<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

Doctor Doom
Gender	Male
Publisher	Marvel Comics
Origin	Latveria
First Appearance	Fantastic Four #5 (1962)
Creator(s)	Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
Alter ego	Victor von Doom
Aliases	The Master
Abilities	utilizes advanced scientific technology, practitioner of the mystic arts
Affiliations	Doom has entered into uneasy alliances with other master villains such as the Red Skull. As the leader of a nation, he has relationships with other Marvel Characters who are royalty, such as the Black Panther and the Sub-Mariner.

Doctor Doom is the arch nemesis of the Fantastic Four, a fictional comic book superhero team owned by Marvel Comics. Doctor Doom is one of the most infamous and iconic comic book villains. Doctor Doom is the first comic book villain to star in his own admittedly short-lived series (beating the Joker by months) and has carried several limited series since then.

Doctor Doom is the ruler of Latveria, a fictional country located somewhere on the Hungarian border. His personal hatred for Reed Richards, the leader of the Fantastic Four, and his ambition to be the supreme ruler of the world, have brought him into conflict with the Fantastic Four and many other Marvel superheroes again and again.

As the ruler of a nation, Doom is the first villain ever to have diplomatic immunity. He has been known to spend time at the Latverian Embassy in New York, where he is legally protected from interference.

Doom is a genius in physics, cybernetics, robotics, weapons technology, bio-chemistry, and time travel. Doom is also a self-taught practitioner of the mystic arts, and battles with the demon Mephisto annually, trying to free the soul of his dead mother.

Doom has proven to have the ability to exchange minds with others. He can cast bolts of eldritch energy and can mystical entities for additional power.

Doom is a master deceiver, but, at the same time, is conceited enough to believe that his word is inviolate, so can be trusted to keep his word, at least technically. He considers himself very civilized, and can be so gracious and charming a host that you can forget that you are actually his prisoner.

Doom dresses in technologically powered armor and masks his face due to an accident he had in college where his face was disfigured. He blames that accident on Reed Richards, who tried to warn him of the danger, but whose warnings Doom wrote off to jealousy. His armor is made of titanium and is nuclear powered. It grants him superhuman strength, contains jets for flying, houses a personal force field, discharges concussive force blasts, and is equipped with a four hour supply of oxygen. It can be sealed for space or underwater travel. In the past, it has been equipped with a special attachments, like the one that can absorb the energy of others, which he once used to steal the power of the Silver Surfer.

Doom can be such a megalomaniac that he is sometimes unintentionally funny. The following quote demonstrates this, while providing insight into his leadership style.

"How ungrateful are those who do not accept the rule of Doctor Doom! Do I not give them shelter--provide them food? And all I ask is total, blind obedience!"

Doctor Victor von Doom/Fantastic Four #84, 1969

Doctor Doom has three life goals that motivate his actions. The first is to free his mother from Mephisto. The second is to prove his superiority over Reed Richards. The third is to conquer the world.

Character Origin

Victor von Doom is born to Gypsies Werner and Cynthia in Latveria, a small European country which grew out of Hungary. His father is a doctor and his mother was a witch, so some might say his scientific and mystical prowess are come by honestly. Latveria at the time was ruled by King Vladmir Fortunov.

When Victor is still a very young child, his mother trades her soul to the demon Mephisto to gain power. That power raged out of control, and she is eventually killed by a soldier.

His father is sentenced to death by King Vladmir when he fails to save his dying queen. Werner and Victor flee into the wilderness, but Werner dies anyway from exposure. He entrusts his son to the care of his best friend and fellow gypsy, Boris. Gefore he dies, Werner tries to warn Victor away from the road to power, though Victor fails to understand.

Motivated by the desire to free his mother’s soul, Victor uses his mother's books and artifacts and studies the mystic arts. As a teen, he comes into his own as a scientific genius, and wages a one-man war against the monarch of Latveria, driven by the desire for revenge for his father’s death. In the meantime, he falls in love with Boris’ granddaughter Valeria.

Victor’s scientific genius became known world-wide, and he was invited to New York State University on a scholarship. Finding his burning ambition more powerful than his love for Valeria, he leaves her to attend. Much later in his life, not unlike his mother, Doom would trade Valeria's soul for even more mystical power.

At State, he meets another scientific genius, a young Reed Richards. Reed extends himself in friendship to Victor, but Victor dismisses him as a jealous inferior, and keeps to himself. At the university, Doom works on a high technological device that he believes will rescue his mother from the nether world. Reed Richards tried to warn him that some of his calculations are off, but, again, he writes Richards off as jealous, and continues on with his experiments. When he activates the machine, it blows up, scaring his face. He blames this on Reed, though it is later revealed to be the work of Mephisto.

Believing his looks are ruined, Victor leaves America, seeking enlightenment and a renewed purpose, in Tibet. Eventually, he finds a long-lost order of monks, who have developed their own brand of technical craftsmanship. Dominating them with his powerful personality, Victor has them make his first suit of armor and mask. He has them place the newly forged mask on his face before it has cooled, even further scarring his facial features. If he wasn't hideous before, he is now.

He returns to his native land and kills King Vladmir, declaring himself absolute ruler of Latveria. He renames the capital of the country (formerly Haasenstadt) Doomstadt. He uses his scientific skills and technology to transform Latveria into a kind of dictator’s paradise, where everyone is fed and housed comfortably, but daren’t neglect to praise their master and obey him in all things.

Doom maintains a puppet prime minister, and allowed the outside world to be blissfully unaware of his existence. Stories of Doom’s fantastic activities in the privacy of his own castle are written off to legend. He uses the time to develop scientific wonders, like his robotic “Doombots” and a machine that enables one to travel through time. There he continues to work on his goals, not the least of which is to rule the world as he does his tiny nation.