Fantastic Four: Books Of Doom Premiere HC: Books of Doom: Marvel Premiere Edition (Fantastic Four (Graphic Novels))

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Like most Marvel villains Doom is complex and isn’t inherently evil he’s doing what he thinks is best, he’s not nearly as sympathetic as a character like Magneto but he’s not pure evil like the Red Skull. It was pretty entertaining, but only serves as a modern expansion on some ideas that had previously already been explored in Kirby's and Byrne's Fantastic Four runs. We get to see a lot of his early motivations and desires that lead him to becoming the powerful ruler everyone knows him as in the Marvel Universe. Since Byrne was on the book so long, he effectively also became the steward of the FF's main adversary, Doctor Doom.

The way Brubaker explains and makes the doombot oblivious that Doom succeded in freeing his mother's soul (with Dr Strange) almost help to localize in Doom's timeline the creation of this doombot. Doom is a larger than life character and yet Brubaker manages to tell a small scale story with incredible weight.Convinced that his mother is trapped in hell, Von Doom seeks salvation for not just his mother, but himself as well. I was a tween during Byrne's run on the book, but repeated readings into my adulthood have indicated that this was one of the truly great runs in comic history and it lasted a very long time (Byrne was on the book for something like six years before moving to DC's Superman reboot. After one of many failed attempts to rescue his mother, Victor became careless, and walked onto the patrol route of a soldier who captured him. It doesn’t add enough or break enough new ground to be considered a “must read,” but it’s certainly enjoyable. I see a rise in Fantastic Four popularity coming with Hickman’s run and Millar’s run about to be all out on trade, and it never hurts to have a couple books on your shelf to show off to people as they come over and ask you just who the Fantastic Four really are.

My only gripe is that I now want to know how the family curse started out as well as it bugged me that we never really learn the origins of his mother’s demon.

FANTASTIC FOUR: BOOKS OF DOOM is an in-depth retelling of the origin of Fantastic Four's main arch-nemesis, Victor von doctor Doom.