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The Tentacles Of The Tyrant!
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After the last issue's attempt to portray Doom as the hero by pitting him against Actual Nazis, this one tries a different tack, keeping Doctor Doom as the clear bad guy and sending in a superhero investigate what he's up to. Normally such a story would concentrate on the superhero, but here Larry Lieber concentrates on Doom. It's a good idea, enabling him to use the aspects of the character that fans enjoy, such as his arrogance and gadgetry, without having to water them down or try and find someone even more despicable to make him look good.
Doom's villiany is in place right from the start where we find him torturing somebody for information, although it's made clear that this is only done for practical reasons, rather than sadism, as when the prisoner tells them what they want to know - that the mineral Vibranium can be found in Wakanda - Doom has him released, despite the ideas of his goonish henchman.
This is all part of Doom's self-image as a good person - yes, he'll certainly torture and kill people, but never just for fun. Heaven forbid!
With the information extracted he dashes back to his lab where he puts together a scanning device in the shape of Hawk, and he sends it off to Wakanda to see what he can see. As ever this involves his most favourite form of communication - Skype!
A nearby poacher spots the 'hawk' and decides to shoot it down, despite the fact that he knows that its a protected species. Doom reacts by simply killing him.
To be honest, I'm with Doom on this one, and if that makes me a "lily-livered conservationist" then so be it!
The robot bird flies to Africa and quickly spots the Vibranium, so Doom blows it up. "What Doom does not need, he destroys!" he says which, as a lily-livered conservationist, seems a bit of a waste of resources to me. This does give George Tuska an opportunity to flex his design skills , in a beauitfully constructed page which sadly also shows that American attitudes to modern Africans are even less enlightened than their attitudes to Eastern Europeans.
Talkin of which, Doom terrifies the local Latverians (who seem to be heading for a jazz club) by starting up his tunnelling machine and generating a most unusual sound effect.
A little while later he arrives in Africa where another beautifully constructed splash page shows the people of Wakanda having their daily life interrupted by a mysterious earthquake, caused by the arrival of Doom's tunnelling craft beneath a volcano. The illustration shows images of Africans living in huts, throwing spears, and hanging around with ostriches, which is reductive at best, but also plain wrong for Wakanda, which is surely meant to be a technological paradise? I always remember getting annoyed when I was first reading comics about how Britain was depicted, all Big Ben, moustachioed bobbies and tudor cottages, so goodness knows what an actual Wakandan would think!
The terrified Wakandans call their leader, the Black Panther, who flies back from Avengers Mansion to be with them.
Hmmm... is it me or does that also look a bit racist?
The Panther goes off to investigate and discovers Doom trying to repair his ship's regulator. Normally this would be the start of the adventure, with the superhero arriving to discover a villain up to no good, but here it's the end of this instalment, with the Panther presenting himself to Doom in the final panel, ready for a promised battle next time.
Apart from the depiction of the Wakandan people, this has been a much more successful way of using Doom as the lead character, telling a conventional superhero story from the villain's viewpoint without trying to turn him into something he's not, thus giving the reader more of the character they have paid to see without having to reduce any of the reasons they like him. The only question that remains to be answered though is: why on earth is the story called "The Tentacles Of The Tyrant"?
link to information about this issue
posted 2/11/2018 by Mark Hibbett
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