One of the best writers of this Marvel era writes an extended origin story for Marvel’s greatest villain.
Obviously, it’s a great read–even if it doesn’t add a lot of new information, just more detail. We see his mother studying black magic and losing her soul, inspiring Doom to try to win her back every year. We then see his father rescuing him from a wicked Latverian nobleman (that might in fact be new information–I don’t remember reading it before).
Apparently, though, it was because of his mother’s sorcery that he was driven from his country.
It is this persecution that drove Doom to the U.S., where he did NOT room with Reed Richard.
Of course, we see his accident in college that led to the scarring of his face.
Whether or not his face was ACTUALLY scarred is a matter of debate–and different creators have taken various approaches. Stan and Jack couldn’t agree on it, with Jack on the side of Victor having only a minor cut on his face but, due to his ego and vanity, over-reacting to it. John Byrne, of course, took Kirby’s vision. Brubaker seems to embrace a narrative of actual serious damage to Doom’s face–but then, this story is told from Victor’s point of view so of course he’d tell it that way.
At the same time, there’s a bit of Doom trying to save his mother from Satan and the Devil’s touch scarring his face–so it’s not entirely clear to me what the view here is on the facial damage due to Doom’s failed college experiments.
There’s also his earliest Doombots and more of the Valeria love story–she was a girl he grew up with in Latveria.
They do the wild thing. That also might be new detail–I don’t recall there being a confirmation of their relationship having been physical.
And of course there’s an evil twist at the end–I won’t give that away.