This, in a nut shell.

Doom, even when written well, is entirely self serving. Doom does not share power. He might occasionally use it for 'good' ends, but those ends are always self serving for Doom.

He has a code of honor, which he'll break whenever he really has to, yes. It can also be argued that he tries to provide for his people (it can just as easily be argued he grinds them under an iron boot, Latervia was generally artistically depicted as being well behind the rest of the world by about 50-100 years in terms of technology and the like).

He is a great character, one of Marvel's best, but he is still a villain.

He definitely doesn't share, but sometimes he's not written as self serving.

Like this scene from Doomwar

I hated that Doom was portrayed as a bigot in recent years when in the past he was nothing of the sort.

However, Doom does have a history of abusing children.

Doom is an opportunistic leader. He wants to further his own goals and rule his people as he wills. I don't think we should necessarily look at things as good and evil when talking about Doom but label what he does with costs and benefits. If the benefits or pros of an action outway the costs or cons, and it furthers ehat he wants to accomplish, then Doom does it. He has teamed up with super heroes, he has been the mastermind behind the evil scheme, he has been the benevolent ruler, and he has been the cruel dictator. Doom has always been a hard character to pin labels on.

YES!

I was trying to write out that very scene and couldn't remember it well enough. One of my favorite Doom moments (if not comic moments) in recent history.

Gross criminal negligence *is* an evil act, especially when taken to the absurd extremes that Doom's been more than willing to go to in order to get back at the Accursed Richards.

Shooting buildings into space, super-charging homicidal alien psychopaths with an artificial Power Cosmic and setting them loose in New York or deliberately putting all of Creation itself at risk for the sake of your own ambition.

These are not things you should be doing if you don't want people calling you evil (and insane!)

Also one of my favorites as well . This is one of the reasons I see Doom as the anti-hero. Doom feels by feeding his vanity via ruling the world, he can also protect mankind from themselves.

I don't really think Doom cares what the world thinks of him. True he does things that are probably rash. However, that's what makes Doom as appealing as characters like Batman or Magneto. All of these characters do what they feel is right, but isn't condoned by society.

Most definitely a full-fledged villain. The guy is about as vain, power hungry, vengeful, and narcissistic as it gets.

Which makes it a shame because if he could just admit that he's not as smart as he thinks, that he's not God's gift to Earth and the wielder of all answers to lifes problems, and that no, Richards is not the guy responsible for all his problems, he could actually do some real good and really make the entire world a better place.

He's just incapable of recognizing that no, the world would not be a perfect utopia if everyone would just step aside and let him call all the shots. I think that's kind of the core that sums up his major flaw - he thinks that in one way or another, he's better than everyone else and nothing is his fault, and it's everyone elses fault for not recognizing and admitting it.

For his next evil plan, he will set fire to Sun.
And there's Kristoff telling him, "Doom, please, it's already a ball of fire. Get over it already".

I don't see how that says he isn't self-serving. I think it shows him as entirely self serving. He thinks he is the only one who can save mankind from itself.

If that isn't meglomania, I don't know what is.

Because if Doom really and truly looked into the future, he knows it isn't written. Given how many times he's jumped through time and changed things, he'd know it isn't written. Ergo, he only sees the outcome he wants to see.

I think what that scene mostly shows (though it's still a great characterisation of Doom), is that Bast is quite clearly the stupidest deity in the Marvel Universe (she's also quite clearly rather lost. Wakanda is a looong way from Egypt!)

Vengeful, narcissistic, and categorical, don't really make one a villian. The Superior Spiderm-man is all of those things yet the general public considers him a "hero". However, I do see your point in saying, if Doom set aside his pride he could do better things. Then again being a man against the masses is what makes Dr. Doom, Dr. Doom .

I think it's an inevitable truth that man kind seeks conflict. I think that's what he intends to "save" mankind from. His intentions are noble, I think that occasionally Doom's vanity gets the best of him, and thus only sees one ultimatum.

I don't think this example holds up because he's definitely on the way to villain-town. The whole series is really about the difference between heroes and villains. It's not just about the core argument. Peter and Doc have the same "Great Power, Great Responsibility" guiding their actions. But the methods used to achieve that is really the difference between what makes them good and bad.

Doom is really a lot like Ock in that sense. They both have good end goals, but they're total dicks and don't have the ability to sympathize with those they are supposedly trying to help. They lack the ability to realistically see themselves from the outside. Too much ego. No matter what they do, they always tell themselves they were in the right.

So yeah, they're villains. They're not one-dimensional, idiotic villains (like, say, Carnage), but they're villains. Old school Magneto was the same style of character, and there's no doubt he was a villain.

Superb point my friend. I wholeheartedly agree with that fact that everyone has good intentions, it's how one goes about those intentions that makes him good or evil. Also I do like the fact that doom, oc , and magneto are one of a kind villains (not one dimensional).

I really don't think anyone is really wrong here. Doom is easily one of the most complex villains.

In FF, when doom becomes a part of the future foundation, you can definitely see that he's a proud man that has an honor code. his story arc is really good, but i love that in the end that even though valeria had promised him compensation, that he sacrificed himself anyway.

/spoiler/

On a side note. I absolutely loved the scene where he sat down with 2 infinity gauntlets!

/spoiler/