Doctor Doom #10 Final issue - "Bedford Falls" SPOILERS

[Iron Maiden]

I agree with you about Thanos Rising...read that one too. Was the part about what he did to his mother new or something that was always canon?

[Orbus]

It was the crack about his finger lasers that finally made Doom crack.

[Iron Maiden]

Repeating this from the Doctor Doom thread ....


I have just read a lengthy Doctor Doom series "exit interview" Cantwell just gave this morning at Adventures in Poor Taste and I feel more enlightened by what he was conveying with that ending. Whether you agree with Cantwell's thoughts or not you have to admit you have to appreciate that he did give us one of the most thought provoking takes on Doom out there.

I think this quote that occurs towards the end in a discussion about how Reed can be as petty as Doom is probably the most insightful....

AIPT: And while Doom has never been able to kill Reed, he has no problem destroying his more successful doppelganger and everything he helped build just for making our Victor confront hard truths about himself. At the end of the day, do you think Doom’s greatest enemy will always be himself?



CC: Yep. Always. And that’s how I justify this evil act in my head. Some readers were mad that Doom killed an entire universe, which included his kids. It included every nice person you’ve ever met in Marvel history. It included Aunt May. I mean think about it. He killed everyone. Morgan Le Fay. The West Coast Avengers. He killed Ms. Marvel. He killed Power Pack. He killed all the Watchers. Eternity. Thanos. He killed your dad. He killed bacterium in the water on Mars. F-----g everything.

Why?

Because in that split second moment, he saw it all as a reflection of himself. A reflection of himself that was admittedly being a little condescending (and thusly not perfect). A reflection of himself he worried he could never reach. A reflection of himself that in order to become he would have to invalidate who he was.

Was he thinking universal genocide? No.

He was shattering a mirror out of momentary rage.
Despite the scope of the crime, I only think it was murder in the second degree. It was a crime of passion. It just included an entire existence. Like… imagine Captain America biting into a subway sandwich and just being instantly nullified. No idea how it happened. The Thing going to the bathroom and there’s no toilet paper left. Blink. He killed Kang again. He killed Victorious, wherever she was.

But he wasn’t thinking about any of that in that moment. He was thinking only of himself.

And that is — now literally — his most fatal flaw.


AIPT: While you show plenty of signs of humanity within Doom throughout the series, your final statement on the character appears to be that there is no good in him — he is Death’s greatest servant (as she suggested he would be in Doctor Doom #3). Is this an accurate read, or are these final proclamations yet another mask Doom hides behind?

CC: That’s not my statement. That’s Doom’s statement. It’s funny how often people get that confused in comics. Doom says there’s no good in him. But we just read 10 issues where there seemed to be quite a lot in him. He’s feeling sorry for himself in this final page. He’s justifying what he just did. He might even be covering up some real guilt. And yeah, Death got him on a technicality, but I don’t think it’s a title he’ll privately be proud of, even if later he touts it as a threat or boast to his enemies down the road.

So yes. He’s totally retreated back behind his mask at the end. If anything, this doesn’t prove he’s eternally evil. It proves that he has a strong streak of cowardice he has yet to overcome or even acknowledge.



Me again... I have to admit I did not consider that last statement by Doom about himself this way and took it as the author saying that Doom had no good in him. I should have known better than to take it that way and explains a lot about Cantwell's interpretation of the character. You have to go back to the ending of Triumph and Torment. Doom's plan for redeeming his mother's soul worked because she had to believe that he was allied with Mephisto and betrayed Doctor Strange. He was willing to have her despise him in order to set her soul free.

[kilderkin]

The thing is that for all his arrogance (the sort that gets him mini-lobotomies), Reed has a bad habit of letting guilt/shame influence his thinking. And despite it being Ben’s fault and despite Doom’s hubris; Reed feels it’s his fault Doom started on his path, a path that still left him able to save Valeria when Reed couldn’t.

Even on his best days Doom is a functional Hollywood!sociopath (emphasis on the Hollywood)

I still feel he was in the right to act against someone taking his child (a minor still) without parental consent

Given the resources at his disposal I think the X leaders got off very lightly

I'd like a payback on that at some point

[Revolutionary_Jack]

The Cantwell interview is very interesting. His definition of genocide and rationalizing mass murder is strictly legalistic though and that kind of thinking isn't going to filter in an ongoing for very long.

[Iron Maiden]

I know the genocide part is going to be hard to get past but I think that comic book readers get a bit jaded after a while when they only happen to an alternate universe. Not that anyone these days even cares about the character but Clyde Wyncham AKA Marquis of Death, or Master of Doom (Millar never really settled on either alias ) was slaughtering universes left and right. The Illuminati wiped out a few themselves. Grant you, it didn't help Namor's reputation at times. I think the worst thing that happened to him was the conflict with Wakana and the bad blood between him and T'Challa.

[JudicatorPrime]

If a man is willing to destroy an entire universe, then genocide is the least of your worries. That's not to romanticize Doom as some kind of force of nature, or deify him as the embodiment of a rational state of being that we cannot ever hope to comprehend. On the contrary.

If the "Good" Mirror Universe is the Yin to the 616 universe, it makes you wonder if Doom's actions will trigger a much bigger crisis (or crises) in the time/space continuum that will ultimately threaten the 616 in the not so distant future.

[Iron Maiden]

I thought it was intriguing that Cantwell's story designates the MU as the broken, flawed universe compared to the other. Maybe there's a bit of hubris there because his lead character is the one that makes the difference in the more perfect universe.

In some ways it reminds me of the ending of St. Elsewhere where the TV show was the inner world of an autistic child looking at a snow globe.

[Old Owl]

Random question I was hoping Doom fans could answer for me.

What happened to Kristoff Vernard? I haven't seen any comics with him lately.

Thanks!

[Iron Maiden]

Random question I was hoping Doom fans could answer for me.

What happened to Kristoff Vernard? I haven't seen any comics with him lately.

Thanks!

Oh, Kristoff's around I'm glad to say We saw him a couple of times in the Doom series. Seems like Doom sort of disowned him at first and told him not to call him "father" anymore. Then he goes and names him the governor of newly annexed Symkaria. I hope we see more of that but with Cantwell not writing Doom anymore I guess it's up to Dan Slott to do anything with that development. But I'm not counting on it

BTW, Kristoff is a young man now!

[Old Owl]

Oh, Kristoff's around I'm glad to say We saw him a couple of times in the Doom series. Seems like Doom sort of disowned him at first and told him not to call him "father" anymore. Then he goes and names him the governor of newly annexed Symkaria. I hope we see more of that but with Cantwell not writing Doom anymore I guess it's up to Dan Slott to do anything with that development. But I'm not counting on it

BTW, Kristoff is a young man now!

Thanks!

Lol he doesn't look young anymore. He went from young to old REAL quick. I wonder why they did that?

[Iron Maiden]

Thanks!

Lol he doesn't look young anymore. He went from young to old REAL quick. I wonder why they did that?

The beard does make him look older but I would say he is in his 20s. He was treated as a young adult in Hickman's FF and new Avengers and that's going on 10 years ago now! Boy time does fly.

Kristoff's one of the few characters that we have seen grow up, or at least allowed to grow up. Franklin is finally getting there but IIRC he and Kristoff used to be pretty close in age.

[jackolover]

I guess the Antlion was intimately connected to Doom in some way. Extraordinary that something Tony Stark and Richards invented ended up being something that turned Victor back into a diabolical bastard again. Antlion was merely a vehicle to move Victor from his ultruism back into his archaic roots, a wholly unsatisfactory development from my standpoint, but a necessary development for Doom to slot back into the Marvel continuity.

I wonder what this does to the Richards/Doom dynamic? Richards had removed himself from continuity when ANAD started, and it looked like for Dooms benefit to try to reach that Alternate Utopian reality of Issue #10. Cantwell got Doom acquainted with the end result of where Dooms ANAD was heading, and Doom didn’t like it. I have to wonder if this series happened at all or whether it was just in Dooms imagination as some sick, heated, fantasy of adjusting his personality back to hating Richards. That’s what I’m going to see this series as.

[legion_quest]

The beard does make him look older but I would say he is in his 20s. He was treated as a young adult in Hickman's FF and new Avengers and that's going on 10 years ago now! Boy time does fly.

Kristoff's one of the few characters that we have seen grow up, or at least allowed to grow up. Franklin is finally getting there but IIRC he and Kristoff used to be pretty close in age.

Kristoff used to be the same age as Cassie Lang, as they did a sort of tween romance thing with them in the 90s. That should make Kristoff around 18-19 (as I think Cassie was recently aged up some)

[Iron Maiden]

Kristoff used to be the same age as Cassie Lang, as they did a sort of tween romance thing with them in the 90s. That should make Kristoff around 18-19 (as I think Cassie was recently aged up some)

You're right....but I have to think with that growth of beard that they are implying that Kristoff is a bit older then his teens. I'm sure if he appears again some day he'll look totally different. I have my doubts that he'll be in anything soon. Writers have a hard time figuring out what to do with him and he only makes brief appearances in the Doom series.

Scott and Cassie were also hanging around the FF's HQ at the time when both Reed and Victor were thought to have died in #381. With Kristoff it got a bit confusing because he was able to wear this special version of Doom armor that had what had to be some kind of stilts for his legs to make him as tall as an adult.