10 Insane Times Supervillains Developed New Powers

2. Doctor Doom - Secret Wars

Doctor Doom Beyonder
Marvel Comics

Thanos might be considered Marvel's most dangerous adversary, but Victor Von Doom is absolutely the company's greatest.

Doom has commanded the worlds of science and magic to devastating results over the years, but there were always limits; the Fantastic Four, whether thanks to Reed's smarts, Sue's power, Johnny's tenacity or Ben's strength, would always find a way to defeat him.

The story of Doom in recent years has been somewhat more complex, however. He's operated on both sides of the hero-villain divide, joining forces with the Fantastic Four and more recently the Avengers, but this period of heroism was interrupted by 2015's Secret Wars.

The culmination of Jonathan Hickman's Fantastic Four and Avengers runs saw Doom wield the cosmic power of the Beyonder just as he had done in the original Secret Wars in 1985, except to far more devastating results.

Gifted with omnipotence and the ability to bend reality to his whim, Doom remakes the multiverse in his image. It takes an Infinity Gauntlet-wielding Black Panther to put an end to the madness, but the Marvel Universe was changed forever after the Latverian tyrant's tinkering.

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WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.