So Doctor Doom's motivation is...

[Frank White]

pure jealousy? I was thinking yesterday, Doom is a villian just because of sheer jealousy of Reed Richards? Or is there some other stuff?

 

[A.Magik]

Not exactly. His villainy is based on hatred for the society that shunned his people. When he was a babe, his mother was killed. When he was a little older, he and his father were forced to flee their Gypsy village to escape the wrath of the region's ruler the Baron (Werner Von Doom was ordered to save the Baron's wife or else, and well...he couldn't). Braving the cold, Werner succumbed to frostbite protecting his son. Victor took the death hard. Mankind had taken everything he loved. He vowed that he would put mankind to his heel. He is something of an anti-Batman, wreaking vengeance (not justice) on mankind (not crime) for taking his parents.
Besides, Doom has never been jealous of Reed. That would mean he accepts Richards as his equal, which he will never do. In his view, it is Richards who was the jealous one, sabotaging the experiment- in his POV- that gave him an itty-bitty scar (which, in Doom's ego-vision, was a complete uglification of his face; so much so that he didn't really care about damaging it for real by putting on a red-hot iron mask).
Doom, along with Norman Osborn, is one of the earliest comic-book villains whose villainy was not based on some accident (unlike say, Dr. Octopus, and the Pre-Crisis versions of Luthor and Two-Face before their origins were retconned). He was already bad before it happened.

A.Magik

 

[AdamYJ]

It's mainly ego, actually. Doom's got an ego the size of Cleveland and it drives him to do about 85% of the things he does.

 

[RAINMAN]

Not exactly. His villainy is based on hatred for the society that shunned his people. When he was a babe, his mother was killed. When he was a little older, he and his father were forced to flee their Gypsy village to escape the wrath of the region's ruler the Baron (Werner Von Doom was ordered to save the Baron's wife or else, and well...he couldn't). Braving the cold, Werner succumbed to frostbite protecting his son. Victor took the death hard. Mankind had taken everything he loved. He vowed that he would put mankind to his heel. He is something of an anti-Batman, wreaking vengeance (not justice) on mankind (not crime) for taking his parents.
Besides, Doom has never been jealous of Reed. That would mean he accepts Richards as his equal, which he will never do. In his view, it is Richards who was the jealous one, sabotaging the experiment- in his POV- that gave him an itty-bitty scar (which, in Doom's ego-vision, was a complete uglification of his face; so much so that he didn't really care about damaging it for real by putting on a red-hot iron mask).
Doom, along with Norman Osborn, is one of the earliest comic-book villains whose villainy was not based on some accident (unlike say, Dr. Octopus, and the Pre-Crisis versions of Luthor and Two-Face before their origins were retconned). He was already bad before it happened.

A.Magik

Doom my not be jealous of reed but he is obssed whit trying to best him in the battles of the minds.

 

[Doop]

Doom is smarter than Reed. The only reason why he does fail at times is because he is unable to admit to himself he is capable of making mistakes or doing anything wrong, whereas Reed isn't.

 

[RAINMAN]

If doom is smarter then reed then why reed always outsmart him?

 

[Doop]

Like I just said; because Reed is able to admit when he's wrong, something Doom is incapable of.

 

[Sharklady]

^ I think what you're saying is, Dr. Doom has a higher IQ, but Reed has much better judgement, so tends to come out ahead.

'Makes sense to me.

 

[Ultra8]

I remember an article from Wizard talked about Doom's motivations(as far as world domination is concerned), he want's to rule the world not for the control or the power but mainly because he believes he could do a much better job than everyone else.

 

[Sharklady]

^ He sounds just like The Brain!

 

[Ed Liu]

Howdy,

I asked him once, and he told me this: Question not the ways of Doom, you insignificant gnat, for Doom's motivations are beyond your petty little mind to comprehend. And then a Doombot threw me out of Latveria.

No, seriously, I think everybody's hitting on a little bit of what motivates Doom. Unlike characters like Magneto or Spider-Man, Doom doesn't really have just one motivating drive. The one that pushes him in any given story is whichever one seems to fit the best at the moment, and that can be jealousy, insecurity, his pathological hatred of Richards, his obsession to prove that he is smarter than Richards, his oppressed Gypsy background, or his desire to rule.

I don't think I agree with the assertion that Doom is smarter than Reed Richards, though. I remember one bit in the Fantastic Four vs. the X-Men series when they were trying to reconstitute Kitty Pryde, and Doom's computers controlling the process failed. The only way to save Kitty was for Reed to do the calculations on the fly in his head, which Doom asserted was impossible. Of course, Doom was wrong, though I don't think he really admitted it even after Kitty was saved.

-- Ed/Ace

 

[Mr.Kurtz]

I though he just had the same motivation that every villian does, he want the main character's girl (see FF movie). If Sue wasn't around, Reed and Vic would probably hang out at the bar talking sports and unstable moecules and stuff.

 

[Lorendiac]

On the subject of comparative genius: It seems to me that there have been at least a couple of times when Doom has pointedly mentioned that when he needs to solve a knotty problem, he can apply both scientific and magical resources in slapping together a fancy solution -- as opposed to the way Reed is limited by having never really studied sorcery to develop any natural talent he may have in that direction, as Doom has done. (Not that I ever got the impression that Doom was a likely candidate to become the next Sorceror Supreme of Earth Dimension after Doctor Strange is gone, but he knows something about spellcasting.)

In context, when Doom says something like that, it gives me the impression that he is "implicitly admitting" that when it comes to such stuff as pure scientific genius and making the best possible use of available technology to jury-rig a new piece of equipment in an emergency, he and Reed Richards are more or less in a dead even tie. He needs the extra advantage of the magical stuff to help him (occasionally) get one step ahead and solve a complicated challenge that Reed hasn't solved, and maybe never would solve if he stuck to purely "scientific" methods of approaching the problem.

 

[DOOM2099]

DOOM's motivations are beyond your comprehension.

NONE JUDGE DOOM!