Books of Doom #1-6

Books of Doom #1-6

Originally released in 2005

Written by Ed Brubaker

Art by Pablo Raimondi

At San Diego Comic Con this weekend, it was announced that Robert Downey Junior was cast as Doctor Doom for the upcoming Avengers sequels, Avengers: Doomsday (formerly known as the Kang Dynasty) and Avengers: Secret Wars. (no word on if he'll appear in the Fantastic Four movie)  I'm not a fan of this casting right now - it feels weird to have Doom played by someone who was already the face of the MCU as Tony Stark/Iron Man, and I'm concerned that it will result in Doom being an Iron Man variant rather than being a proper adaptation of Doctor Doom - but I'm willing to wait and see how it turns out.

In the meantime, I thought I should go back to Ed Brubaker's reimagining of Doctor Doom's backstory.  To my surprise, I learned that I hadn't covered any books by Brubaker before on this blog; he's well-known for writing the Captain America run that introduced the Winter Soldier.  This seems like as good enough of a reason as any to change that.

This series takes plot points from Doom's past and expands on them - while Reed Richards is present, his role is relatively minor, and Ben Grimm (who attended university with the two of them) is little more than a cameo. Rather, aside from Doom himself, the series focuses on the people who surrounded Doom in his early years and helped or hindered his rise to power, with a particular emphasis on Valeria, the namesake of Valeria Richards.

Valeria is one of the few people who can break through Doom's metaphorical armour, giving a sense of hope that Doom can be redeemed, though it doesn't last.  Doom still holds a soft spot for her, giving her what she needs to escape Latveria before he begins his revolution so she's not caught up in the chaos.

Doom's parents pass away in the first issue of this mini-series, though their deaths (particularly the death of his mother) haunt him to the end.  His mother, a witch, makes a deal with Mephisto to get revenge on the local Baron who hunted the people in Doom's camp, only to repent upon seeing that the price of Mephisto's deal is the lives of every single child and to be killed as a result.

Doom's father is a medical doctor, but when the same Baron (who later becomes the king of Latveria prior to Doom) wants Doom's father to cure his wife's cancer and there's nothing he can do, he has Doom and his father hunted down.  They flee to the mountains to escape, but with little in the way of food or shelter, it costs Doom's father his life.

Doom has gotten wildly different treatment from creative teams over the course of sixty-plus years, with some focusing on his nobility and others focusing on his cruelty.  Doom is a character who has suffered from bigotry, poverty, and hunger, and depending on the writer, he intends to remove those from society if he ever gets his wish of ruling the world. However, it comes at a price - Doom is an iron-fisted despot who is extremely thin-skinned, and a world under his rule is a world without freedoms. Doom treats his subjects well, but all people would be equal...ly inferior to Doom.

This series leans more towards the crueler aspects. Even at the age of four, after his mother's death, Doom terrifies the Romani camp that he was raised in by threatening their lives if they abandon him or his father after his mother's death.  Doom isn't the most reliable narrator, though his narration is broken up by stories from people who knew him.  All of these stories are told from the same dimly lit room, and slowly, the implication becomes clear that all of these people - fellow Romani camp members, college friends, loyal disciples - are prisoners within Doom's castle.

The series does give him small amounts of nobility back, though. To save his mother's soul, Doom is forced to bargain with Mephisto.  He can attempt to save his mother's soul at a specific time each year, but every time he tries, the people of Latveria will hate him more and more.  Even if Doom succeeds, Mephisto admits that his mother's soul will ascend to Heaven, where Doom can never reach it.  Even though he loses no matter what the outcome is, Doom accepts - saving his mother is worth the cost.

The series does a good job at explaining a few plot holes in Doom's backstory - why one of the smartest men in the world would hastily put a boiling-hot metal mask on his face, for example. Originally, the scar from the explosion that got Doom kicked out of university was intended to be small, with most of the damage caused by the aforementioned mask incident.

Here, the scar (which is still implied to be gruesome) is demonic in origin, caused by Doom's attempts to build a technological portal to Mephisto's realm, and it gives him nightmares and other mental anguish.  The mask was designed to block Mephisto's influence, and while it did mess his face up further, it was already damaged to begin with.

The Books of Doom may have an unreliable narrator, to say the least - Doom's intelligence is dwarfed by his ego, and he's usually treated as the second smartest man on Earth, so that's saying something - but it's an excellent depiction of Doctor Doom's backstory and what made him the way that he is. Doom is one of Marvel's most enduring and beloved villains (along with Magneto, though arguably, Magneto doesn't even count as a villain any more), and his backstory gives him a lot of nuance that generally wouldn't be given to a character named "Victor von Doom".

It seems especially relevant decades after his creation, with the debate of freedom versus security - if Doom had his way, the world would be well-educated and content (if they stay in line), but it comes at a cost of any form of freedom. This series is an excellent story whether you want an introduction to Doctor Doom or want to learn more about him; I'd read it before, and I appreciate it even more the second time around.