A Brief Comment on Fantastic Four (2015)

It's bad. Yeah, everyone is saying that (but not everyone), but what makes it bad? I'll sum up:

1. The plot never stops setting up. Meet Reed! Meet Ben! Meet Sue! Meet Johnny! They build a teleporter! They use a teleporter! They get powers! The government exploits their powers! They build a new teleporter! Doom got powers! What's going to happen now? Oh, we beat Doom. The end.
2. There's no sense of "family". They're a bunch of thinly-written characters who barely relate to each other. They never even work as a team until the very end. Part of the point of the comics was that the Fantastic Four expressed the idea that your "family" is a group of people with whom you have a shared experience. This never comes across in the film, and Sue never has their experience. If anything, the 'Four' in this film is Reed, Ben, Johnny and Doom. This leads me to:
3. It's kind of sexist. Yeah, the old comics are sexist too, but so is this. Sue never goes to the other dimension until the very end. She gets her powers in a very arbitrary way. None of the men even think of bringing her along even though she was part of the team that built the teleporter, and it's never brought up that they didn't.
4. They make exactly the same mistakes with Doom as in the 2005 film. He's attracted to Sue, so he fails as a reflection of their embrace of family: remember the classic line "Doom needs no one." Doom rejects the society of others because of his massive inferiority complex. In the film he also has superpowers. Thus instead of being a character who pursues power, he's simply a character who misuses power, making him just an arbitrarily evil version of the other main characters. There's no explanation for why he's that way.
5. The film is grey, flat, boring and colourless.

This might have worked as a crappy sci-fi film about teleportation and body horror, but there was no need to waste the characters of the Fantastic Four on such a concept. Even an incredibly generic film where the Four got powers and Reed's old colleague Doom, now a power-hungry tyrant, attacked them because he thought they were the biggest obstacle to his taking over the world/becoming a god/whatever, and they had to defeat him, would have been better. I didn't mind that they made Johnny and Sue into more active characters in the plot, but they could have done a lot more with it. You'd be better off watching the 1994 one than this.

Supervillain Rushmore

Have you ever seen this? It's, as you should be able to tell, a piece of humorous-style artwork depicting Mount Rushmore but with the faces of Darth Vader, Megatron, Cobra Commander and Doctor Doom. It's been floating around on the internet for a few years.

Now I know it's just a piece of amusing artistry. But there's a missed opportunity here which will never be able to be rectified without looking like a rip-off of this work. Let's consider the four faces.

Darth Vader: central character of the Star Wars films, antagonist or co-antagonist of the Original Trilogy, franchise figurehead and marketing bonanza.

Megatron: main bad guy from the Hasbro toy line Transformers, and specifically as seen here the version from the 80s glorified commericals known as the cartoon series.

Cobra Commander: main bad guy from the Hasbro toy line G.I. Joe, and specifically as seen here the version from the 80s glorified commercials known as the cartoon series.

Doctor Doom: supervillain from Marvel Comics, archenemy of the Fantastic Four.

Notice something? Film villain, 80s toy/cartoon villain, 80s toy/cartoon villain, comic book villain.

This should totally be the "80s toy/cartoon villain" Rushmore.

"Who else would you put there?" I hear you ask. Easy. Firstly, get rid of Doom and Vader. They're both odd ones out.

80s toy/cartoon villain 1: Skeletor. Obvious, really. He's the bad guy from Masters of the Universe. Masters of the Universe is an 80s toy line that was adapted for television as a series of glorified commercials presented as a cartoon series. Put him on the far right.

80s toy/cartoon villain 2: Shredder from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Okay, so TMNT was originally a comic book which was then adapted as a children's cartoon from which a line of toys derived, but in my opinion it's the closest equivalent. Put him on the far left.

I've now found a picture which was Cobra, Megatron and Skeletor but they had Mumm-Ra. I guess that could work, but I know nothing about Thundercats - it was one of those things that didn't seem to make it into Australian childhoods - so I guess if you prefer, take that one. Surely of all these things Thundercats is the most obscure.

In any event we would have:

Shredder

Megatron

Cobra Commander

Skeletor

Ah, consistency of theme. The only other option which comes to mind is Doctor Claw from Inspector Gadget and part of his schtick obviously is that you never see his face so he'd hardly work unless you used the MAD logo or something.

This has been bugging me for ages. I don't mean this as an attack on the original piece, just a commentary on how I felt like it could make more sense. I don't know why I care. I don't like 80s cartoons and I've never even seen Masters of the Universe or G.I. Joe. It just seems like one of those missed opportunities (although I realise that wasn't the point of the original artwork).

Feel free to make this if you wish and put it on Twitter or somewhere tagged with "opinions can be wrong," I might stumble upon it.

Concerns before the 2015 "Fantastic Four" film adaptation

Fun fact: in Portugese, Doctor Doom is called 'Doutor Destino.'

Apart from the fact that it simply doesn't look like it's going to be very good, I'm reasonably convinced that the next attempt to realise Marvel's First Family on the silver screen is going to be little more successful than the one before. We already know that the reason this is going ahead is largely so that Fox can avoid losing its film option, which makes this 2015 production in some respects a high-budget reiteration of the 1994 ashcan copy which, if anyone's seen it, occupies an uneasy space between "so bad it's good" and "actually just very bad." The best thing that can be said of that rare cinematic experience is that Doctor Doom's costume is quite good, although the actor, Mister Joseph Culp, is partially muffled by the mask. Did they not put a microphone inside? Anyway, it's Doom I wanted to talk about.

Sorting out the Fantastic Four themselves is never going to be a huge stretch of the imagination for filmmakers. Inevitably, Reed will be the stretchy smart guy who lacks certain social graces or takes life too seriously, Sue is the strong core of the group who can turn invisible and project force fields, Johnny is a hot head who can fly and set himself on fire and Ben is the tormented one who's been turned into a monster. I'm not saying that's all there is to the characters, but that's what filmmakers are going to see.

The reason why Doom works in the best of the comics, and the reason why he's never worked in a film, is because he functions most successfully as a dark reflection of the Fantastic Four: a Jungian shadow or nemesis figure, as attested on the website The Great American Novel which analyses the comics from the 60s to the 80s. Doom is never used this way in the films, and as such he doesn't work at all. To be specific, Doom reflects each of the four heroes individually and as a whole:

1. Like Reed, Doom is an intellectual, but he is not a purely rational character. He supplements his scientific expertise and technological resources with magic, injecting an element of superstition into the framework. The fact that Reed does not dwell on his own genius is also reflected by Doom's arrogance and pride.
2. Sue's conviction and strength of character are reflected by Doom's stubbornness, obsessive nature and warped code of honour.
3. Johnny's extroversion and passionate, energetic behaviour is shadowed by Doom's grandiosity and his short temper (as well as his showy costume).
4. Like Ben, Doom is deeply insecure about his appearance, but while Ben tends to confront the world openly and dares the world to react, Doom hides behind a mask and an elaborate costume intended to inspire dread and awe.
5. The Fantastic Four are intrinsically a family. Doom is ultimately alone, emphasised by his tendency to surround himself with robot duplicates made in his own image. His closest confidant, his seneschal Boris, fears him, his adopted son Kristoff is forced to become him in case of emergencies, and his childhood sweetheart, Valeria, rejected him when she discovered what a tyrant he had become as an adult.
6. The Fantastic Four are something of a capitalist-democratic success story, embodying how hard work, talent and a little luck could allow one to achieve prosperity, freedom and happiness (apart from all the villain-fighting). Doom is an autocrat who used his skills to seize control of his homeland and rule it. How benevolent Doom is seems to depend very much on the author, but Doom contrasts to the Four in that while their lives are about gaining power over themselves and their own lives, Doom is interested in power over other people.

I'm not claiming to have some particular insight into the character of Doctor Doom that other people lack, but I think that gives at least a sense of why Doom is so successful in artistic terms as the archenemy and sometime begrudging ally of the Fantastic Four. Obviously the reason he's been a villain in other comics, the Avengers and the like, is because he looks cool, is powerful and has reasonably clear motivations, but that's why Doom works in the best Fantastic Four comics.

The reason why Doom doesn't work in adaptations is because they always change him to such an extent that he becomes irrelevant. In the 1994 ashcan he wants the FF's powers because he believes that the cosmic radiation, which he was studying in the film with Reed, should have been experienced by him but the accident got in the way. In the 2005 film he's made similarly irrelevant because, like his form in the Ultimate Comics, he actually gains powers in the same way as the FF, in the same incident, which means that instead of being a reflection of them, he just is one of them, but evil. One facet of Doom's character which also makes him an effective foil to the Four in the comics is that he doesn't have powers, but has gained power through his study of science and magic. As a combatant, Doom is basically the same as Iron Man, a human being in a powered suit of armour that can fly and shoot lasers out of his hands. The FF are about dealing with and managing the powers they received by accident, while Doom is focused on giving himself more power intentionally.

Approved by the Comics Code Authority.

Doom also doesn't work in the 2005 film because he has no motivation beyond revenge. While Doom in the comics is partially motivated by transferred self-loathing which manifests as resentment towards Reed, a major part of his characterisation is that he desires rulership, initially over the world and later merely over Latveria so that he may order it. In the 2005 film I suppose you could say that Doom represents, however blandly, the corporate world which only values profit while Reed represents purely scientific academia, but it's hardly borne out through the film. He is also motivated in the 2005 film by a lust for Sue, which means that he fails as a foil for the team: Doom in the comics is a loner by choice because he has such contempt and mistrust for the world around him.

So what does any of this have to do with the 2015 film, I hear you ask? Well let's take what we know about Doom in the new film, derived from some websites I saw: supposedly Doom is a "very anti-social programmer" who is known on blogs by the username "Doom."

Right.

Y'know, I don't want a big fanboy about it, because they're just film adaptations. Fantastic Four is a comic. That's kind of an issue with this whole superhero film market at the moment. Comic book characters work best in comics because that's their medium. And there are a bajillion good comics with good, proper Doctor Doom in, many of which I have read. But the thing is, I'm very sceptical about this being a good direction in which to take Doom.

Doom is the shadow of the FF. He's the fifth member of the Fantastic Four. He needs to reflect them, to be like and yet unlike them. If he's doing that, then he's doing his job, and it doesn't matter if he's a programmer or whatever. But the thing is, this situation seems to me like they want Doom to be "modernised," and I think this isn't the way to go.

One of the important elements of the Fantastic Four is that they embody forward-looking attitudes, optimism and futurity. Doom is a monarch, and represents a different kind of society. He's a scientist who also uses magic, which suggests something both old-world and new-world about him. This is also embodied in the fact that he is European while the Four are American. A good example might be in the classic "This Land Is Mine" issue of John Byrne's run on the comic, in which Doom is simultaneously the enemy of the Four (who represent capitalism), the enemy of Zorba, the King of Latveria who seized the throne from Doom by claiming inheritance from his brother, and the enemy of the Soviets - one of the reasons he wishes to rule Latveria is to better protect it from being absorbed into the Eastern bloc. So Doom is an anti-capitalist, anti-communist and anti-traditionalist. Possibly this makes Doom a fascist, if anything. At the same time Doom is Romany, and therefore naturally an enemy of racist fascists like the Red Skull.

What this means is that in a sense Doom embodies that idea which lurks inside of many people which is a form of introspection bias: "I can see how the world should work, but no one else seemingly can. If only I was in charge, everything would be put right." In that sense it might be appropriate for Doom to be an "anti-social programmer." But the point of Doom is that he's anti-everything, except Latveria and himself. For this reason I think putting Doom into this modern mould risks rendering him irrelevant, because it makes him part of an existing cultural structure - internet culture. Another reason Doom is the shadow of the Four is because the Four are about forging a path, and about freedom, while Doom achieves this not in his actions but in his attitude: while he achieves a great deal, he is interested in rejecting, denying and belittling all existing structures. This is obviously represented in how regularly Doom tends to abuse his diplomatic immunity when he's in the United States.

"Only one of us has enough fanboys to triumph!"

On the website I mentioned previously, The Great American Novel, it's argued that Doom's fundamental motivation is simply that he wants to feel important. Now this again seems like a reasonable idea to be applied to an online figure, given the notion that many trolls and online commentators do so because yelling uselessly into the void of cyberspace is the only way they can deal with their crushing feelings of unimportance and irrelevance (the irony is not lost on me incidentally). This is a fact borne out every day, of course: the people at the top of the chain in most online "controversies" - that is, multinational corporations and their decision-making bodies - have probably no knowledge and certainly no interest whatsoever in the demands or arguments of online nobodies. But Doom is not a character ruling over a petty little online kingdom of misery but a man who wishes to impose himself upon the world in a public and spectacular way.

Now I might be proved wrong by the characterisation of Doom in the film. I might be, although I highly doubt it. I suppose my point in the end is this: Doom is the archetypal super-villain. One of the biggest problems in my opinion is that Marvel Studios don't have the rights to the character. I'm not one of those people who thinks that everything Marvel Studios does is gold - in fact I think a lot of it is well-presented mediocrity - but I think they would have got Doom right. I mean, he's so hard to get wrong. He's a tyrant in power armour who calls himself 'Doctor Doom.' You can basically put him in anything and he'll work - as long as you keep him that way. But I don't think many modern Hollywood studios are too interested in the subtlety which can be derived from a character like Doom. It's a mistaken impression, obviously. Look at the enduring popularity and cultural resonance of Darth Vader, a character partially modelled on Doom. I haven't even touched on another part of Doom's characterisation in this, his relationship with his parents, which is another effective element of his characterisation which remains untapped onscreen. I think it's a shame that there's all this interesting stuff happening in source material which has never survived the adaptation process, and continues to not survive. Why not try Doom in his original state? The only time it's ever been attempted is in the 1994 ashcan which was never intended to be seen by anyone.

Compelling villains have been all the rage since The Dark Knight and Doom could easily be no exception, even from a bottom-line marketing point of view: a grandiose antagonist in a fancy costume who could be the subject of any number of t-shirts, toys and internet memes. It's actually something Marvel have generally bungled in my opinion. The only villain they've come up with, across Fox, Sony and Marvel Studios who has gained any mileage is Loki (the only other memorable one is Ian McKellen's version of Magneto, and that mostly works because Ian McKellen is a very good actor). Doom needs to be evil, but also visually impressive and charismatic, the kind of guy people will quote as they're leaving the cinema. He needs to be the guy who you kind of want to win.

At the end of the day though, comic books are comic books, and not movies. One of their failings in the modern day is that they're trying to be movies, which they aren't. Doom works as a comic book villain. He especially works as a comic book villain in the 60s, 70s and 80s - these days he's practically a good guy half the time. His value could extend outside that, but only if filmmakers and the like recognise why the character is so distinctive and effective, which they rarely seem to do. It's not about treating comics that only a handful of people these days read with "respect"; they're not sacrosanct and only the fanboyism of naïve consumers treats them that way. It's about the fact that these ideas were assembled originally in good faith for an artistic reason, and for an adaptation to succeed it really needs to be making similar artistic decisions to its source material. One of the reasons adaptations so regularly artistically fail (even if they succeed commerically because the average consumer neither recognises nor cares about this problem) is because they are simultaneously trying to be one thing (the source material) and another, different thing, usually in another medium (the adaptation). But one thing is not necessarily another thing, and altering the first thing can easily mean that none of it makes sense after the alterations are made (it's one of the reasons Peter Jackson's Hobbit films don't remotely function at all as any kind of story).

If you want good Doctor Doom, read any of the following: Lee/Kirby era Fantastic Four featuring the character (you'd be surprised how much was introduced straight away: Doom went to college with Reed, he was injured in a magical experiment, he likes living in castles, he has a time machine), John Byrne era Fantastic Four featuring the character (like Chris Claremont with Magneto I'd argue he was more interested in the villain than he was with the actual main characters of the comic he was writing), the one shot "graphic novel" (more correctly known as a 'long comic book' - "graphic novel" is marketing speak for men in 80s business suits) Emperor Doom, and if you want something more modern, Ed Brubaker's Books of Doom if you want a sympathetic view of the character, or Mark Waid's run on Fantastic Four if you want a really unsympathetic view of the character (he murders his aforementioned childhood sweetheart and makes a suit of magic armour out of her skin). There's also Super Villain Team-Up from the 70s but while that's essentially Doom's comic (he was the main character for most of it) it's mostly just him acting like a moustache-twirling villain and most of the "teaming up" actually involves him having slap fights with other villains with whom he can't get along. Maybe that was the point.

Long story short, "Fantastic Four 2015" probably won't be very good and their modern take on Doom, whether it's good or bad, will probably never be as good as making an attempt to actually use the original character as he is, which has never been done and has more artistic relevance and merit. How am I able to write an article this long about a comic book character? What am I doing with my life?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWxo1VV3QyY#t=0m47s
The only good 'Doom' moment ever in live action.
'Nuff said.

Marvel Legends: Doctor Doom

As you may know, I'm a sucker for a well-characterised villain, and when it comes to well-characterised villains, or rather super-villains, there are few better than Victor von Doom, arch enemy of the Fantastic Four and especially its leader, Reed Richards. A perfectionist with a monstrous ego, he craves power - power which he has demonstrated to be able to competently wield for the good of society in the case of his homeland of Latveria but which he believes he should wield heedless of the choice of others. Perhaps he is right, because when Latveria has been under the rule of Doom it has generally prospered, but the rest of the world isn't so willing. On the one occasion in which he did successfully conquer Doom found himself bored and frustrated by the tedium and minutiae of administration, as he constantly desires challenge and, in a sense, adventure. Hence his repeated clashes with the Fantastic Four. Much like Marvel's other great villain, Magneto, he comes from an oppressed minority, in this case the travelling Romani of Eastern Europe, and their harsh treatment has greatly motivated his desire for a just and prosperous society. Coupled with the accident which caused him to hide his body from the world and the loss of his mother to the demon Mephisto and we get a character who wants what's right but really has a bone to pick with the world. In another parallel with Magneto, he too recently found it advantageous to join his erstwhile enemies, and became a member of the Fantastic Four when they expanded into the Future Foundation. This has lately provided the opportunity for a lot of good character interaction between Doom and his opponents, although it's not the first time he's formed an alliance with the Fantastic Four in pursuit of the common good.

This brings us to the figure. Like the other Toybiz Marvel Legends figures I've encountered, this is a very detailed toy which is sure to please enthusiasts of the character. One of the fortunate things about Doom is that he wears armour over his limbs, so there's no need to disguise or worry about joints for the articulation of the figure. Nonetheless he's not quite as poseable as Magneto or the other figures I have, Captain America and Red Skull, but I can make him to an extent looking like he's haughtily crossing his arms so I think that's still pretty good. The cloth of his tunic is very detailed, as are his belt and mask. His hood and cloak are completely removeable and indeed easy to take off. His face mask is removeable too; this figure utilises Jack Kirby's original conception of the character in which he greatly exaggerates his own disfigurement; he actually only has one scar across his right cheek, which is still too much of a marring for the perfectionist Doom. I believe there's some kind of Fantastic Four combo pack in which Doom's face is completely ravaged but I kind of think I prefer this version; it's more subtle. The mask has its own set of eyes sculpted on so you don't have to worry about the face and the mask not matching up; it's maybe a bit of a cop out on ToyBiz's part but I think it works nonetheless.

The other accessories with which Doom is equipped are a Luger in a holster at his belt, which I can only really associate with the laser pistol he uses occasionally in Marvel vs Capcom 3, and a turret stand presumably from Castle Doom in Latveria. Like Magneto's stand it can be hooked onto the wall if for some reason you want your action figures to hang from the wall and it too is very nicely detailed. There's a prominent crest featuring the sombre visage of Cynthia von Doom, his mother, she of the character backstory. This way you can have Doom so that he's brooding or plotting or, depending on how you like your villain, speculating hopefully on the future of Latveria and the world, probably while concocting a zany scheme which will bring the ire of the Fantastic Four.

The paint on the figure's a game of halves. In principle, in a perfect world, the paint scheme itself is extremely impressive. The armour's given a wash so that it looks a bit battle-worn and not excessively polished and shiny. The texture on the tunic is very strong, with lighter highlights on the folds. The cape, while of course darker, has this too, along with gold on the clasps. However that being said, it's not a perfect world, and on my Doom there are a few slightly sloppy bits on the face, the pistol and in one spot on the skirt of the tunic. They're hardly dealbreakers, however. Doom's face under the mask is extremely detailed, with individual teeth and haughtily cocked eyebrows. One other nice detail is that behind his cape, on his back and sticking out from his tunic are the two little booster jets that let him fly. They really didn't miss a trick with these figures. His joints are a little stiff but he has been sitting in a plastic clamshell for ten years so I can't really begrudge him that. If I'm going to make any particular criticism it's that on his arms and legs the armour's not especially detailed. It gets the job done, but it lacks some of the ridges on the gauntlets and feet with which Doom is normally depicted.

As I mentioned earlier he's pretty poseable. The cape and tunic skirt obstruct some potentially wilder positions but he's advertised as having twenty-seven points of articulation, which isn't too bad. He's got ball jointed shoulders, hips and neck, swivelling upper arms, wrists, waist and upper legs and hinged fingers, toes, knees, elbows and feet. He's not quite at the level of Magneto because he doesn't have the hinged chest, double-jointed elbows, knees and shoulders, swivel ankles or hinged wrists which are kind of commonplace, but this is due to his unique design with the tunic and armour. It's not really a great loss. You can still pose him pretty well; some of the articulation on the really heavily jointed ToyBiz figures is kind of extraneous to be honest. He's certainly not up there with the insane levels of a toy like Face-Off Cap, who has individually poseable fingers. As I say, it's more than compensated for by the wealth of accessories and the level of detail.

It's also worth noting that like all ToyBiz figures from this era Doom comes with a complementary comic showcasing the character at his finest. In this case it's a reprint of Fantastic Four Vol 1 #247, written and illustrated by John Byrne and originally published in 1982. In support of my brief discussion of the character above it's a famous story in which Doom enlists the help of the Fantastic Four to assist him in overthrowing Zorba, the very monarch the Fantastic Four helped into power to replace the apparently-tyrannical Doom. Upon arrival they discover that Zorba's actually a good deal more unpleasant in power than Doom ever was. It marks the first appearance also of Kristoff Vernard, Doom's ward and heir apparent. I think the ending's a bit rushed but it has some interesting character moments, such as when Sue Storm the Invisible Woman notices what a dangerously competent and charismatic natural leader Doom is when he's put in charge, and when Doom remarks that the only freedom he denied his subjects is "the freedom to commit evil." It really colours Doom in an ambiguous way, culminating in his murder of the defeated tyrant Zorba.
In case you're wondering, the chase figure for this is a Doombot. As far as I'm aware the only difference is that under the mask it has a metallic, mechanical robot face rather than Von Doom's own appearance. I've heard from a couple of places that ToyBiz's original plan was to release the figure with the mask on, so that you wouldn't be able to tell if you were getting Von Doom himself or a Doombot. This was meant to mimic the recurring situation in the comics in which the Fantastic Four or whichever heroes are present, thinking they have defeated Von Doom himself, discover that it was only a robot duplicate: it was often difficult to discover which armoured, green-clothed baddie in the area was the real Doctor Doom. The Doombots were therefore going to be the main production and Von Doom would be the rare chase variant. One source I've read claim that the complaints of overly-entitled fans dashed this plan. Personally I think I'm more willing to believe another account I've heard, which was that simply common sense ruled the day - people want Von Doom himself, not a robot duplicate, and making it impossible to tell was either cruel or a money-grubbing endeavour in itself: how many figures would you have to buy until you found a real Von Doom? I know I'm the kind of slightly obsessive-compulsive person who wouldn't have been satisfied with a Doombot even though they look identical with the mask on. As intellectually clever as I think the idea is of emulating the comic scenario with the distribution of the figures, it makes no business sense. You'd either be seen as greedy, encouraging multiple purchases of the same toy, or it would backfire and people would stay away for fear of getting the one they didn't want. Buying an action figure shouldn't be a gamble, and it makes sense to me that his face is visible.
It's probably worth mentioning that once Hasbro took over the Marvel Legends franchise they produced their own version of Doom which a quick Google Image Search will swiftly reveal. While this certainly has some better or at least more accurate detailing around the legs and feet and has a perhaps slightly more standard face plate design (without attached eyes) the level of detail on the tunic and cape is significantly less and compared to this Doom the cloth looks overly smooth, shiny, plastic-like and ultimate cheap. I've avoided Hasbro Marvel Legends because their paint jobs and level of detailing are simply not up to the standard of the earlier ToyBiz figures. Despite lacking a torso hinge the ToyBiz figure is also superior in terms of articulation to the Hasbro Doom. The addition of the cracking Latveria turret stand and a nice showcase comic compared to getting a build-a-figure piece for some guy I've never heard of means that this figure, the ToyBiz one, peps the Hasbro Doom to the post completely. The thing I like about the good ToyBiz Marvel Legends, and this Doctor Doom figure in particular, is that the level of detailing in both the sculpting and the paint are combined with good accessories and articulation to produce figures which comfortably exist in the worlds of both collectable statue and toy. I see that a lot of people online think the Hasbro Doom is better but I can honestly say that when it comes to ToyBiz Doom vs Hasbro Doom, unless you like cheap-looking stuff the ToyBiz Doom has got to win the day. Maybe some kind of hybrid of the articulation and paintwork of ToyBiz Doom with some of the better details and design choices of Hasbro Doom would create some kind of ultimate Doctor Doom figure but until that day comes this one is my pick.

One last remark I'll make about the figure is that it has some very nice detailing on his head, especially the rivets of the mask and the many layers of the neck armour. Overall, like all the Toybiz figures I've encountered, I must say I'm impressed with this figure. There are quite a few floating around on eBay and they're not too expensive, all things considered. I'd definitely recommend this to anyone who's a fan of the monarch of Latveria. Your shelf will assuredly look a bit more snazzy with a touch of Doom.

UPDATE in 2015
This is really late but I've meant to write this down for ages and I only just got around to thinking this would be the best way to do it. You see how up there I said that a Doom figure with the paintwork of ToyBiz plus the design of Hasbro would be good? Well in 2013 Hasbro released a re-issue of their 2007 Doom figure (the one I didn't have and thought looked cheap) with an updated paint job closer to that of ToyBiz Doom. This solved the main problem with the Hasbro figure and I bought it. It's a good one, and a fitting take on the character in my opinion. It's probably not too hard to find these days so if you want Doom, get the 2013 re-issue with the better paintwork from Hasbro if you can't find or don't want the ToyBiz one. There was a variant in Doom's white Future Foundation outfit from the Hickman run on FF but I could never find it in Australia and it's incredibly expensive online. Nonetheless, Hasbro did well by Doom in the 2013 re-issue so I guess that proves I have the power of accidental prophecy.