Variation on a Theme: What Marvel Villains Simply Shouldn't Be Able to Coexist

[Anthony Shaw]

here is doom referring to magneto as a 'freak.'

A bigot, & a child abuser.

[Iron Maiden]

Wow, good find

I don't think he's going to be found as a racist consistently enough to really count it as a trait, but I think the idea here and there is that he's not far from it. Which is a fair assumption as far as comics go.

Doom ego is such that I don't think he singles out any particular race or ethnicity as inferior. It's Doom first, everyone else is inferior.

It's not that obscure but then I've read all the Doom solos. To me it's not so much Doom being racist as rookie writer Gerry Conway not reading up on Wakanda--who was about 18 or 19 at the time he wrote this story.
We know from the very first intro in the FF that Wakanda was one of the wealthiest nations in the world and yet Doom calls the kingdom a poor one. A different writer wrote the first part of the story in Astonishing Tales #6 and Conway finishes it in issue #7. As for the ignorant savage part, well a lot of movies from the 1950s and 1960s do show some pretty stereotypical "savage" type denizens of Africa. You have to remember this was written around 1971. I bet even Conway would be a bit embarrassed about the "noble savage" stuff.

[Anthony Shaw]

Some writers have also portrayed Magneto as a monstrous genocidal psychopath, most of the big villains are going to have inconsistent portrayals, they have been written several different ways by different writers over a period of several decades.

Heck of all the major villains, Red Skull is easily the most consistent, he is written as pure evil all the time.

That could be why I favor the Skull over Doom & Magneto.

Skull has zero time for pretentious nobility.

He's just a full-time a-hole.

[Iron Maiden]

He did it in Secret Wars by calling mutants a blight. And this is apparently a lead on from his HoM f*ck up.

That's probably one of the worst and blatant retcons to lay HoM at Doom's feet just for the sake of wiping the guilt away from Wanda (and I like both characters by the way) He was trapped in Hell after the Unthinkable & Authoritative Action arcs at the end of Mark Waid's run. He doesn't break free from there until the beginning of Civil War in JMS's Fantastic Four story where through a stroke of luck Mjlinor goes ripping across various dimensions and leaves a tear in the Netherworld that Doom uses to escape from Hell. So when Disassembled got under way, he wasn't anywhere near Wanda. Wanda includes him in HoM but he really serves as Magneto's enforcer. He doesn't even have access to Wanda. Show me a panel where he's in the room when she says "No more mutants".

[Iron Maiden]

Yes he did do this, but insomuch as to prey on Reed's insecurities at the time in an attempt to break the FF up. And oh by the way, at the end it was Reed who saved Kitty not Doom. The only reason they went to Doom was because Richards turned them down thinking he couldn't do it.

Partly true. Doom's device was working until Magneto, who was just outside the castle, let off an EMP during a hissy fit and jazzed up the computers. Reed was able to outprocess the computers and put in the correct data. Of course since this story was the 1980s maybe Doom still had an old PC with only about 8 MB of RAM.

[Iron Maiden]

A bigot, & a child abuser.

In the present, Kristoff calls Doom his father and their relationship is quite different when you read Hickman's FF and New Avengers. In Charles Soule's first She Hulk arc, it shows that if anything, Doom indulges Kristoff a bit too much.

[Kuwagaton]

Doom ego is such that I don't think he singles out any particular race or ethnicity as inferior. It's Doom first, everyone else is inferior.

Yeah, as I think that scan talking about Magneto also shows that he finds "humans" lowly. But, I still don't know if I'd say he is immune to intolerant portrayals, singling out inferiority of individuals, since separate writers have put it into narrative.

[Iron Maiden]

Yeah, as I think that scan talking about Magneto also shows that he finds "humans" lowly. But, I still don't know if I'd say he is immune to intolerant portrayals, singling out inferiority of individuals, since separate writers have put it into narrative.

But that is a distinction between Doom and Magneto. Magneto has gone on campaigns against humans and tends to paint them all with the same brush. When he got his heart's desire in HoM, he elevates all mutants above humans. Even though his family and fellow Roma were oppressed in Latveria, there were no efforts to wipe out all European Latverians and replace them with Roma.

[The Fury]

Given the way he is and what his endgame is realistically there would be a bunch of people opposing Apocalypse.

Given his end goal is never really that defined, in reality it would be the other way around. Apocalypse would oppose them. He's rejected Loki before on his goals as example, Loki talking about ruling over humanity while Apocalypse said he tried that and moved passed it. His goal is more along the lines of helping humanity reach their potential, even if it's forced, and that to him is the next stage in their evolution, aka mutants. He has no reason desire to rule any more.

I'd say he's team up with very few villains at all, if any.



On the topic, people have mentioned Mags and Red Skull? Have people read the story in which Magneto left Red Skull trapped underground to starve to death?

[DrNewGod]

Some writers have also portrayed Magneto as a monstrous genocidal psychopath, most of the big villains are going to have inconsistent portrayals, they have been written several different ways by different writers over a period of several decades.

^This is the answer. Different authors, different interpretations. Some of them trying to create a new look at the bad guy, some of them just trying to get something in before it's too far past deadline.

Heck of all the major villains, Red Skull is easily the most consistent, he is written as pure evil all the time.

Yup. Nobody wants to try layering nuance on a Nazi. I'm surprised anybody tried it with Baron Zemo, of course, he's been more vengeance on Captain America than ideology in the last 30 years.

[DrNewGod]

Given his end goal is never really that defined, in reality it would be the other way around. Apocalypse would oppose them. He's rejected Loki before on his goals as example, Loki talking about ruling over humanity while Apocalypse said he tried that and moved passed it. His goal is more along the lines of helping humanity reach their potential, even if it's forced, and that to him is the next stage in their evolution, aka mutants. He has no reason desire to rule any more.

Hm. Magneto and Apocalypse are another pair I couldn't see co-existing, especially before each of their I-don't-want-a-throne conversions. Apocalypse might have been fine with Magneto fighting the X-Men, but Magneto would have been out to remove Apocalypse from the board at least as hard as he was the X-Men, both to prevent Apocalypse from culling Magneto's people (and potential soldiers), and to eliminate a competitor.

[Anthony Shaw]

In the present, Kristoff calls Doom his father and their relationship is quite different when you read Hickman's FF and New Avengers. In Charles Soule's first She Hulk arc, it shows that if anything, Doom indulges Kristoff a bit too much.

Doom has always struck me as fair-weather in terms of being kind & noble.

It does not faze me when I see him being kind, and then utterly despicable within the same story, or over decades of stories.

He is still the guy that sent Franklin Richards to demonic underworlds on two separate occasions (the two stories were by Englehart & Waid).

[Anthony Shaw]

On the topic, people have mentioned Mags and Red Skull? Have people read the story in which Magneto left Red Skull trapped underground to starve to death?

I did, and it was a great story by Mark Gruenwald. The Skull did everything in his power to escape, but to no avail. As a kid, the Skull lost a few bad guy points with me, and even more after his subsequent defeat at the hands of Kingpin (Skull was not fully recovered). Looking back, losing to Magneto is not the worst thing so long as you live to tell about it.

The story between Skull & Magneto needed to be told.

It was not until Waid that the Skull returned to the villain I know & loathe.

[Kuwagaton]

^This is the answer. Different authors, different interpretations. Some of them trying to create a new look at the bad guy, some of them just trying to get something in before it's too far past deadline.

Yup. Nobody wants to try layering nuance on a Nazi. I'm surprised anybody tried it with Baron Zemo, of course, he's been more vengeance on Captain America than ideology in the last 30 years.

Same with the Red Skull. He's technically not a Nazi, but every character holds the fact that he was
against him. Which ends up more than fair, since he's arguably worse now than he was during the war.

Magneto burying him worked given who he was at the time, but even two bit villain Magneto probably would have put him down.

[Iron Maiden]

Doom has always struck me as fair-weather in terms of being kind & noble.

It does not faze me when I see him being kind, and then utterly despicable within the same story, or over decades of stories.

He is still the guy that sent Franklin Richards to demonic underworlds on two separate occasions (the two stories were by Englehart & Waid).

And neither really got Doom IMO. Waid was a lot closer though I will grant you that but I think the level of brutality was OTT but that's another discussion.

It would not surprise me if Simonson came up with the famous/infamous Doombot scene in his FF #350 was because of Englehart's writing on Fantastic Four after Byrne left. In a metatexual scene, Simonson has Ben saying he couldn't believe that Doom hadn't kicked Kristoff off the throne by now. Doom was considered dead in FF #260. In the intervening years, Doom struggles to get the throne back from Kristoff-Doom, going to BP for help in one issue. He doesn't return to power until Simonson quickly changes that in FF#350. Then he has Doom cryptically say he'd been gone for a while and didn't know about Johnny and Alicia's wedding for example. So it's up for grabs whether or not Englehart's Doom was a Doombot.

Englehart's story in FF annual #20 has Doom trying to use Franklin as a bargaining chip with Mephisto but then remember Franklin had no problem sending Mephisto to the cornfield back in Byrne's run. In a twisted way it does make sense if Doom felt he could free his mother's soul and have Franklin take care of the demon.

I don't think kind is a word one would ever use to describe Doom. Tolerant maybe. Even with Valeria, there are some limits there. Gotta love Hickman's view of parenting, Doom style.