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It’s one thing having to come up with plots and machinations when you’re writing a comic book villain, but the greatest comic book villains are such that challenge their writers with their very speech patterns — as Fantastic Four and One World Under Doom writer Ryan North revealed.

Asked during the Q&A portion of the Friday afternoon Marvel Fanfare panel at San Diego Comic-Con 2025 whether or not he enjoyed writing Doctor Doom — the character at the heart not only of North’s current Marvel event comic book series, but the bad guy of his current Fantastic Four storyline — the writer had an unexpected reason got enjoying working with the Latverian monarch so often.

“Writing Doctor Doom is a joy because, every other character, you write their speech kind of like how a person talks, but Doctor Doom is a person who’s never said ‘um’ in his life,” North admitted during the Marvel Fanfare panel at San Diego Comic-Con 2025. “Everything he says is so formal, so you get to write speeches all the time.”

North had an example of what he was talking about: “I think it was in One World Under Doom #2, when the Thing loses his powers, any other person would say, ‘The Thing was transformed because of his error.’ Doom says, ‘Behold the Thing! A man by error and ineptitude transformed.’ There’s just so much more grace when he speaks, so he’s just fun to write. You always have to bring your A game when you write him.”

North has a few more months to enjoy Doom’s linguistic foibles before what is being teased as a pretty severe setback for the character. All things considered, I'm sure he'll have something to say about that.

Keep up to date on Popverse's Marvel coverage, with these highlights:

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