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Q: Why does EVERY major Marvel villain want to rule the world?

That's sort of an exceedingly dumb way for Doom to attempt to conquer the world, though, isn't it?

Not at all. Military superiority has proven to be a very effective form of conquest in the past. Alexander The Great and Gengis Khan both got pretty damn far, and their empires only fell apart because a lack of organization after the deaths of Alexander and Khan. Hitler probably would have won WWII and conquered a vast portion of the world, if not the entirety of it, if he'd not enacted the final solution during the war and used the man power and resources from the camps for the war effort. **** like Death rays, that's dicy because it's basically a global hostage situation, and mind control, well, if it works it would be ideal, but from a storytelling standpoint, it's going to have to not be universal if there's going to be any conflict in the story, and from an in-universe perspective, it's a pretty big gamble on a pretty wacky idea. Even gaining power through political manipulation and machiavellian schemes, while they work, does require military might at some point to hold onto and expand your power base. With full on military conquest, it's pretty simple. You defeat their armies, execute their leaders, rename and/or destroy their cities, and everyone knows who's boss. Plus, WWIII with Doom as the main bad guy would make a pretty damn good event if Bendis doesn't write it.
 
Provided Doom either uses bleeding-edge Doombots or gives his Latverian army suitable weapons to deal with everything, I suppose it could work. It just seems like a ham-fisted way for Doom, who's all about the most efficient solution to any given problem, to go about things. I've always seen him as more elegant a planner than that.
 
Why stop at a fraction, when you can have the whole thing? It would seem the wiser idea to take the everything, when you'll probably go to war with the countries you didn't invade.

I don't have the desire to rule a whole planet. A continent would be more than enough for me. The countries I didn't invade wouldn't see me as a threat b/c I'd make it very clear that I'm content with my single continent :up:
 
Provided Doom either uses bleeding-edge Doombots or gives his Latverian army suitable weapons to deal with everything, I suppose it could work. It just seems like a ham-fisted way for Doom, who's all about the most efficient solution to any given problem, to go about things. I've always seen him as more elegant a planner than that.

The fact is, no matter how elegant his plans are, military might will be necessary to ensure world domination at some point. And, really, which is a more efficient way to conquer new territory? Concocting some wacky Bond villain style scheme, or slowly building an empire through conquest and treaty? Doom's tried all sorts of machiavellian methods of power grabbing before. Maybe it's simply time to kick it old school. And, also, we're talking about the basic strategy employed by Alexander the Great, Napoleon, and Adolph Hitler, who were inarguably very elegant planners.
 
I don't have the desire to rule a whole planet. A continent would be more than enough for me. The countries I didn't invade wouldn't see me as a threat b/c I'd make it very clear that I'm content with my single continent :up:

Your idea is sound, and makes sense, aiming smaller. Taking what you can get, and growing from there, but keep in mind, like in comic books there are always people who wish to help the less fortunate and stop what they consider 'evil.'

For the villain, this might be an invasion of the villain's business, but to the hero, this might be an inevitable meeting anyway or maybe they are empathetic, who knows why they help people. The point is they do.

Of course there's the distinct possibility that the guys fighting for what's 'right' are weak and can be dealt with easily. Fear also plays an important factor too, I suppose. You can just frighten the good people into doing nothing. Just be careful of the braking point. Everyone's got one.

EDIT: I forgot, starting small can also have the advantage of nobody caring about the insignificance of the speck. There's just the possibility of someone actually giving a damn.
 
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Your idea is sound, and makes sense, aiming smaller. Taking what you can get, and growing from there, but keep in mind, like in comic books there are always people who wish to help the less fortunate and stop what they consider 'evil.'

For the villain, this might be an invasion of the villain's business, but to the hero, this might be an inevitable meeting anyway or maybe they are empathetic, who knows why they help people. The point is they do.

Of course there's the distinct possibility that the guys fighting for what's 'right' are weak and can be dealt with easily. Fear also plays an important factor too, I suppose. You can just frighten the good people into doing nothing. Just be careful of the braking point. Everyone's got one.

EDIT: I forgot, starting small can also have the advantage of nobody caring about the insignificance of the speck. There's just the possibility of someone actually giving a damn.

Exactly. If Latveria invades a neighboring country, everyone in the U.S. will simply be saying "silly Europeans...what's on TV?" It won't be until Doom is personally planting the Latverian flag at the top of the Eiffel Tower that we'll start collectively ****ting bricks.
 
Dude, the US might not care, but the superheroes would be in a tizzy. Doom doesn't have the luxury of operating under the radar like Hitler did for a while. He makes one move against a neighbor and Reed, Tony, and every other superhero is gonna be like, "Oh s***, Doom's expanding his territory! He must be stopped!" Not all the superheroes feel like their hands are tied by US policies.
 
Thats one of the things that makes Kang great. He doesnt just want to rule the world. He could do that easilly. In fact he already rules thousands of worlds.

It's actual, outright conquest that he enjoys. Military might ftw.
 
Dude, the US might not care, but the superheroes would be in a tizzy. Doom doesn't have the luxury of operating under the radar like Hitler did for a while. He makes one move against a neighbor and Reed, Tony, and every other superhero is gonna be like, "Oh s***, Doom's expanding his territory! He must be stopped!" Not all the superheroes feel like their hands are tied by US policies.

Reed will plant an Unstable Molecule flag in your country if you do.


:ff: :ff: :ff:
 
Thats one of the things that makes Kang great. He doesnt just want to rule the world. He could do that easilly. In fact he already rules thousands of worlds.

It's actual, outright conquest that he enjoys. Military might ftw.

I would love to see Kang show up in an Avengers Movie, he's definitely an impressive villain, him and Ultron are pretty much my favourite Avengers villains.

BTW I don't think I will see Ultron in an Avengers movie, I suspect he might be in Ant-Man's movie, to provide a visually threatening villain.
 
Well, the "rule the world" shtick was something that was pretty much used throughout the 60s. Dr. Doom most noteably has retained his world conquering desires, however initially Kang the Conqueror, Red Skull, Mandarin, Magneto, Mole Man, Namor, and even the Sentinels expressed desires to rule all of mankind with an iron fist. I think it was an easy way to write a motivation for a team of superheroes to fight a bad guy. Spider-Man's and DareDevil's villains were always localized, since they didn't fight much beyond their local neighborhoods, however team based books usually needed a larger threat and had influence that extended further than their backyard.

While most comics return at some point to a "save the world from conquering" storyline with major villains, I think you'll find most of the characters you mentioned moved beyond that goal a long time ago. Magneto is a good example. Once he was little more than a Dr. Doom ripoff, later he matured into a counter culture figure who even taught at Xavier's mansion despite questioning his approach. So with a little more layering his plans became more about wiping out humanity to advance mutantkind. Kang turned more into a time based villain, who posed more threats to mettling with the past and past events. The Sentinels of course became a mutant police force which was the arm of misguided humans. Namor became some sort of an anti-hero who looked after his own turf (sea turf). Mole Man became more of a nusance, and Mandarin became more of a power hungry tyrant not so much bent on taking over the planet but advancing his own power.

So I would say most villains actually don't want to rule or take over the world, but rather many started off with that goal since it was an easy story to market to children.
 
I would love to see Kang show up in an Avengers Movie, he's definitely an impressive villain, him and Ultron are pretty much my favourite Avengers villains.

BTW I don't think I will see Ultron in an Avengers movie, I suspect he might be in Ant-Man's movie, to provide a visually threatening villain.
I wanted the to vaguely set up Ultron in the Ant-Man movie. I had a different approach to the film itself. I always saw Pym as a somewhat disturbed person, and I thought an interesting take on the film would be to do it in the way of a 1950s Sci-Fi cult film. Have the story focus on his invention of the Pym particles in the midst of the killing of his first wife, Maria, and then have him take revenge on his wife's killers. I think it would be interesting to have a hero set up doing some very terrible things to terrible people, and then have him try to go back (in the Avengers movie) to being an very All-America superhero. The dynamic of a man who took vengence now trying to be the do-gooder would definitely layer Pym nicely, and could serve as a build up to his break down.
 
That sounds like a sci fi Punisher movie where they got the name wrong. :huh:
 
Maybe, but it's a lot more dramatic than his real origin.

I'd still rather Ultron though.
 
No, it pretty much is his real origin, just with Hank cast as a more violent bastard. I think the raging inferiority complex is reason enough for his later breakdown, myself.
 
A story, the likes of which I can't remember ever seeing in mainstream comics, at least not either of the big two, that I would like to see is Doom attempting to conquer the world, not through some clever mad scientist/bond villain style scheme, but kicking it old school and raising a Latverian military force to start cycles of conquest and create a Latverian Empire. It might be nice to see a proper war story in the MU that isn't a WWII flashback.

What you need to do is stop making talky-noises out of your word-hole, go buy Empire by Mark Waid, and then, read Empire by Mark Waid.
 
What you need to do is stop making talky-noises out of your word-hole, go buy Empire by Mark Waid, and then, read Empire by Mark Waid.

I've read Empire. It was really really good. What I'm talking about is showing the actual length of the war, not the aftermath with Doom in charge.
 
There two reasons why someone would why a villain would want to take over the world.

Some villains genuinely want to make the world a better place (Doom and Magneto) and believe only by taking over the world can they achieve that.

Some villains are deranged and filled with hate and want to punish the world for their own crappy lives (Red Skull and Apocalypse) and their trying to conquer the world in order to get revenge.

The fact is, no matter how elegant his plans are, military might will be necessary to ensure world domination at some point. And, really, which is a more efficient way to conquer new territory? Concocting some wacky Bond villain style scheme, or slowly building an empire through conquest and treaty? Doom's tried all sorts of machiavellian methods of power grabbing before. Maybe it's simply time to kick it old school. And, also, we're talking about the basic strategy employed by Alexander the Great, Napoleon, and Adolph Hitler, who were inarguably very elegant planners.

But no one has actually succeeded in conquering the entire world through force, its impossible to do logistics wise.

The problem is doom would to take too long and would cause too damage to the planet he wants to fix, if he used military force he would cause too much resentment amongst the people wants too rule, Doom is too Machiavellian to get into that pitfall. Plus if tried that he would be in state of war with everyone else, every hero on the planet would coming to Latveria to take him down, he would never get a moments rest and the world would no longer be willing to tolerate, it would have to be the last Doom story for it too work.
 
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I think it's a bit more complex than that. Some people want to rule the world, not for revenge, but simply to have a sense of power and control over their lives and the world around them. And sometimes that desire for control leads them to believe that the world would be better off with them in charge, making their motivations a bit multifaceted. I think that better describes The Red Skull than a desire for revenge against the world. Of course, these days he's motivated less by a desire to rule the world and more with a single minded obsession with Steve Rogers.
 
I think it's a bit more complex than that. Some people want to rule the world, not for revenge, but simply to have a sense of power and control over their lives and the world around them. And sometimes that desire for control leads them to believe that the world would be better off with them in charge, making their motivations a bit multifaceted. I think that better describes The Red Skull than a desire for revenge against the world. Of course, these days he's motivated less by a desire to rule the world and more with a single minded obsession with Steve Rogers.

I have seen no evidence the Skull wants to make the world a better place at all. There was one comic where it was stated that if the red skull got the cosmic cube, he would use to make the world a living nightmare, putting everyone in death camps and having being tortured by Nazi demons. He has no desire to make the world a better place, his motive is hate, pure and simple.
 
You'd think with a villain controlling the world, most evil aliens and demons would be afraid to invade Earth, because they know the villain will come after them and give retribution, not just let them go and forget it ever happened.
 
Well, if all the 'lesser races' are being tortured by Nazi demons, the world would be a better place to the Skull.
 
Ya gotta give it to Annihilus. He just wants to kill everyone so he can live in peace.


:doom: :doom: :doom:
 

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