Doctor Doom

Real Name
Victor von Doom

Occupation
Monarch of Latveria, would-be conqueror

Citizenship
Citizen of Latveria

Place of Birth
A camp outside Haasenstadt (now Doomstadt), Latveria

Known Relatives
Werner von Doom (father, deceased), Cynthia von Doom (mother, deceased); Kang, his counterparts, and offspring (alleged descendants)

Group Affiliation
Cabal; formerly Knights of the Atomic Table, Acts of Vengeance prime movers, partner of Namor, employer of the Terrible Trio

Education
College studies in the sciences (expelled before completion of degree); self-educated to graduate level and beyond in most sciences; self-taught knowledge of the mystic arts

Height
6'2" (in armor) 6'7"

Weight
225 lbs. (in armor) 415 lbs.

Eyes
Brown

Hair
Brown

Powers
Doom can exchange minds with others. He possesses some mystical abilities, such as casting bolts of eldritch energy and invoking mystical entities (principalities) for additional support. While empowered by the Haazareth, his mystical powers were on a par with those of Dr. Strange.

Abilities
Doom is a genius in physics, robotics, cybernetics, genetics, weapons technology, bio-chemistry, and time travel. He is also self-taught in the mystic arts. Doom is a natural leader, a brilliant strategist, and a sly deceiver.

Other Info
Victor von Doom was born to the Zefiro travelers (gypsies) Werner and Cynthia in Latveria (a small European country which grew out of Hungary and was ruled by King Vladimir).Victor barely knew his mother (a witch who had invoked the demon Mephisto for power, which raged out of control before she was finally slain by a soldier). Before dying, she asked Werner to protect their son Victor from Mephisto. Then after that, Victor's father, a doctor, was forced to treat King Vladimir's wife. When Werner could not cure her cancer, Vladimir blamed him for his wife's death, and Werner fled out of the country with Victor. Unfortunately, Werner died from exposure to the cold while protecting his son, Victor. Before dying, Werner placed Victor into the care of his best friend, Boris, and tried to warn his son of the fearful life he foresaw him falling into; however, he died before he could make Victor understand. (To learn more about the above highlighted characters or place, just click on their names.)

Discovering his mother's mystical artifacts, Victor schooled himself in sorcery. He began an annual contest against the might of Mephisto, attempting to set his mother's soul free. By the time he was a teenager, he had also become a scientific genius and used his inventions to wage a one-man war against the monarchy of Latveria. His genius was heard of even in America, and he was invited to New York's Empire State University on a scholarship. Victor had been in love with Boris' granddaughter Valeria, but he left her behind as his desire to acquire knowledge and the means to seek revenge consumed him.

Upon arriving at State University, Victor was greeted by Reed Richards, a fellow student who was interested in rooming with him; however, Doom rejected his offer of friendship. Throughout his university days, Doom pursued a rivalry with Richards (he was convinced his intellect was more superior than Richards'). Doom's greatest invention was a machine designed to rescue his mother's soul from the netherworld. Richards tried to warn Doom of a flaw in his calculations, but Doom was too proud to listen. Victor activated the machine and it exploded in his face. This explosion led to Doom being expelled from the university, and a scared face. Filled with self-loathing, he left America for Tibet, seeking new enlightenment. There he found the Aged Genghis, one of the enigmatic Immortal Nine. The now senile sorcerer directed him to seek out a long-lost order of monks. Doom made these monks his servants and had them forge his first suit of armor, designed to hide his scarred features from the world. Doom had them press the mask to his face before it had cooled, ensuring that if his face had not been hideous before, it was now. (Click on the highlighted names to learn more about the above characters.)

After this, Dr. Doom conquered Latveria, slaying King Vladimir, imprisoning his son Rudolfo, and having a robot duplicate of Rudolfo surrender the Latverian crown to him. After doing so, he renamed the capital city Haasenstadt to Doomstadt. While Doom maintained a puppet prime minister, the outside world was largely unaware of Doom's status as ruler, tending to dismiss his existence as a myth.

Dr. Doom wears a sophisticated nuclear-powered titanium battlesuit which grants him superhuman strength, contains jets for flight, houses a personal force field, and discharges concussive force blasts. He can also electrify his armor's surface. The armor contains a 4-hour air supply, and can be sealed for travel into outer space or underwater. Special attachments to the armor have included a molecular-expander, which can cause molecules to expand into the size of boulders, and various devices for absorbing the energies of others. Doom's many inventions include a variety of robots, such as robot duplicates of himself (Doombots), Latveria's robot police force (Servo-Guards), an army of unstoppable robots designed only to destroy (Killer Robots), as well as robots designed for slave labor and non-humanoid models used for special posts; his time machine, with which he can travel through space and time; and a shrink ray.

In one of his earliest time travels he journeyed back to World War II and considered killing Adolf Hitler for the crimes his Nazi regime had inflicted upon the Zefiro and other travelers; however, he ultimately decided to leave him to his own fate.

Much of Victor's life has been set around three goals: rescue his mother, prove his superiority over Reed Richards, and conquer the world. Due to these goals, Dr. Doom is one of the main rivals against the Fantastic Four. (To learn about the highlighted team, just click on their name.)

When Reed Richards was wed to Sue Storm (aka Invisible Woman), a spiteful Doom used an Emotion Charger to send scores of super-villains to the wedding site; unfortunately for Doom, these villains were defeated by the Fantastic Four and their super-heroic wedding guests. Doom engaged in new schemes, once stealing the Silver Surfer's powers, which he lost by challenging the barrier Galactus had placed around the Earth. Once, he also swapped bodies with Daredevil, but this farce was foiled by the Fantastic Four. (To learn more about the above characters, just click on their names.)

At one time, Diablo tried to force Doom into a partnership by holding his long-lost love, Valeria, hostage; however, Doom used his time machine to cast Diablo into the future. He saved Valeria, but then lost her again because Valeria was ashamed of Doom's gloating over Diablo's fate. (To learn about Diablo, click on his name above.)

Later on, Doom's throne was threatened by its rightful heir, Prince Rudolfo. Doom also had to contend with his rogue creation the Doomsman, and with the Red Skull, who attempted to claim Latveria for himself. The Black Panther, ruler of Wakanda, foiled Doom's attempt to steal Wakanda's Vibranium. (Click on the above highlighted names to learn about the characters, country, and item above.)

Even though Doom is evil, he has fought side-by-side with the Fantastic Four to save the Earth from the Overmind, acknowledging that while he had no love for them, he would not allow anyone to threaten Latveria. (Click on the highlighted Overmind to learn more about him.)

One time, Doom spread a neuro-gas into Earth's atmosphere to bind the entire world's population to his will. However, his authority was challenged by the mutant Magneto, and they fought, manipulating the Champions, Avengers and Hulk into fighting for their sides. When Doom was attacked by the Ghost Rider, his mask overheated and he was forced to remove it, inhaling his own neuro-gas; this rendered him unable to control anyone affected by the gas. (To learn about the above characters and team, just click on their names.)

At one point, Doom tried to take mental control of the United Nations using his Solartron Complex. But, after being exposed to multiple images of his own face projected by the Solartron, Doom went completely insane and was imprisoned. After his imprisonment, Prince Zorba, Rudolfo's younger brother, reclaimed his family's throne from Doom.

Later, Doom was freed by Boris and he regained his sanity. He then learned that Latveria had fallen into anarchy without him. Therefore, he was able to convince the Fantastic Four to assist him in overthrowing the now-insane Prince Zorba and retaking his throne. Doom himself slew Zorba. In the aftermath, a young Latverian boy named Kristoff Vernard was orphaned by Zorba's forces and Doom took the child under his protection, making him his heir. (To learn of Dr. Doom's heir, click on his highlighted name above.)

Later on, it had seemed that Terrax killed Dr. Doom. And the Doombots had activated a contingency plan whereby Doom's past experiences were implanted within Kristoff's mind so that he could assume Doom's role. Kristoff went insane, believing he was Doom trapped in the body of a child. Finally, the true Dr. Doom returned to Latveria following a time travel adventure, and he retook the throne from Kristoff. (To learn about Terrax, just click on his name.)

Doom often attributes his many defeats to his Doombots. And perhaps one of his most humiliating defeats came by Squirrel Girl who sent squirrels in to chew apart the wiring the armor of his Doombot. On the otherhand, Doom's greatest victory came when, after years of combating Mephisto, he and Dr. Strange finally rescued his mother's soul from Hell, allowing her to pass on to a better afterlife. (Click on the characters above to learn more about them.)

Sometime later, Doom had seemingly died alongside Earth's heroes battling Onslaught; but Doom and the others were preserved in the new Counter-Earth, created by Franklin Richards. Here, Doom lived a new type of life in which he was an old friend of Bruce Banner, Reed Richards and Tony Stark, who had all been members of a fraternity called "Knights of the Atomic Table." However, history seemed to repeat itself, because Doom became a villain on this Earth as well. When the heroes regained their memories, Doom helped them return to their own Earth via the Negative Zone; however, when he attempted to escape with Franklin, Doom was assaulted by Thor and cast back to the Counter-Earth. With no super heroes to oppose him, Doom soon became ruler of Counter-Earth. For a while, Doom ruled both Counter-Earth and Latveria simultaneously by projecting holograms back to Earth, but he ultimately found that Counter-Earth could never equal the utopia of his Latveria, so he returned to Earth to resume his duties in Latveria.

(To learn about the above characters and places, just click on their names.)

When Thor led an unauthorized invasion of Slokovia (a country neighboring Latveria), Dr. Doom aided the Avengers in fighting their rogue ally-manipulating events so that when Slokovia's government collapsed, Doom moved in and annexed the country, adding it to Latveria.

To learn much more about Dr. Doom, click on the following link, http://marvel.com/universe/Dr._Doom.