Doctor Doom’s comics legacy is so much bigger than his Iron Man connections

As San Diego Comic-Con attendees roared at the announcement of Robert Downey Jr.’s return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the 59-year-old actor assured his fans that while he’ll be wearing a new mask in Avengers: Doomsday, his (or at least his character’s) larger task would largely be the same. It was an interesting choice of words to describe Marvel’s new plan to introduce Victor von Doom with a twist, just as a fresh version of the Fantastic Four is scheduled to make its big screen debut. 

The Doomsday announcement and news of RDJ’s Doom casting immediately read as Marvel betting that it might be able to win audiences back with another massive cinematic event built around a person whose face and voice have long since become synonymous with Iron Man. And it’s not hard to understand why Marvel thought that weaving Doom and Iron Man’s stories together might be a clever way to pivot away from the studio’s now-discarded plans for Avengers: The Kang Dynasty. 

The metal-masked super scientists have always been some of Marvel’s most fascinating characters in comics where their reputations as uniquely brilliant intellects have occasionally led to them butting heads, cooperating, and — in one instance — becoming one another. As many have noted, there’s definitely some comics precedent for the Stark-as-Doom turn that Doomsday seems to be setting up. But the thing that has always made Doctor Doom a compelling figure is the way he exists independently from his peers while doing everything in his power to illustrate his superiority over them. And it’s going to be hard for the MCU to tap into that energy if Doom is anyone but himself.

First appearing in The Fantastic Four #5, Doctor Doom was introduced as a maniac with a helicopter and a dream of using the Fantastic Four to steal enchanted relics from pirates in the distant past. Though Marvel’s first family already had its fair share of supervillains, Doom’s grandiosity and striking design set him apart from the likes of Mole Man and the alien Skrulls. He was an old college friend of Reed Richards and a talented engineer in his own right with a knack for the supernatural. But he was also a proud, arrogant man whose early encounters with death left him hardened to the world and distrustful of those he couldn’t control like his mechanical Doombots.

Those aspects of Doom’s personality became easier to understand following Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s Fantastic Four Annual #2, which fleshed out his origins in the fictional, Eastern European country of Latveria where his mother, a Romani woman named Cynthia, was murdered for practicing witchcraft. That story added new depth to Doom’s use of magic in his quest for world conquest and his insistence on returning to Latveria to rule as its king. But it also helped establish how Doctor Doom could ultimately become a frequent participant in many of Marvel’s big comics events involving beings from other planes of existence and teams-ups between other villains.

As Doctor Doom became the Fantastic Four’s signature archnemesis, Marvel also leaned into the idea of him being one of many geniuses — like Iron Man, Doctor Strange, and Black Panther — who could (at least privately) appreciate one another’s raw talents. Though Doom would often rather die than acknowledge Reed as an intellectual equal, their fights were sometimes rooted in a shared sense of being the only people capable of going toe-to-toe with each other. That sense of animosity could also be felt in moments like the complicated birth of Valeria Richards — Reed and Sue Storm’s daughter whose delivery required Doom’s assistance and his becoming her godfather — and it has continued to keep the Fantastic Four’s (extended) family dynamic interesting in more recent years.

There have been rumors that the cinematic reboot Fantastic Four: First Steps will feature one of the team’s children, which would gel with director Matt Shakman’s recent assertion that the film will gloss over origins we’re all familiar with to get right into the Galactus-flavored meat of its story. But while it would make perfect sense for Doom to show up in the MCU along with Reed and the gang, it currently seems like Marvel intends to debut him in Doomsday with a plot that somehow explains why he looks a lot like Tony Stark, who died in Avengers: Endgame.

With a multiverse full of variants now in play, Marvel could reveal that, in another reality, the figure the audience recognizes as Tony Stark is just named Victor instead and has a fondness for the color green rather than red. The studio could present Doctor Doom as a dark Iron Man who never came to see his weapons-derived wealth as something to be atoned for. It’s also easy to imagine Marvel execs taking one look at Alex Maleev’s cover for Infamous Iron Man #1 and immediately deciding that the MCU could be saved with a very expensive palette swap.

It would be surprising if Marvel were even thinking about touching Civil War II — the crossover event that laid the groundwork for Doom taking up the Iron Man mantle in Infamous. But much like Doom’s existence as a persistent thorn in the sides of Marvel’s heroes, both comics series were key parts of what made his turn to heroism compelling.

After years of Doctor Doom trying to kill the Avengers and the Fantastic Four, it was shocking to see him setting his grievances aside to become Iron Man when Tony Stark no longer physically could. Rather than respect or obedience, Doom’s Iron Man era was shaped by a desire to help protect the world from people like himself whose violent compulsions eclipsed their potential to do good things. 

Infamous Iron Man used its supporting cast of heroes and villains — all of whom had plenty of beef with Doom — to explore what it really means for someone to have an existential change of heart and how a person’s words can only do so much to undo things that they have done. And while it wasn’t long before Doom was back to wearing his usual cape and mask ensemble, the time he spent as Iron Man helped hammer home how much more interesting the character is when he’s allowed to exist in a morally gray area surrounded by people with justifiably complicated feelings about him.

The MCU’s movies have never been 1-to-1 adaptations of the comics, and Doomsday is likely going to feature a mix of ideas pulling from Doctor Doom’s long history. But an important part of that history is Doom being a well-known adversary to the world’s heroes — one whose actions have inspired hatred and hope in all of them at various points in time. 

That kind of textual significance is something Marvel spent years cultivating in the books with stories that understood how the best heroes and villains are defined by their relationships rather than their harebrained ideas for global domination. And that’s something Avengers: Doomsday might have a tricky time nailing when it hits theaters in 2026.