Is Doctor Doom the most versatile supervillain in terms of story potential?

[Iron Maiden]

"(When is Doctor Doom #7 going to be released?!!?)"

At this point, possibly 2099.

Okay, I have to laugh

But now I'm getting worried

[K7P5V]

Right, and there are great stories with Doom even after that, like Books of Doom in the 00s, and in the 2010s you have Hickman's run and now Cantwell.

And don't forget Chuck Dixon's Doom & The Emperor Returns, along with Doom's appearance in Brubaker's Winter Soldier

[Michael Watkins]

Dude, I don't say this a lot, but you're just flat wrong.

Dr. Doom having "failed so miserably as movie villain" has nothing to do with a flaw in the character. The Fox FF movies were s*** cinema and took all the characters - including Doom (and maybe excepting The Thing) - down with them.

Your argument is basically that a golf club sucks because a golfer is incompetent.

Multiple golfers. I think the club is broken.

[Michael Watkins]

Not many good stories or moments between Ultron and Dr. Strange, Ultron and Spider-Man.



Ditto for Spider-Man.



Ditto for Spider-Man, Dr. Strange, X-Men.



Not for Dr. Strange and X-Men.



There's just a handful of good stories with Mephisto (the Silver Surfer ones, Triumph and Torment, Infinity Gauntlet as Thanos' court jester). Aside from that he's an annoying obnoxious character.



Norman hasn't been a Marvel-wide villain for years now, and even when he was, I don't know if many of the stories he was involved in was the best Avengers stories.



Doom's best stories came in the 80s: Secret Wars '84, Triumph and Torment, Interlude, Emperor Doom, the Iron Man time-travel stories.



That applies to Doom and the Fantastic Four too no? Like the special effects weren't quite advanced in the Tim Story FF movies. And the failed 2015 movie was an issue of poor aesthetic choices made by the director who wanted to do a totally idiosyncratic approach to the character and settings.



The fact is it was based on the same reasoning as Doom not working in live-action simply because everything before had failed. I am not saying that the reasoning isn't valid at all but it is if it's not qualified or considered in context. Fact is virtually everything and every character was dismissed because "it didn't work before". That's not a valid reason.



The problem is also miscasting, misunderstanding, lack of sense of tone. Trying to make Reed and Sue into a cliche couple with drama and problems. Mashing together Doom's origins on top of FF's, making Galactus a sentient Gas Cloud. Making Reed into a nerdy kid rather than a type A Feynman-esque Scientist which is what he is in the comics. There are a host of problems in those movies. And even then I'd hardly call "a lame threat" in those movies as a problem. Considered as plot it's not lame at all. I did like Larry Fishburne's vocal performance as Silver Surfer for what it's worth. And Mike Chiklis as Ben Grimm. There's also problems of casting. If you want to do Doctor Doom as a major villain and do the Reed Richards rivalry justice, you can't cast Ioan Gruffudd and Julian McMahon, the former a low-key British actor whose biggest claim until then was the male lead in the 101 Dalmations sequel, and the other a TV star. You want to know why Batman and Joker worked in the movies because they cast big name actors to play those parts. If you beleive Joker is a great villain, that belief needs to be reflected in who is cast in that role and Joker has Nicholson, Ledger, Phoenix (and Leto who for what it's worth did win an Oscar and while miscast in the part is on paper a talented actor). You need big name actors to do Reed and Doom justice in live-action.

Admittedly, there are problems with doing Doctor Doom in live action that don't exist with Magneto, Loki and even Thanos. Namely that this is a character who spends most of his time behind an iron mask. That's hard to sell and pitch to a big actor. And it's not like Darth Vader because you are supposed to see and recognize Doom's human and expressive eyes at all times. Magneto, Loki and Thanos (via CGI motion-cap) have faces to express emotion and so on. Whereas Doom needs an actor with a strong body language, sense of gesture, ability to move with costume, and vocal performance...you need a Boris Karloff type. The nearest equivalent would be Edward Norton as the Leper King Baldwin in Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Jerusalem:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbIL6nHjG78

I didn’t agree with any of that. doom just isn’t as versatile as those villains I listed. And he has never entertained me outside of getting his *ss beat by Ant-man.