Doom will never die! Or, at least, the actual Doctor Doom will never die. It's become something of a running gag that any time it seems like the Fantastic Four's arch nemesis has finally perished, it was actually just one of his humble Doombots being committed to the scrap heap, as opposed to the final defeat of one of the greatest villains in the Marvel Universe. Like, obviously. You're not going to kill off a character as brilliant as Doctor Doom, are you? Certainly not for any extended period of time. Which does start to make it feel a little cheap every time he's supposedly in peril, since after fifty years of the same trick, the robot clone thing is starting to get a little ridiculous. That's not a patch (pun intended) on Nick Fury, mind. Doom has his own personalised fleet of android doubles, whilst the former head of SHIELD simply employs a technology often used by his organisation: Life Model Decoys, perfect robotic replicas that people control remotely. Every single time it looked like Fury was being killed off, it was actually a Life Model Decoy. Same goes for all of his friends, including Dum Dum Dugan, who it turned out has been a robot for yonks. LMDs have also explained way the supposed deaths of Ant-Man, Black Widow, Bucky, Iron Man, Thor, and even Captain America.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
