Doctor Doom Is Marvel’s Biggest Fraud and I Can Prove It Before The MCU Does

When it comes to being a supervillain, one of the most important parts is charisma. Villains have to make themselves out to be believable threats, after all, and one of the best ways to do that is to make them legitimately scary. There are plenty of other ways, too, from having them be so convincing they rally the entire public behind them, or so cool that you love every single moment they’re on panel. Doctor Doom is, without a doubt, the epitome of that final type of villain. He is Marvel’s number one aura farmer, the guy who will do anything and everything to make himself look like the coolest guy in the world in every situation imaginable. It’s hard to imagine the MCU will swerve away from decades of that carefully curated mythology, too.

Whenever someone mentions Doctor Doom, it’s inevitable that someone will bring up one of his awesome feats or quotes, all of which create this image in people’s minds that he is the best and most amazing person ever, and that he only loses because the plot demands it. In actuality, if you think this, you’re falling for Doom’s number one trap. Doom has some of the coldest moments in all of comics, but nearly all of his most quoted, most reposted pages and wins all come on the back of either him about to get his butt handed to him, or it already having happened and he’s trying desperately to save face. Doctor Doom is Marvel’s biggest fraud, and I have the receipts to prove it.

Doom’s Is A Legacy Built on Impossible Hype

Doctor Doom is a fantastic character, largely because he genuinely believes he’s the greatest person to ever live and everyone else is inferior by the law of nature. The reason he hates Mister Fantastic and the rest of the Fantastic Four so much is that they directly prove that worldview wrong, with Reed being objectively smarter than Doom. Regardless, Doctor Doom firmly believes he exists at the top, and so he constantly attempts to show that through his actions and postures. After all, he is the coolest guy ever born, so he has to constantly affirm that. Doom, of course, is plenty cool, but his coolest moments are always really pathetic out of context.

Case in point, let’s look at the most popular Doom moment of all: when God Doom rips Thanos’s skeleton out of him in Secret Wars #8. In and out of context, this was a legitimately terrifying moment that showed how strong Doom was. However, upon further inspection, we discover a few things that really make it a lot less cool on a second look. One is that Doom was obviously way above Thanos in power here, given that he had Molecule Man amping him, so this really isn’t all that impressive.

Still, that hardly detracts from the coolness factor of it, which is way more important. That is taken down by the ending of Secret Wars, where Doom and Reed fight and Doom admits that if Reed had the same knowledge and power Doom did, instead of only creating Battleworld from the scraps of the multiverse, Reed could have saved the whole thing. This was immediately proven true, showing that even if Doom was cool here, it was all on the back of his being utterly incompetent in comparison to Reed. But that scene is still cool, even with the context of the story, so let’s look at another classic Doom example.

Doom’s Legacy is Littered With Lies & False Claims

He claims that he became a god and found the experience beneath him, which was said in Fantastic Four #611. It’s a perfect Doom quote, where he’s basically saying that he’s so genius, so amazing, that being a god is too small and stagnant for him, right? Well, in actuality, this is him saving face with Valeria.

See, Valeria had set up Doom to inherit his own Infinity Gauntlet and personal universe after the collapse of the Council of Reeds, which Doom used to create life and rule like a god. Unfortunately for him, his creations rebelled against him and locked him up, leading to his archenemy, Mister Fantastic, needing to save him. Valeria is even the one who suggested going to save Doom because she knew this would happen. So this isn’t Doom being too cool for godhood, it’s him being too petulant to say thank you despite objectively needing all the help in the world to get out of a problem he made himself.

For a third example, let’s look at the most recent source of Doom’s aura farming: One World Under Doom. Doom tricked Doctor Strange into making him Sorcerer Supreme, and he used his newfound power to take over the world and declare himself Emperor Doom. He beat back Dormammu on his own, took on all of the Avengers at once, and even finally beat the Fantastic Four. Doom was pure power and always one step ahead, and seemed genuinely unstoppable.

Of course, his secret source of power was revealed in Fantastic Four (2025) #2 and #3, which showed that Doom was only winning all of his fights because he was using magic to create save states in time, and whenever he lost a fight, he would reset everything to then, with only him keeping his memories. Doom literally got his butt kicked every time, and then he save-scummed and acted like he knew what he was doing the entire time.

Anyone can win with infinite tries! The best part about this is how Doom would apparently give the same brag to the Four every time because he simply could not help himself from gloating, and that they only figured out how to stop it because Doom outright told them what he was doing, which is something he literally just called Reed an idiot for doing right before that. The second they actually know what he’s doing, they figure out how to stop him and win on their first try. Something Doom definitely can’t say.

To put it simply, Doctor Doom is really cool, but he loves to pretend that he can never be embarrassed or lose. Whenever he does, he will legit play it cool and try to gaslight everyone into thinking that he never messed up at all, which is the perfect flaw for such a great character. Doom’s ego is his biggest draw, which works so well because, despite being so massive, it’s still so incredibly fragile. If Doom swallowed his pride even once and just didn’t go out of his way to make himself look cool, especially to versions of his enemies that literally won’t exist in ten seconds, then Doom would win. But he never will, and that refusal is part of what makes him such a stupid, amazing character.

The MCU’s use of Doom in Doomsday, and the decision to cast Robert Downey Jr feels like an inspired way to channel this side of Doom. Rather than making him an infallible megalomaniac, going the same way Thanos did and revealing his vulnerability is his hubris (like a dark inversion of Tony Stark’s own failings). It’ll be interesting to see how it plays out.

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