The animosity between Fantastic Four is legendary. Despite the fact that the FF’s leader Reed Richards knew Victor Von Doom since college and considered him a colleague, Doom’s ego and lust for power frequently causes him to repeatedly threaten the world, forcing the Fantastic Four to stand against him. Still, this wasn’t always the case…
In fact, during their college days, Reed and Victor were, if not friends, on much more civil . At one point, Victor even did Reed a huge favor – by selling him his first car!
This offbeat event happened in Marvel Adventures: Fantastic Four #12 in a hilarious tale titled “Doom, Where’s My Car?” While storing some new equipment in the Baxter Building’s basement, the Human Torch spots a classic car that the Thing re as Reed’s old wagon from his college days. Falling in love with the machine, Johnny spends weeks fixing it up, modifying it, and painting flame decals on its sides.
Johnny shows off his car to the rest of the Fantastic Four, but Reed is annoyed, pointing out that the car is actually his – and that Johnny doesn’t really need a car since he can fly. Johnny, however, points out that it’s hard dating girls when you’re on fire and Reed begrudgingly lets him have the car, grumbling that it has a history Johnny doesn’t know about.
The car turns out to be much more than a snazzy roadster, as Johnny discovers to his delight when he finds it can fly and has built-in weapons he can use for his superhero duties. Believing Reed had modified the car with all sorts of cool high-tech gizmos, Johnny naturally uses his tricked-out ride to do what he does best – pick up women. However, his car also attracts the attention of a mysterious man who sends a Doombot to steal Johnny’s car, much to the Torch’s horror.
Furious that “Doctor Doom jacked my ride!” Johnny flies all the way to Latveria accompanied by the rest of the Fantastic Four. As it happens, they arrive on Doom’s birthday where scores of his subjects are throwing themselves before their monarch and giving him large expensive gifts (turns out Doom has a thing for big robots that entertain him and smash his enemies). Doom’s favorite gift, however, is Johnny’s car which turns out to be Von Doom’s old flying car from his college days.
Enraged, Johnny flames on and attacks Doom, forcing the rest of the Fantastic Four to battle Doom’s party robots. During the fight, however, Reed points out that the car is actually his since he traded an anti-matter regulator to Doom for it back in college just so he could take Susan Storm out on dates. College Reed even asked Doom if he was sure he didn’t need the car when he bought it from his classmate, only for the young Victor to scoff and state, “Victor Von Doom has no use for such petty contraptions now!”
itting “that does sound like something I would say,” the present-day Doctor Doom still argues that since the car has been returned to him, he’ll be keeping it – and starts blasting away at the Torch to make his point. As the petty feud reaches epic levels, the Doom starts shooting the Fantastic Four with all of his castle’s weapons, forcing the FF to beat a hasty retreat.
Despite his reputation as a world-conquering dictator, seeing Doctor Doom engage in a petty fight with the Fantastic Four over the right to own a car actually makes the Latervian monarch more relatable. Everyone has a soft spot for their first car, after all, and in that respect, Doom is no different from the rest of us. Even if his car does fly and shoot lasers.
