What a villain. There’s a lot of Dr. Doom in Darth Vader, and pretty much every Bond villain of the last 40 years. Of all Marvel’s villains, Doom has appeared most, across countless titles. Where most villains stick to their designated hero, Doom, nominally the arch-enemy of the Fantastic Four, will go toe-to-toe (or, more likely, he’ll send a Doombot to go toe-to-toe; he doesn’t like to get his hands dirty with mere serfs) with anyone. A truly brilliant scientist, Doom likes to combine his unquenchable thirst for ultimate power (he once stole the energy of the near-omnipotent Beyonder) with a bizarre double life, as the altruistic leader of the European country of Latveria. Which makes arresting him on American soil doubly difficult, due to that pesky diplomatic immunity. He has a noble side, like many of the best bad guys, but he’s as disfigured psychologically as he is physically. And then there’s that surname, which is pretty hard to get around. How life might have been different if he’d been born Victor Von Awesome.

FIRST APPEARED IN FANTASTIC FOUR #5 (1962)
CREATED BY STAN LEE AND JACK KIRBY