DOCTOR DOOM: EARLIEST STORIES

This weekend’s escapist superhero post here at Balladeer’s Blog looks at the first several stories of one of Marvel Comics’ most infamous villains: Dr. Victor Von Doom. 

FANTASTIC FOUR Vol 1 #5 (July 1962)

Title: Prisoners of Doctor Doom

Synopsis: At the Baxter Building, the Human Torch cruelly taunts the Thing that he resembles the monster called the Hulk who has run amok in the American southwest. (Hulk #1 was published in May 1962).

Mr. Fantastic and Invisible Woman break up the resulting fight between the two. Suddenly, their power and backup generators are knocked out and a high-tech netting of some sort isolates the top five floors from the rest of the Baxter Building.

Over a loudspeaker, the Fantastic Four hear demands issued by a voice that Reed recognizes as that of an old college acquaintance – Victor Von Doom, now a PhD. Dr. Doom threatens to start killing unless the Fantastic Four surrender to him and enter his massive airship.

To save any innocent bystanders from harm, our heroes do so. They meet the armored Dr. Doom, who explains that his experiment which went awry and caused his expulsion long ago left his face scarred, so he now hides it behind a steel mask.

NOTE: The old pulp magazine villain Steel Mask, a foe of G-8 and His Battle Aces, wore such a mask to hide his hideously scarred face beginning in 1937, so though Dr. Doom did indeed come before Darth Vader, Steel Mask came before Dr. Doom.

Victor blames Reed for causing the experiment to misfire, but all Reed did was try to warn Doom that his calculations were wrong. Reed was right, but rather than admit that, the crazed Victor Von Doom has always maintained that Reed sabotaged his college experiment. 

Dr. Doom imprisons Invisible Woman in a separate cell from the others and threatens to kill her unless Mr. Fantastic, the Thing and the Human Torch let him send them back in time via his time machine. Legend holds that the lost Treasure of Blackbeard has mystical properties that will let Doom conquer the world.

The three superheroes are sent back to the age of piracy, acquire Blackbeard’s treasure and return to the present. Dr. Doom, unsurprisingly, decides to kill them all. The Invisible Woman frees herself and saves her teammates.

The quartet battle Dr. Doom, whose high-tech armor lets him hold his own. When the fight turns against him, he flees by way of his armor’s rockets and the Human Torch is unable to keep up with him.

Debuting in August 1962 was Spider-Man in Amazing Fantasy #15 and Thor in Journey Into Mystery #83 

FANTASTIC FOUR Vol 1 #6 (September 1962)

Title: The Deadly Duo

Synopsis: This story picks up an unknown amount of time after the previous issue. A worldwide search by the Fantastic Four has failed to locate Dr. Doom. We readers are shown that Victor has made contact with the Sub-Mariner.

Because Namor’s complete memories have not yet come back to him, he still has not located his people and is assuming they may all be lost forever. Dr. Doom uses that to egg him on to an alliance against the surface world, beginning with destroying their mutual foes the Fantastic Four.

The Sub-Mariner agrees, with one condition – that Invisible Woman be kept alive so that she can become his bride. Doom is free to kill the other three team members. Victor agrees to those terms.

At the Baxter Building, the Human Torch has discovered his sister Sue mooning over an old World War Two photo of the then-heroic Sub-Mariner. He calls her out for still being genuinely attracted to Namor despite dating Reed.

A bitter argument among the team members is interrupted by the arrival of the Sub-Mariner, who breaks in through a window. While Subby fights the Thing, Human Torch and Mr. Fantastic, Invisible Woman tries to play peacemaker.

While that battle is keeping the Fantastic Four occupied, Dr. Doom uses the distraction as planned to set up his latest trap – an anti-gravity magnetic bubble. Returning to one of his combined air and space vessels, Victor activates the bubble, which traps the Fantastic Four AND Sub-Mariner in the Baxter Building as the entire skyscraper is towed along behind Dr. Doom’s flying craft.

Doom broadcasts taunts to his victims in the Baxter Building, and even tells Namor he was a fool to trust him. He considers the Sub-Mariner another potential obstacle to global conquest and so he will send him and the Fantastic Four (and the rest of the people in the Baxter Building) toward the sun where they will all be destroyed.

By now in the vacuum of space, the Fantastic Four try and fail to reach Doom’s ship. Sub-Mariner is able to survive in space long enough to reach Victor’s vessel. He breaks in, defeats Dr. Doom in combat and knocks him out of the spacecraft.

Doom’s momentum and a passing meteor carry him off into space. Namor, who was experienced at piloting Atlantean vessels, pilots Doom’s ship back to Earth, with the Baxter Building still enveloped in the anti-gravity/ magnetic bubble.

Sub-Mariner restores the building to its normal location (but pipes and power cables will need reconnected among other work). He then remotely summons the device from the Baxter Building basement and destroys both it and Dr. Doom’s vessel.

NOTE: September of 1962 saw the debut of Ant-Man in Tales to Astonish #35.

FANTASTIC FOUR Vol 1 #10 (January 1963)

Title: The Return of Dr. Doom

Synopsis: The Thing and Alicia Masters enthusiastically show off her sculptures of the Fantastic Four and their assorted foes. Ben’s teammates are impressed.

Soon, we see that Reed has dived heavily into merchandising to keep Fantastic Four Incorporated flush with money. They have licensed comic books to churn out child-friendly versions of their adventures, plus action figures, t-shirts, sheets, lunch boxes, you name it. (This enabled guest spots by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, in the spirit of Stan Lee’s 1940s cameo in All Winners Comics.)   

Dr. Doom uses a fake business meeting to abduct Mr. Fantastic and imprison him in his lair. Victor reveals to Reed that he survived their last battle by eventually being rescued by a space craft piloted by an alien race called the Ovoids.

Doom forced the aliens to show him how some of their technology worked, especially methods of transferring minds from one body to another. The intimidating Victor then forced the Ovoids to return him to Earth.

Dr. Doom uses the pirated Ovoid tech to switch his mind into Mr. Fantastic’s body and Reed’s mind into his armored body. Doom in Reed’s body then convinces the rest of the Fantastic Four that he is working on ways of improving all their powers and to enable the Thing to turn back and forth to his human form at will.

In truth, Victor is secretly creating a means of shrinking Invisible Woman, Human Torch and the Thing down into the Microverse/ Quantum Realm. Meanwhile, Reed in Dr. Doom’s body escapes the death trap in which Victor left him.

At first, Sue, Ben and Johnny refuse to believe the apparent Dr. Doom that he is really Reed, but just as Victor in Mr. Fantastic’s body is about to subject the willing F.F. members to the ray that they think will improve their powers, the doubting Human Torch bluffs Doom into confirming the accusation about the mind-switch.

Conveniently, exposure undoes the mind-switch and the restored Mr. Fantastic leads his teammates in battle with Dr. Doom. At length, the battle causes Doom to be hit with the ray he intended to shrink the Fantastic Four, and he himself gets shrunk down to subatomic levels.

FANTASTIC FOUR Vol 1 #16 (July 1963)

Title: The Micro-World of Dr. Doom

Synopsis: At the Baxter Building, the Fantastic Four members experience a few incidents of momentarily shrinking down to insect size before growing back to normal. Those incidents are accompanied by disembodied voices promising even more such treatment.

Mr. Fantastic calls in Ant-Man, an expert on the physics of size-changing. Ant-Man provides the F.F. with some of his Pym Particles and the serum which serves as a delivery mechanism. The quartet shrink themselves down to get to the bottom of things.

Down in the sub-atomic Microverse/ Quantum Realm, our heroes find themselves on a planet now ruled by Dr. Doom. He conquered the planet after accidentally shrinking himself down back in Fantastic Four #10.

During the resulting battle between Victor and the F.F. Dr. Doom uses knockout gas to render the team unconscious and imprisons them alongside the rightful king and his daughter the princess of the planet – called Sub-Atomica by Victor.

After enough time goes by that Ant-Man fears for the Fantastic Four’s safety, he shrinks himself down enough to enter the Microverse/ Quantum Realm so he can search for them. Once he arrives on Sub-Atomica, Ant-Man overcomes some guards but is defeated and brought before Victor.

Meanwhile, the Fantastic Four have used material from their cell walls to make an escape device. They join Ant-Man in fighting Dr. Doom and his troops. When Victor eventually considers the battle as good as lost, he returns himself to normal size, thus escaping the Microverse/ Quantum Realm.

Ant-Man does the same for himself and the F.F. but when they once again appear in Reed’s laboratory they find that Dr. Doom has slipped away and is long gone.

NOTE:  Dr. Strange debuted in Strange Tales #110 this same month.

FANTASTIC FOUR Vol 1 #17 (August 1963)

Title: In the Clutches of Dr. Doom

Synopsis: Some time after the previous issue, Dr. Doom sends squads of androids to attack the individual Fantastic Four members as they go about their everyday lives.

Invisible Woman is at a photo shoot, Mr. Fantastic was attending a science lecture by a colleague, and the Thing & Human Torch were on a double date, Ben with Alicia Masters (at right) and Johnny with his latest girlfriend.

Though our heroes survive the attacks, Dr. Doom recognizes the Thing’s date as famous sculptress Alicia Masters. He abducts her and holds her in his latest flying fortress.

Dr. Doom demands that the Fantastic Four cease opposing him or he’ll kill Alicia. Naturally, the F.F. refuse, invade Doom’s sky vessel, free Alicia and seemingly cause Doom’s death in the final battle.

SPIDER-MAN Vol 1 #5 (October 1963)

Title: Marked for Destruction by Dr. Doom

Synopsis: The Fantastic Four’s archenemy Dr. Doom has been misled by J. Jonah Jameson’s fake news about Spider-Man and actually believes that our hero is a villain. He wants to recruit him as an ally against the Fantastic Four.

Intuiting the wavelength of Spider-Man’s spider-sense, he is able to lure him to a meeting.

When Spidey turns down his offer of a partnership, Dr. Doom tries to kill him. The hero is lucky to escape.

The next day, Flash Thompson dresses in a Spider-Man costume because Spidey is his hero. Dr. Doom abducts the costumed Flash and broadcasts a threat to the Fantastic Four that he will kill Spider-Man if they don’t meet him where he says.

Peter Parker reluctantly dons his costume and tries to free his bully Flash Thompson. He attacks Dr. Doom but is outpowered until the Fantastic Four arrive as Doom ordered. The assembled heroes drive off the villain and save Flash Thompson’s life.   

FANTASTIC FOUR Vol 1 #23 (Feb 1964)

Title: The Master Plan of Dr. Doom

Synopsis: At the Baxter Building headquarters of the Fantastic Four, a dinosaur escapes from Mr. Fantastic’s duplicate of Dr. Doom’s time machine due to negligence by Invisible Woman, the Human Torch and the Thing. Reed recaptures the creature unharmed and returns it to its proper era. A massive argument over the incident breaks out among the quartet.

Dr. Doom emerges from hiding to recruit a trio of career criminals into his service. He uses his technology to grant each of them superpowers. He gives Bull Brogan massive superstrength to take on the Thing; Doom grants Harry Phillips enhanced senses to let him detect Invisible Woman even when she turns invisible; and he makes the Indian Yogi Dakor completely fireproof so he can take on the Human Torch.

The villain also gives each man a high-tech weapon to increase their chances against the Fantastic Four. The three underlings each succeed in abducting their designated FF member. Dr. Doom himself captures Mr. Fantastic.

Doom has timed this attack to coordinate with an intense solar flare hitting the Earth just now. Victor banishes his three super-powered lackies to another dimension until he needs them again.

Next, the villain uses the solar radiation from the flare to power a device with which he will teleport our heroes millions upon millions of miles away from the Earth. Reed manages to trap Dr. Doom in the device with the FF, then saves himself and his teammates while Doom gets teleported off into space.

FANTASTIC FOUR ANNUAL Vol 1 #2 (Sep 1964)

Story 1: The Origin of Dr. Doom

Synopsis: Victor Von Doom recalls his childhood when his father, Werner Von Doom, was a medical mystic for the Gypsy Clan that Victor was born into. When Werner failed to save the life of the wife of the then-ruler of the fictional European country Latveria, that ruler, King Vlad, wants Werner and his son killed. 

While fleeing through the wintry forest, Werner dies and has his fellow Gypsy Boris promise to look after Victor. Years later, the embittered orphan has brilliantly mastered the disciplines of science AND magic. Earning scholarships to a university in America, Victor meets Reed Richards, a fellow student.

At one point, Victor wants to test his experimental device combining science and sorcery. Reed warns Victor that his scientific calculations contain an error but Doom refuses to listen. Using his device causes an explosion which disfigures Victor and damages university property.

Doom is expelled and deludes himself that Reed Richards sabotaged his device out of jealousy, thus beginning his unhinged hatred of Reed and everyone close to him. After leaving the university, Victor sought out monks who educated him further in Black Magic. They also provided his first suit of armor which he would upgrade countless times over the years.

Victor went on to kill the Latverian ruler who had his father and earlier his mother killed. He then assumed the throne of the nation.

Story 2: The Final Victory of Dr. Doom

Synopsis: This tale picks up after Doom was teleported into space by his own invention at the end of Fantastic Four #23 above. He was saved by his and Reed Richards’s shared descendant from over a thousand years later – the time traveling Nathaniel Richards aka Kang the Conqueror, Rama Tut, the Scarlet Centurion and Immortus.

Using the Latverian Embassy in America as the base for his latest attack on the Fantastic Four, he subjects them to illusions that make them fight each other. Mr. Fantastic/ Reed Richards figures out what Dr. Doom is doing and eliminates the illusions.

Mr. Fantastic then challenges Victor to a one-on-one duel of sorts in which they each try to assemble a high-tech weapon from parts and kill the other first. Reed is using Doom’s illusion strategy against him, making him think he assembled the weapon first and killed Reed with it. Convinced he has finally killed his hated foe, Victor returns to Latveria.

NOTE: Yes, I know Doom would surely learn via the news that Reed is still alive, but you know how lazy a lot of comic book writing is. 

FANTASTIC FOUR Vol 1 #39 (Jun 1965)

Title: A Blind Man Shall Lead Them

Synopsis: In Latveria, a hypnotist performing for the country’s ruler Dr. Doom undoes the villain’s belief that he killed Reed a while back. Infuriated, Victor immediately departs for New York City to attack the Fantastic Four once again.

Meanwhile, at the Baxter Building, the Fantastic Four’s lawyer Matt Murdock is going over more legal documents with them. Before he is finished, Dr. Doom arrives in his stealth aircraft and lands atop the Baxter Building.

Doom invades the building and attacks his arch-foes. Matt Murdock slips away to become Daredevil and helps our heroes battle Victor. Dr. Doom has them on the run and Daredevil leads the FF to a nearby building his senses have told him is vacant.

Dr. Doom destroys the entire building during the fighting. Daredevil attacks Victor as a distraction while the FF desperately try to come up with a plan.

FANTASTIC FOUR Vol 1 #40 (Jul 1965)

Title: The Battle of the Baxter Building

Synopsis: The Fantastic Four and Daredevil rush the Baxter Building, so Dr. Doom starts unleashing the building’s high-tech defenses on them.

Victor becomes so focused on the FF that Daredevil is able to stealthily approach and take Doom by surprise. Mr. Fantastic, The Thing, Invisible Woman and the Human Torch use that break to burst in and join DD in fighting the villain.

At length, the Thing crushes Dr. Doom’s gauntlets and otherwise damages his armor. Doom is forced to flee.

FANTASTIC FOUR ANNUAL Vol 1 #3 (Oct 1965)

Title: Bedlam in the Baxter Building

NOTE: THIS ISSUE FEATURING THE WEDDING OF REED AND SUE SEES DR. DOOM SEND COUNTLESS VILLAINS TO ATTACK THE FANTASTIC FOUR AND THEIR SUPERHERO WEDDING GUESTS.

Synopsis: Nick Fury and his agents prevent a guest being controlled by the Puppet Master from poisoning the Thing with a chemical that would kill even him.

Before the Thing has a chance to let his teammates know that the Puppet Master might be mounting an attack the Mole Man and his subterranean race of Moloids invade the Baxter Building. The original X-Men (Cyclops, Ice Man, Angel, Marvel Girl and the Beast) arrive at the ceremony and help Ben fight off the invaders.

Elsewhere Mr Fantastic, Invisible Girl and the Human Torch are attacked by the Red Ghost and his original Super-Apes (Mikhlo, Piotr and Igor). The arriving Doctor Strange helps the trio defeat their foes.

While enroute to the Baxter Building, Thor is assaulted by the Super-Skrull and in the running battle that follows the Human Torch joins the thunder god in defeating the villain.

Daredevil stumbles across a group of Hydra agents planning a missile attack on the wedding ceremony and wades in swinging. The then-current line-up of Avengers (Captain America, Hawkeye, the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver) reach the Baxter Building with Spider-Man just in time to take on the Enchantress, the Executioner, Cobra, the Mad Thinker and his Awesome Android.

Meanwhile Daredevil and the X-Men join forces to battle the Mandarin, Electro, Unicorn, the Melter and the original villainous Black Knight. Quicksilver clashes with Whirlwind (then known as the Human Top).  

Next a virtual Armageddon gets going with the arrival of new heroes and villains. The heroes: Iron Man, the Wasp, Ant-Man and the Hulk. The villains: Kang the Conqueror, Dragon Man, Mr Hyde, the Red Skull, Sub-Mariner, the Wizard, Medusa, the Beetle, the Grey Gargoyle, the Eel, Attuma, the Leader, Sandman, Trapster and Diablo. 

At the height of the furious battle Uatu the Watcher transports Mr Fantastic to his City of Ruins headquarters on the Blue Area of Earth’s moon. As usual violating his vow of non-interference, the Watcher gives Reed Richards a device that will undo the effects of Dr Doom’s mind-control weapon.

Mr Fantastic is transported back to the Baxter Building where he uses the device on the army of villains. The gizmo not only frees the supervillains from Dr Doom’s control but causes them to vacate the area.

With all the danger now over, Reed and Sue’s wedding ceremony is held and all the guests party at a peaceful reception. 

FOR QUICKSILVER AND CRYSTAL’S WEDDING CLICK HERE  FOR PART ONE AND  HERE  FOR PART TWO.

FOR THE WEDDING OF THE SCARLET WITCH AND THE VISION CLICK HERE