The Best Ship for the Latverian Space Program – We Break Down the Doomship
Of all the vessels built by Dr. Victor von Doom, the Doomship might be the only one that has helped save Earth-616 instead of conquer it.
Say what you will about Dr. Victor von Doom; that he’s a megalomaniacal super-genius bent on world domination, that he’s also sometimes a wizard, that he believes himself the only one who can lead a broken, disparate humanity out of self-defeating darkness with the iron hand of Doom, the man sure does know how to make a spaceship. Or flying fortress. Or submarine.
Doom has built many things. Doom has brought advancements to the world, whether it wanted them or not. Including a Lunar Base and Hypno-Ray satellite which would allow Doom to psychically enslave any who fell under its effects.
But, directly related, and perhaps most important of all, to both Earth-616 and Doom himself, was the Doomship.
The Doomship
The Doomship was, for a time, the pride of the Latverian Space Program. Which is to say, one wing of Castle Doom. Doctor Doom built the Doomship from the ground up, and while none can say for sure whether he used his super-genius or skills in magic to construct the ship, it is noted that the Doomship’s engines caused minimal damage to their environment.
A launch of the Doomship would not so much as scorch the walls of the Castle Doom dry dock. All that would be left in its wake was the smell of brimstone, hinting that there might be more than just science powering Doom’s personal spaceship.
And, like all his inventions, the Doomship was built to be in constant communication with its home base in Latveria. Castle Doom could monitor and track the Doomship.
The hull was made of an alloyed metal of Doom’s design. It was a light and fast ship, meant to get Doom wherever he needed. As such, Doom did not waste design space on armor or systems like an anti-missile defense, for who would dare to attack Doom?
The Red Skull dares to attack Doom
The Doomship’s lack of a missile defense system came up almost immediately after its creation. Not long after the Doomship was finished, presumably as a way to convey Doctor Doom to his Lunar Base, where work had finished on the Hypno-Ray satellite, the dastardly Red Skull launched an attack on Latveria.
Nothing satisfies a megalomaniacal supervillain more than outdoing one of their rivals. And the Red Skull had an intricate plan to seize Doom’s power. The Skull pretended to be a foreign agent, looking to purchase weaponry for one of the many wars that humanity descends into without the guidance of Doom. But this allowed the Red Skull to reverse-engineer Doom’s devices and seize control of the Lunar Base and Hypno-Ray satellite.
Doom and Captain America teamed up to try to stop the takeover, but they were intercepted by a Skull-launched, Doom-designed Rainbow Missile and were believed disintegrated. In reality, they were merely shrunk. No really. Doom built a Rainbow Missile and what it does is shrink things caught in its blast.
Thus were Captain America and Doom able to infiltrate Castle Doom and seize control of the Doomship. This let Doom go to space to fight the Red Skull in Doom’s very own Lunar Base. But, while approaching, the Red Skull shot missiles at the ship, daring to attack Doom, and Doom was forced to sacrifice the ship, making it crash into a cliff, relying on his armor’s spaceworthiness and built-in jetpack to get him the rest of the way.
There’s probably a lesson about hubris in all of this, but Doom doesn’t even know the meaning of the word, so he’ll likely keep learning it over and over again.
