One of the biggest "out of left field" announcements of Comic-Con International in San Diego was the reveal that Noah Hawley is potentially tackling a Doctor Doom film. After you stop and think on it for a moment, you realize that this is nothing but great news. Over the past few years Hawley has firmly cemented himself as one of the most creative voices currently working in television. His Coen Brothers-inspired series Fargo has turned out amazing season after amazing season, and his foray into comic book adaptations, Legion, is a refreshing and unique show.

RELATED: Fox Developing Doctor Doom Movie by Legion/Fargo Creator

Now, we know practically nothing about the proposed film, but chances are it’s going to be an origin story, or at least involve Doom's origin. It kind of has to be. People who don’t read comics might know who Doom is, but chances are they’re not too clear on his origin. With that in mind, it makes perfect sense to adapt Ed Brubaker and Pablo Raimondi's Books of Doom. This six-issue miniseries is a biography of the villain’s life, told from the perspective of a present-day Doctor Doom.

Brubaker cherry-picked elements from previous stories about Doctor Doom’s past, combining and reworking them while adding his own narrative flourishes. He contextualizes Victor Von Doom’s history, painting him as a sympathetic character whose path to supervillainy is paved with tragedy. In short, he wasn't born evil -- he became evil.

Victor Von Doom is born into a group of Romani, in the country of Latveria. His mother, Cynthia Von Doom, was constantly dabbling in the occult. One night she is possessed by a demon, giving her supernatural abilities to take vengeance against a Latverian Baron's soldiers who were constantly harassing her people. As payment, the demon also took the life of every child in the village, leading to Cynthia's death at the hands of the surviving villagers. To make matters worse, her dealings with demons now means her soul belongs to Mephisto.

After his father and leader of the Romani clan, Werner, is unable to cure the Baron’s wife of her cancer, he and Victor go on the run as the Baron was just looking for an excuse to kill him. This also ends in tragedy, with Werner dying from exposure in the forests of Latveria while trying to keep Victor warm. It’s a tragic backstory, with the same level of loss felt by heroes like Spider-Man or Batman. Where Doom differs is how he channels that loss. Victor becomes cold. He begins experimenting with his mother’s spell books, later turning to science as a means to both take his revenge and free his mother from her eternal torment. He becomes the leader of his people by the time he’s 16, with word of his exploits making it as far as the United States of America.

He eventually leaves his homeland to work for the U.S. government, creating early versions of his Time Platform and Doom Bots.  When an experiment to contact his mother's soul goes wrong, his face is left disfigured – a constant reminder of his failure. He later travels to Tibet to find a hidden temple where monks have harnessed and combined powerful magicks with technology. It’s there that he finally discovers the power he desires, eschewing what little humanity he has left and becoming Doctor Doom.

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Doctor Doom is a Tragic Figure, Not a Cliched Supervillain

Brubaker paints Victor Von Doom as a tragic figure. Again: he wasn’t born evil, but through the course of his life, Victor became cold and twisted. He’s a man tortured by demons – both physiological and literal. He’s not an egotistic maniac obsessed with world domination. He’s a flesh and blood human being who can feel actual emotions. There’s a real heart beating underneath his cold, armored exterior.

His relationship with his childhood sweetheart Valeria shows that Doom is actually capable of love, and Brubaker heavily implies that if things had been slightly different, the two would’ve settled down and created their own happiness. Unfortunately, happiness, like all emotions, is a weakness in the eyes of Doom. As he dons his iconic armor for the first time, he proclaims, “Von Doom would not be like other men… no emotion, no pain, no cold or warmth would affect me again.”

He shuts himself off from the outside world, not because he can't feel, but because feelings will only slow him down. Doctor Doom must be strong; failure is not an option.

One of the nice narrative touches that Brubaker and Raimondi use in Books of Doom is that every now and then present-day Doom will appear within the flashback. He observes his younger self kill someone for the first time, stands over his broken body after his lab experiment goes wrong, watches himself undergo the deadly journey to find “the Temple in the Mountains.” That’s a framing device that Hawley could definitely have some fun with; in fact, it’s very similar to how David Haller interacts with his memories in Legion.

What would really set this apart from recent origin films like Wonder Woman and Doctor Strange is that this isn’t a superhero's story; it’s a supervillain's. We would be watching the birth of Marvel’s most iconic comic book villains. Assumedly, Hawley will put us in a position where we’re not only sympathizing with Doom, we’re also cheering him on, and that’s what Books of Doom does best. It sells the idea that Doom is the hero of his own story because we’re experiencing everything from his perspective.

RELATED: Stan Lee Explains Why Doctor Doom Isn’t a Villain

It’s a much more complex take on the character, bestowing upon him a morality that is less black-and-white than you’d expect. The boy at the start of Books of Doom is repulsed by the act of murder, but the man at the end relishes killing the man responsible for the death of his parents and ruining his homeland.

He’s driven by a need to free his mother from Mephisto’s clutches, which is a noble cause. He even saves Latveria from the rule of its corrupt king, by forming an uprising with its downtrodden citizens. He’s not the power-hungry egotist you’d expect him to be. He’s a man haunted by his personal demons and driven by his refusal to fail. Doom has to be the best there is, and he will do whatever it takes to get there. We want him to succeed and save his mother, even though deep down we know he's the bad guy. And as Fargo has taught us, Hawley is in his element when it comes to crafting morally complex villains.

Considering the state of the Fantastic Four film franchise, Books of Doom is a perfect guide to tell Doom's story without that meddlesome Reed Richards and his idiot family. The comic features a one-page cameo from Ben Grimm that can easily be written out. The only real obstacle is the role Reed plays in Doom’s history, but considering he only pops up briefly in Books of Doom’s second issue (and for half a page in issue #5), it wouldn’t be hard to write around him. Perhaps Richards could be heard, but not seen – a potential teaser for the future of the franchise.

Previous movie incarnations have tied Doctor Doom’s origins far too directly to that of the Fantastic Four. This relationship changes his motivation: Revenge against the FF is his main motivation, rather than the insatiable drive of his own ego and desire to save his mother. By making Doom's origin more self-contained, Hawley has the chance to create a unique, nuanced character study for one of Marvel's most iconic villains -- perhaps before he himself helms the third iteration of the Fantastic Four.