When you read articles and books on writing -- particularly on writing heroic fiction -- you frequently see the advice that one musn't write one-dimensional villains. If the villain is simply bad and that's it, he's dull. The conventional wisdom goes that your villains have to bring a little something more to the table -- usually Sympathy, Motivation, or Panache. Sympathy -- you have to show that the villain is a real human being (or other sentient species) too, and feels pain, and maybe even from his point of view isn't really a villain at all. Motivation -- (often closely linked to Sympathy) you have to show that the villain has relatable, primal, human reasons for doing what he does, motivations you can at least kind of understand even if you couldn't agree with them. And finally, the Hannibal Lecter exception: Panache -- even if the character isn't really sympathetic at all, nor does he really have relatable human motivations, at the very least you can make him a good villain by giving him a good, compelling style.
So how about Dr. Doom?
Dr. Doom is one of the "all-time great" villains, and unlike most conventional wisdom WRT mainstream Marvel and DC superhero comes (henceforth "superhero comics"), I actually agree with this one. But is Doom really all that great, and does he "fit" the SMP paradigm?
Honestly, how sympathetic is Dr. Doom, really? Okay, his mom got dragged to Hell by Mephisto. That's a bummer, I'll grant you, but that doesn't generate a whole lot of sympathy from me. First of all, there's the whole "play with fire and you get burned" aspect to occult magic. Second, Doom could probably have saved his mom a long time ago if he poured all of his time and energy and resources into rescuing her instead of stalking Reed Richards.
The closest anyone's ever come to giving Doom a note of real sympathy, that I recall, was when Doom took in that Kristoff kid -- but there are two problems there, as well. First, it was during Byrne's run on the FF, and the Marc Singer Corollary applies (if you go back and re-read a Byrne FF story now, there's a better-than-50% chance that it's nowhere near as good as you remember, or that Byrne is just riffing an earlier Stan Lee story anyway), and second, it turns out he has a plan for the kids brain patterns to be overwritten with his own if anything happens to him. That kinda ratchets down the ol' sympathy factor. I should also note that Byrne's attempts to generate sympathy by showing that he was a kindly dictator (??) always came of as fairly silly to me, even back when I was fully enamored of Byrne's work.
So Doom doesn't strike me as a villain with a whole of sympathetic potential. How about motivation? Not to pick on Mr. Byrne (who has written and drawn a lot of material that I still like a great deal), but in the X-Men Companion II, Byrne states his belief that Dr. Doom is way more noble a figure than Magneto, because Magneto is simply using a rationalization to justify his rotten deeds, whereas Doom has hereditary monarchy to back up his claims to power (seriously -- now, Byrne does point out, in no uncertain terms, that Doom's a complete "rotter," but still...). Maybe it's because I'm an American, but to me, proactively defending your ethnic/culture group/species is a *way* better justification, motivation, and source of sympathy than some claim to who-gives-a-rat's-ass monarchy. In terms of flimsiness, that's up there with "I had a dream in which a magic frog with the face of Harry Truman told me to take over Latveria." Then of course you have the jealous of Reed Richards thing and Doom blaming Reed for his own arrogant mistakes. Yeah. So Doom pretty much strikes out on both sympathy and motivation in my opinion.
So how about panache? Well, "panache" implies a level of sophistication I would hate to suggest, but style...yeah, I like Doom's style. He's a direct, simple, grandstanding hotdog of a villain, given to overly-complex, pseudoscientific schemes and long-winded diatribes. He likes to blow things up. He uses robots -- lots of robots. He has a convoluted backstory that includes lots of magic and psuedoscience and gypsies! He's really kind of irritating. I love the guy.
But do I love the guy because his style really makes for a great villain, or is there a nostalgia factor at play? Do the attributes I attribute to Doom make for a good villain, or just a good superhero comic book villain? Could you get away with "classic Doom" in a modern action movie or TV series? Or is there some other key to understanding why Dr. Doom is a great villain (besides longevity) that I'm missing?
Posted by Chris M. at June 26, 2006 12:56 PM