I intended Doom to return to Latvaria and absolutely FREAK OUT when he
discovered what his robots had done to Kristoff. Basically -- he'd need a
whole lot of new robots by the time he calmed down. And then he would
devote a whole lot of time and energy to restoring Kristoff. - JB

Wow. Untill this very moment I had always assumed that Kristoff's brainwashing was Doom's own contingency plan, which, I must add, seemed perfectly in character with Doom as you had written him. I had no idea that the Doombots had gone into business for themselves. I'd even assumed that in Doom's mind this was in no way a form of abuse, since Kristoff could have no higher honor bestowed upon him than to become heir to Doom's magnificent intellect. I wonder- when you say Doom would have "freaked out", would this have been outrage at the treatment Kristoff had been subjected to, or indignance that the Doombots had dared to give Doom's greatest asset, his mind (and ego), to someone else?

Wow. Untill this very moment I had always assumed that Kristoff's brainwashing was Doom's own contingency plan, which, I must add, seemed perfectly in character with Doom as you had written him. I had no idea that the Doombots had gone into business for themselves. I'd even assumed that in Doom's mind this was in no way a form of abuse, since Kristoff could have no higher honor bestowed upon him than to become heir to Doom's magnificent intellect. I wonder- when you say Doom would have "freaked out", would this have been outrage at the treatment Kristoff had been subjected to, or indignance that the Doombots had dared to give Doom's greatest asset, his mind (and ego), to someone else?

+++++++++++

I've tended to think the same way, but now that JB has revealed what would have happened, it makes perfect sense.

The Doombots, sophisticated as they are, cannot duplicate the real Von Doom's twisted nobility. So of course they'd go through with such an evil plan, whereas the real Doom would not be pleased at all.

Wow. Untill this very moment I had always assumed that Kristoff's brainwashing was Doom's own contingency plan, which, I must add, seemed perfectly in character with Doom as you had written him. I had no idea that the Doombots had gone into business for themselves. I'd even assumed that in Doom's mind this was in no way a form of abuse, since Kristoff could have no higher honor bestowed upon him than to become heir to Doom's magnificent intellect. I wonder- when you say Doom would have "freaked out", would this have been outrage at the treatment Kristoff had been subjected to, or indignance that the Doombots had dared to give Doom's greatest asset, his mind (and ego), to someone else?

+++++++++++

I've tended to think the same way, but now that JB has revealed what would have happened, it makes perfect sense.

The Doombots, sophisticated as they are, cannot duplicate the real Von Doom's twisted nobility. So of course they'd go through with such an evil plan, whereas the real Doom would not be pleased at all.

******************

But don't you think part of the anger would be from Doom's vanity?  After all, only Doom can be Doom.

But don't you think part of the anger would be from Doom's vanity?  After all, only Doom can be Doom.

**********

You and I are in total agreement on this on, Marc.  I pretty much said the same thing in the other thread about Doom.

That storyline never really sat well with me....but I suspect I've been misinterpreting Doom's (and JB's) intentions all along....I'm very curious to see JB talk about this some more.- Vinny Valenti

Yeah, me too. This was a major storyline for me back in the day. Damn, I would have loved to have seen "Doom War"

What ultimately did happen to Kristoff, anyway?

But don't you think part of the anger would be from Doom's vanity?  After all, only Doom can be Doom.

++++++

Yep. Forgot to mention that part.

Walt Simonson did an interesting follow-up to that storyline, I think, in which Doom went up against an army of his former Doombots that had been reprogrammed by Kristoff to be wary of Victor since his reported demise in JB's classic FF260 tale. Dr. Doom prevailed and took back over his kingdom and seal of Latveria.

Some of Simonson's Fantastic Four stories were as excellent as John's, including a battle between Doom and Richards in the temporal medium that shifted anamalously based on inference than on straight sequence and an interesting rendezvouz with Galactus at the center of a black hole along with a few other intergalactic tales.