Doctor Doom’s Finest Moment Isn’t Even Available Any More (& MCU Fans Need It)

Doctor Doom has long been one of the greatest villains in Marvel history, if not the greatest. The villain began his life as an archenemy of the Fantastic Four, where he shined so bright that other creators started to use him throughout the rest of the Marvel Universe. Since then, the monarch of Latveria has starred in numerous events and solo series, as well as multiple video games, cartoons, and movies. The villain is about to have his biggest showcase ever in the Marvel Cinematic Universe‘s Avengers: Doomsday. Marvel has been pushing Doom hard since the announcement of Robert Downey Jr. playing the character, with the villain taking his place at the top of the Marvel villain hierarchy in numerous stories.

Doctor Doom is Marvel’s greatest monster, and it will be interesting to see the way the MCU uses this new version of the character. Doom is going to be hot, and luckily, Marvel has decades of amazing stories starring the villain for fans who want more. While books like Infamous Iron Man and Secret Wars are often pointed at as what MCU fans should read for the upcoming movies, there’s one story that these new fans need to read, but also one that they can’t read: Books of Doom, by Ed Brubaker and Pablo Raimaondi. This 21-year old book is out of print, robbing MCU fans of the Doom story they need to read to understand the character.

Books of Doom Takes Is the Perfect Doom Primer

Marvel has a major problem keeping classics in print, and it’s hurt the fandom. A lot of great stories that would help newer fans better understand the Marvel Universe are rarely reprinted, and Books of Doom is unfortunately among this number. The book came out at the end of 2005, and was part of the Ed Brubaker push that the publisher was on at the time. Brubaker’s Captain America (Vol. 5) was a massive hit, and he was on the cusp of becoming a Marvel megastar, so they put him on every book they coudl. Books of Doom was one of the series meant to take advantage of that.

The book is simple, retelling the origin of Victor Von Doom, starting with his childhood. Before this book, readers had to read years worth of Doom stories in order to get his origin. However, this one took all of the events that we had been seeing for years, gave them more depth, and put them in front of readers. It was released without a lot of fanfare at the time, but it was immediately a hit with the fans who were able to get their hands on it (and that wasn’t actually all that many; it was heavily under-ordered).

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Books of Doom does an amazing job of putting the man known as Doom on the page, warts and all. It gives readers Doom’s tragic origin, his mother losing her soul to Mephisto and his father being killed by the forces of the Baron of Latveria in the first issue, and builds the character slowly. We see the boy that he was and how the horrors of his life molded him into the villain he becomes. The book’s narrative conceit is Doom telling his story to an interviewer, so one of the fun parts of the book is knowing that we have an unreliable narrator. What’s true? What’s false? It makes the reading experience so much better, because you know you’re getting lies and the truth.

The book really shows off the complexity of Doom, which is something that MCU fans need to see. Doom is a tragic character, but he’s also someone who is constantly self-mythologizing. The book does a fabulous job of showing both the tragic origins of the character, and the evil, the ways he twists everything to paint himself as the hero of his own story, instead of telling the truth. All of this is so integral to who Doom is as a character, and it’s hard to find books that do such a great job showing the hypocrisy and the tragedy of the character: that Doom could have been a greater hero than anyone out there, if only he could see past his own “greatness”.

Books of Doom Is the Greatest Portrait of Who Doom Is

Marvel Studios having RDJ play Doom for a nostalgia pop worries me, because the villain is one of the richest characters in the Marvel Universe. It doesn’t really feel like we’re going to get the “real” Doom from the films (which is a general problem with the vast majority of Marvel villains in the MCU). This is a tragedy and I think the best way to counter this is for the publisher to start reprinting the greatest stories starring the monarch. Books of Doom is crucial to this.

The book, in many ways, is all about how complicated the character is. We see the tragedy, the heroism, the legend, and the villainy. It gave readers a full picture of the character in a way that a lot of stories starring the villain fail at. It’s exactly the kind of book that fans need to understand him. This six-issue story was never as big as it should have been, and it’s easily the most important Doom story of them all.

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