Super Hero Worship is a daily opinion column by IGN’s Senior Staff Writer Jesse Schedeen. Check out the earlier Super Hero Worship entry, Robert Pattinson’s Batman Has No Business Being in James Gunn’s DCU.
Doctor Doom has nicely and actually cemented his standing as Marvel’s best villain by now. What’s to not love? He’s bought boundless ambition and an excellent greater ego. He’s efficiently taken over the world greater than as soon as. He had a quick stint because the self-proclaimed God Emperor of all actuality. And none of that may absolutely disguise the truth that he’s a deeply flawed and self-loathing man who can’t recover from his decades-old feud together with his mental rival and former roommate.
Strangely sufficient, Doom has additionally emerged as Marvel’s most compelling hero over the previous two years. Not the normal Doom, who’s at present reigning over the Marvel Universe but once more in Marvel’s One World Under Doom crossover. Rather, the Doom of the brand new Ultimate Universe. He represents a really totally different but nonetheless totally fascinating tackle this iconic Marvel character.
The Ultimate Universe’s Rebirth
To perceive why this model of Doom is so compelling, you first must wrap your head across the idea of Marvel’s Ultimate Universe imprint. The authentic Ultimate line, which ran from 2000-2015, was devoted to giving readers up to date and streamlined variations of characters like Spider-Man, the Avengers (rebranded as The Ultimates), and the X-Men, all reimagined to swimsuit the twenty first Century and the age of the War on Terror. It was nice stuff… up till Marvel misplaced the plot after a number of years.
The new Ultimate line, which kicked off in 2023, is extra purposeful and directed in the way it adjustments the normal Marvel system. This world, Earth-6160, was meant to be a detailed copy of the common Marvel Universe, Earth-616. But because of the time-traveling machinations of The Maker (the twisted model of Reed Richards from the unique Ultimate Universe), Earth-6160 has gone badly astray. The Maker labored to systematically suppress the emergence of Earth’s superheroes. Most of these superhumans that do exist serve on The Maker’s Council, a shadowy, autocratic cabal that secretly guidelines this dystopian world.
Yet, there’s a resistance motion. Together, the Earth-6160 variations of Tony Stark and Reed Richards have been searching for out those that had been robbed of their alternative to be heroes and giving them a second likelihood. That’s the entire premise behind Jonathan Hickman and Marco Checchetto’s chart-topping Ultimate Spider-Man, which incorporates a married, older Peter Parker changing into Spidey for the primary time. It’s additionally the concept fueling Deniz Camp and Juan Frigeri’s The Ultimates, as Tony and Reed lead a ragtag band of heroes to liberate the world whereas the clock steadily counts all the way down to The Maker’s return.
I’m of the opinion that the Ultimate line is one of the best factor Marvel is publishing for the time being (particularly with the X-Men’s Krakoan period now over), and there’s a purpose why The Ultimates was IGN’s greatest comedian ebook of 2024. More than another ebook at Marvel or DC, The Ultimates seems like the comedian for this unusual and scary age during which we discover ourselves. It’s so refreshing to learn a superhero comedian the place the heroes aren’t merely defending and upholding the established order, however actively combating to tear it down and construct one thing higher.
Who Is Ultimate Doom?
If the brand new Ultimate line represents one of the best of Marvel’s present comedian ebook crop, then Ultimate Doom is its best and most compelling character. That’s as a result of, on this universe, Doom is Reed Richards. In the Ultimate Universe, one Reed is a horrible, seemingly unstoppable villain, whereas one other is its potential savior. What can I say? He’s a malleable character, and never simply because he can stretch and twist himself into literal knots.
Books like Ultimate Invasion and The Ultimates have established an in depth backstory for Ultimate Doom. When he got here to Earth-6160 and began constructing his secret empire, The Maker made a particular mission out of tormenting his multiversal doppelganger. The Maker quietly sabotaged Reed’s scientific work, in order that the cosmic accident meant to provide the Fantastic Four their powers as a substitute killed Johnny and Susan Storm and triggered Reed to be thrown in jail.
From there, The Maker spent years bodily and psychologically torturing Reed. He didn’t cease till Reed lastly accepted that he’s actually Doom – a black gap of a human being who sucks the life out of everybody and all the pieces he loves. Even although Reed has since been liberated and joined the resistance towards The Maker, he nonetheless carries the profound scars from these years of torture. He nonetheless wears the visage of Doctor Doom, like a modern-day Man within the Iron Mask. But the place Doctor Doom’s masks initiatives energy and regal authority, Ultimate Doom’s masks represents nothing however caged ache and anguish.
The query of why The Maker devoted a lot effort to ripping down a model of himself is an interesting one. His hatred of Earth-6160’s Reed is because of each private and completely sensible causes.
A refugee of the unique Ultimate Universe, this Reed as soon as served on his personal model of the Fantastic Four, at the start collapsed and he misplaced his discovered household. This Reed has gone greater than slightly insane after sealing himself away for a thousand years and changing into an immortal tyrant with an outsized mind. He clearly hates the person he was as a lot as he secretly yearns for what was misplaced, so punishing Earth-6160’s Reed is a means of exorcising his personal demons. It’s been an actual wild journey for this character over the previous 15 years, and I’m nonetheless amazed at how The Maker (and fellow Ultimate Universe refugee Miles Morales) continues to thrive as a personality lengthy after his universe has been consigned to the dustbin of the comedian ebook business.
There’s additionally the truth that, of their final encounter, The Maker requested the Reed Richards of the principle Marvel Universe a pointed query – “If you had the prospect, would you erase me from existence?”. That Reed admitted he would. So The Maker is aware of with certainty that the best risk to his new empire is Reed Richards. Only one Reed can cease one other. The resolution? Destroy him totally and utterly, in order that Reed’s unparalleled thoughts turns into impotent and nugatory.
Ultimate Doom’s Battle with Depression
Did The Maker reach his objective of destroying Reed Richards? That query is on the coronary heart of what makes Ultimate Doom such a compelling character. He’s a profoundly broken particular person. Who wouldn’t be, after what he’s suffered? He’s an excellent scientist who failed in his life’s ambition but nonetheless strives towards overwhelming odds to construct a greater world. He’s an admirable man in lots of methods.
Yet, there’s one thing inherently sinister about anybody who wears the masks of Doctor Doom. Reed is not any exception. The Ultimates often leaves us to surprise if The Maker has accomplished too good a job of stamping out Reed’s heroic flame. He’s proven to carry his fellow heroes in contempt for what he sees as half-measures. Given the chance, he’d use time journey to rewrite and reshape the material of their universe simply as The Maker did earlier than him. And he can’t appear to flee his obsession with correcting his botched work. Doom continually toils away in his lab, experimenting on mice and attempting to recreate the Fantastic Four.
Many of the characters in The Ultimates are depicted as being neurodivergent in a roundabout way. Tony/Iron Lad is autistic. Giant-Man is wracked by anxiousness and an entire mess of phobias. And Ultimate Doom suffers from a melancholy so debilitating it makes each day a battle. Doom vocalizes this within the actually unbelievable The Ultimates #4, a problem that explores 4 parallel threads of time concurrently. Here, Doom refers to his melancholy as his “Negative Zone,” a intelligent spin on the lethal dimension from the core Marvel Universe.
“I… endure from durations of… excessive despair,” Doom tells Tony. “During these durations it’s as if I’m… oppositely charged. Lost in an all-consuming universe the place nothing is feasible. I name it my ‘adverse zone’.”
This, greater than another scene in The Ultimates, serves to humanize Ultimate Doom and make him extra relatable than the larger-than-life Doctor Doom of Earth-616 may ever be. How many amongst us can perceive the plight of situational melancholy and the considered being floor down by the world and the infinite deluge of unhealthy information? Who doesn’t have days the place they really feel trapped in their very own private Negative Zone? I can definitely relate.
All of this helps to mildew this model of Reed Richards into essentially the most complicated and layered character within the new Ultimate Universe. He’s a person as soon as destined for greatness who had that life stolen away. He’s somebody who fights an uphill battle each day merely to get away from bed and maintain transferring ahead. He bravely resists, but it stays to be seen how a lot of his battered soul he’s prepared to sacrifice within the course of. He’s an uncommon and really broken hero in a universe that has far too few heroes. And he’s the one largest purpose why anybody even remotely occupied with superhero comics needs to be following Marvel’s Ultimate Universe line.
