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Doctor Doom Survey Results

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Back in April I used this blog to conduct an online survey, designed to try and discover what makes Doctor Doom Doctor Doom. It went much better than I expected (I was hoping for about 50 responses, but by the end of the survey period I had had 225 completed surveys returned) which is why it's taken so long to sort out the results, but for the next couple of weeks I'm finaly going to be sharing them with you here.

I'm going to start with the analysis for section five of the survey, "Your Experience Of Doctor Doom". It makes sense to start here, rather than in the order the questions were actually asked, because this section gives a lot of insight into the background knowledge of those taking part, which in turn sheds light on some of the results themselves.

For all answers, I'll give the question in bold and then go through the results, as follows:

Media types: In which of the following media have you experienced Doctor Doom stories?

Respondents were asked to answer "Yes", "No" or "Don't know" to this question to indicate which types of media types they had experienced Doctor Doom in.

Media Type Yes No Don't Know Missing
Comics 221 2 1 3
Movies 185 30 7 5
Animated TV shows 164 40 17 6
Video games 108 92 19 8
Newspaper strips 50 152 17 8
Radio shows 6 209 4 8
Action Figures/Toys 136 77 9 5
Other 54 64 70 39


If the respondent answered "Yes" to "Other" they were asked which other media they had seen featuring Doctor Doom. The answers were as follows:

Other Media Types Mentions
Costumes/Cosplay 11
MF Doom/Hip Hop 9
Trading Cards/Table top games 9
Fan-Art/Fan-fiction 8
Prose fiction/Text Books 7
Memes 4
Vinyl record/Audio story 4
Collectibles 3
Other 7


By adding the top answers here to the main table the following graph was produced.

Comics came out clearly on top, although movies and animated TV shows were not far behind. This was to be expected, as most of the respondents were recruited via comics-related groups, but I did not expect Action Figures/Toys to be such a popular response. As will be seen throughout this analysis, respondents regularly gave answers that I would not have considered important, or included at all, if the survey had not been run - a great justification for actually doing it!



Comics: How familiar are you with comics from each of the following decades?

The next questions were only asked for people who had answered "Yes" or "Not sure" to the question "Comics" at the start of the section. Results were as follows:

Decade Scale of 1 to 5 where 1 means " Not familiar at all" and 5 means "Very familiar"
1 2 3 4 5 Missing
1960-1969 12 51 59 27 55 21
1970-1979 19 53 62 25 44 22
1980-1989 19 34 50 38 62 22
1990-1999 19 45 65 36 38 22
2000-2009 16 47 56 41 43 22
2010 - present day 22 44 50 30 56 23




By recoding scores 1 and 2 as "Not familiar", 3 as "Neither" and 4 and 5 as "Familiar" the following graph was produced. This shows that awareness of Doctor Doom's appearances was fairly evenly spread across time, with a slight bias towards the 1980s, which could be accounted for by his leading appearance in "Marvel Superheroes Secret Wars" during this period. This might also explain why so many people thought of Doom appearing as an action figure, as this was the commercial driving force behind the creation of the "Secret Wars" series.



Comics series: Which comics series are you aware of Doctor Doom appearing in?

This was only asked for people who answer 'Yes' or 'Not sure' to the previous question.

Comics Series Yes No Don't Know or Missing
Fantastic Four 203 2 20
Marvel Superheroes Secret Wars 164 39 22
The Avengers 164 40 21
What If? 156 46 23
The Amazing Spider-man 145 59 21
Unbeatable Squirrel Girl 144 59 22
Doom 2099 141 63 21
The X-Men 129 75 21
Infinity Gauntlet/Infinity War 127 76 22
Secret Wars 127 76 22
Secret Wars II 127 75 23
Spidey Super Stories 101 102 22
Infamous Iron Man 100 102 23
Dark Reign 94 107 24
Not Brand Echh 80 120 25
Books Of Doom 74 127 24
Super-Villain Team-Up 64 137 24
Doctor Doom and the Masters of Evil 50 152 23
Other 80 95 50


Predictably, "Fantastic Four" and "Marvel Superheroes Secret Wars" were the most popular answers here, although it was intriguing to find "What If?" appearing so high in the list. This is not a series that I personally would associate particularly with Doom, even though I know he did appear in it several times.

One important thing to note here is how many people were aware of Doom's appearances in "Unbeatable Squirrel Girl". This is likely, in part at least, to be due to so many respondents finding out about the survey via Ryan North's retweet of the call for participation. As will be seen as the analysis continues, this would lead to some skewing of other results.

If the respondent answered "Yes" to "Other" they were asked which other series they had seen featuring Doctor Doom. The top answers were as follows:

Series Mentions
Iron Man 13
Doctor Strange and Doctor Doom: Triumph and Torment Graphic Novel 12
Luke Cage Hero For Hire 12
Doctor Doom (2019) 10
Thor 9
Daredevil 7
Astonishing Tales 6
Black Panther 5
Dazzler 5
Future Foundation 4
invincible iron man 4
X-Men/Fantastic Four 4


It's notable here that so many people mentioned Doom's appearance in "Luke Cage: Hero For Hire", a series which he only appeared in for two issues but which did generate a popular internet meme.
Widely quoted panel from Luke Cage, Hero For Hire #9


There were also another 66 separate series mentioned for this question, all with three or less responses, demonstrating how widely Doom has travelled throughout the Marvel Universe.



I think that's enough for today - hopefully it's been of some interest. Join us next time when we'll be looking at responses for movies, animated series and video games!




posted 4/8/2020 by Mark Hibbett

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DOOMBOT FILTER: an animal that says 'buzz' (3)

(e.g. for an animal that says 'cluck' type 'hen')

A process blog about Doctor Doom in The Marvel Age written by Mark Hibbett