Doctor Doom is one of the most underestimated characters in all of comic books.

The Marvel villain’s intelligence can’t be denied – he has one of the most gifted intellects in all of fiction – but not many people realise just how formidable he is in battle as well.

His armour is full of incredibly powerful gadgets and greatly increases his general physical prowess, and he’s far better at using magic than most people think he is, which makes him a very versatile foe who is difficult to beat.

That being said, he still regularly performs above his pay grade, defeating more powerful foes with a mixture of skill, wit, intelligence and power.

To emphasise just how versatile Doom is, we’re going to run through ten different ways he has defeated opponents that he should really have no right defeating. Here are ten ways Doctor Doom has bested tougher opponents…

With His Bare Hands

There was an occasion when Doctor Doom was banished to a planet that was very similar to Earth. He was naked and without any gadgets or weapons of any description – but he would still prove himself to be a formidable opponent.

He found himself on that planet’s version of Africa – the Serengeti, to be precise – and encountered a lion. Now, no naked, unarmed man should ever be able to defeat a lion in combat – but Doom is no ordinary man.

With nothing but his bare hands, Doom killed the lion – and with a single blow, no less. One punch, where the brainstem meets the spine, killed the rogue male beast. And then Doom ate him and turned him into clothes and a mask for himself.

Through Sheer Willpower

The High Evolutionary started life as a mere human, but his intelligence was such that he was able to experiment on himself to make himself godlike in terms of his power levels.

In spite of the fact that he has indeed become a reality-warping god of epic proportions, the Marvel character’s most powerful weapon is still undoubtedly his intellect – and that means he has designed some pretty awesome and powerful devices and weapons in his time.

One of those devices was so powerful that, when activated, it mutated every living thing on the planet to become a more evolved being. However, Doctor Doom’s willpower is so incredibly strong that he was able to resist the mutation and best the High Evolutionary using the power of his mind alone.

With Anti-Magnetism

Doctor Doom classically wears a suit of armour that is made primarily of metal. With that in mind, who is the most obvious nightmare character for him to go up against? Well, theoretically, it’s the master of magnetism, Magneto – but that’s not actually the case at all.

In spite of the fact that Magneto should be the perfect man to take Doom down with his mastery over all things metal, Doom can actually humiliate him by rendering his power useless against him.

Doom’s armour is fitted with an abundance of high-tech devices, one of which is anti-magnetism device that renders it immune to Magneto’s powers. As a result, when Magneto tries to manipulate it, nothing happens and Doom one-ups him in the most elaborate of ways.

With A Magic Mind Blast

The Sentry is one of the most powerful heroes in all of Marvel. The man with the power of a million exploding suns has defeated beings like the Molecule Man, Terrax and Ares with ease – and he’s even said to have fought Galactus to a tie – but Doctor Doom is proven to be able to best him.

When the Sentry dared to lay a hand on Doom, the genius villain reacted with a simple and near-instant magic spell that incapacitated the hero quite effortlessly.

Doom’s armour protected him from Sentry’s attack, so he uttered the words “blavatuni mastalanata”, which struck the fragile mind of the hero with a magical blast that put a stop to the assault immediately.

With An Energy Blast

In among the plethora of fancy gadgets inside Doctor Doom’s very versatile power armour, there are also some very crude ones that aren’t so fancy. Those cruder gadgets include basic energy blasts and, while that might not sound like much, those basic energy blasts can harm cosmic beings as powerful as Watchers.

When Doom came into conflict with Uatu the Watcher over a Cosmic Cube, not only did Doom’s armour manage to tank an attack by the cosmic entity, he also managed to harm him.

Doom fired an energy blast from his hand that sent Uatu flying, causing him to drop the Cosmic Cube, before using another blast that sent him to a dimension he would struggle to return from.

With A Force Field Projector

Doctor Doom’s armour is pretty durable to begin with and the fact that it can project a surrounding force-field makes it even more so – but it also has a miniaturised force-field projector that can envelope targets in a debilitating force-field of their own.

The villain has used it on a variety of opponents – including opponents as physically powerful as the Hulk – and it’s always been a very effective method of thwarting them.

The Hulk typically and crudely described it as “something invisible holding Hulk back” but, just like Doom responded, it was actually a very apt description of the situation. When Hulk is physically unable to escape from something, you know it must be pretty powerful.

With Telekinesis

A surprising ability that Doctor Doom has demonstrated is telekinesis – that being the ability to move things with his mind alone. Very few people are aware that he possesses this ability, but he definitely does!

There aren’t many examples of this ability, but one prime instance of him using it comes against someone with vast telekinetic powers – the incredibly powerful Herald of Galactus known as the Silver Surfer.

The Surfer used his own telekinetic abilities to tear one of Doom’s devices apart, but Doom countered with telekinesis – evidently more powerful than that of the Surfer’s – to put it back together. It’s not really known whether Doom’s telekinesis is magical or technological in nature, but it’s certainly extremely potent.

By Siphoning Their Power

Doctor Doom loves acquiring power. In the past, he’s gotten his hands on powerful items like a Cosmic Cube and the Infinity Gauntlet, but another way he acquires power is by siphoning it from other powerful beings.

He has various methods of doing this and has utilised several throughout his comic book history, but one of the most notable is via a device called the Cosmic Power Siphon Harness.

He has used the device to gain the powers of the likes of the Silver Surfer, Galactus and Hyperstorm. Other beings he has acquired the power from using different methods include the likes of Franklin Richards and the Beyonder. The problem is that Doom tends to get bored very quickly when he gains those levels of power – and he tends to get lazy and complacent – so he either ends up giving it up or letting his guard down, allowing opponents to defeat him.

By Deflecting Attacks

One of the most annoying ways – at least for the opponents – that Doctor Doom tends to get one over on his more powerful opponents is by effortlessly deflecting their attacks. Attacks that would normally take villains down are often simply shrugged off by Doom.

Doom has an abundance of devices in his armour that ready him for almost anything – his contingency plans are second to none – and, in the case of Thor’s powerful hammer Mjolnir, it was electromagnetism that he used to deflect it.

Mjolnir is usually a sure fire way to take down any given opponent, but Thor was shocked when he threw it in anger at Doom and it was simply repelled right back at him. Doom has many methods of turning opponents attacks back at them, but to do it to Mjolnir – which can generally only be moved in any way by those worthy of wielding it – was very impressive.

With Doombots

Classically, if Doctor Doom thinks he’s going to be in any kind of danger against any given opponent, he will send one of his Doombots on his behalf.

Doombots are copies of Doctor Doom that are so convincing, even the most sophisticated and powerful of sensors can’t differentiate them from the real Doom.

Often, these Doombots can even harm the opponents in question – they’re that powerful – but, more often than not, they are Doom’s way of outwitting his opponents. While they are preoccupied with his Doombots, he can go about defeating them with his genius from the safety of a completely different location. He’s an extremely clever, conniving and cunning villain!

What do you think? Is Doctor Doom sometimes cruelly underestimated? Which of his other countless methods to best more powerful foes have you been impressed by? Have your say below!