First footage from Avengers: Doomsday, seen at Disney’s CinemaCon panel, confirms that Doctor Doom is infinitely more powerful than Thor. According to the God of Thunder, Doom is the most dangerous threat he has ever faced. Doomsday‘s first footage proved the point with a stunning shot of the villain catching Stormbreaker between two fingers. It’s a smart scene, effectively contrasting Doom with Thanos; Stormbreaker was created in part to kill the Mad Titan, after all.
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But how powerful is Doctor Doom, and how is he able to accomplish such a feat? Looking to the comics, there have only been a handful of occasions where Doom went head-to-head against Thor. That’s largely because Doom is a shrewd tactician, and he knows he’s outmatched by Asgardians. As he once observed, superhumans have powers, but Asgardians are power personified. So how is he accomplishing this feat in the MCU?
How Doctor Doom’s Powers Compare to Thor & the Asgardians
At first glance, a battle between Thor and Doctor Doom seems desperately mismatched. For all his genius, Doom is an ordinary human. According to the recently-published Marvel Anatomy, the Aesir of Asgard are nearly three times stronger and more durable than any human being. “Their cells seem to possess an increased capacity for processing higher forms of energy, gifting a number of them with powers such as energy projection and elemental manipulation,” the book notes. Thor is essentially a god among gods, not least when he wields his enchanted hammer Mjolnir.
But this comparison is a basic one, focused only on innate power. Doom may not possess superhuman abilities, but he is actually one of the most powerful beings on the entire planet. He is a skilled practitioner of dark magic, challenging Doctor Strange for the title “Sorcerer Supreme” on occasion and recently claiming it after Strange was forced to surrender the role. Doom has learned magic from some of the greatest sorcerers of history, traveling through time to learn secrets of the Darkhold, In the Darkhold event, he came close to absorbing an Elder God’s mystic power into himself.
Doom is far more than a mere sorcerer, though. He’s also a scientific genius, arguably matched only by Reed Richards. This has allowed Doom to invent advanced technology that can threaten even Thor (almost crippling him with a surprise shot). He seems particularly skilled when it comes to understanding how to channel flows of power, successfully stealing Asgardian life-forces on one occasion, and is a master of robotics who has even controlled Odin’s Destroyer armor. In truth, Doctor Doom is easily one of Marvel’s most powerful supervillains.
How Could Doctor Doom Possibly Take On Thor?
Thor and Doctor Doom have only clashed one-on-one a handful of times, and the fight has typically been uneven. Thor #182-183, for example, saw the Odinson sneak into Latveria in the guide of Donald Blake; he was dependent on physical contact with Mjolnir at the time, which Doom then used against him by trapping the hammer behind a force-field. When the two clashed again, in Thor #600-606, the final battle came after Doom had quite a bit of time to plan and prepare – not to mention steal Asgardian energy.
That power theft is a typically Doctor Doom trick. Over the decades, he’s successfully stolen power from anyone he considers superior to himself, ranging from the Beyonder to the Silver Surfer. He’s made attempts on others, too, including the Elder God Chthon; he’d have been successful there if not for the Scarlet Witch’s intervention. At one point, during the 2015 Secret Wars event, Doom tore Thanos apart after acquiring the power to become a god infinitely beyond Thor Odinson. The MCU’s interpretation of Doom is clearly informed by that arc, so we’re dealing with Doom at his greatest power-level.
This isn’t just a fight between Thor and Doctor Doom, then. It’s actually a fight between the Odinson and Doom at his most powerful, when he literally possessed the raw power to manipulate entire worlds at will. Given that’s the case, it’s no surprise even Stormbreaker is no threat to the MCU’s Doctor Doom. It wouldn’t even be a surprise to learn he immediately discarded the weapon after taking all its power as his own, proving to Thor that he really is the most dangerous villain in the entire MCU.
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