Jak Ryan North przepisał „najlepszego superzłoczyńcę Marvela” na potrzeby polityki 2025 roku

With Ryan North’s Squirrel Girl inactive standing as 1 of the top Marvel comics of this century, and with North in the midst of a lauded run on Fantastic Four, it feels like pigeonholing to describe him as “the Dinosaur Comics guy.” On the another hand, the Canadian author — who has also hit the fresh York Times bestseller list with prose books like a choose-your-own-adventure adaptation of Romeo and Juliet — has kept the venerable webcomic going strong and steady at qwantz.com even as the another projects on his plate have gotten bigger and bigger. There are adequate readers out there who’ve never connected the dots on his career that it’s worth drawing the line between his creative spheres.

Also, sentences like “The Dinosaur Comics guy is writing Marvel’s latest line-wide crossover event, One planet Under Doom” are simply irresistible.

One planet Under Doom is North’s first time at the helm of a major Marvel Comics crossover, and as typical for a author who loves to experimentation with form, it’s not a communicative about Doctor Doom taking over the world. Instead, Doctor Doom — as North says, “the best supervillain of all time” — has already taken over the globe by page one, much to the bafflement of Earth’s superheroes. The question raised by One planet Under Doom #1 isn’t so much “How will the Avengers halt him?” but “Does a beleaguered planet even want them to?”

Polygon sat down with North over video chat to talk about this classical superhero event comic, and discuss punch-’em-ups, weird discipline solutions, and the dangerous political fantasy of “What if there was 1 perfect individual who could fix everything for us?”

This interview has been edited for concision and clarity.

Polygon: In his late career, Doom co-creator Jack Kirby drew any sketches of the villain without his mask, which Doom insists that he wears due to a disfiguring discipline experimentation gone wrong. Famously, Kirby’s sketches depict him as simply having one small scar. What do you think is going on under Doom’s mask?

Ryan North: Under his mask? Oh, wow, starting with the hard questions.

I always liked [Kirby’s take]. To me, Doom is individual who has all these gifts, all these strengths. He’s smart, he’s driven, he’s brilliant, powerful. It was never enough. He’s never pleased. And I think the reason he is never pleased is due to the fact that Reed Richards exists. I don’t think Doom thinks he’s smarter than him, but he’s damn close. And it frustrates Doom that he can’t prove erstwhile and for all that he is the better man here.

So for me, you take that mask off — I think it’s what Kirby drew. The perfect face with the 1 scar, the blemish that he just can’t accept. If he could accept that blemish, he could accept Reed Richards, but he can’t do either.

Years ago, individual asked me, “Hey, I don’t know a ton about comics stuff, but what’s the appeal of Doctor Doom?” I was totally speechless. All I could think was, You gotta read any comic with Doom in it. He’s perfect. If you boil the thought of supervillains down to a syrup, why is it Doom?

So before I was writing Fantastic Four, or before I even knew I was writing Fantastic Four, I was working on a book called How To Take Over the World, which was nonfiction [about] supervillain schemes.

In the intro to that book, I talk about Doctor Doom, and I say he’s the best supervillain of all time. And the reason is that he’s got all the powers of science, he’s got all the powers of magic, and he dresses like a robot in a cape. Everything is peak. [Laughs] And, most impressively of all, he can talk in the 3rd individual and have it read as cool and not ridiculous.

There are times erstwhile Doom starts talking about Doom in 3rd person, and you’re like, Oh crap, things are getting serious now that he’s doing this. Everything just ties together with him, in this perfect bow of elegance and power and operatic… beauty, almost? I can’t think of anything I would change with him to make him better, which is large for a character and a character design.

The simplest summary of the logline of One planet Under Doom is Doctor Doom is taking over the planet again, which is kind of a dog-bites-man story. How does this become a “man bites dog story?” Tell me about your twist.

This is simply a communicative of Doctor Doom taking over the world, and it begins with him having taken over the world. That’s done. So the communicative is almost like “dog bites car.” Now that he’s got it, what’s he going to do with it, and how is he going to hold onto it? The first issue is fundamentally him selling himself to the world, saying, “Look, here’s what I’m doing. Here’s why you should accept me.”

[The issue ends with] this female repeating a slogan back to him and kind of giving that oh shit minute of This might be working. You get to see both Doom and the heroes working in this unfamiliar position quo where he has successfully done this, and they’re left going, Well, what now? This clearly can’t stand. He’s Doctor Doom, this is not a good thing for the world. And then Doctor Doom saying, “Hey, I’m Doctor Doom, and this is definitely fine, and it’s definitely a large thing for the world.”

It is simply a communicative of power and politics, in the sense of politics being the art and discipline of negotiating with people, and trying to get them to do what you want them to do. Doom’s never truly been 1 for negotiation. It’s a large story, in the sense that it is dealing with global events and large heroes moving around doing stuff, but it’s besides a communicative of Doctor Doom, personally, and getting to see him get what he wants. He doesn’t want the planet for altruistic reasons, of course, he wants to take over the planet to show that he’s the best guy to be in charge of the world. This is all, in the end, feeding his ego. And that’s dangerous, but besides powerful.

Maybe this is me projecting, as an American, but it feels like you’re asking questions about why people follow charismatic leaders.

That’s not [just] an American thing! For me, I think that Doom is selling himself as a single leader who can do everything; this… peculiar small guy [laughs] who’s going to solve all the problems.

And… that’s a fantasy, right? That’s a fantasy of What if there was 1 perfect individual who could come down and fix everything for us? And that’s a dangerous fantasy, that’s an anti-democratic fantasy. So in 1 sense, [One planet Under Doom] is simply a communicative of a fascist leader trying to take things over, and succeeding in doing that. erstwhile you look at fascism as a political system, you gotta see that it’s sold on that seductive fantasy of Here’s a guy who can fix everything. This man alone can do it. Doom sees himself in that way. He’s the kind of guy who’s like, “Yes, OK, yes, that is fascism. But erstwhile I’m doing it, it’s not fascism, it’s the actual best guy doing it, so it’s fine.” [Laughs]

[One planet Under Doom] is talking about planet politics not in the sense of actual What’s Going on present politics, but the thought of fascism versus more democratic approaches. You see quite a few that in past — not so much in the present, where we thankfully do have quite a few democracies — but going back a couple 100 years, where you have nations represented by kings and queens and individuals, and planet politics was the relationships between these individuals and what they wanted to do.

I consider you a guy who has a real knack for tie-in issues to events.

Your Squirrel Girl tie-in for War of the Realms and Fantastic 4 tie-in for Blood Hunt come to head — the event tie-in comic is simply a tricky thing, and you’ve mastered it. Now that you’ve been on the another side of penning and organizing a large crossover event, do you feel like you’ve learned something fresh about the form?

Yeah, that’s precisely it. As a guy who has done tie-ins before, 1 thing I wanted to do here was have the full communicative written well in advance, so erstwhile it came time to give the communicative to another artists and another writers, to be like, What do you want to do with this? It was little of, “Yeah, I’m reasoning this might happen, and I’m beautiful certain around issue #8, we’ll be here. Instead, I could go, “Here’s the script, here’s precisely what’s happening.”

Because for me, erstwhile I’m doing a tie-in issue, what I care about is What is the position quo? What’s happening? Where are the characters? What can we do with this? due to the fact that then erstwhile you know what the planet looks like, you can tell a communicative inside that world. With War of the Realms, it was “OK, frost giants have taken over, there’s any place for Squirrel Girl to operate there.” In Blood Hunt, “vampires have taken over.” The challenge there was, “Well, how can we tell a communicative with Mister Fantastic where he doesn’t solve the problem?” And the answer was, “He’s trying to, but he’s struggling with it due to the fact that it’s magic, and he’s bad at magic, and he’s amazed erstwhile Doom solves the problem,” which is simply a good lead-in to where this is going.

I just wanted to make certain that I had [One planet Under Doom] full written, so that for everyone else doing a tie-in on their side, it would be as easy as possible to say, “Here’s what’s happening. What can we do with this?” And I will say, I’ve seen what people have planned for any of the tie-ins, and there’s stuff there where I’m like, I want I’d thought of that, that’s so cool. If I hadn’t already written these issues, I would’ve stolen that and put it in my book!

As a Squirrel Girl fan, I’m always delighted to see her in your wider Marvel books. Is that just about utilizing a favourite character, or is there more to it?

Oh yeah, she’s going to show up again in One planet Under Doom, and she has an crucial function to play. There was no way I was going to do a Marvel event and not put Squirrel Girl into it, due to the fact that I love her. But also, I think what’s so large about her is she is this truly smart, intelligent woman, and she sees through baloney in a way that I think is truly useful. She brings a fresh voice to the table.

So it’s not just like, Oh, Squirrel Girl is here due to the fact that Ryan likes Squirrel Girl. Squirrel Girl is here and she has a cool function to play. She’s encountered [Doom] before, she knows what he’s like. And it lets us have any truly interesting discussions on the hero side about, like, What are we doing here? What is the correct thing to do here? What is the ethical thing to do here? Those are Squirrel Girl questions. She’s active in those conversations.

I wrote a part late about Todd Phillips’ Joker movies that challenged me to figure out what I considered immutable about a very mutable character. What do you think is immutable about Doctor Doom?

I was going to answer that by saying that the Joker famously changes a lot. You’ve got the goofy one, you’ve got the serious one, they did three Jokers for a time, just to bring that home. Doom, in his first appearance, sends the Thing back in time to bargain Blackbeard’s gold. He’s got this archness to him that remains, I think. He can do large goofy stuff, but it’s serious due to the fact that he is specified a threat.

I think his second appearance is him being blasted into space on an asteroid, and they’re like, Let’s see if he survived. And he comes back, he’s like, Yeah, evidently I survived, I’m Doctor Doom! As much as you get a sense of who Reed is erstwhile he calls himself “Mister Fantastic” right off the bat, you get a sense of who Doom is erstwhile — not only does he call himself “Doctor Doom” erstwhile he doesn’t have a doctorate, he dresses like that. He is making a statement.

So if you’re asking what’s the essential part of Doom, I think he has been very consistent throughout the years. He can be a small bit silly. He can be very serious. He can be both at the same time, but the consistent part for me, like, What’s the core of Doom? It’s how he presents himself to the planet and the way he talks about himself in the 3rd person. And of course, ego, but quite a few characters have ego. It’s what they do with it [that counts].