11 Reasons Why Marvel's Doctor Doom And Reed Richards Hate Each Other

Doctor Doom and Reed Richards have one of the most legendary rivalries in all of comics. The iconic Marvel characters first shared a comic frame in 1961, and they've spent the ensuing decades doing everything that they can to destroy each other.

Victor von Doom is one of the few Marvel villains who are scarier than Thanos, and he owes most of his threatening presence to his intelligence. Doom is a scientific genius who's also studied the forces of dark magic, and his mastery of those two fields gives him enough power to take on the entire world. Unfortunately for Victor, there's one man in the universe who's even smarter than he is; every time Doom comes up with a new scheme to seize control of reality, Reed Richards is there to stop him.

"Fantastic Four: First Steps" finally gives the Marvel Cinematic Universe its Reed, aka Mister Fantastic, but Doom will remain waiting around the corner. Robert Downey Jr. will portray Doctor Doom in the movies, promising a fresh take on the character, but Doom wouldn't be Doom without his hatred of "that accursed Richards." The on-screen versions of these two characters might reshape the MCU as we know it, but the hatred between their comic book counterparts has defined the course of Marvel's history as a whole. Reed and Doom have been fighting for so long that even some fans might have forgotten why they hate each other, so here's a quick refresher on what is arguably the greatest rivalry in Marvel Comics history.

The Fantastic Four has a long history, and Doctor Doom appears early in it. Doom was introduced in "Fantastic Four" #5 (by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby), and, at the time, his backstory wasn't very detailed. In fact, his hatred of Reed Richards had less to do with their actual shared past than it did with what each character represented in the issue's story. Reed explained that he knew Doom in college, where his fellow student had been obsessed with studying dark magic. One night, Doom summoned some unknown power that caused an explosion and left him badly disfigured. After getting expelled, he left school in search of more magical secrets and power.

From the very beginning, Doom's backstory set up a thematic rivalry between himself and Reed. As the smartest man in the universe, Reed represents the power of science, while Doom represents the mystical and the unknown. Reed is meant to mistrust everything about Victor, and Doom is set up to look down on Reed for refusing to accept the power of magic. The two of them have issues with each other for plenty of grounded, real-world reasons, too, but it's worth knowing that their animosity goes deep into the core of their characters.

In his first appearance, we learned that Victor Von Doom went to college with Reed Richards, but "Fantastic Four" #5 didn't actually establish the rivalry that existed between the two of them. For those juicy details, Marvel fans had to wait until 1963, when they got their hands on Lee and Kirby's "Fantastic Four Annual" #2. It was here that readers were finally treated to "The Fantastic Origin of Doctor Doom," a story that fully dives into his early history with Reed.

Victor only comes to study in the United States after helping his people rise up against a corrupt count in their homeland. When he arrives at school, Doom has already lost both his parents and helped found a fledgling nation, and he is fully committed to his own pursuits. Reed crosses paths with the future supervillain and tries to strike up a friendly conversation, but from the very first moment they meet, Doom detests the future Mister Fantastic's attitude.

Doom fully believes that he's more intelligent than anyone else at the school, and he's desperate to prove it. One day Reed stops by Doom's laboratory as he's working on his most ambitious project yet, offering some advice and pointing out that Doom has missed a few decimals in some of his calculations. But Doom refuses to listen to anyone else's input on his projects, a character trait that proves to be a near-fatal flaw when his experiment literally blows up in his face.

If you take the events of "The Origin of Doctor Doom" at face value, it would appear that his initial feud with Reed Richards is pretty one-sided. It seems like Reed made a genuine attempt to be friends with Victor when they were at school together, but that's not how Doom interpreted their interactions at all. He always saw Reed as an intellectual competitor, and he couldn't imagine that his fellow classmate was doing anything other than mocking him. Over the years, different "Fantastic Four" writers have presented the idea that Doom blames Reed for the accident that caused him to be scarred and get expelled from school.

Writer Mark Waid's famous take on the character subscribes to that theory — but the acclaimed author himself does not. Waid wrote a "Fantastic Four Manifesto" before starting his run on the Marvel series, and in it, he describes the utter ridiculousness of Doom refusing to take responsibility for his accident. "Doom can b**** until your ears bleed about how Reed MUST have sabotaged his calculations, but it's obvious to everyone – including, at his very core, Doom himself – that Reed was right and he was wrong," Waid wrote (via SlashFilm). The truth is, Doom won't be able to stop hating Reed until he admits that Reed isn't to blame for what happened to him.

In case it isn't clear by now, Doom's only guiding star is his ego. Before he ever crossed paths with Reed Richards, Victor von Doom was pursuing a noble goal by freeing his people from an evil ruler, King Vladimir Vassily Gonereo Tristian Mangegi Fortunov. From the outside, Doom looked like a hero, but deep down, he was really fighting Latveria's king because he wanted to prove his own strength. Doom only cared about the success of his people because it reinforced his own greatness.

The one thing Doom wants more than anything in the world is to prove to everyone, especially himself, that he's the smartest, most powerful man on the planet. To that end, Doom has become one of the richest villains in the Marvel Universe and, time and time again, has threatened the existence of the very universe just to prove that he can. Despite all Doom's efforts, Reed Richards is still able to give him a run for his money. The fact that Reed is so intelligent is an insult to Doom's ego, and because of that, there's nothing the Fantastic Four's leader could ever do that would make Doom hate him any less.

Doctor Doom and Reed Richards hate each other for plenty of deep thematic reasons, but there are also some pretty specific incidents in their pasts that warrant the longstanding mutual ill will. Doom and Reed have been trying to undermine each other for a long time, and their battles don't always affect the fate of the world. One such example is found in 1961's "Fantastic Four" #10 (by Kirby and Lee), where Doctor Doom returns after being presumed dead and unveils a new plot to ruin Reed and the Fantastic Four.

This time around, Doom has a surefire way to destroy his nemesis. While studying a civilization of aliens called the Oviods, he learned how to mimic their telepathic ability to swap bodies. With his new technique prepared, Doom lures Reed to the offices of Marvel Comics creators Jack Kirby and Stan Lee. There, Doom traps Reed with a teleporter and then takes over his body. The Fantastic Four arrive and fight "Doom," while the real villain escapes with Reed's body.

Doom's main goal is to kill the Fantastic Four, but first, he gets swept up in the thrill of destroying Reed's reputation. He lies to his longtime enemy's friends and commits crimes like robbing a zoo by shrinking the animals and encasing them in glass cubes, setting Reed up to take the fall. Luckily, when the real Mister Fantastic returns in Doom's body, Sue is able to sense his spirit of goodness, and he gets the truth through to the rest of the Fantastic Four. Doom's defeated with his own shrink ray, but Reed isn't likely to forgive this attack easily.

Doctor Doom is arguably the greatest villain in Marvel history, but his arch-nemesis isn't a completely uncomplicated hero. Mister Fantastic has saved the planet — and the entire universe — more times than anyone can track, but the world's smartest man also has a dark side. In certain storylines, we've seen that Reed is willing to commit atrocities if he thinks it's for the greater good.

In the "Fantastic Four" storyline "Solve Everything" (by Jonathan Hickman and Dale Eaglesham), Reed is anxiously trying to find a way to save the planet from Galactus. He concludes that he needs to use the multiverse to solve everything, every single problem that Earth has, in one go. Reed connects with a Council of Reeds, other versions of himself that have joined forces with the goal of aiding people all across the multiverse. The Council is feeding millions, if not billions, of people, but everywhere they go, they encounter Doctor Doom.

The Council's solution to these Dooms is to create a special, permanent collar that destroys higher brain function. They trap individual Dooms and strap the collar around their neck, instantly and permanently transforming them into a mindless shell before locking them away in a dark cave they call the Pit (pictured above). Reed knows that the Council is committing murder on a multiversal scale, but because he believes the universe is better off with them killing Doom, he goes along with their plan.

Like Reed Richards, Doctor Doom is a more complicated character than he appears at first. When Doom shows up in the comics, it's typically because he has a new evil plan to pursue — but every so often he does something good, albeit for dubious reasons. Once, Doom even got to play the hero for Reed by saving Sue and her unborn baby.

Sue got pregnant with her second child in the Negative Zone, which resulted in the baby having strange energy and emitting dangerous radiation. The effects of her time in the Negative Zone were so severe that Sue and Reed's child was stillborn in "Fantastic Four" # 267 (by John Byrne) in 1984. Thanks to some comic book shenanigans involving the power of the Negative Zone and Sue's son Franklin, the baby came back to life in a 2002 story arc, but the radiation came back, too.

In the story "A Choice of Dooms!" (by Carlos Pacheco, Rafael Marin, Karl Kesel, and Mark Bagley), Reed gets caught up in a battle just as Sue is going into labor. Once again, the lives of Sue and the baby are at risk because of the energy of the Negative Zone, but Doctor Doom, of all people, steps in to save them both. In exchange for saving their lives, Sue lets Doom name the baby. After giving her the name Valeria and declaring that she is and will always be under Doom's protection, he reminds Reed that for the rest of his life, anytime he looks at his family, he'll remember Doom was the only one who could save them.

We've talked about how Doctor Doom's ego is one of the biggest reasons he hates Reed Richards, but there's more to this dynamic than that. Doom wants to be the smartest, most powerful man in the world, and the only person who can really measure up to Doom's intellect is Reed. Doom hates Reed because he fears that the hero may be better than him — and, deep down, Reed believes the same thing.

In Jonathan Hickman and Esad Ribić's "Secret Wars," Doom creates Battleworld and essentially remakes the Marvel Universe. The assembled heroes do everything in their power to fight back, but, eventually, the fate of the universe comes down to a confrontation between Doom and Reed. During their battle, Reed accuses Doom of not making the most of the infinite power he obtained in order to create Battleworld. Doom asks Reed if he thinks he could do any better with all of Doom's power, and Reed answers honestly and says yes.

In a final verbal blow, Reed also tells his lifelong enemy that he knows Reed is right. Doom is finally forced to confront the thing he least wants to admit, and when he puts his ego aside and agrees with Reed, the entire "Secret Wars" conflict comes to an end. The realization of Doom's worst fear just so happened to save all of reality.

Doctor Doom's feelings about Mister Fantastic are complicated by his ego, but Reed's sentiments toward Victor also have a deep-seated origin that the hero doesn't want to admit. Despite their wildly different approaches to life, Reed and Victor are strikingly similar — they're both geniuses, and they're both more committed to advancing their own knowledge than to almost anything else in their lives. Deep down, part of Reed Richards' hatred for Doom comes from the fact that he knows they aren't very different at all.

Doom is basically the negative version of Reed, and at least some versions of Mister Fantastic have admitted that they have a little bit of Doctor Doom's energy at their core. In fact, when Reed first met the Council of Reeds, one of them admitted that because they are so similar to Doom, they have a perfect understanding of why Doom must be destroyed.

In some of Marvel's darker universes, Reed really has turned into a full-blown villain. The Reed Richards of the Ultimate universe eventually became known as the Maker, an evil Reed who wreaked havoc across the multiverse — and once brainwashed yet another version of Reed into becoming Doctor Doom. MCU fans have theories about the Maker showing up on the big screen, but for now, the MCU's Reed still has Marvel's first family at his side to help keep his darker impulses in check.

On some very rare occasions, Doctor Doom actually does something nice for another person. In "Fantastic Four" #311 (by Steve Englehart and Keith Pollard), Doom encounters a deeply distressed Sharon Ventura, aka Ms. Marvel, and offers her some help. At this point in Marvel history, Sharon has been transformed by cosmic rays into a form that resembles the Thing, and she's so upset that she tries to kill herself. Seeing Ms. Marvel, Doom explains that he can sympathize with her because he, too, has had his appearance permanently altered by an accident. Doom tells Ms. Marvel that strong people can overcome difficulties and that she still has a chance to lead a worthwhile life.

Much like how Doom refuses to acknowledge that Reed Richards is smarter than him, Reed refuses to acknowledge that Doom has any capacity for good. That's why Reed was so shocked when Doom saved his wife and daughter, and that's why he never brings up incidents like Victor's advice to Sharon when he's talking about Doom's character. Of course, after calming Ms. Marvel down, Doom did try to talk her into helping him destroy the Fantastic Four, but at this point, can you really blame the guy for trying?

When they first met, Doctor Doom and Reed Richards were almost destined to hate each other. They came from different places and approached their shared field of scientific research from completely different perspectives. But Victor wouldn't give Reed the time of day, and Reed simply couldn't understand Doom's behavior and outlook. Over the years, as Doom took potshots at the Fantastic Four and Reed undermined the would-be world ruler's plans at every opportunity, the two supplied each other with plenty of concrete reasons to hate each other. The feud between Doctor Doom and Reed Richards is so strong that it nearly ended the world on multiple occasions.

Today, the weight of all that shared history is simply too much for Reed and Doom to put behind them. At this point, all their cards are on the table, and they probably understand each other better than any hero/villain duo in history. You'd think that after the pair really got down to brass tacks during the "Secret Wars" finale, they wouldn't have anything left to fight about — and you'd be right. But the feud simply has too much momentum to slow down. Reed and Doom are likely, pardon the wordplay, doomed to battle each other until the end of time. But, hey — at least that's great news for Marvel Comics fans!