountains, Werner froze to death holding Victor in his arms. Perhaps the most memorable and haunting panel from the book by Raimondi.
A brilliant kid, who becomes a brilliant teen, melding science with his mother’s magic, the American military takes notice and offers him a private lab at a military base to further develop his inventions. While at State University, Victor encounters Reed Richards (who would become Mister Fantastic), another notable up-and-coming scientist. Victor is innately skeptical of Reed, owing to his own ego. Even then, as a college kid, Victor is already distancing himself from humanity, already thinking of himself as something beyond human. Everything he does and is is in service to rescuing his mother from Hell, or the nether realm, as he calls it. Yet, the first chance he has at doing just that, again thanks to the U.S. military funding his research and inventions, fails. The machine blows up, apparently disfiguring his face. Victor now wears almost mummy-like wrappings around his face and head. What’s compelling to imagine is that the scarring wasn’t even that bad, but he hid his face anyway because of his ego and/or as another step to distancing himself from humanity.
After that mishap, Victor destroys his lab and all of the creations and absconds from America back to Eastern Europe. He continues his inventions until the Soviet Union comes calling, trying to poach him for their side. Victor wants nothing to do with it, though. They try to kidnap Valeria, Victor’s love interest from his Gypsy clan days, but a sorcerer foils their plans, saving Victor and Valeria. Victor chastises himself for allowing this leverage (Valeria) over him. No more. Moreover, he learns from what he thought was a drunk old man in his back alleyway, the sorcerer, that a temple in the Himalayas has monks who have reached the pinnacle of this melding of science and magic and who are ready to serve Victor. So begins Victor’s perilous journey to find this temple. Along the way, he even has to fight a Yeti! He nearly freezes to death like his father did, but he was close enough to the temple to be rescued by the monks. Over the next five years, he amasses greater power and knowledge. He also learns that Richard Reeds is now Doctor Reed and is renowned. So, Victor takes to calling himself Doctor Doom, and he demands the monks and others refer to him as such. Talk about ego! Doctor Doom has also fashioned metal body armor, including around his face, to protect his mortal body and ward off the influence of the demon who has eternally ensnared his mother.
Coming down from the mountain, Doctor Doom’s new plan is the same as the old plan: rescue his mother from Hell, but along the way, he plans to also avenge his family by overthrowing the King of Latveria, who is the former Barron that ruined his family. While he has the power now to waltz into the King’s fortress and kill him, Doctor Doom’s ego prefers another method: cajoling the people of Latveria to his side, including, eventually, the King’s very soldiers sworn to protect him. At the end of multiple battles and winning the people and soldiers over, Doctor Doom does indeed waltz in and kill the King. Now, Doctor Doom is the King of Latveria. He has an entire nation at his disposal. And then he makes a deal with the demon. Every year, he has an opportunity to fight and save his mother, but if he fails, then the people of Latveria will turn against him all the more. Even if he frees her from the demon, the demon promises that her soul will “still be beyond your grasp … for where her soul goes from here is a place you will never enter.” Doctor Doom’s ego is such that of course he takes that lopsided deal.
What’s great about the way this origin story is structured is that we see the adult version — the fully realized version — of Doctor Doom visiting his memories, as it were, as he’s retelling his story. There have also been interviews with the various people at the peripheral of the story, who are clearly prisoners now. At the end, we learn Doctor Doom’s been talking to a reporter, who also wishes to see his face. It’s grotesque, but also robotic. That is, she’s been talking to one of Doom’s Doombots this whole time, who just has Doctor Doom’s memories programmed into it. Doctor Doom uses these Doombots to take his place when he’s away … doing other things. One of Doctor Doom’s henchmen then imprisons the journalist, saying, “Our deal was that I would allow you into the dungeon to learn the master’s secrets … but like all who know too much of Doctor Doom, once you entered this dark place, you were never meant to leave.” Brilliant, darkly brilliant.
Doctor Doom has been driven since he was 4-years-old to avenge his mother, and more to the point, to rescue his mother from a demonic force in a nether realm. In order to do so, or perhaps it was fated from the beginning as the demon alludes to, Victor had to become something less than — or more than, depending how you look at it — human. In the meantime of his attempts to rescue her, Doctor Doom has convinced himself that peace and prosperity on Earth, or at least in Latveria, is only possible through his steady hand and stewardship. By him being made king. It’s ego all the way down to the flesh that is still very much human.
Great story and art by Brubaker and Raimondi, and a nice appetizer before Avengers: Doomsday next month.
