Victor Von Doom: Doctor Doom Appreciation 2019

[Iron Maiden]

what are our favorite MF DOOM tracks

Honestly, haven't checked him out. Sometimes I think Doom might be more of a Queen fan. As a pianist himself, he would probably get a kick out of Freddie Mercury.

But on another tangent, I am reminded of this article from Ta-NeHisi Coates column in the Atlantic from 2008... He Wears the Mask Just to Cover the Raw Flesh where he ties in Doom with hip-hop

[From The Shadows]

Honestly, haven't checked him out. Sometimes I think Doom might be more of a Queen fan himself. As a pianist himself, he would probably get a kick out of Freddie Mercury.

But on another tangent, I am reminded of this article from Ta-NeHisi Coates column in the Atlantic from 2008... He Wears the Mask Just to Cover the Raw Flesh where he ties in Doom with hip-hop

The current conversation reminds me...



Yes, Sue you should have know he'd be up for celebrating like Kool and the Gang.



"Like the philosopher Prince... Doom's gonna party like it's 1999!"

[Ravin' Ray]

Read Starlin's The Infinity War and it brought up one highly underused rivalry, Doom and Kang. To my knowledge this is only the second time they've been an event together, the first being the 80's Secret Wars, and in both cases Doom summarily dismissed his erstwhile "ally" with ease. I had to smirk at Kang's inner monologue, calling Doom a "primitive cretin" with "medieval manners", and Doom returned the favor calling him an "overbearing prig."

[Snoop Dogg]

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[SuperiorIronman]

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Considering how common retooled figures are I'm genuinely surprised it took this long to make considering the Fantastic Four purge didn't include Doctor Doom.

[Iron Maiden]

Well, well. We're getting an Infamous Iron Man figure after all. I'm also surprised it took this long. It's too bad that there was never a Doom 2099 figure.

[Kintor]

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Damn, where was this toy two years ago? Strong sales of some Infamous Iron Man merchandise might've helped keep the book in print.

Ah well, I want to buy it now anyway. Assuming of course that a couple of cases of the toy end up on Big Bad Toy Store or some other place that ships internationally.

Well, well. We're getting an Infamous Iron Man figure after all. I'm also surprised it took this long. It's too bad that there was never a Doom 2099 figure.

This is another unfortunate twist of fate. There were some X-Men 2099 figures in the 90s but no Doom 2099 toy. All the more galling since Doom 2099 was consistently among the best preforming of all the original 2099 books.

[Iron Maiden]

I think any X-Men figure was bound to be made in the 1990s since that was Marvel's Golden Goose at that time. But you're right about Doom 2099 being the other outstanding title of the 2099 line. I've seen custom creations of Doom 2099 but that's about it. He deserved to have some kind of merchandise. Which armor would you have preferred? I think I might have gone with the Presidential armor from One Nation Under Doom.

Read Starlin's The Infinity War and it brought up one highly underused rivalry, Doom and Kang. To my knowledge this is only the second time they've been an event together, the first being the 80's Secret Wars, and in both cases Doom summarily dismissed his erstwhile "ally" with ease. I had to smirk at Kang's inner monologue, calling Doom a "primitive cretin" with "medieval manners", and Doom returned the favor calling him an "overbearing prig."

We did see Kang, or I guess one version of Kang, in the Fraction/Allred "FF" but that whole series was pretty dismal IMO.

I like how Kurt Busiek addressed the long standing time paradox of Kang and Doom (introduced in Fantastic Four #23) in his maxi series Avengers Forever.

I've seen a family tree in an old issue of the Fantastic Four (I'll have to see if I can find it again) where it listed Kang and Kristoff as part of the Richards family tree through Nathaniel.

Here's some interesting panels of Kang musing about his alleged ancestors. Seems to Busiek also discounts the theory first proposed by Stan and Jack that Kang and Doom were the same man. But as we see here, he leaves the possibility open for either Nathaniel or Victor being Kang's ancestor.

[Kintor]

I think any X-Men figure was bound to be made in the 1990s since that was Marvel's Golden Goose at that time. But you're right about Doom 2099 being the other outstanding title of the 2099 line. I've seen custom creations of Doom 2099 but that's about it. He deserved to have some kind of merchandise. Which armor would you have preferred? I think I might have gone with the Presidential armor from One Nation Under Doom.

Hmm... that's a tough question. The red and black 'President Doom' armour is objectively the most unique and creative but I still have a soft spot for the original. That metallic 90s extreme twist on the classic Doom armour with the blue cloak just works so well.

[Iron Maiden]

Hmm... that's a tough question. The red and black 'President Doom' armour is objectively the most unique and creative but I still have a soft spot for the original. That metallic 90s extreme twist on the classic Doom armour with the blue cloak just works so well.

and it had those spikes

[SuperiorIronman]

I don't think it would've helped that much had this been released during the run.
Riri took over Invincible Iron man and while her half of the book became sales poison quickly, remember that Invincible Iron man was the one in the public eye, not Infamous Iron man. Ads had more to do with Invincible and Civil War 2 then it had anything to do with Victor's adventures. Riri also got to show up in a bunch of titles whereas if memory serves, Victor just got a team-up in the Avengers book at the time. People really don't care that much about satellite titles when it comes down to who is relevant. And that is to this day why I suspect Bendis had Riri take over Iron man, you can guarantee sales that way.

You also got to consider the climate that Riri showed up in which was a social/political minefield during the United States elections and extended well into Bendis leaving. You also had those idiots breaking toys and writing slur filled rants about Riri and not simply posting a review of the book. And when you combine that with the same people doing **** like that with stuff like TLJ well it just serves to make the rest of us look bad. Riri by proxy gets more attention than ever and her fans feel the need to defend the book and push it harder.

The irony is that by the time people really took to Infamous Iron man, well the Slott run went into production and as far as we know he's ditched it. Infamous Iron man is this weird gem in a bunch of crap at the time that only got successful late game and didn't have a book to come home to. Riri despite being objectively the worst between those titles got a multi-media push.

[Iron Maiden]

I don't think it would've helped that much had this been released during the run.
Riri took over Invincible Iron man and while her half of the book became sales poison quickly, remember that Invincible Iron man was the one in the public eye, not Infamous Iron man. Ads had more to do with Invincible and Civil War 2 then it had anything to do with Victor's adventures. Riri also got to show up in a bunch of titles whereas if memory serves, Victor just got a team-up in the Avengers book at the time. People really don't care that much about satellite titles when it comes down to who is relevant. And that is to this day why I suspect Bendis had Riri take over Iron man, you can guarantee sales that way.

You also got to consider the climate that Riri showed up in which was a social/political minefield during the United States elections and extended well into Bendis leaving. You also had those idiots breaking toys and writing slur filled rants about Riri and not simply posting a review of the book. And when you combine that with the same people doing **** like that with stuff like TLJ well it just serves to make the rest of us look bad. Riri by proxy gets more attention than ever and her fans feel the need to defend the book and push it harder.

The irony is that by the time people really took to Infamous Iron man, well the Slott run went into production and as far as we know he's ditched it. Infamous Iron man is this weird gem in a bunch of crap at the time that only got successful late game and didn't have a book to come home to. Riri despite being objectively the worst between those titles got a multi-media push.

IMO it's a shame that Marvel decided to give the return of the Fantastic Four precedent over keeping the Infamous Iron Man title going. With Bendis leaving Marvel, we wouldn't have seen Maleev on the title anymore which is a shame because judging by his Twitter activity, he really loves working on the character. I am at a bit of a loss as to who would be the best writer to to have taken it over. Maybe Ewing?

I know RiRi has a lot of baggage that comes with being a Bendis pet project. A lot of the resentment centered on her t could have been avoided had it not seemed like Stark was pushed out of his own title to give her debut a big push. That's bound to cause friction between fan bases. As a female reader who has several nieces who are now interested in superheroes via the movies, it's nice to see something that they can get interested in. I also got a kick out of some of the interaction with Infamous Doom, AI Tony and RiRi.

The sales on Infamous Iron Man were not spectacular but they leveled off at a certain point when one tracks them on Comichron. It appears to have had a loyal core audience that stayed with the book until the end. With each release, it tracked well on Comixology. Many times it was on the top ten for that week's releases. It ranked hight that other more well known characters solo titles like Batgirl, But we never get many exact figures on Comixology's digital sales.

I dug up some stats on some Marvel titles that launched at around the same time as Infamous Iron Man and "Infamous" measures up pretty well in the comparison;



Jessica Jones has a well received series on cable, and the Champions got a push on their launch along with the Doctor Strange Titles. The sales on these three fell off a cliff.

[MarvelMaster616]

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That looks incredible! Definitely one of my favorite designs for Doom.

[SuperiorIronman]

That's just the sad nature of the beast. A lack of marketing for it and either writer not wanting to or being unable to use Victor meant that people wouldn't know it was happening. Infamous Iron man was also victim of Civil War 2 with much of the lead-in in Invincible Iron man never being resolved just what exactly Doom and Stark spoke about. You also had Riri for whatever reason be in Civil War 2, and yet Victor would've been the one actually present which of course goes back to Riri being a Bendis pet project. Wasn't Victor at best on a variant cover?

I'll say this about Riri and Iron man friction though..., it's definitely still there. Not as bad as what it was, but there is definitely still some rumblings about Riri coming back and taking over again made worse that Iron man is monthly and on a delayed schedule. There's of course little credence to that, but given how the Bendis run went I'd imagine that left plenty of people raw.

[MichaelC]

I always liked the idea of Riri being Stark's Jubille/Robin. I was disappointed when she outright took over the book, but I still gave her a chance. Unfortunately, Bendis didn't write her very well, making her rather bland. Ewing, however, writes an excellent Riri, fixing all the problems I had with Bendis' run right there in the very first issue of Ironheart.