I Didn't Even Touch On Apocalypse Or Kang's Effect On Ancient Egypt

One problem with the next Captain America movie being Civil War is there are lots of posts about it on Gawker and Uproxx sites, and those usually discuss the mini-series, and there are a more than a few of the writers - and a lot of the commenters - who are very pro-registration. Relax, I'm not doing another post on why that's stupid. Yet. This is actually an attempt to divert my brain onto a more interesting path.

I was thinking about how the registration thing is often presented as what would happen in our world, and how the Marvel Universe was meant to resemble our world, just with superheroes. The counter to that - as mentioned many times by many people other than me long before now - is that the Marvel Universe has a dozen things in it that really ought to have changed it to an extent we wouldn't recognize it. Pym Particles, Asgardians, Adamantium, Skrulls, time travel, Galactus, magic, mutants, on and on. Then I started thinking about differences in a socio-political sense, which got me thinking about how history on Earth-616 really ought to be different.

The one that really got me thinking about this was Latveria. Tiny Eastern European nation, but undeniably a world power, probably with a pretty high standard of living (but also a probably poor human rights' track record), and one of the most technologically advanced (certainly its military) nations in the world. You'd have to think Latveria tries to be a leader in any kind of worldwide agreements (be it about pollution, economic agreements, etc.) simply because Doom's ego wouldn't allow him to not try and take charge. And he has the brilliance and the resources that he couldn't be easily dismissed, no matter how awful he can be. I know in Doom's origin as originally conceived, it's run by a brutal, repressive, racist monarch (he's trying to expel/kill all the Romany, including Doom's family), until Doom comes back for revenge/liberation and seizes control.

But given when that was taking place, Doom almost certainly had to stave off the Soviets. Actually, it's probably likely Latveria was conquered by Germany during World War 2, then taken by the Soviets, and the monarch was either replaced, or made a puppet ruler of a Warsaw Pact nation. Doom comes in, takes over, ousts the Soviets. I'd imagine he had to fend off one attempt by the Red Army to retake the country. I say one, because I feel if they'd tried twice, Doom would have said "Enough of this foolishness!" and just started conquering the Soviet Union until they said uncle. I would imagine Doombots are weatherproof, so relying on "the worst winter in X years" as a stall tactic probably wouldn't work.

This all lead me to wonder what U.S. diplomatic relations with Latveria were like. I know the Fantastic Four were often on shaky ground to try striking back at Doom after his latest revenge attempt, because he was recognized as ruler of a country, but I don't know how friendly Latveria and the U.S. were. I'm sure his resistance to the Soviets would be something the U.S. would have enjoyed, and Doom probably wouldn't be the worst dictator the United States ever threw in with, but I can't see why he'd bother. He wouldn't want ideas about democracy and freedom infecting his populace, and he's generally presented as being scornful of American waste, pollution, and excess. Though I could see him playing the U.S. and USSR against each other.

I feel like Marvel traditionally addressed this by having the more unusual countries opt for isolation until recently. Atlantis, Wakanda, Attilan, they all mostly kept to themselves for centuries, I think, although I know Hudlin's Black Panther run showed Wakanda easily thrashed at least one 19th Century attempt at European imperialism.That at least accounts for world history not being vastly different at the start point of the story. But since superhero creative teams are rarely interested in writing entirely isolationist countries, even if they are into castle intrigue, the fictional countries inevitably become more involved in the wider world. With Atlantis, this has frequently taken the direction of Namor declaring war on the surface world. T'Challa is usually more diplomatic, but it also tends to be him interacting, while Wakanda remains aloof. I feel like Wakanda usually still withholds some of its advances, understandably in many cases.

Obviously part of all this is because the writers and artists aren't looking to deviate too much from our world. So if Wakanda develops a cheap, clean antigravity drive people could easily purchase for personal vehicles as well as large-scale shipping, they doesn't get implemented for one reason or the other. It's shift things too far from where the creative team (or their bosses) want things to be. So Cable establishes his own floating, artificial island, which welcomes everyone from any side of life, so they can collaborate and hopefully show how things can be, but it doesn't really get to change things in a way we can see. Instead we see the ways vested interests try to undermine it and if possible, wreck the whole thing.

Which I suppose could be an assertion about history in its own way. Certainly the idea already established powers will try to maintain their position on top by knocking down any up and comers isn't unusual. Same with the idea that a country can't remain isolated forever, although I don't know if Earth-616 has had the prominent example of the formerly powerful nation that sealed itself off and was passed by the rest of the world's advances, leading to a rude shock. Wakanda kept itself ahead of the rest of the world, and I think the same is true of Attilan. I don't believe Atlantis is shown as being an underdeveloped country, although its environment and the challenges that would present make for different enough circumstances a comparison might be difficult.

I don't have an endgame with these thoughts right now - big surprise! - I just got intrigued by the idea of the State Department approaching Doom with some spiel about being a bulwark against Communism, and Doom being completely uninterested in the transparent attempt to get him to be their puppet.