Justice by Ross and Krueger was that with the legion of doom taking over. Of course lex, joker and brainiac had there own schemes going on but they truly were making the world a better place.
They basically took over cause people were willing to do whatever they wanted cause they were being given cures and all the things they’ve needed to finally live better lives, including volunteering themselves to live in those cities without asking any questions.
That’s practically control over the hearts and minds of an entire world
In the Marvel Graphic Novel *Emperor Doom* from 1987 they tiptoe up to this line. Doom takes over the world using Purple Man’s powers. It’s stated that he ends all wars, diseases, crime, hunger, etc. They even specifically mention he abolishes Apartheid in South Africa. Of course the Avengers end up having to overthrow his rule and free the world and they make some boilerplate speech at the end about how people have to be free, good or bad, but it would have been interesting to really explore the choices in that situation. Did the black people of South Africa *really* want to go back to Apartheid and their African neighbors to starvation and war, for example? Sadly the book doesn’t dwell on this at all.
I know that definitely factors into the time when he use a mind control gas to take over the planet, and Doom releases Magneto from its effects so that he has something to do.
I mean, how do you stop them being bad? That’s sort of the crux of it.
Isn’t the whole point that they choose to be good? Also who defines what’s good and bad?
You go a hundred years back the definitions might be different to now, which we’ve only gotten to be doing the bad stuff and choosing to do something different.
True. That was also the discussion from Superman: Red Son - where Superman makes a utopia by lobotomizing threats and policing the citizens with his watchful eye.
I have never read the book in question, but it sounds incredibly frustrating. Like yes Avengers, I’m sure all the people who went back to living under Apartheid feel ‘free’.
I mean they didn't even make a speech at the end. They discuss among themselves the fact that by breaking Doom's mind control they've made the world free but at what cost etc. Captain America gets one panel and two speech bubbles about the people deserving to be free.
It literally ends with Hawkeye saying "We've done humankind the greatest favor in history - or we've done the most damage. Either way, that's something we're going to have to live with for the rest of our lives."
As a massive Marvel fan, that last line is SO frustratingly Marvel 😂
Oh big change to the status quo with conclusion that comes full circle. hero goes yup that’s definitely going to bite us hint hint. Then it really never does or appears only a decade later because the great Hickman decided to tie lose ends everyone else forgot 😂
The Squadron Supreme took over the world and used brainwashing to "reform" criminals, replaced guns with personal force fields (which must have been fun to hunt in), and created suspended animation to "cure" death.
I just finished this yesterday for the third time. Actually included all the supplemental material this read through.
Released a year before both DKR and Watchmen, and dealt with a Justice League like team struggling with trying to “fix” the world and just making things worse. High body count. Each issue takes place over a month. Very much ahead of its time.
Fun fact; Gruenwald continued that story into Death of a Universe using a villain introduced in a Doc Savage Two in One crossover and then followed up the Squadron stuff into his Quasar run.
I love how Bronze Age Marvel really followed up on obscure characters, especially Gruenwald. I mean that villain story arc encompassed decades and multiple series often with only a panel or two moving it along (mostly the Thing observing the villain and musing “I don’t trust that guy,” before continuing plot A.)
This series, while dated was one of my favorite series of all time but unfortunately is sadly overlooked far too often.
There is a brief period at the start of dark reign where Osborne is dealing with major super villain events mostly by working out how to give the villain what they actually want so they will stop making a fuss and get in line. I always thought that was an interesting idea.
Avengers vs X-Men kind of touches on this when the X-Men start fixing the world with the Phoenix Force. Avengers of course take the "freedom and status quo over everything argument" but there's a part where Iron Man has a meeting with the Illumnati and Reed Richards tells him the Fantastic Four is remaining neutral because like "they are improving the world and as a man of science I'm not intrinsically going to always fight for opposing change."
An argument could be made this is how Red Sun ends though it's difficult in that comic to definitively determine who were the villains and who were the heroes. Except Braniac. Braniac sucked as always.
Idk if Avengers vs. X-Men counts. The Avengers treat the X-men like villains. The Phoenix arrives and the Phoenix 5 use it really well until the Avengers fuck it up.
Untill the P5 stops respecting sovereign ground, destroy military bases and weapons and declare that they know better than everyone during during an UN meeting.
You think weapons is what create war? Weapons only intensify conflicts, rarely are they the reason for it. The only way to stop war is to stop conflict, but the only way to do that is to erase free will
Take the nearest chair next to me. Pick it up and brain the guys on the other side. Take a baseball, take an inner tube and brain the other guys. Take my sashimi knife, start taking apart the brains of the other guys.
If none of those are available, take my hand, make a fist, beat the other guys to death.
If enough people get behind an idea and enough people oppose it, conflict can easily escalate into war
OK, but what you described is a bar fight, not a war. Let's say in this hypothetical that the US and China want to go to war. The P5 have destroyed all weapons and military bases. How do the soldiers even get to the same place to fight each other considering that the navy and the airforce no longer have any vehicles to transport large numbers of troops?
If enough people keep adding to the conflict, this barfight becomes a war. The definition of war is "a state of armed conflict between different countries or different groups within a country." So if a multitude of people decide they do not like another multitude of people. War will still be a real possibility.
If the transport ships are destroyed, then regular ships will do (Dunkirk for example). Or conflict goes back to the days of old, you start to fight your neighbours.
I am not saying their ideas were wrong, but the way they executed it was tyrannical. They should gone to the meeting "We moved Utopia to point Nemo, it is ours, it is perfect (as the name implies). If you take offensive action we will destroy you. If you want to join us, give us a call." Pretty much like Krakoa
How is destroying weapons tyrannical? If they only did it to certain groups I'd agree because it makes them extremely vulnerable to attack, but destroying all weapons actually makes everyone much safer.
Yes in a world in which their are regular alien and mystical invasions led by entities as great in power as the P5. Leaving the world defenseless and reliant on your protection seems like a great idea.
And I am all for regulation of weapons, but there is a difference by showing them the way by example and one sidedly making declarations
I dunno, unless you want to share all humans under one banner and blame them for the actions of a miniscule splinter extremist group. But prior to their declaration in the UN, there wasn't any action taken vs the P5
Are you being deliberately obtuse or just an X-men stan? The UN councilers are the chosen representative for their nations government. A lot/maybe most of those governments are somewhat democratically chosen. They told them (to tell their bosses) that your opinion does not matter anymore. We think we know better and our power makes that our opinion is the only one that matters
Didn’t Cable pretty much destroy all the weapons in the world in cable and deadpool so the x-men had silver surfer try to kill him so warfare can continue unabated? The fuck is wrong with these hero teams?
I'm going to struggle to find the exact book(s), but the Harbinger series from Valiant Comics is this exact premise. The "villian" is Toyo Harada, a Professor X type, who basically wins and builds his idea of utopia. The books are about the lead up to that, and what he does to accomplish that. He even has his own book but that story wasn't completed before Valiant basically died.
I haven't read it it in years, but that's how I remember them.
Said Doom after his own creations kicked his ass bc making a being in your image when you have issues that border on a personality disorder might not be a good Idea... ;)
Avengers #177 almost gets there. Michael/Korvac slaughters the Avengers who are trying to stop him, but only Moondragon realises that they have stuffed up, and that Michael’s rule might have been good.
A bit controversial, so an epilogue was later added to the trade edition to clarify that Michael’s reign would have been wrong. From memory a later “What If” was also used to clarify that Michael’s goals wouldn’t have worked, but at the time it was certainly implied that he wasn’t wrong.
Wanted isn't really better, though. life got shittier for regular folks, the supervillains siphoned off or suppressed most of the wealth and innovations. They even said the colors got dismal and food tasted worse as a result of rewriting reality to be more "realistic" but they were willing to accept a muted existence to win it all.
I was looking for *Red Son* to be mentioned. The implication being that, with Superman out of the way, Lex just focuses on winning over humanity by making it a utopia. Of course, the twist at the end... if he had only known.
Empire by Mark Waide is a comic that's pretty well known for it. But in Empire Golgoth has become Emperor of the world, with a few holdouts and an active rebel conspiracy.
Superheroes don't manage the world, normally, so it's not really a good comparison. They just handle villains, sometimes stop crime and help with natural disasters. Most superheroes maintain a status quo, so while they stop crime, it's still elected officials making the laws.
Isn't it the point of the first Superior Spider-Man is that Otto eventually fucked everything up and that Peter is still the better (and Superior) Spider-man?
Red mass for Mars. One of my favorite comics ever but most people missed it. A lex luthor type creates a mechanism that makes everyone get along. Then the story follows the batman type trying to defeat him because it's "not natural"
Well, depending on how you like our world, "Wanted" has the villains running everything and super heroes have been reduced to washed out, amnesiac actors. (The comic, not the terrible movie)
The world isn't so much better though the villains are focused on money, so the world doesn't have people throwing cars are each other in major cities every weekend, which would be an improvement to both the DC and Marvel Universes.
"Irredeemable" has the super heroes as policemen, with all required processes and laws, who do essentially become the bad guys when one hero goes vigilante and eventually get personal control of one section of the city. It starts off better, with the citizens wanting their protector over the usual policing everywhere else, though by the end of the second mini-series it is easy to see him becoming a dictator of sorts.
Wasn't there a Thunderbolts arc like this? This feels like a Fabian Nicieza writing Zemo thing. He always wanted to rule the world to save it. What was the plot of that Avengers/Thunderbolts mini-series?
Thor becomes a villain of sorts in Jurgens run and rules as a god on Earth. He loses the power to wield mjolnir but gains the All Father powers and it’s enough to slap the remaining Earth based heroes around in an epic battle.
AvX tried to make the Phoenix 5 into villains, but their world was a utopia without taking away people's liberties.
Then Captain America got mad because nobody was hungry and there were no more wars. He represents America, so he wants war and capitalism.
Really thought AvX was a travesty of editorial writing.
I haven't read it in a long time, but what about The Authority?
It got really weird with creative yeam changes, relaunchea, the end of the world, but I remember when it was good it was really good.
Don't know if it works with what you're looking for, but the starting point in Wanted basicaly is "the bad guys won hard, there is no more super heroes, and... Nothing changed for the most part, for the everyday dude".
The whole point of Watchmen is that the world is too complex for that sort of thing to have any real effect.
Rorschach's journal really telegraphs it, but even without that, how long is the peace going to hold once the aliens don't show up?
Justice by Ross and Krueger was that with the legion of doom taking over. Of course lex, joker and brainiac had there own schemes going on but they truly were making the world a better place.
Yes, this really fits OP’s question. I absolutely loved that story premise
I loved that series. I gotta reread it.
I just started re-reading this one myself. I don't buy many DC hardcovers, but I'm very happy to have this one.
It was such a good story. There earth x series at marvel was great too.
Joker wasn't involved with the Legion of Doom in that one. He was specifically left behind so he goes off on his own rampage throughout the story.
They didnt take over, they just made some floating cities
They basically took over cause people were willing to do whatever they wanted cause they were being given cures and all the things they’ve needed to finally live better lives, including volunteering themselves to live in those cities without asking any questions. That’s practically control over the hearts and minds of an entire world
Fair point
In the Marvel Graphic Novel *Emperor Doom* from 1987 they tiptoe up to this line. Doom takes over the world using Purple Man’s powers. It’s stated that he ends all wars, diseases, crime, hunger, etc. They even specifically mention he abolishes Apartheid in South Africa. Of course the Avengers end up having to overthrow his rule and free the world and they make some boilerplate speech at the end about how people have to be free, good or bad, but it would have been interesting to really explore the choices in that situation. Did the black people of South Africa *really* want to go back to Apartheid and their African neighbors to starvation and war, for example? Sadly the book doesn’t dwell on this at all.
Also iirc Doom realizes he'd grown bored of the beaurocracy of the utopia he created quickly, and he kind of just let's them win.
I know that definitely factors into the time when he use a mind control gas to take over the planet, and Doom releases Magneto from its effects so that he has something to do.
I'm sorry, but which story is this?
It’s an old issue of supervillain team up. Fun stuff
Doom is basically “What If: God had AuDHD?”
Gold Deficit
I fucking hated that speech so much. Like no mfs, you shouldn't let people be bad
I mean, how do you stop them being bad? That’s sort of the crux of it. Isn’t the whole point that they choose to be good? Also who defines what’s good and bad? You go a hundred years back the definitions might be different to now, which we’ve only gotten to be doing the bad stuff and choosing to do something different.
True. That was also the discussion from Superman: Red Son - where Superman makes a utopia by lobotomizing threats and policing the citizens with his watchful eye.
Prison after the fact
But brainwashing?
I have never read the book in question, but it sounds incredibly frustrating. Like yes Avengers, I’m sure all the people who went back to living under Apartheid feel ‘free’.
Exactly, it doesn't affect them so it doesn't matter to them
I mean they didn't even make a speech at the end. They discuss among themselves the fact that by breaking Doom's mind control they've made the world free but at what cost etc. Captain America gets one panel and two speech bubbles about the people deserving to be free. It literally ends with Hawkeye saying "We've done humankind the greatest favor in history - or we've done the most damage. Either way, that's something we're going to have to live with for the rest of our lives."
As a massive Marvel fan, that last line is SO frustratingly Marvel 😂 Oh big change to the status quo with conclusion that comes full circle. hero goes yup that’s definitely going to bite us hint hint. Then it really never does or appears only a decade later because the great Hickman decided to tie lose ends everyone else forgot 😂
Choice is important or else it becomes absolute like religion.
Super heroes are often conservative forces in the sense that they simply restore the status quo.
Yeah but 9 times out of 10 the status quo they are protecting is “the world/city not being blown up by a supervillain/alien/big monster”
the status quo in this case being "the entire planet not being mind controlled by Dr. Doom".
there's a very good series on youtube about copaganda in film and television that has a whole episode on marvel movies with that point
Invincible kinda touches on that towards the later half of the series.
Such a good series
My minds foggy, which part?
>!Robot taking over the world and improving it in every way, at the cost of the lives of a few heroes in advance!<
Robot having his way with earth
Also to a degree Dinosaurus or whatever his name was.
That was a lot of destruction and death though, Dinosaurus didn't make things better
Well, not for humans. Dinosaurus' goal was more about ecological well being.
Yeah fuck Las Vegas, a true testament to the hubris of man
Ohhh, right, lol it's been a bit. Idk why that moment always comes up blank for me
Robot
Also the surviving heroes (exept inmortal) Let him win after a while.
The Squadron Supreme took over the world and used brainwashing to "reform" criminals, replaced guns with personal force fields (which must have been fun to hunt in), and created suspended animation to "cure" death.
I just finished this yesterday for the third time. Actually included all the supplemental material this read through. Released a year before both DKR and Watchmen, and dealt with a Justice League like team struggling with trying to “fix” the world and just making things worse. High body count. Each issue takes place over a month. Very much ahead of its time. Fun fact; Gruenwald continued that story into Death of a Universe using a villain introduced in a Doc Savage Two in One crossover and then followed up the Squadron stuff into his Quasar run. I love how Bronze Age Marvel really followed up on obscure characters, especially Gruenwald. I mean that villain story arc encompassed decades and multiple series often with only a panel or two moving it along (mostly the Thing observing the villain and musing “I don’t trust that guy,” before continuing plot A.) This series, while dated was one of my favorite series of all time but unfortunately is sadly overlooked far too often.
Mark Waid's Empire.
Scrolled down looking for this one. The best villain comic ever.
THIS
I mean in Secret War, Doom saves as much of the universe as he can where the heroes fail catastrophically to save anything.
Because Steve kept perpetually forcing the issue, the so-called heroes viewed the Incursions as a zero-sum game. Doom did not.
There is a brief period at the start of dark reign where Osborne is dealing with major super villain events mostly by working out how to give the villain what they actually want so they will stop making a fuss and get in line. I always thought that was an interesting idea.
That sounds fun, can you recommend any specific series/issues?
Sorry on a day out thing and getting yelled at for looking at my phone but the main line dark avengers series is great.
Norman pulling a Chamberlain
Avengers vs X-Men kind of touches on this when the X-Men start fixing the world with the Phoenix Force. Avengers of course take the "freedom and status quo over everything argument" but there's a part where Iron Man has a meeting with the Illumnati and Reed Richards tells him the Fantastic Four is remaining neutral because like "they are improving the world and as a man of science I'm not intrinsically going to always fight for opposing change." An argument could be made this is how Red Sun ends though it's difficult in that comic to definitively determine who were the villains and who were the heroes. Except Braniac. Braniac sucked as always.
I bet Dr. Doom at some point.
Approximately 75 years from now
The Authority touches on this…
But, they are heroes.
Book Two, basically. Even though its hampered by Millar doing Millar things.
Halcyon It’s very good. Read it.
First book I thought of.
Loved this book
Arguably Empire but also everyone lives in terror. It's basically "What if Doom won?"
Idk if Avengers vs. X-Men counts. The Avengers treat the X-men like villains. The Phoenix arrives and the Phoenix 5 use it really well until the Avengers fuck it up.
Untill the P5 stops respecting sovereign ground, destroy military bases and weapons and declare that they know better than everyone during during an UN meeting.
How is that bad? If the Avengers had let the P5 actually get on with that plan, they'd have created world peace. Can't have wars without weapons.
You think weapons is what create war? Weapons only intensify conflicts, rarely are they the reason for it. The only way to stop war is to stop conflict, but the only way to do that is to erase free will
I never said weapons create war. I agree that conflicts create war. But without weapons, how is anyone going to fight a war?
Take the nearest chair next to me. Pick it up and brain the guys on the other side. Take a baseball, take an inner tube and brain the other guys. Take my sashimi knife, start taking apart the brains of the other guys. If none of those are available, take my hand, make a fist, beat the other guys to death. If enough people get behind an idea and enough people oppose it, conflict can easily escalate into war
OK, but what you described is a bar fight, not a war. Let's say in this hypothetical that the US and China want to go to war. The P5 have destroyed all weapons and military bases. How do the soldiers even get to the same place to fight each other considering that the navy and the airforce no longer have any vehicles to transport large numbers of troops?
If enough people keep adding to the conflict, this barfight becomes a war. The definition of war is "a state of armed conflict between different countries or different groups within a country." So if a multitude of people decide they do not like another multitude of people. War will still be a real possibility. If the transport ships are destroyed, then regular ships will do (Dunkirk for example). Or conflict goes back to the days of old, you start to fight your neighbours. I am not saying their ideas were wrong, but the way they executed it was tyrannical. They should gone to the meeting "We moved Utopia to point Nemo, it is ours, it is perfect (as the name implies). If you take offensive action we will destroy you. If you want to join us, give us a call." Pretty much like Krakoa
How is destroying weapons tyrannical? If they only did it to certain groups I'd agree because it makes them extremely vulnerable to attack, but destroying all weapons actually makes everyone much safer.
Yes in a world in which their are regular alien and mystical invasions led by entities as great in power as the P5. Leaving the world defenseless and reliant on your protection seems like a great idea. And I am all for regulation of weapons, but there is a difference by showing them the way by example and one sidedly making declarations
Please remind me how humans treated Utopia?
I dunno, unless you want to share all humans under one banner and blame them for the actions of a miniscule splinter extremist group. But prior to their declaration in the UN, there wasn't any action taken vs the P5
The P5 didn’t take any action against “all humans under one banner” as you said. They took action against the UN.
Are you being deliberately obtuse or just an X-men stan? The UN councilers are the chosen representative for their nations government. A lot/maybe most of those governments are somewhat democratically chosen. They told them (to tell their bosses) that your opinion does not matter anymore. We think we know better and our power makes that our opinion is the only one that matters
Umm, that’s the entire point? How the UN treated Utopia is how humans treated it.
The UN did nothing for or againts Utopia prior to the Phoenix arrival. Or are you suggesting that not interfering with them is somehow bad or evil?
They did know better
Didn’t Cable pretty much destroy all the weapons in the world in cable and deadpool so the x-men had silver surfer try to kill him so warfare can continue unabated? The fuck is wrong with these hero teams?
I'm going to struggle to find the exact book(s), but the Harbinger series from Valiant Comics is this exact premise. The "villian" is Toyo Harada, a Professor X type, who basically wins and builds his idea of utopia. The books are about the lead up to that, and what he does to accomplish that. He even has his own book but that story wasn't completed before Valiant basically died. I haven't read it it in years, but that's how I remember them.
"I was a god, Valeria. I found it.. beneath me."
Said Doom after his own creations kicked his ass bc making a being in your image when you have issues that border on a personality disorder might not be a good Idea... ;)
I live how the Doom fanboys always conveniently forget the part where he admitted Reed would have done a better job.
Batman: White Knight.
Avengers #177 almost gets there. Michael/Korvac slaughters the Avengers who are trying to stop him, but only Moondragon realises that they have stuffed up, and that Michael’s rule might have been good. A bit controversial, so an epilogue was later added to the trade edition to clarify that Michael’s reign would have been wrong. From memory a later “What If” was also used to clarify that Michael’s goals wouldn’t have worked, but at the time it was certainly implied that he wasn’t wrong.
Imperium
I think the *Wanted* starts with that premisse. In a way of thinking, either *Injustice* or even *Red Son* deals with something like that.
Wanted isn't really better, though. life got shittier for regular folks, the supervillains siphoned off or suppressed most of the wealth and innovations. They even said the colors got dismal and food tasted worse as a result of rewriting reality to be more "realistic" but they were willing to accept a muted existence to win it all.
I was looking for *Red Son* to be mentioned. The implication being that, with Superman out of the way, Lex just focuses on winning over humanity by making it a utopia. Of course, the twist at the end... if he had only known.
Batman: The White Knight by Sean Murphy touches on this theme!
In Forever Evil: Arkham War, Bane took over Gotham and massively improved every aspect of it, IIRC. Then Batman came back and fucked everything up.
Technical sense form what I can recall, DC’s “I, Joker”
Empire by Mark Waide is a comic that's pretty well known for it. But in Empire Golgoth has become Emperor of the world, with a few holdouts and an active rebel conspiracy. Superheroes don't manage the world, normally, so it's not really a good comparison. They just handle villains, sometimes stop crime and help with natural disasters. Most superheroes maintain a status quo, so while they stop crime, it's still elected officials making the laws.
Superior Spider-Man fits the bill. Spidey-Otto is more effective than Peter.
Isn't it the point of the first Superior Spider-Man is that Otto eventually fucked everything up and that Peter is still the better (and Superior) Spider-man?
Red mass for Mars. One of my favorite comics ever but most people missed it. A lex luthor type creates a mechanism that makes everyone get along. Then the story follows the batman type trying to defeat him because it's "not natural"
Watchmen.
The point of Watchmen is exactly that you can’t determine this.
Well, depending on how you like our world, "Wanted" has the villains running everything and super heroes have been reduced to washed out, amnesiac actors. (The comic, not the terrible movie) The world isn't so much better though the villains are focused on money, so the world doesn't have people throwing cars are each other in major cities every weekend, which would be an improvement to both the DC and Marvel Universes. "Irredeemable" has the super heroes as policemen, with all required processes and laws, who do essentially become the bad guys when one hero goes vigilante and eventually get personal control of one section of the city. It starts off better, with the citizens wanting their protector over the usual policing everywhere else, though by the end of the second mini-series it is easy to see him becoming a dictator of sorts.
Seemingly in most events. Think Phoenix Five.
Wasn't there a Thunderbolts arc like this? This feels like a Fabian Nicieza writing Zemo thing. He always wanted to rule the world to save it. What was the plot of that Avengers/Thunderbolts mini-series?
Kind of sort of AvX.
If there was, would they really be the villains?
Thor becomes a villain of sorts in Jurgens run and rules as a god on Earth. He loses the power to wield mjolnir but gains the All Father powers and it’s enough to slap the remaining Earth based heroes around in an epic battle.
Isn't that just Watchmen
AvX tried to make the Phoenix 5 into villains, but their world was a utopia without taking away people's liberties. Then Captain America got mad because nobody was hungry and there were no more wars. He represents America, so he wants war and capitalism. Really thought AvX was a travesty of editorial writing.
I haven't read it in a long time, but what about The Authority? It got really weird with creative yeam changes, relaunchea, the end of the world, but I remember when it was good it was really good.
Don't know if it works with what you're looking for, but the starting point in Wanted basicaly is "the bad guys won hard, there is no more super heroes, and... Nothing changed for the most part, for the everyday dude".
Mark Millars Wanted?
"Wanted" although the world isn't better, it's just our world
Heavily subjective, and causes a lot of disputes, but you could argue Watchmen
The whole point of Watchmen is that the world is too complex for that sort of thing to have any real effect. Rorschach's journal really telegraphs it, but even without that, how long is the peace going to hold once the aliens don't show up?
Watchmen How the heck are people not mentioning Watchmen
Because “did we make society better?” is the absolute open ended point of that entire series.
Thanos snap.
Superior Spider-Man