Doctor Doom

Victor von Doom, known as Doctor Doom, is a villain primarily opposing the Fantastic Four.

Biography

Origin

As a boy, Victor von Doom was part of a traveling tribe of gypsies in the European nation of Latveria, the son of Werner von Doom and a sorceress mother who died when he was very young. He was raised not knowing his lineage, and of the power he would one day wield. One day, Werner was taken by a local baron, who demanded that he use his "gypsy healing" to cure his dying wife. Werner knew there was no hope, but he did his best to save her. The baron released him, threatening him with his life should his wife die. Knowing she would not survive, Werner fled with Victor. They lost their horse and were trapped in the wilderness, where they nearly died from the cold. Werner's friend Boris took them back to the camp, but Werner soon perished. Victor grew spiteful toward the wealthy nobility for having returned his father's kindness with contempt. He discovered his mother's magical and scientific paraphernalia, and as he grew older he embraced this part of his background. As a teenager, Victor traveled the countryside with Boris, selling supposedly magical items at great prices only to have them fail after he was safely away. He became an infamous rogue, pulling the wool over the eyes of the rich and spreading his wealth to his people.

As a young man, Victor was approached by a recruiter from State University, who offered him a science scholarship. Doom accepted, and promised Boris that he would return to reward him for his loyalty. Victor was antisocial and abrasive upon arriving at the school, interested strictly in using the campus facilities to carry out ambitious scientific experiments. Another new student named Reed Richards offered to room with him, but Doom callously brushed him off. He began experimenting with ways to connect with the afterlife, hoping to contact his mother. Richards attempted to pay him a visit one day and examined his findings, warning him that he had a few things slightly wrong that could have disastrous consequences. Doom arrogantly told him off and carried on with his experiment, which literally blew up in his face, scarring him horribly. He was expelled, and traveled to Tibet to study ancient magical methods. Over the course of several months, Doom attained dominion over a caste of monks, and forged what would come to be his signature metallic garb, declaring himself Doctor Doom. He also outfitted himself with a camouflaged ring that acted as the only method of removing his mask so as to keep anyone from ever seeing his scarred face. Doom returned home and, over time, used his incredible might and brilliance to become the ruler of Latveria. He ruled in a way that was firm and intolerant of opposition, but fair to those who followed his lead, and he was greatly admired among his people.

1962-1964

Doom soon turned his attention to his former schoolmate and the rest of the Fantastic Four. He took Invisible Girl hostage and coerced the other three into traveling back in time to bring him Blackbeard's treasure; which, unbeknownst to them, once belonged to Merlin, who had imbued it with the power of invincibility. When the three returned, they had in fact brought him a chest filled with metal chains. Doom attempted to cut off the three's oxygen supply, but Invisible Girl managed to escape his clutches and free them. Doom then fled by jetpack before any potential conflict could take place. Perhaps realizing the threat the Fantastic Four posed to him alone, Doom then enlisted the assistance of Namor the Sub-Mariner, who had recently made an enemy of the heroes. He betrayed Namor however, using a small magnetic device called a "grabber" to pull the Fantastic Four's headquarters building into space with them and Namor inside. Doom intended to hurl all of them into the sun, but Namor was able to thwart his plan and send Doom himself hurtling into empty space.

Doom was found by a passing ship piloted by Ovoids, an extremely-advanced race capable of transfering minds between bodies. A peaceful and trusting people, the Ovoids bestowed upon Doom this ability and returned him to Earth. Doom naturally plotted revenge against the Fantastic Four, and his plan began at the offices of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. He used the two to bait Mr. Fantastic to their offices, and ambushed Fantastic with sleeping gas, taking him hostage. Doom brought Fantastic back to his laboratory, telling Lee and Kirby the address and to send the remaining heroes there. Using the skill he'd learned from the Ovoids, Doom traded minds with Mr. Fantastic. Richards' teammates soon arrived, and began attacking him in Doctor Doom's body. He was unable to convince them what had happened, and Doom-as-Richards imprisoned Richards-as-Doom in a plexiglass dome in the lab's basement, omitting from the other heroes that there was only enough oxygen in the dome to last an hour. Returning to the Baxter Building, Doom showed the three his reducer ray invention, which he claimed could enhance their powers by shrinking and re-growing their bodies. Of course, Doom's plan instead was to simply continue shrinking the three of them until they disappeared into nothingness. Relishing his pending victory, Doom told the team to return in a few hours. When they returned however, they came with Richards-as-Doom, who had escaped Doom's lab. The team was unsure of what to do, as Richards-as-Doom had repeatedly maintained that he was trapped inside Doom's body. Doom-as-Richards quickly restrained his foe and told the others to get in front of the ray, but Richards-as-Doom besought them not to do it. Observing his selflessness, the others were convinced of the supposed mind-switch, and turned on Doom-as-Richards. In his panic, Doom lost mental control, causing his and Richards' minds to return to their original states. In the ensuing battle, Doom inadvertently activated the reducer ray on himself, causing himself to seemingly shrink into nothingness.

But in fact, by shrinking to such a small size, Doom had been transported to a world in another dimension, which he came to call the Micro-World. He was disgusted by the peaceful, utopian nature of the world, and used his scientific expertise to cozy up to the king and Princess Pearla, only to use a shrink ray to get them under his control and usurp power. Doom also used his shrink ray to toy with the Fantastic Four back on Earth, though this proved to be his undoing. With help from Ant-Man, the Four entered the Micro-World, though they were soon captured and imprisoned along with Pearla and the king. Doom planned to marry Pearla against her will and hand off the Four to the Lizard Men of Tok as slaves to assure their allegiance with him. Ant-Man soon also arrived at the Micro-World, but was similarly captured. As Doom prepared to receive the Lizard Men, the Four escaped their prison, freed Ant-Man, and deflected the visitors from Tok. Doom was able to escape, using an enlarging ray to return to Earth proper.

Doom retreated and established a large, labyrinthine dirigible—how long he'd had this airship by this point is unclear—and donned a disguise on the ground as a kindly janitor, looking to fool his heroic nemeses. He approached the Four in a mall while they were out on the town, shaking their hands and subtly planting a set of trackers on the backs of their hands. These trackers were used to lead a series of ethereal robots, who followed the heroes and analyzed their molecular structures; Doom used this information to align the disintegrator rays on his ship to prevent the Four from boarding. Further, he kidnapped the Thing's girlfriend Alicia and threatened the Four from afar to stay away. Believing himself to be in an unstoppable position of power, Doom attempted to ransom the United States government into giving him a major cabinet position, but was ignored. In turn, he electronically sabotaged a series of critical systems across America, which forced the Four into action. Mr. Fantastic was able to figure out a way through Doom's defense systems, and the Four maneuvered their way through his ship's various traps to rescue Alicia. Doom himself again had to flee, this time jumping from the ship to safety.

Doom survived the fall thanks to a "jet-powered flying belt," retreating to a new base to contemplate his next move. He soon learned of journalist J. Jonah Jameson's reporting, in which Jameson speculated as to the motives of the young hero Spider-Man, outright calling him a menace to the city. Doom constructed a device to contact Spider-Man by targeting his spider DNA—similar to Ant-Man's ant-communication techniques. Spider-Man responded to the signal and arrived at Doom's hideout, but flatly refused Doom's offer of an alliance. The two briefly fought, but Spider-Man escaped. Doom further constructed a device to track Spider-Man through his unique arachnid genetic code, and tracked him down to a city block. In a bizarre set of circumstances, high-school student Flash Thompson was in disguise as Spider-Man in an attempt to scare his classmate Peter Parker, Spider-Man's secret identity. Due to their proximity to each other, Doom interpreted Thompson as being Spider-Man, and gassed and abducted him. Taking Thompson to his hideout in an abandoned factory, Doom hijacked the television airwaves and attempted to blackmail the Fantastic Four into surrendering to him. Much to his confusion, Doom was soon confronted by the real Spider-Man. The two did battle until the Four also arrived, and this was enough to force Doom to retreat once again.

Several months later, Doom returned his attention to the Fantastic Four, recruiting a trio of criminals—Yogi Dakor, Bull Brogin, and "Handsome" Harry Phillips—to even the odds. Each of these men were tasked with abducting a member of the Fantastic Four, while Doom handled Mr. Fantastic. The Four were successfully brought into Doom's dungeon, and Doom sent his new henchmen to another dimension until he could use them again. His foes restrained, Doom attempted to use the arrival of a "solar wave" to his advantage. The wave began to attract the ionic dust particles in the room, sucking the room (and only that room) into space. Invisible Girl sent a forcefield through the wall that locked Doom to the wall on the other side, ensuring that he would be taken intos pace with them. Doom panickedly came back in, but Thing threw him into space and the Four barely escaped from the room. As Doom went floating through space, his hold on Dakor, Brogin, and Phillips was released, and they returned to Earth.

As Doom hurtled through space all the way to the orbit of Jupiter, he was picked up by a passing spaceship. The pilot of the ship was a strange pharaoh-looking man called Rama-Tut. He learned that Rama-Tut was a time traveler from the distant future, and supposedly his descendant, with his own grudge against the Fantastic Four. Doom proposed that he and Rama-Tut might actually be the same person, estranged by the complexities of time travel. They agreed to go their separate ways, with Rama-Tut returning to his own time and sending Doom back down to Earth. As his capsule landed off the coast of New York, Doom parachuted into the city. He devised a plan to defeat the Fantastic Four for good, and relayed these plans to the ambassador at the Latverian embassy. The ambassador invited the Four to a nice dinner at the embassy, where they were served what was presented as a beloved Latverian berry juice. In truth, the juice was a concoction that, when drunk, allowed the most intelligent drinker present to produce illusions to the other drinkers. Hidden away elsewhere in the embassy, Doom produced such illusions to three members of the Fantastic Four, causing them to distrust and fight each other, but Reed Richards didn't drink any of the juice. His confidence growing, Doom decided to try looking at his unmasked face for the first time in years, but reacted in a violently negative fashion, shooting the mirror with his ray gun. The blast caught the attention of the Four, who banded together once Richards figured out what was happening. They found Doom, who escaped and waited at their headquarters in the Baxter Building for their return. Upon their arrival, a full-fledged battle ensued. In the end, Richards convinced Doom to face him man-to-man, given that the true grudge was between them. Doom agreed, and Richards offered him a toast: unbeknownst to Doom, it was the same juice from the embassy. The two drank together, and Mr. Fantastic gave Doom the impression that they dueled with an "encephalo-gun," a device that measured their respective brainwaves and would banish the weaker participant to "a timeless limbo." In the illusion, Doom was victorious, and departed the Baxter Building in victory.

1965

Doom remained under Richards's spell for several months, returning to Latveria fully under the impression that he had defeated the Fantastic Four. It was only by the chance performance of a hypnotist in his castle that the hypnosis was lifted, and Doom realized that he'd been played for a fool. He traveled to New York and infiltrated the Baxter Building, which was fortuitously vacant following the heroes' recent defeat at the hands of the Frightful Four. Doom located the Fantastic Four in a nearby warehouse and began assaulting them with the myriad weapons at his disposal in the Baxter. By chance, the Four were accompanied by the hero Daredevil, but Doom soon realized that they were fleeing his attack rather than responding in kind: he deduced correctly that they had somehow lost their powers. The five heroes cautiously made their way to the Baxter Building, led by Daredevil. The acrobatic Daredevil confronted Doom head-on on the 35th floor, keeping him from employing the building's many defensive measures and allowing the Four to make it up safely. In the end, Mr. Fantastic got hold of a stimulator ray that allowed the team to regain their powers, and the Thing singlehandedly dismantled Doom's powerful suit, leaving him to retreat in shame. The day of the wedding of Reed Richards and Sue Storm approached, and Doctor Doom devised a plan to ruin their special day. He used an "emotion machine" to psychically contact and tacitly encourage a great number of assorted villains from around the world to arrive at the wedding and attack. A virtually countless number of malicious villains attacked the Baxter Building, but a similarly formidable array of heroes were on hand to fight them off. Doom himself remained in Latveria, watching the events from afar. In the end, Richards used a device provided by Uatu to transport all of the villains back slightly in time and wipe their memories of these events. Reed and Sue Storm were thus successfully and peacefully married.

Doom naturally remained vengeful toward the Fantastic Four, but he then decided to take a more oblique route to defeating them. In order to "fill [the Four's] hearts with fear," he would instead defeat the Avengers first. The Avengers at this point consisted of Captain America, Hawkeye, and the Maximoff twins, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch. The Maximoffs were mutants who grew up orphans, and Doom decided to take advantage of that fact. He sent them a letter claiming to be from their long-lost aunt, inviting them to come visit. The Avengers took the bait, and all four arrived in Latveria. Doom had them arrested on sight, but they quickly figured out what was happening and escaped their cell. Doom figured that they would, and he activated an enormous, virtually impenetrable plastithene dome over Latveria, preventing passage in or out. The citizens of Latveria, generally reverent toward Doom, were unsure about this decision, and some of them desperately needed to get across the border for medical treatment. Doom naturally disregarded their needs. The Avengers confronted Doom in his castle and soon defeated him, destroying the panel that controlled the dome and incapacitating him long enough to make good their escape.