Victor Von Doom: Doctor Doom Appreciation 2019

[U.N. Owen]

A major missed opportunity with Iron Doom is how we got no Iron Doom vs. The Maker fight. We just got a lame climax with Mephisto.

[lordozone]

A major missed opportunity with Iron Doom is how we got no Iron Doom vs. The Maker fight. We just got a lame climax with Mephisto.

it seems that, once again, Bendis has changed his planned ending even if it doesn't make a lot of sense. He really has difficulties to finish his stories.

[SuperiorIronman]

I want to think Maker was involved in Avengers or Venom at the time (either way it was stupid why he couldn't use him) and basically had to settle for Mephisto.

[Iron Maiden]

He became Iron man largely due to what Bendis was doing over in Iron man at the time.

Riri Williams and Victor spent time as Iron man due to what was going to be a culmination of Bendis plotting at the time, though we don't really know what the end result was. Bendis jumped ship to DC and we got the haphazard ending of Invincible Iron man that I'm not convinced anyone was happy with. Sure he could end it there but he just wasn't done hence a couple of dropped plot points.
At any rate the two becoming Iron man (or more specifically Riri Williams being a cancerous growth on Iron man for a year+) was to be spinning out of Civil War 2 and getting hip with the kids as Bendis tried to emulate his success with Miles Morales through Iron man. Victor was supposed to have turned over a new leaf which meant Bendis could do almost whatever he wanted but found himself more and more embroiled in Riri Williams leading to garbage like Legacy. Victor was supposed to be the counterpoint to Riri. Someone who'd seen it all and hit the ultimate glass ceiling and made more than a few enemies along the way. He was the veteran to Riri's rookie.

It didn't really pan out.
Victor's book was fine and had some crossovers (even in some cases beating Riri) but being held in Bendis affairs and having Riri attached to projects instead leads to Infamous Iron man being underused and under-explored, which then leads us to Dan Slott.
He got on Fantastic Four and with a big name with a "return to form" (which is just code for internet memes and slurping the 70's) we get the one thing Victor was on that was starting to explore Victor's mindset to be abruptly canceled for whatever that dumbass plan with batteries was.

Infamous Iron man was a fine idea pretty much killed through an onslaught of misuse, bad writing and nobody otherwise knowing how to write the damn thing ironically outside of Bendis and two or three others. It was kind of like Penance all over again with writers not knowing a single thing about the mindset or character to try and make it work.

I totally agree with your take on Victor's status post SW. IMO it was Hickman's gift to the character, if you will. He had as close to a clean slate as you can get considering his rather long history and the sometimes contradictory takes on the character. I give major props to Bendis for taking Hickman up on his Secret Wars ending, certainly being more faithful to it that Slott has been. Slott seems to be trying to have it both ways. He started out promisingly with the introduction of Zora/Victorious. He had completely withdrawn from the world and she drew him back in again. Having had his face restored at the end of SW opened things up for him to a life he never thought possible and we saw this in the on again off again courtship of Amara. Sure, he took up the mantle of Iron Man but he really had very little resemblance to IM....with the dark colors and cape he still looked more like Doom than Iron Man. While some onlookers were seen calling him Iron Man, I don't think the public really bought into him as Iron Man either.

But then Slott has Doom immediately hating on the Fantastic Four right off the bat. Never mind that he had been with Ben and Johnny during those issues of MTIO and before that, he and Ben interacted quite a bit in Infamous Iron Man. But Slott just ignores that and no mention is made. Even more important, it ignores a conversation Ben and Reed had towards end of Zdarsky's MTIO where Ben tells Reed that he thought "their" Doom was really trying. But Ben seems to have gotten amnesia in Slott's run.



Now we have this plot between Doom and the Puppet Master that Slott is cooking up. I don't have any interest in this either. Prediction: the Puppet Master will turn on Doom, who has to be crazy to give him a couple of pounds of cosmically radiated clay.

As for the Maker vs Mephisto discussion, I would rather it have been the Maker also but I don't think it would have explained the Cynthia von Doom doppelganger. That does seem like something that is more in Mephisto's ballpark considering the supernatural nature of whatever "she" was. We were lead to believe in Triumph and Torment that she was on the path to having her soul ascend to a higher plane and achieving redemption. I kind of doubt the Maker would have enough knowledge to create such an entity. I could see Mephisto wanting to bedevil Ben too. He was not in a good place either and I thought it was not in character for him to threaten the staff at the Latverian Embassy after they repeatedly told them they didn't know anything about their former leader. And he was very brutish about destroying some items that were of value to the Latverian people, not just Doom. Maybe Mephisto was influencing his actions.

[Crimz]

DOCTOR DOOM Imagines a Better Future in New Ongoing from MARVEL

[Snoop Dogg]

larroca is honestly a turn-off, but is it CONFIRMED he's keeping the pimp fur and the belts? thank god

[Winterboy]

doom.jpg

[Snoop Dogg]

gaaaaaaaah no fur

LARROCAAAAAAAA!!!

[Reviresco]

DOCTOR DOOM Imagines a Better Future in New Ongoing from MARVEL

OMG! Such great news! I can finally put something on my pull list!

[Iron Maiden]

OMG! Such great news! I can finally put something on my pull list!

Me too! I like seeing Cantwell as the writer on this. I thought his Doom story in War Scrolls showed that he has a good grasp of the character

[ImperiusWrecked]

Congrats on Victor getting a solo!!! I'm very excited for this and I hope we can finally get some Kristoff in this comic, now would be a great time for Doom and Son reunion. I will be adding this to my list!

[Ravin' Ray]

larroca is honestly a turn-off, but is it CONFIRMED he's keeping the pimp fur and the belts? thank god

Larroca's Doom in Claremont's FF run was fabulous for me. Yeah, he changed his style since then, but I really loved it.

[Snoop Dogg]

Yeah, that run looked cool.

[Iron Maiden]

Of course, what do I know but these days it looked to me like LaRocca has been using a lot of digital tools as opposed to his Fantastic Four run. I agree with Ray that he did a great job on that. I also like the work he did on the Stan Lee Meets Doctor Doom issue. The preview page reminds me of his work in that comic

[Iron Maiden]

They already have a cover for issue #2 and this artist does use the fur. Can't tell right off who the artist is. Issue #1 comes out in October