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  1. #31
    New old guy Surf's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Revolutionary_Jack View Post
    -- In a modern tragedy, Willy Loman of Death of a Salesman is a tragic figure but he's also a self-centered POS of a Dad who cheats on his wife and fills his kids with terrible unrealistic expectations and ideas.

    If you look at movies, Al Pacino's Michael Corleone is maybe the most famous Tragic Hero of American Cinema but he's also a mob boss who murders a ton of people and kills his own brother, and yet people sympathize with him, right?

    Doctor Doom has fundamentally more sympathetic origins than many of these characters.
    Sympathize, is the term here, I don't think is totally applicable in every situation, I think. I agree that Victor Doom lacks an element, well clinically I guess he's tragic figure BASED on his background but that's if we attribute that everyone knows that backstory with the Gypsies. But he's also rich, runs a country, is genius level smart and also a total lunatic. That's not traits, in totality I sympathize with. I feel if Doom were actualized, and not a cartoon character, one would feel pretty appropriately uncomfortable to be around him.

    Donald Trump is a Supervillain, or at least as close as we're going to get on a descriptive real life level. Maybe his father kicked the **** out of him but he still didn't have to become an ******* and lie and cheat and steal professionally. For a real world comparison that is. And if Doom was a fool.

    Corleone I don't think people, well some do but 'sympathize' with is different and not something I think is the pull. People don't often associate 'bad guys' with a snag in picking up their dry cleaning. Does anyone really sympathize with another character of Pacino's in Tony Montana? What about Tony Soprano? Somewhere between fascination and morbid curiosity is where I'd put the interest in characters like those. Up to and including most Supervillains. Along those same lines is Joker and Two-Face. Don't forget cool goes a long way too, Doom is cool Two-Face is cool. Clinical definitions can often be different than the social connotations of those same definitions. The social definitions often do consider their roots.

    Willy Loman didn't kill anybody, been a long time since I saw a Salesman performance but I don't know if I sympathize with him either. So it IS nebulus but at the same time, irresponsible behaviors post the tragic origin isn't necessarily a per-requisite for feeling a certain way for a character.

    Madelyne Pryor is way more tragic to me than Doom or Joker. Maybe a separation of ones beginning of life and the beginnings of ones supervillainy is the sticker here.
    Last edited by Surf; 05-13-2021 at 10:06 AM.
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  2. #32
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    The one concern I have with the literary definition is that the idea of the tragic flaw can conceivably be applied to every villain. Hubris, greed, maybe even traits like sadism or tendency to monologue nonstop. It's often what leads to their defeat. In the Greek and Shakespearean sense I also find it hard to rank tragic characters since these tragedies pretty much always end the same way, with the hero's death. They have a flaw and die because of it. Is Doom's hubris any more tragic than the Shocker's when both lead to the same results?

  3. #33
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    Quote Originally Posted by ERON View Post
    I don't take issue with you using the literary definition; I take issue with you chastising other posters for not using the literary definition.
    I never chastised other posters for not using the literary definition. They were the ones who complained about Doom being tragic, and got in a snit about it because they think Doom doesn't qualify because more or less they don't like him as a person, and so on. At which point, I have a right to ask what they think tragedy is about? Or you know if they read the OP (which is about "most tragic supervillain" not most likable supervillain, or villain with the best sob story)?

    Quote Originally Posted by Surf View Post
    [font=georgia]Sympathize, is the term here, I don't think is totally applicable in every situation, I think. I agree that Victor Doom lacks an element, well clinically I guess he's tragic figure BASED on his background but that's if we attribute that everyone knows that backstory with the Gypsies. But he's also rich, runs a country, is genius level smart and also a total lunatic.
    Doom's not a lunatic. He's a rational man, in the same way Napoleon was a rational man but also a dictator and despot and conqueror. Or Caesar. And people do consider Napoleon and Caesar to be tragic figures. Like those two, Doom believes that only he and he alone can decide and rule over everyone.

    I feel if Doom were actualized, and not a cartoon character, one would feel pretty appropriately uncomfortable to be around him.
    That's true of practically any literary character. Even ones we think of as heroes. Like take Odysseus, the hero of the Odysseus, one critic wrote, "Odysseus is a dangerous man to be around. You may well drown, but he will reach land." Batman would be a terrifying and completely dislikable figure were he to exist in our reality. In a fictional city like Gotham with supervillains and other fictional characters to move against, he's tolerable up to a point, but in the real world, questions like...would Batman fight against the Capitol rioters or join them, or would Batman fight against the companies destroying the planet, or would he go and shakedown Putin or Xi would be the questions he'd take a stand on, were he even remotely heroic.

    Quote Originally Posted by sunofdarkchild View Post
    The one concern I have with the literary definition is that the idea of the tragic flaw can conceivably be applied to every villain.
    That's why I said Iago, Luthor, Palpatine, Voldemort don't qualify. A tragic villain (and by the way that's what the OP is, not characters who are tragic in general) is someone who has relatable origins and passions, has a strong individual personality, a capacity for good compromised by personal flaws as well as social conditions and so on.

    Is Doom's hubris any more tragic than the Shocker's when both lead to the same results?
    Shocker does crimes to rob banks and get a score. Doom's actions include stuff like mastering time and space, becoming a God, marching to Hell and freeing his mother's soul, taking Latveria from a broken racist monarchy to a dictatorship that's technologically powerful, economically self-sufficient, and provides equality before the law for all subjects. Doctor Doom is fundamentally driven by ideals and he's a man of achievement. Latveria was never a democracy and the previous governments were corrupt backwater monarchies and Doom definitely built a government far better than the one he overthrew even if it's a dictatorship and tyranny.

  4. #34
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    By the way, some words from Doctor Doom's creator:

    "I had a hand in creating Doctor Doom...Doom is a very tragic figure... I like Doom. Doom has got a lot of class, he's got a lot of cool. But Doom has one fallacy: he thinks he's ugly. He's afraid to take that mask off. Doom is an extremist; he's a paranoid. He thinks in extremes... if Doom had an enemy, he'd have to wipe him out. And if Doom thought that anybody was smarter than himself, he'd kill 'em, because Doom would have to be the smartest man in the world."
    — Jack Kirby, Kirby & Lee: Stuf’ Said!: The complex genesis of the Marvel Universe, in its creators’ own words, by John Morrow.

  5. #35
    New old guy Surf's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Revolutionary_Jack View Post


    Doom's not a lunatic. He's a rational man, in the same way Napoleon was a rational man but also a dictator and despot and conqueror. Or Caesar. And people do consider Napoleon and Caesar to be tragic figures. Like those two, Doom believes that only he and he alone can decide and rule over everyone.
    Isn't that even in the Zip code of lunacy though? Totally being obsessed with Reed being over him, never besting Reed, not being satisfied with his own accomplishments whatsoever, finding no consolation in no one. I'm talking in Kirby Krackle point of view here, even considering, that's all pretty looney to me.
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  6. #36
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    Quote Originally Posted by Surf View Post
    Isn't that even in the Zip code of lunacy though?
    The mentality of excessive self-belief is common to strong individuals, and historically a number of scientists, artists, and others are strong individuals with deep convictions and confidence that they had the ability to make a better world.

    That by itself isn't enough to qualify as a lunatic.**

    Totally being obsessed with Reed being over him, never besting Reed,
    Doom has bested Reed a few times, it's just never enough for him. He delivered Reed's daughter when he wasn't around and every time Reed looks at little Valeria he has to reconcile for the fact that but for Doom she wouldn't have been born.


    ** It must also be pointed out that words like "lunatic" used interchangably with people we refer to as evil or grandiose, perpetuates stereotypes about the mentally ill that are distasteful and questionable. I don't think that was your intention, I am sure it wasn't, but it's important we be specific about what words mean. I don't think Doom is clinically insane or was ever written as such.

  7. #37
    Better than YOU! Alan2099's Avatar
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    Doom has bested Reed on several occasions. However it's just so burned into his character that it's not enough.

    It's much like his multiple attempts at ruling the world. It's not enough to rule, he feels the need to have everyone accept that he should rule. He wants to be acknowledged.

  8. #38
    New old guy Surf's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Revolutionary_Jack View Post

    Doom has bested Reed a few times, it's just never enough for him. He delivered Reed's daughter when he wasn't around and every time Reed looks at little Valeria he has to reconcile for the fact that but for Doom she wouldn't have been born.
    Titans have won games at times against the Colts too but they are few and far between. Yes Doom has won battles but he and Reed are not parallels. That's only In Victor's mind where Reed is cretin 1A but to Reed... that guy's made a living out busting heads across galaxies. BTW didn't Doom's son turn on him... FF 198 and 199 If I remember. Anyway, I feel our definitions of character instability and imbalance, just like everything else in the comic world, is wholly exaggerated.


    Quote Originally Posted by Revolutionary_Jack View Post
    ** It must also be pointed out that words like "lunatic" used interchangably with people we refer to as evil or grandiose, perpetuates stereotypes about the mentally ill that are distasteful and questionable. I don't think that was your intention, I am sure it wasn't, but it's important we be specific about what words mean. I don't think Doom is clinically insane or was ever written as such.
    Of course and I agree.
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  9. #39
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    Quote Originally Posted by Surf View Post
    Titans have won games at times against the Colts too but they are few and far between. Yes Doom has won battles but he and Reed are not parallels. That's only In Victor's mind where Reed is cretin 1A but to Reed... that guy's made a living out busting heads across galaxies. BTW didn't Doom's son turn on him... FF 198 and 199 If I remember. Anyway, I feel our definitions of character instability and imbalance, just like everything else in the comic world, is wholly exaggerated.
    True.

    Doom and Reed is that on a literary level there's a kind of displacement between them. Both of them are fairly similar characters and dark reflections of one another.

    The thing is Doom's accusation about Reed that he was a moron who sabotaged his experiment or gave him bad advice and so compromised his invention is obviously unfair but there's a truth to that if you consider that it's an inverse of Reed and Ben Grimm, because in the latter's case Reed's arrogance and mistake led to Ben getting made into the Thing and turning his family into freaks. So it's an exteriorization of Reed's guilt and displacement to a situation where Reed is overly scapegoated. Fundamentally Reed being right about Doom's calculations doesn't mean that Reed can't make mistakes or that his calculations are always right, and Reed couldn't understand that when Doom is doing something about his mother's soul he's not gonna be rational and academic when listening to someone give advice (mostly because he didn't know about Victor's life at the time).

    Between them you also have this commentary. Reed is the middle-class academic who won the American lottery. He got a pretty wife, a great job, and material and professional success, where Doom is the orphaned Romani immigrant who arrives in America and struggles and fails to assimilate and then when he goes on a personal mission to save his mother's soul, he gets scarred and cast out of paradise essentially. Doom's inability to let go of his past and his identity as a Latverian, his fixation on his mother, led him down a path. So there's this amazing tension between them, and as a reader Victor von Doom is fundamentally a more universal figure than Reed Richards. Few of us ever win the American Lottery (sometimes called the American Dream) and when you fail you tend to suffer this social disgrace and shame, and Victor experiences that and throws it back on the world. So that's another reason why people relate to him.

    "Doom was born a [Romani]... Put differently, he was one of us. His aspect was scarred from his attempts to transcend himself, and so he donned a mask...Comics are so often seen as the province of white geeky nerds. But, more broadly, comics are the literature of outcasts, of pariahs, of Jews, of gays, of blacks. It's really no mistake that we saw ourselves in Doom, Magneto or Rogue."
    — Ta-Nehisi Coates.
    Last edited by Revolutionary_Jack; 05-13-2021 at 01:38 PM.

  10. #40
    Extraordinary Member foxley's Avatar
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    If you really want to use the classical definition of tragic, then Doom would have to be destroyed by his hubris which never happens. Instead, he just returns to Latveria and rules as its beloved leader. It is as if if Oedipus, instead being blinded and exiled, returned to Thebes and ruled as its greatest ever king, beloved by all his people and learning nothing from his experience.

    So not tragic, even in a classical sense.

  11. #41
    Ultimate Member babyblob's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Alan2099 View Post
    Doom has bested Reed on several occasions. However it's just so burned into his character that it's not enough.

    It's much like his multiple attempts at ruling the world. It's not enough to rule, he feels the need to have everyone accept that he should rule. He wants to be acknowledged.
    Wasnt there an issue of Super Villain Team up where Doom used mind control machines and did rule the world. But Magneto was not effected. So Doom told Mags that his victory was too easy and hallow because he did not earn it so he game Magneto a chance to stop him. Magneto and I think Beast were in the issue and it crossed over with the Champions.
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  12. #42
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    Magus. No one else comes close. A good man who knows what he will become and constantly struggles against it his entire life, yet ends up fighting his own evil self, coming face to face with his own physical, intellectual, emotional, and moral failing in ways that cannot be denied.

  13. #43
    Mighty Member Zauriel's Avatar
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    In the Hollywood cinema, The Most Tragic Supervillain is Darth Vader. He lost his wife. He betrayed the Jedi Order. He was scarred beyond recognition.

    In the manga, it is Lucy from the series Elfen Lied. She is an outcast and has suffered because she is different from the others.

    In the Superhero comics, it is Joker.

  14. #44
    Latverian ambassador Iron Maiden's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by foxley View Post
    If you really want to use the classical definition of tragic, then Doom would have to be destroyed by his hubris which never happens. Instead, he just returns to Latveria and rules as its beloved leader. It is as if if Oedipus, instead being blinded and exiled, returned to Thebes and ruled as its greatest ever king, beloved by all his people and learning nothing from his experience.

    So not tragic, even in a classical sense.

    Doom has been "destroyed" a number of times, with probably FF #200 being the most classical conclusion where he goes insane from the sight of his unmasked face reflected back at him thousands of times.


    But this comics after all so there is rarely a final ending to these characters. It's not the same as the "classical" format of a novel. A great part of the tragedy is exceptionally gifted and I daresay more so than Reed whose gifts are basically in the sciences. Doom is just as talented but also has the skills to be Sorcerer Supreme when Reed is very dismissive of magic even though he's known Stephen Strange for a long time. He is also muscially talented and has done a little composing for his own amusement. He is a comic book version of a polymath and a throwback to the warrior kings of old.

    Reed thought Victor was mad for trying to contact the dead but when Ben died in Mark Waid's Hereafter arc in the FF, he had no problems using the old device that Doom used to attempt to breach the Netherworld to rescue Ben. IMO that is part of Reed's passive/aggressive nature...he can't accept that Doom has talents he lacks.
    Last edited by Iron Maiden; 05-13-2021 at 05:05 PM.

  15. #45
    Mighty Member Zauriel's Avatar
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    You say the Doom is a Roma. But the Roma are dark-skinned and they originated from India. They were called gypsies which is a corruption of the word "Egyptian" because they were thought to be from Egypt. Doctor Doom is a white-skinned Caucasian and doesn't look like a Dark-skinned Roma at all.
    Last edited by Zauriel; 05-13-2021 at 04:37 PM.

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