Super Hero Worship is a regular opinion column by IGN’s Senior Staff Writer Jesse Schedeen. Check out the previous Super Hero Worship entry, Robert Pattinson's Batman Has No Business Being in James Gunn's DCU.
Doctor Doom has well and truly cemented his status as Marvel’s greatest villain by now. What’s not to love? He’s got boundless ambition and an even bigger ego. He’s successfully taken over the world more than once. He had a brief stint as the self-proclaimed God Emperor of all reality. And none of that can fully disguise the fact that he’s a deeply flawed and self-loathing man who can’t get over his decades-old feud with his intellectual rival and former roommate.
Strangely enough, Doom has also emerged as Marvel’s most compelling hero over the past two years. Not the traditional Doom, who’s currently reigning over the Marvel Universe yet again in Marvel’s One World Under Doom crossover. Rather, the Doom of the new Ultimate Universe. He represents a very different yet still utterly fascinating take on this iconic Marvel character.
The Ultimate Universe’s Rebirth
To understand why this version of Doom is so compelling, you first need to wrap your head around the concept of Marvel’s Ultimate Universe imprint. The original Ultimate line, which ran from 2000-2015, was dedicated to giving readers updated and streamlined versions of characters like Spider-Man, the Avengers (rebranded as The Ultimates), and the X-Men, all reimagined to suit the 21st Century and the age of the War on Terror. It was great stuff… up until Marvel lost the plot after a few years.
The new Ultimate line, which kicked off in 2023, is more purposeful and directed in how it changes the traditional Marvel formula. This world, Earth-6160, was meant to be a close copy of the regular Marvel Universe, Earth-616. But thanks to the time-traveling machinations of The Maker (the twisted version of Reed Richards from the original Ultimate Universe), Earth-6160 has gone badly astray. The Maker worked to systematically suppress the emergence of Earth’s superheroes. Most of those superhumans that do exist serve on The Maker’s Council, a shadowy, autocratic cabal that secretly rules this dystopian world.
Yet, there is a resistance movement. Together, the Earth-6160 versions of Tony Stark and Reed Richards have been seeking out those who were robbed of their opportunity to be heroes and giving them a second chance. That’s the whole premise behind Jonathan Hickman and Marco Checchetto’s chart-topping Ultimate Spider-Man, which features a married, older Peter Parker becoming Spidey for the first time. It’s also the idea fueling Deniz Camp and Juan Frigeri’s The Ultimates, as Tony and Reed lead a ragtag band of heroes to liberate the world while the clock steadily counts down to The Maker’s return.
I’m of the opinion that the Ultimate line is the best thing Marvel is publishing at the moment (especially with the X-Men’s Krakoan era now over), and there’s a reason why The Ultimates was IGN’s best comic book of 2024. More than any other book at Marvel or DC, The Ultimates feels like the comic for this strange and frightening age in which we find ourselves. It’s so refreshing to read a superhero comic where the heroes aren’t simply defending and upholding the status quo, but actively fighting to tear it down and build something better.
Who Is Ultimate Doom?
If the new Ultimate line represents the best of Marvel’s current comic book crop, then Ultimate Doom is its greatest and most compelling character. That’s because, in this universe, Doom is Reed Richards. In the Ultimate Universe, one Reed is a terrible, seemingly unstoppable villain, while another is its potential savior. What can I say? He’s a malleable character, and not just because he can stretch and twist himself into literal knots.
Books like Ultimate Invasion and The Ultimates have established a detailed backstory for Ultimate Doom. When he came to Earth-6160 and started building his secret empire, The Maker made a special project out of tormenting his multiversal doppelganger. The Maker quietly sabotaged Reed’s scientific work, so that the cosmic accident meant to give the Fantastic Four their powers instead killed Johnny and Susan Storm and caused Reed to be thrown in prison.
From there, The Maker spent years physically and psychologically torturing Reed. He didn’t stop until Reed finally accepted that he is truly Doom - a black hole of a human being who sucks the life out of everyone and everything he loves. Even though Reed has since been liberated and joined the resistance against The Maker, he still carries the profound scars from those years of torture. He still wears the visage of Doctor Doom, like a modern-day Man in the Iron Mask. But where Doctor Doom’s mask projects power and regal authority, Ultimate Doom’s mask represents nothing but caged pain and anguish.
The question of why The Maker devoted so much effort to tearing down a version of himself is a fascinating one. His hatred of Earth-6160’s Reed is due to both personal and entirely practical reasons.
A refugee of the original Ultimate Universe, this Reed once served on his own version of the Fantastic Four, before everything collapsed and he lost his found family. This Reed has gone more than a little insane after sealing himself away for a thousand years and becoming an immortal tyrant with an oversized brain. He clearly hates the man he used to be as much as he secretly yearns for what was lost, so punishing Earth-6160’s Reed is a way of exorcising his own demons. It’s been a real wild ride for this character over the past 15 years, and I’m still amazed at how The Maker (and fellow Ultimate Universe refugee Miles Morales) continues to thrive as a character long after his universe has been consigned to the dustbin of the comic book industry.
There’s also the fact that, in their last encounter, The Maker asked the Reed Richards of the main Marvel Universe a pointed question - “If you had the chance, would you erase me from existence?”. That Reed admitted he would. So The Maker knows with certainty that the greatest threat to his new empire is Reed Richards. Only one Reed can stop another. The solution? Destroy him utterly and completely, so that Reed’s unparalleled mind becomes impotent and worthless.
Ultimate Doom’s Battle with Depression
Did The Maker succeed in his goal of destroying Reed Richards? That question is at the heart of what makes Ultimate Doom such a compelling character. He’s a profoundly damaged individual. Who wouldn’t be, after what he’s suffered? He’s a brilliant scientist who failed in his life’s ambition yet still strives against overwhelming odds to build a better world. He’s an admirable guy in a lot of ways.
Yet, there’s something inherently sinister about anyone who wears the mask of Doctor Doom. Reed is no exception. The Ultimates frequently leaves us to wonder if The Maker has done too good a job of stamping out Reed’s heroic flame. He’s shown to hold his fellow heroes in contempt for what he sees as half-measures. Given the opportunity, he’d use time travel to rewrite and reshape the fabric of their universe just as The Maker did before him. And he can’t seem to escape his obsession with correcting his botched work. Doom constantly toils away in his lab, experimenting on mice and trying to recreate the Fantastic Four.
Many of the characters in The Ultimates are depicted as being neurodivergent in some way. Tony/Iron Lad is autistic. Giant-Man is wracked by anxiety and a whole mess of phobias. And Ultimate Doom suffers from a depression so debilitating it makes every day a struggle. Doom vocalizes this in the truly incredible The Ultimates #4, an issue that explores four parallel threads of time simultaneously. Here, Doom refers to his depression as his “Negative Zone,” a clever spin on the deadly dimension from the core Marvel Universe.
“I… suffer from periods of… extreme despair,” Doom tells Tony. “During these periods it is as if I am… oppositely charged. Lost in an all-consuming universe where nothing is possible. I call it my ‘negative zone’.”
This, more than any other scene in The Ultimates, serves to humanize Ultimate Doom and make him more relatable than the larger-than-life Doctor Doom of Earth-616 could ever be. How many among us can understand the plight of situational depression and the thought of being ground down by the world and the endless deluge of bad news? Who doesn’t have days where they feel trapped in their own personal Negative Zone? I can certainly relate.
All of this helps to mold this version of Reed Richards into the most complex and layered character in the new Ultimate Universe. He’s a man once destined for greatness who had that life stolen away. He’s someone who fights an uphill battle every day simply to get out of bed and keep moving forward. He bravely resists, yet it remains to be seen how much of his battered soul he’s willing to sacrifice in the process. He’s an unusual and very damaged hero in a universe that has far too few heroes. And he’s the single biggest reason why anyone even remotely interested in superhero comics should be following Marvel’s Ultimate Universe line.
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