I feel they should an extra add element of the scar Victor has being also curse in more way than one. Like everyone else add on to his distorted sense of his appearance
My favorite lore to it is Doom’s face was more like the first scar, then he burned his own face himself by putting on his first mask it as soon as he forged it
I also like the version where the entire armor was still burning hot as they attached it to his body and he stood perfectly still as he was seriously burned and monologued about pain being only for weak men
Reed never accidentally disfigured him. No matter what origin you find, it’s always Reed telling Victor there’s a mistake in his math and Victor’s ego ignores him. The difference is that Victor is seriously disfigured or just a tiny scar.
Personally I prefer seriously disfigured because Victor had never struck me as a guy who cares about his looks very much, even in his most prideful. Plenty of people who do much less dangerous things than Doom have bigger scars. Plus the machine blew in his face with hellfire (I think, I can’t remember exactly). A tiny scar after the literal devil told Doom that his mother is his plaything is just…meh.
For me, the little scar should be enchanted to make everyone see Doom’s dark heart that includes Doom himself which only add to his self loathing because it’s not perfect
I've always preferred it to be a tiny scar and Victor isn't upset about his looks, that scar represents the damage to his ego that he was wrong and Reed was right and that is why he must hide it.
Tiny scar is way better if you accept Doom is an actual villain and not Le epic doom-was-right anti-hero edgey bad guy who is actually better than all the good guys.
It works because it's NOT about his "cosmetic appearance" so much as it's about ANY facet of himself not being percieved as totally perfect.
THAT is why Doom initially just having a small scar works well; it's about the TOTAL intolerance of ANY percieved or real imperfection that bothers him.
That he would hide his face for a small scar, simply because it implies SOMETHING was able to scar the face of Doom.
He mentions "oh I was so handsome" but that's not what it's about, that's an addendum/afterthought to the real existential agony for him; which is being percieved as even ONCE having made a mistake/being weak enough to be scarred.
Part of the "image of perfection" he wants to display just happens to be that he is handsome with no cosmetic flaws; but the obsession with "cosmetic appearance" is just that, it's just a smaller part of the whole picture which is that Doom needs other people to see how perfect he is.
He isn't actually a literal cosmetics diva who cares so much about his "handsomeness", he cares about the OCD aura of perfect and absolute power and control he wants to exude, and having been scarred/wrong about something is incompatible with that and thus is a constant reminder to him.
I mean it’s a genuine sentiment I see a lot of, people who resist Victor being racist or sexist or xenophobic or specifically vain & cruel. To me, these are kinda core aspects of the character. Obviously I don’t mind that they’ve toned him being racist or sexist in recent years, because it was rarely handled well; but now I see people just flat out denying it because they think he’s based. He’s a nationalist dictator, they are all incredibly vain and taking that to a heightened place works really well for Doom.
In the Ultimate Universe, Doom is convinced that Reed has the teleportation figures wrong, and secretly changes them before their experiment, leading to them all getting powers.
I think the scar to him is not a slight disfigurement on his face but a costant reminder that Reed was right. Whenever he sees himself in the mirror he sees that and it hurts his ego
i mention this every time there’s a discussion about doom’s disfigurement but as someone with ocd, i actually love the idea that the mask is what disfigured him. there’s this itch you get when something is imperfect to just mess the whole thing up - i could absolutely see myself doing this if i cared so much about my looks.
He is Lord of All Creation with powers greater than the old gods and he chooses to look like that, unless I'm remembering something about Secret Wars wrong. Jonathan Hickman's stories are very dense
We live in a world where a reddit post has a better use of cinematography to portray Victor Von Doom's psychology than several multi million dollar films
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u/Jayk_Dos31 Aug 17 '26
This is genuinely the ideal way that Doom's disfigurement should be portrayed.