On Doctor Doom

I'm sure everyone who cares to know has seen the big casting announcement, and all the hoopla about the least important Fantastic Four related casting. 

You heard me. 

I didn't always feel this way. Back in the old, pre millennium days, Doctor Doom was a proper villain because people knew how to write proper villains. Lets take a quick look, shall we? 

He's a brutal, violent, totalitarian dictator who demands absolute control over the lives of the people under his rule, but as long as they all keep their heads down, do as their told, don't get above their station, and don't try to leave the country, everyone will be happy. He's Benito Mussolini by way of Nicolae Ceaușescu, only in power armor. Doom is the State in Latveria, complaining bitterly about the country not being respected while harkening back to an imaginary past that made it the equal of other European states. 

Which is a laughable concept. It's a Ruritania, a fictional postage stamp country. I appreciated the realization that in the cold war it would have been a US ally against its neighboring Communist states were Doom not such an obvious villain. Doctor Doom: so bad even the Reagan Administration wouldn't partner with him, But I digress. 

So why isn't Latveria in as bad a shape as similarly situated countries? Because Doom has legit super-tech chops. Give him that. Everyone is employed in or educated for supporting his super-tech advancements to keep the economy humming. But also he carelessly eliminates his best scientists as potential rivals or "fools", and he's so paranoid that none of his technology leaves his control. it all stays in his basement, er, dungeon. 

And to what end does he place this massive technological advancement: getting revenge on his college lab partner for being smarter than him, and wanting to spend more time with his mom (who is dead and in hell) - because he never learned to grieve and because people 'disrespected' his family once. Good. great. Nice thinking. His one girlfriend left him when he refused to move on like a normal person and he has been obsessing about her ever since. 

So we have a guy who spends all his time locked in his basement with his expensive toys stoking grievances with no romantic relationships and no peer friendships who lashes out at anyone who he thinks makes him look bad and insists on a dominance only worldview with his employees. He maintains a nouveau-riche appreciation for great European arts and culture that ends with the interwar period of art strongly challenging the status quo because that's what Fascists always do.

Basically, he's king of the Incels. 

What else do we know about this guy? He's a Romani from back before we stopped calling them a racial slur, but also from when all Romani were the exotic magical thieves of Europe*. So naturally he was also a magician who dabbled in black magic. As a way to get his mom back. Because mother issues. 

Oh and after he was kicked out of college for using university funds to try to create a portal to hell (but fucked up because his math was off and he wouldn't listen to Reed's corrections), he... <checks notes> Oh. Oh my. Went to the far east to find a secluded monastery and master all the physical and psychic arts until they declared him their master. So that's a thing... that happened. Wow is that some nicely coded yellow peril meets white supremacy. 

All of this worked (well most of it) in the 1900s because the comics knew he was the bad guy. The writers were people who knew the wars in Europe, knew what dictatorships looked like, knew what these sorts of threats these ravening loons were. Half the time Doom loses because he can't not fuck up his relationship with his business partners before the deal is over. His grievance against the Fantastic Four is built on such a slender reed (heh) that its almost comical were it not for the fact that he is played as a deadly threat... right up until he screws himself over. 

He's a great villain for a returning comic book serial - lots of angles, clear if crazy motivations, explanations for how he can get away and come back. 

And then the 90's happen and then the 2000s happen, and it just gets worse inside the comics for a lot of reasons I'll get to in another post, but Doom starts getting elevated past his Crazy Dictator status, in part because people forget. They forget the threats to their people and neighbors and European dictators cause. They forget the Cold War. They want their protagonists to be edgy outsiders who, if they work with a team, the team has to bend to them and not the other way around. And there's the Fantastic Four whose team leaders are LITERALLY your really smart Dad, your really capable Mom, your dad's wacky best friend  (who's smart than you but at least hides it: Ben's a fucking Astronaut, yes he's goddamn smart because they all had to be) who could be an edgy outsider except he's always still your dad's best friend, and the actual uncle who was edgy once but now is just that guy from school who likes cars and gets girls. "Dude no!" they yell, "I can't see my parents as the heroes of this story! I have to rebel against everything they stand for plus she's a wine Mom who like cares about stuff!"

But what represents everything they stand for? 

Hey, lets make Doctor Doom cool! What if we write books where my dad is actually WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING and MAKES THINGS WORSE while his worst enemy gets to be more powerful and cool and did we say he dabbled in magic? HELL NO HE'S THE BADDEST BADASS SORCERER ON THE PLANET! and have him fight EVERYBODY!

So in the end, I don't care who they cast as Doctor Doom to fight the Avengers, because Doctor Doom isn't designed to fight the Avengers. And to be honest, Doctor Doom isn't the first movie villain for the FF. He's the second, or most likely the third. He's the foe you build towards. 

Unless you want to rightfully make him the sometimes dangerous but mostly self destroying king of the Incels. But I doubt that's the take. 

* remember, Magneto became Romani just to explain the possible Scarlet Witch/Quicksilver parentage when they decided to do that, and all the X-Men were coded Jewish back when the book was a metaphor about being Jewish and having to assimilate and hide what you were or people would put you in camps. Once Claremont openly made Magneto a holocaust survivor the metaphor for everyone else shifted from assimilating Jews to closeted Gays because the metaphor had been actualized.