@testament said:
@jriddle73 said:
@testament said:
@daredevil21134:
Good choice bro. Magneto is definitely one of my all time favorites but I'm gona go with Dr Doom
Pre-Waid Doom all the way. Sadly, infuriatingly, another corpse in Waid's corpus.
What the Hell did Waid do to my favorite villain??? I haven't read Waid's Doom
@testament said:
@theheaven_guardian10 said:
@testament: Oh I know bro Magneto and Doom aren't pure evil, but when they do engage in
the act of vllainy. They are some of the best, but there both are epic. I heard that Waid mucked up Doom as well.
Good choice man very nice, mine would be.
1. Green Goblin
2. The Joker
3.Reverse-Flash
4. Magneto
5. Deathstroke
Now I'm starting to hate Waid. I really, really passionately hate that douchebag. First my favorite Superhero now my favorite Supervillain?
He got to Doom before DD. It's part of why I didn't want him to have anything to do with DD (and I pretty much called exactly what he'd do with DD before he did it as well, though I never dreamed he be able to take it as far as he did).
Some exposition (stuff you probably already know but others may not): Dr. Doom was a variation on a standard comic-book character, the megalomaniacal villain bent on conquest. But right from the beginning, he was invested with a nobility not found in such heartless villains. No matter how villainous he became, for example, he would always keep his word, even to his own disadvantage. He was always supremely self-confident, something he never lost even when he himself lost and badly. The will of Doom is absolutely unbreakable--once, he exposed himself, bare-faced, to the Purple Man, who couldn't do a thing with him (Killgrave was terrified).
He was a gypsy from the fictitious land of Latveria, where gypsies were oppressed by the king. His backstory as it developed over time included the fact that his mother had been a sorceress who made a deal with Mephisto--she was trying to improve her people's lot, gain the power to defeat the tyrant who tormented them, but the demon tricked her, gave her more power than she could control and it brought tragedy and her own death. And Mephisto claimed her soul. Years later, Doom's face was scarred in a lab accident in college (which he attended with Reed Richards) as he tried to contact the netherworld (Ed Brubaker's much-later "Books of Doom" would introduce the idea that this was an early effort to get at his mother's soul, and Doom's horrific scarring a punishment by the demon). Later still, after Doom had overthrown the government of Latveria and made himself ruler, he descends to the dungeon of his castle to summon demonic forces and battle them for the soul of his mother. Every year, he has his ass handed to him, and every year he goes back for more. Years later, in an excellent graphic novel called "Triumph & Torment" (the strongest possible recommendation for anyone who hasn't read it), Doom is able to maneuver Dr. Strange into owing him a boon, and what he asks is assistance in freeing his mother's soul from the demon. Strange, at one point, asks Doom why he didn't just ask for help, which Strange would have gladly provided. Doom's reply was that he would undergo any hardship, but "Doom doesn't beg." And that's just the way he is--he doesn't ask for help. He would die before putting himself in debt to or under the authority of anyone else. And he knows as much as any mortal about the perils of dealing with demons.
At the same time, Doom, in his younger years, once loved a woman. Her name was Valeria. He loved her the way he'd only ever loved his mother, but his will is such that, when offered the chance, he was unwilling to give up his dreams of conquest to be with her. He wasn't at all cold in this decision--it clearly hurt him, just about the only thing that ever has. Still, he loves Valeria and has, over the decades, always protected her, to the point that he has refused to even harm Valeria dopplegangers that have been directed his way over the years. She's sort of his unbreakable link with humanity.
In his earliest Silver Age appearances (and for some time after), Doom had a major chip on his shoulder about proving that, between he and Reed Richards, his was the superior intellect. As far as Doom's agenda goes though, that was literally decades in the past when Waid took over the writing chores on the Fantastic Four and, in astonishingly ugly fashion, flushed down the toilet everything I've just described. Under Waid's pen, proving himself smarter than Richards was suddenly the only thing that mattered to Doom. So much so that, in order to gain the power to defeat Reed, Doom made a deal with a group of demons. He tracked down and murdered Valeria in one of the most horrible ways imaginable and even fashioned and wore a new armor made of her flesh. In exchange, the demons made him their servant, granting him the power to sadistically torment the FF.
All of his nobility was gone. Everything that had been done with the character for decades was gone. To prove himself superior to Reed--something that hadn't been on his agenda for decades--Doom made a deal with demons--a fundamentally out-of-character confession that he couldn't take the FF on his own--to kill Valeria--the woman he would never, under any circumstances harm--in order to make himself a servant to demons--again, fundamentally out-of-character from top to bottom, inside and out. Not just un-Doom-like, but anti-Doom. And it got worse; when, later, the FF then went to Latveria (with Doom trapped in Hell), Waid presented Doom's rule of that nation as a mirror of the then-current regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq! An amoral tyrant who regularly committed atrocities and mass murder against his own people.
Collectively, this completely destroyed what had been one of Marvel's greatest creations, all for shock-value. Gimmickry to sell books Waid lacked the talent to sell without it.
(This is an adaptation of an article I wrote a few years ago--I'm reworking it for the 4-Color Noir site on Fbook)
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