That’s because he’s gotten rid of them.
So, is Victor Von Doom an actual medical doctor or is it more like Doom PhD?
More like that. He’s the intellectual peer of Reed Richards (the two of them, along with Tony Stark, are arguably the most gifted inventors on Earth). Doom and Richards studied together in college, before Doom suffered the accident which disfigured his face.
I don’t know if he technically holds a Ph.D, but he’s a brilliant scientist. I don’t recall ever seeing anything about him which suggested he’s a medical doctor.
Thanks for that. It is hard to keep track of what everyone is an expert of in Marvel. Being a ‘scientist’ seems to mean having bleeding edge knowledge in at least 2 completely unrelated fields. I have to assume some of them also go to medical school.
I think you mean, is Victor Von Doom an actual doctor, or an MD? (Because the first MD wasn’t issued until 200 years after the first PhD. I know, I nitpick.)
I don’t think he actually holds a real degree in anything, though. He attended Empire State University with Reed Richards, but was expelled after a reckless experiment led to a massive explosion. He took on the name “Doctor Doom” as a pseudonym, and conquered his home nation of Latveria through a revolution.
As the sole autocratic leader of his nation, he could probably just award himself a degree, but I’m not sure that he’d bother. I always assumed he gave himself the title because he judged that only he was smart enough to properly judge his own worth.
All of that is his comic book background to the best of my knowledge, the film may diverge slightly or massively from any part of it.
In his case he is a scientist and a sorcerer. Those are his fields. (Robotics is a particular scientific specialty, as he creates a lot of mechanical doppelgangers of himself, to the point where it becomes a ridiculous trope that you can never kill the real Doctor Doom.) But the experiment that got him expelled was an attempt to create a machine that can speak with the dead. A lot of his science is fringe stuff, total mad science stuff, and tied up in a lot of mystical whatever. Very much like alchemy I guess.
As far as I can tell, the only superpowered individuals in the MCU with medical degrees are Dr. Stephen Strange and Dr. Bruce Banner.
Huh, always thought Banner was another scientist. I had no idea he was an actual MD.
He was originally a nuclear physicist; and canonically (in the comics), that was his first Ph.D. He might have gotten an MD at some point, too, I’m not sure.
When we first meet him in The Avengers, he’s running a medical clinic in India.
He may very well have other degrees, of course.
Banner was both. He was an MD and held 7 different PhDs. (In the MCU at least, according to the Marvel Studios Visual Dictionary.)
Funny enough, Jane Foster, who became a superhero in the most recent Thor film, was an MD in the comics (after originally being a nurse) but was changed into an astrophysicist for the MCU, so she doesn’t count.
Pym is way ahead of Stark.
I knew I forgot someone. By the time I started reading Marvel comics in the '80s, they had already started to de-emphasize Hank Pym.
The multiverse aspect definitely helps this impression but the MCU in general these days feels like too much work for me. The original batch of films came along at a manageable pace and were mainly self contained aside from some hooks. These days I feel as though if I haven’t watched a half dozen films and three 12-episode television shows, I may as well not bother. Which I no longer do; I’ve pretty much dropped off since Endgame aside from the Spider-Man films.
Well, there’s at least one more contender:
Oh, there are plenty of metatechnologists. Also Shuri, and Rocket whenever he happens to be on Earth, and heck, even Peter Parker. But most of them (Stark included) invent things like extra-powerful ray guns, while Pym invents things like shrink rays and time machines, Richards invents things like god-killing weapons, and Doom invents things like necromancy engines.
After Marvel established that (Hulk character) Amadeus Cho was the “seventh smartest person in the world”, the ongoing fan debate has been “Who are the top six?”. Reed, Doom, and Stark are given and no one wants to include the unpopular Banner or Pym, so the remaining three are always a battle between legacies like Peter Parker, Professor X, and Hank McCoy and…little girls, Valerie Richards and Moon Girl. Heaven forbid, Marvel actually create a super-genius woman.
They did. Shuri, T’Challa’s sister. Yes, women are underrepresented (in the Marvel universe and in ours), but they still exist.
I think Riri from Iron Heart is supposed to be a genius also.
I get why Pym is unpopular, but Banner??
Depending on the writer, Bruce Banner is often written as cowardly and unwilling to take responsibility for his actions. And our hero, Hulk, hates his guts. In the Ultimate Marvel Universe he is written as an all around despicable and unlikable character.