Warning: Spoilers for Blood Hunt #4!

One of Marvel’s most complicated antagonists, the Latverian dictator Doctor Doom, has even more contingency plans than DC’s Batman. The Caped Crusader is famous for being prepared in the eventuality that every possible worst-case-scenario will come to pass, but as it turns out, Victor Von Doom’s level of preparedness puts Gotham’s protector to shame.

Blood Hunt #4 – written by Jed MacKay, with art by Pepe Larraz – features the world’s surviving heroes coming to Doctor Doom for help in their fight against the vampire uprising. During their meeting, Doctor Doom insists that he has had multiple precautions in place for situations like this, not unlike what Batman does for his contingency plans.

The comparison to Batman shows how Doctor Doom, in many ways, thinks like a hero, rather than a villain; at the same time, how he uses these contingencies reveals why he’ll always be a bad guy in the end.

Doctor Doom’s “Precautions” Make Batman’s Contingency Plans Look Rudimentary By Comparison

Blood Hunt #4 – Written By Jed MacKay; Art bB Pepe Larraz & Marte Gracia

Coming fresh out of his essential limited series, Blade becomes possessed by the first vampire in pop culture, eclipsing the Marvel Universe in darkness. A desperate Clea Strange and a newly non-corporeal Doctor Strange (thanks to Blade killing him) go to Doctor Doom for help against this new force of evil. The dictator’s Latverian nation is surprisingly vampire free, unlike the rest of the world, all because Doom has taken “precautions,” though he reveals no specifics. Strange then warns Doom of the ensuing Darkforce, which Doom corrects him that he’s also made “precautions” against the Darkforce.

Doom having such precautions for every scenario imaginable fits with his character, as there are multiple preceding examples of Doom’s excessive level of preparedness. For a more recent example, as someone who always expected Krakoa to fail (as everyone except the X-Men did), Doom recruited and trained his own X-Men in secret, giving Latveria their own personal mutant defense squad. Doom seems to have exhausted every potential situation in his head, no matter how unlikely, to the point of paranoia and obsession. Many would say the same about Batman’s plans.

Doctor Doom’s Forward Thinking Adds More Layers To An Already Complex Character

Among Marvel’s Greatest Anti-Heroes

Despite his long-running history as a villain of the Fantastic Four, Marvel has played with the idea of Doctor Doom cementing himself as a hero, thanks largely to being redeemed by Reed Richards. His affiliation to the Fantastic Four, collaborations like those seen in Marvel Two-in-One, and his dynamic with goddaughter Valeria Richards have practically made him more of an unofficial Fantastic Four member than an antagonist in recent years. His habit of thinking outside of the box, in the way every hero should, and the relevant comparisons to Batman, only helps strengthen that case.

Unfortunately for those who want such a hero run out of Doom, his decision to keep his precautions for himself and his people exemplifies exactly why he’s still a villain. It is noble to see just how dedicated he is to his people of Latveria, but a hero sets out to help everyone in the world and isn’t just invested in their self-interests, even if those self-interests are helping the citizens of Latveria. In Blood Hunt #4, Doctor Strange and Clea gave Doctor Doom the opportunity to help them save the world, and he refused, something Batman would never do.