The Avengers Just Teamed Up With Doom (But Is It a Set Up?)

One World Under Doom gives readers Doom at his best. Doctor Doom was able to get the power of the Sorcerer Supreme at the end of Blood Hunt, and has seemingly used the power to take over the world. Doom is the emperor of the Earth, and this has drawn the Avengers and Fantastic Four into battle against him. In the first two issues of One World Under Doom, Doom has constantly outsmarted the Fantastic Four and Avengers, making them look like fools on the world stage. This has forced the Avengers to team up with the Masters of Evil, leading the two sides to attack Doom with a two-pronged assault in One World Under Doom #3. The combined hero and villain force draw Doom out, while Scarlet Witch, Baron Mordo, and Madelyne Pryor work together to figure out how Doom used his magic to get the world leaders on his side.

Doom continues his streak of flawless victories against the heroes, but the plan partly works; the magic team is able to figure out what Doom did — he used magic to negotiate with everyone at once, giving them their heart’s desire. Doom didn’t cheat at all, just played the game of international relations better than anyone else. However, as the fight winds down, Doom and the Avengers learn that they need to set aside their enmity because of a breakout at the Raft. This isn’t the first time this happened, but it comes at a very strange time.

The Raft Has Been Fraught with Breakouts

The Raft isn’t the first supervillain prison in the Marvel Universe. The first was the Vault, a facility that was located in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. This being comics, villains broke out of it all time (if you can find Venom: Deathtrap: The Vault, check it out). It was closed and reopened, but would fall out of prominence when it came to supervillain prisons, replaced by the Raft. The Raft was located near New York’s Ryker’s Island, and it makes a lot of sense to have a supervillain prison there, as New York City has proven to be catnip for Marvel’s villains. However, almost immediately after it was introduced in 2003’s Alias #26, it had its first breakout, when Veranke and her Skull infiltrators hired Electro to attack the Raft. This brought together the New Avengers after Scarlet Witch’s rampage in “Avengers Disassembled”, and the Raft became the foremost supervillain prison.

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While it’s only been in operation for a short time, nearly every major villain has been imprisoned there. Even Doctor Doom, who usually never sees jail time because of diplomatic immunity, spent some time there after detonating his symbiote bomb on New York City. Any supervillain prison is going to have problems keeping inmates inside, but the Raft has proven especially bad for this. So, it’s not a huge surprise that there was another breakout; the surprise comes from the timing. Doom’s victories over the FF and Avengers lately have all involved something like this — a distraction that stops the fight between Doom and the heroes. For this to happen yet again is very suspicious. It’s easy to imagine that Doom is involved in it somehow, perhaps using the Eye of Agamotto to read the future, setting up ways of beating the Avengers without beating them. He wants to make them look like fools, and it’s succeeding. However, Doom is going to need the heroes help very soon.

The Return of a Doctor Strange Villain Is Going to Test Everyone

The breakout at the Raft is almost certainly Doom’s doing. Sure, weird things happen at time, and coincidences are a thing, but this one is a little too much. It stopped the fight between Doom and the Avengers, allowing him to go off and deliver a mysterious message. It also allowed Doom a PR victory, as the news reports used the fact that the Avengers had attacked Doom instead of watching the Raft to make them look bad. One World Under Doom #3 shows the heroes on the backfoot again, but the end of the issue reveals that it’s out of the frying pan and into the fire for not just the heroes, but also Doom.

The Sorcerer Supreme has many jobs, and one of them is to watch the Dark Dimension and make sure that Dormammu is under wraps. Doom apparently doesn’t know about this part of the job, and Dormammu decides that now is the perfect time to attack the Earth. This going to bring a big change to One World Under Doom; Doom is going to have face against an enemy of godlike power, one that he can’t trick or outsmart. Doom is going to have to actually team-up with the heroes. However, even this could be a trick. There’s no way that Doom doesn’t know about Dormammu, so this could easily be yet another way to paint the heroes as enemies, blaming them for Dormammu’s invasion. The Raft was almost certainly a trick, so why wouldn’t this be as well?

One World Under Doom #3 is on sale now.