Yeah, that's true. I've lived to see Tony go from a rather stoic, serious, business first, manipulative authority figure, to a 24/7 quipster who breaks down and cries every other Tuesday. His comics have been rehashes of Demon In A Bottle for literally a decade now. And no, I'm not kidding. Fraction revitalised him and started with a quasi-Demon story. Tony lost his company and built it from the ground up. Gillen came along and... Let's forget it. Gillen wanted to write space stories but Bendis stole the character and ruined his plans, so we got Adopted Tony and not much else. Then Bendis had him lose his company and rebuild it. After that Slott had him rebuild his company again (also Robot Rights NOW! because that's where we are). Then Cantwell had him lose his company and rebuild it, but this time around he was addicted to painkillers. And in the coming series by Duggan, he's, you guessed it, losing his company and rebuilding it. But boy, he'll get dragged into Krakoa X-Men stuff too, so there's that... Point is, Iron Man's been thoroughly character assasinated and ruined Post-MCU and that's a fact.
Revolving characterizations due to the changes in writers is a fact of comics. Which is why I just pick and choose what I like. You can't do anything else in these funnybooks. The good thing about Doom is that with the Doombot excuse you can chalk up every appearance/action you don't like up to a faulty Doombot, keep the ones you prefer as the true Doom's action, and there you have it; your Doom is the canon Doom. If Morrison cared for Marvel he could've written some really nice meta/Hypercrisis stuff around him and the FF.
Fair point. I get what you mean, as too many characters are gateways into much larger worlds and collections. I was debating on whether I'd open the X-Men can of worms but when I got confirmation that I'd have to wait until the end of the decade to get a Doom, I figured I might as well get some mutants for representation's sake. But I trimmed it around 4-8 figures max. I like many, but I'm sticking with the basics (Xavier, Magneto, Scott, Jean + Apocalypse & Sinister, maybe Emma and Cable at most). It's what I'm trying to do with all the properties I've already "invested" time and money into. Get one or two from each, then go a bit deeper in the most "important" ones. So Spider-Man gets a single Tobey-Man, Batman gets a Baleman and a Joker, and so on, but things such as Star Wars are more expanded. It's the nature of the game.
Doom works as a singular character that fits in many places. You could stick him next to Sherlock Holmes, Indiana Jones, a Coppola Dracula, and so on. You could put him next to some WW2 soldiers, or even some monsters or whatever. Really, he's got a lot of options and that's what's always made the character interesting/fun to me. One story could have him fighting a vampire clan, then a witch coven, the next arc could be about time travelling cyborg mutants, or a Lovecraftian entity and so on. He's very versatile.
And therein lies Doom's problem. He's a fascist dictator, but also an "opressed gypgy turned revolutionary" because American comics are obsessed with the concept of the romanticised gypsy. He acts like a typical dictator one day, then a peace loving hippy the next. He gets stories where he relishes in war and conflict, but then I'm supposed to believe that all he wants is eternal peace. He slaps around women on one panel for no real good reason, then he's acting like a white knight. He calls mutants scum, then in another run he's supposed to be an open minded champion of mutant rights. And so on and so forth. Some of the contradictions work. Like say when he acts all cordial but eventually gets too frustrated and lets go of his carefully crafted persona and shows off the unhinged beast of greed and violence inside. But when you amass so many characteristics that make each other impossible, you have a problem.
Doom and Skull have fought more often than they've worked together, ever since the Super-Villain Team-Up days, but they've had alliances rather often. Acts Of Vengeance, Brubaker's Cap, AUs like Old Man Logan. And aesthetically, like you said, it fits. In context... eh. 616 Doom is a gypsy so he'd rightfully hate Nazis, but then again so would most Balkaners. Doom's problem is that he's supposed to be this clearly Nazi-styled Balkan Dictator, but the writers in charge of him have no actual knowledge of this area of the world, so they self-insert and you get the "Doom is actually a really good guy who wants to create a One World Government to feed the hungry, heal the sick and make humanity happy and safe and equal and-" stories which is just nonsense. You can't have your opressive dictator who spies on his people 24/7 behind closed borders and sends them to the dungeons if they displease him, and then some Deus Ex Illuminati guy on top of that. Run with the clear Magical Science Dracula Dictator aspect or create a different character. Evil/Amoral Reed or Tony having such "progressive" views works. Doom doesn't. You can't have a guy with such a corny name running around in the modern era dressed in medieval garb and being a dictator, then presenting him as some progressive unifier or whatever else. The guy literally keeps the country looking like a fantasy book drawing. Come on.
For my money, Doom's first and foremost a pulpy villain rooted in all that Lovecraftian pop culture. That's what we need. The egotistical Euro Royal with dark magic and mad science. The convoluted 616 origins, motivations and so on should go. I don't want him to be some misunderstood rebel or whatever else. He's a wicked, just not Red Skull wicked, person with very self-serving motivations that sometimes can align with some widely-accepted version of "good", so he ends up commiting some "heroic acts". And he takes care of his people because they're his pets. But I like him because he's a magnificent bastard and is very entertaining, not because I'm self-inserting as the "totes right guy whom the plebs can't understand" type that capewriters seem to love. We love Hannibal because he's handsome, charming and all that; he's still a murderous cannibal though. You can have entertaining characters who are monsters and that's alright.
Red Skull to me never reached the heights he should've. He's been turned into too much of a sadistic creature to ever work as anything beyond Nazi Joker. He can't even get the Hellboy treatment because he's just in it to get off pain and misery, nothing else. Von Strucker never caught on with the general public and HYDRA eventually became too big for any one leader (which I suppose is the point). Doom's had many frenemies over the years, but his most notable bad guy ally has been Namor which, in all honesty, I've always found relatively meh. Namor's pretty dumb, and he's also an abrassive hothead. Why Doom keeps him around is a mystery, same as to how he's able to stand him. It kinda works in-universe as Atlantis has magical tech and is supposed to control the waters, but Doom can always create better tech, Atlanteans get punked, and their cities look unimpressive. Then you add that Namor's unreliable so really the whole situation makes little sense. They were just paired because they were both FF villains with some anti-heroic streaks, they were both monarchs and Doom was always trying to manipulate Namor. Namor works as the frenemy to the heroes. Pair him with Doom and you get a supergenius wizard with tech light years ahead of anything, and his brutish muscle who can flip at any moment. It's a rather passionless pairing. If Namor was more regal and less of a hothead, maybe it'd work better.
You ask me, out of all his relationships, Doom works best as frenemies with Strange, and as villainous allies with Loki. If an egotistical science wizard is going to team up with anyone, it might as well be a god. Loki being Loki you always assume that he'll betray you so there's no risk there. He's closer to Doom's character and intelligence than Namor, he's got no people to put over the partnership, and would generally be more jovial to be around. Namor's always liable to leave you hanging dry if he's promised a crumb of Sue's *****, or he remembers that he has a people to rule. Then there's Morgan Le Fay, who's as wicked as Doom, is a top tier sorceress, and also is an 11/10, so... Doom's got better options for partnerships than a bipolar hotheaded fishman is my point. Technically, since Loki is a godly shapeshifter, he can be both your best bro and your ideal gal. What's wrong with some fun between heterosexual bros?
It's different for gods!
TL;DR Doom should be Castlevania Dracula, not Deus Ex Illuminati Corpo-Whatever. Play up the set aesthetics of Mad Scientist Sorcerer Euro Royal Dictator, and streamline the contradictions. I want an entertaining, magnificent bastard to grace my screen and speak in operatic monologues as he's attempting to become god, nothing else. He's a villain, not a hero, end of story.
