The following story contains major spoilers for Fantastic Four #1 by Dan Slott, Sara Pichelli, Elisabetta D’Amico, Marte Gracia, Simone Bianchi, Marco Russo, Skottie Young, Jeremy Treece and Joe Caramagna, on sale now.


Victor Von Doom has had an interesting few years, to say the least. He achieved everything he ever wanted by usurping the godlike power, only to fall from grace. Forced to start from scratch with a new outlook on life, Doom attempted to side with the heroes of the Marvel Universe and became the Infamous Iron Man, but that, too, ended in tragedy.

Now at his lowest ebb, Victor Von Doom has returned to a Latveria desperate for leadership. But it takes the conviction of one of his former subjects to convince the one-time monarch that he needs his country just as much as it needs him.

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Secrets...

To cut a long story short, years ago Doctor Doom discovered that the multiverse was unstable, that incursions of other Earths were happening across the globe and threatening to destroy the world. While the Illuminati were trying to halt the incursions and the Cabal was slaughtering the invading Earths, Doom took a different path and worked with the Molecule Man to find another solution to the incursion problem, only to accidentally end up being the person that caused it in the first place. This path of action eventually led Doctor Doom and Doctor Strange to come face-to-face with The Beyonders, and through means that are too complicated to get into right now, Doom killed them and stole their power.

God King Doom

Although, “stole” might be too harsh a word, because Doom only did what Strange could not bring himself to do and, using the power of The Beyonders, he created Battleworld. A patchwork planet made from the scavaged remains of dead worlds, Doom ruled Battleworld as its God Emperor; he took Reed Richards’ place as the patriarch of the Fantastic Four, he had an entire army of Thors as his personal police and anyone who crossed him was sent beyond The Shield into the domains of Ultrons, zombies and the Annihilation Wave. Everything was exactly as Doom wanted it, until after eight years of relative peace, two ships from the forgotten world which came before were discovered, and changed everything.

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One ship held the Cabal, led by Thanos and the other ship held the surviving heroes of the Marvel Universe, led by Mister Fantastic. While the former set about learning how to conquer this new land, the latter sought to undo everything which Doom had wrought, and get his family back by any means necessary. The dominoes established by the discovery of the two liferafts eventually toppled over, leading to a siege on Doom’s castle and a final confrontation between Mister Fantastic and Doctor Doom. When the villain finally admitted his rival was the better man, Reed Richards was granted Doom’s godlike power and remade his world as the Prime Marvel Universe, before setting off with his family to re-establish the Multiverse.

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Infamous

Doom woke up on this new Earth with his face healed of its scarring and a new outlook on life, one which compelled him to atone for his misdeeds as the world’s greatest villain and set himself on a new course of attempting to be a hero. He allied himself with Tony Stark — albeit reluctantly on Tony’s behalf — and aided Iron Man cryptically in a number of adventures. However, when Tony Stark was rendered comatose following a fight with Captain Marvel at the end of Civil War II, Victor Von Doom decided he was the person to carry on Tony’s legacy and built his own suit of flying armor to carry on the mantle of Iron Man.

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Victor Von Doom’s face turn to the side of angels wasn’t welcomed by most; the heroes of the Marvel Universe didn’t trust him and neither did the villains, whom he had began rounding up starting with his former allies in The Intelligencia. The Thing was drafted by SHIELD into hunting down his longtime enemy, but a clash with Mephisto — still angry at being cheated out of the soul of Victor’s mother — somewhat convinced the authorities to give him a bit of a wide berth and see what happens. He also informally joined the Avengers at this time, striking up an unlikely friendship with Nadia Van Dyne and coming to the team’s rescue on a number of occasions.

However, there were a number of events which led to Victor’s eventual downfall. The first came while traveling the multiverse with Ben Grimm and Johnny Storm; he learned that The Council of Reeds had once again convened and discovered missing memories from the very end of his time in Battleworld. Just before he set the world right again, Reed Richards told Victor that he was going to give him a world where everyone thinks Mister Fantastic is dead, believing that Doom could finally be the man Reed believes he has the potential to be. The second event came during a clash with The Hood which saw Doom facially scarred once again, leading the villain-turned-hero to retreat to his homeland of Latveria.

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Victory

That’s where this week’s Fantastic Four #1 comes in. In a back-up story, Latveria is shown to still be undergoing a time of great strife, with succession of tinpot dictators attempting to take the country for their own. It wasn’t long ago that Riri Williams declared herself Queen of Latveria just to keep it out of the hands Lucia Von Bardas, and though Ironheart turned it over to SHIELD, SHIELD isn’t a thing anymore. With a new leader instilling strict curfews and stricter punishments for violations, a young woman named Zora risks everything to infiltrate Castle Doom on the chance that he savior is there.

Doom doesn’t feel much like a savior since his fall from grace, but Zora reminds him that his disfigured face isn’t what the Latverian people know or what they expect to see. She hands him the mask of a fallen Doombot and urges him to be the leader his country needs, and Doom realises that despite fate constantly scarring his visage, it’s the face he chose that people know, fear and respect. That morning, Doom returns to his people by leading an assault on Doomstadt, dedicated to reminding his people who he is and what he means to them, by any means necessary.

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Victor Von Doom’s turn from Iron Man back to Doctor Doom is interesting because it wasn’t facilitated by the return of Reed Richards and the Fantastic Four. Reed gave Doom a Victor a world where he didn’t have to be Doctor Doom and still ended up becoming Doctor Doom without him, though that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Despite all his evil tendencies, Doom was always a pretty good monarch to the people of Latveria who lived happy, fulfilled lives under his regime.

If the current regime is much more overtly totalitarian than Doom, then there’s no reason that Victor becoming Doctor Doom again to bring it down signals a shift back to being a villain. Fantastic Four #1 is a primer for everything that’s going to come in Slott and Pichelli’s run, and this backup lets us know that Doctor Doom is back, but he’ll be very different the next time he encounters the returned Fantastic Four.