Doom's Policies & Government

There was a Doom thread about a week ago which had anons going pretty deep in the whole "what would a world under Doom look like"and whether Doom would be actually beneficial or harmful for the world. The main argument was that the majority of people don't have delusions of grandeur or buy into the "everyone is can achieve whatever they want", so give them a comfy and stable life and they'll be set.

Do you agree? Dissagree? In the end, is he a well-meaning but ruthless freddom fighter, or just another vain and cruel conqueror?

He's a vain and cruel conqueror, but relatively speaking, a rational one. Which puts him ahead of most authorities in the real world.

Lex Luthor and Dr. Doom are a bit alike in that sense. They can be goaded into doing the right thing, if you know how to appeal to their reason and their ego without pissing them off.

The main difference is that Lex is more sociable than Doom, so he's willing to work "within" society without having ostensible supreme authority, whereas Doom's ass chaffs if anyone presumes to question him without being extra super eggshell walky.

Most of his actually villainous conquests have been to spite Reed to some degree or other powerful individuals who stand in his way. Latveria is doing very well under his iron fist and he seems to be well-liked. The idea of swearing total fealty sounds like such a negative idea because so many have abused that power. But not Doom. He keeps his word, serving him brings prosperity. Education and art and sustenance and safety. At what cost? Not fucking much.

>At what cost? Not fucking much.
What about your freedom of choice? Doom's policy is essentially installing a universal class system, which goes Doom > Doom's Underlings > Everybody else.

>Lex Luthor and Dr. Doom are a bit alike in that sense.
I would argue Lex is far more evil than Doom. He gave up literal Godhood and the abillity to do universal good just to spite Superman.

>What about your freedom of choice?
It didn't go anywhere. Don't like it? Rebel or leave.

Latverian culture and society might simply de-emphasise the individual, over society as a whole. Similar in some ways to China and Japan.

So a citizen of Latveria might not be sitting there going "I havent a fantastic idea to start a business and screw over everybody I know so I can sleep on a bed of dollar-pounds!" and may instead be sitting there going "Latverian society is taking care of its people and its natural resources, Doombots take care of most of the pointless labour, and gosh, I think I'll go on another walk through our beautiful national parks and enjoy the diverse nature of Latverian culture and society!"

Or, maybe Doom just dumped a bunch of drugs into the water that makes the populace compliant and little-given to disturb the peace. "Oh no, we couldn't riot. It wouldn't be proper!"

Rebel? How? Leave? And go where? We're talking about a Doom-Controlled World now, not just Latveria.

>Rebel? How?
Fight against Doom. You're over-complicating an absurdly simple question to make a fairly blank argument.
>Leave? And go where?
Anywhere that isn't Earth, since Marvel isn't limited to one planet. Again, over-complicating for no reason.

>"I havent a fantastic idea to start a business and screw over everybody I know so I can sleep on a bed of dollar-pounds!"
But what's wrong with people who are smarter and have great ideas getting a bit ahead in the world? I get the point you're making, but to keep everyone at the same level regardless of their abillities isn't ideal.

>the average joe
>rebel against Doom
>leave the planet
Okay then...

Do you notice that you're arguing against things I've already said? I don't think you do. You still have the choice, whether or not you have the means. Throwing a rock is fighting. I don't think you're as stupid as you're acting.

You're arguing that Doom's plan for the world is perfect and good, when it does not even give its citizens the right to vote, open a business, whatever. To simply say "ayo, u have the freedom to do these things, you just cannot do them" is like saying to a cripple "you can walk, you just need functional legs".

plus there was that shit in the diner.

Doom is evil for pragmatism's sake. The world should do what he says, and by god, he will make it.

Luthor feels the same way, but also takes time out of his schedule to just be cruel for it's own sake.

Doom can be sadistic when he's vengeful, but he doesn't do it for it's own sake.

Doom's a petty racist, so I figure Wakanda and Atlantis would be the first to go. Dunno if he'd have second class citizens in his world...

>You're arguing that Doom's plan for the world is perfect and good
No reading comprehension.
>it does not even give its citizens the right to vote, open a business
Says who? Citation, please.
>ayo
>like saying to a cripple "you can walk, you just need functional legs"
Not remotely like that, if you'd read what's already been said. Maybe I was wrong about you?

>No reading comprehension.
"U just got it wrong". So explain to me, the retarded user, EXACTLY, what you mean when you say that people have freedom in a fascist regime.

>Says who? Citation, please.
The fact that everytime he's ruled the world it's a bunch of peasants doing peasant shit and he holds all the power.

>I would argue Lex is far more evil than Doom. He gave up literal Godhood and the abillity to do universal good just to spite Superman.
I wouldn’t say he’s more evil than Doom... I was going to say more petty, but Doom gets pretty bad with these things and the only reason he (also) lost his own shortlived godhood was because Reed got him to admit that Victor came up short when it came to saving/rebuilding the universe (or something to that tune, it’s been awhile since that moment was story timed).

I’d say the key difference between Doom and Lex is that Lex is simply a much worse psychopath than Doom. Victor still has a firm grasp on what is beneath him and even a moral standing on certain issues, but Lex tends to immiediatly trample anything if it can advance his plans or give him an egotistical hard-on.

To put it another way, if someone betrayed Doom he might kill their family to dissuade others from future acts of treason, but Lex might do the same purely out of spite.

WE

Maybe that isnt the thrust of Latverian culture and society tho? Like, maybe a Latverian would think that 'getting ahead' is remarkably crass - a Latverian would be more interested in 'what can I do to improve society?'

Of course, I assume this could only work if Doombots take care of all basic labour, there's some form of guaranteed income, and Doom controls all education and entertainment (and thus the basis for the shape of society).

All things we've seen Doom do before.

>a Latverian would be more interested in 'what can I do to improve society?'
>a bunch of Slavs, Germans and Greeks
>"what can I do to improve society" as their mantra
They'd be tryingto backstab each other 1second after Doom lef-
>looks at every story where Doom leaves the country
Huh. I guess it's realistic.

>I’d say the key difference between Doom and Lex is that Lex is simply a much worse psychopath than Doom. Victor still has a firm grasp on what is beneath him and even a moral standing on certain issues, but Lex tends to immiediatly trample anything if it can advance his plans or give him an egotistical hard-on.
It just seems like Lex genuinely think morality doesn't exist. While Doom believe in morality, he just has other things that he priorities above morality.

What the actual fuck

Define pointless labor. Latveria still has farmers and peasants -- they may be an educated people with a good life and sewage treatment, but they still are rather medieval in places.

As far as I understand, Doombots mainly run security, both from external (invasions, heroes) and internal (local crime?) threats.

Doom raised a rich kid of instagram.

>rich
Kristoff is the son of a science wizard with a time machine who lives in a castle with demons. He's way past the "rich" stage and probably posts pictures of him torturing political prisoners and dead dragons.

Still not as obnoxious as Jake Paul, but I'm sure he'd love to join his crew.

That was Hudlin though, yeah?

WAZ

Lex did it because he was stupid. That was some really horrible writing. It makes more sense that is was because he was afraid of that power.

yeah no. that level of racism is beneath doom's ability and intelligence

It's not beneath Stark's though.

what the fuck is this from

Marville. It's unedited.

>The idea of swearing total fealty sounds like such a negative idea because so many have abused that power. But not Doom. He keeps his word, serving him brings prosperity. Education and art and sustenance and safety. At what cost? Not fucking much.
This. Ordinary men are fallible, corruptible. Tempt them with the power to rule over an entire nation and it won't take long for them to become self-serving and cronyistic. It wouldn't be especially difficult to coerce them either with threats of force against the people they care about the most. Everybody has their codes, their self-imposed limits but if you find their weakness and exploit it then those same codes and limits simply fade away.
Now I'm not saying that Doom is infallible. On the contrary, he's very much human at times. But when compared to the average man he is superior. There's no question of that. So when tallied up against the myriad of self-serving world leaders that we're saddled with today, Doom is unquestionably the best choice to lead.

I disagree, it was great.

Yeah... no. I don't think it's going to work.

Here's the thing. In the Marvel universe, Doom is a villain. He's not a villain because he's willing to plumb moral depths, or because he has a penchant for scheme. He's a villain because his flaws outweigh his strengths. Because when it comes down to it, Doom is not a good person, and will not leave the world in a better place than when he left it.

As Doom is a complicated figure who has done good before, he could rule a country- or the world- quite well, for a time. He'll organize it, keep it safe from external threats, use his scientific acumen for considerable general good. But eventually- he's going to fuck up. He might not fuck up 'big', compared to things other villains have done in the past. But he's going to fuck up enough that it outweighs any good he's done in ruling.

Best-case scenario? He rules the world well enough, then sacrifices himself to defeat some new, world-breaking threat. He sacrifices himself also as he knows that if he continues to rule, eventually, his own drives will turn him against the people he rules.

It's not like there already was a world governed by Doom that was disfunctional as fuck, despite him having immensely more power than usual.
God I hate Doomfags.

Whoever wrote that has no idea about Doom. Doom is beyond such things. All people are inferior to Doom.

hasnt Kristoff been MIA for years? Was he even in Secret Wars? Does Bendis know he exists?

The big problem with Doom ruling is two-fold. The first is that he is an insatiable conqueror and would almost invariably move on to trying to conquer the universe and then the multiverse. The second is that the governments he set up always fall apart without him. Whenever he does conquer everything, he fucks it up somehow and his efforts at extending his own life also always comes with a hitch.

I'm pretty sure Doom let people vote for local stuff like Burgomaster, although the titles were ceremonial at best.

>I assume this could only work if Doombots take care of all basic labour

Bryne's version of Doom & Latvaria implied that he wanted his subjects doclie & contented but also wanted them to keep busy by keeping their lifestyle tech level in the early 20th century. He seemed to genuinely care as long as nobody triggered his ego or started to want more.

Waid kinda sperged over this interpretation and implied the whole time Doom was guillotining people for spitting on the sidewalk.

At this point its a fucking mess. Writers have had pissing matches about who/what Doom is and anything they didn't like previously got retconned into being a Doombot but now we got stories retconning the goddam Doombot explanation.

I like Doom more but I definitely concede that Lex has had more character stability the past two decades.

>"Doomwankery: The Thread"

Can anyone post a single page of Doom taking smart and well-thought decisions on rulership?

Writers making villains more evil than they were in the past isn't limited to Doom though he is the biggest example. Magneto also got bounced between genocidal villain and noble anti-hero over the decades. The problem is that writers want to use big villains but they want to force these villains to fit the narrative instead of using a villain who would already fit.

Are you guys still mad that it turns out noone wanted monarchy back?

I mean why are we assuming the more mellow version is the right one? Waid just brought Doom back to how he was under Stan and Jack before Bryne wrote his flowery fanfic about how he wanted that iron monarchial dick. Magneto as a good guy is absolutely a huge part of why the X-Men are rudderless right now; he's great as an enemy who COULD be saved but he's been on a x-men team for a decade now despite doing some outright evil shit, and more importantly, he's doing nothing to really make the franchise better.

Like you're right that people need to make more new villains instead of using the old saws for every plot they can think of, but even that's unstable. How fucking long did it take Danger, probably the new x-villain with the most potential in a long time, to join the team? Like two, three uses?

Writers just can't resist it and that's a problem because in Marvel between Bendisites's defanging every bad guy or them all joining the fucking x-men and avengers there's no threat left.

There's that one fight with the guy he relents to because he discovers that his nuclear program has been sabotaged, and if he bothers picking a fight with him any longer instead of dealing with the stealth breach it'll reveal Latveria as a nuclear powered threat to the States, giving them the casus belli needed to invade.

Triumph and Torment and the stuff written by Byrne was the status quo for a long time. The fact he had two solos as the anti-hero largely cemented the idea that he isn't a monster. Waid went overboard trying to make him evil the same way Bendis did with the cow-mouth line or Hudlin with Doom pontificating on Africans.

It also doesn't help that Marvel's staple comic heroes aren't very heroic anymore. It is as if all the old heroes have their own Hank Pym wife beater moments that the comics won't let anyone forget now. When your heroes are scum, writers are tempted to lower the bar on the villains as well.

I find it strange that the current writers are better at making the villains anti-heroes then being irredeemably evil, and the heroes all just happen to be losers-now-with-superpowers who fit the costumes the real heroes threw aside in disgust before going into hiding.

This. Just look at Secret Wars. Like it or hate it but it was written by a big doomfag and even he showed that anytime Doom rules over something it devolves quickly into tyranny.

>Triumph and Torment and the stuff written by Byrne was the status quo for a long time. The fact he had two solos as the anti-hero largely cemented the idea that he isn't a monster
Man its like you deliberately ignore the stuff that happened in between triumph and Waid. The guy is a fucking supervillain who is also a complex human being.

Is it truly that hard to write a fun evil villain and a fun noble hero? Without winks and nods to silver age bullshit, just an honest hero vs villain story.

I don't know what you're talking about.

Hudlin's ability to write non-black characters is as natural as a white man's dialogue in a Spike Lee film.

Yeah he is a super villain but he definitely had more heroic moments than most and like it or not, those moments stuck. Before Waid, he wasn't much worse than Stark during CW and was better than Steve during Secret Empire. Doom actually was pretty damn heroic in 2099.

>subtle justification for saying nigger

brilliant

>the virgin doom and the chad Lex

Aye, Stark's pretty based.