You mention that the new and bad Chip Zdarsky Captain America comic is set in a very specific time in Latveria’s history that isn’t being acknowledged. Could you elaborate on that?
Chip Zdarsky's Captain America is set shortly after Victor's revolution and subsequent ascension to power.
So far, a significant part of the plot is the resistance group in Latveria seeking to end Victor's new reign.
Now, granted, the resistance guy is wants to turn Latveria into a democracy, but my problem is the lack of acknowledgement that Latveria before Victor was a deeply racist society that significantly prosecuted it's Rromani and likely other ethnic minority populations.
Victor after the death of his father becomes something of a revolutionary, attacking the wealthy, racist Latverian gentry. They actually hate him enough to use a tank at what they see as a normal caravan, which is insane.
So the problem I have with Zdarsky's depiction is the complete lack of acknowledgment of what kind of people would statistically be upset that the wealthy, explicitly racist monarchs of their nation aew gone. This isn't to say I don't think having a character with a reasonable reason to dislike Victor, because he's a dictator, is wrong, but I find it kind of hard to believe that is everyone involved in this resistance group's motivation, because what is it about Victor's claiming of power and not Vladimir Fortunov's that is so egregious? The claim that Victor is no different than the man he overthrew is just incorrect, because Victor's claiming of power signifies a major tangible improvement in the lives of the Rromani people, and I find not acknowledging this deeply odd considering this has been part of Victor's story and characterisation since 1964 in Fantastic Four Annual 2.
Victor von Doom is a villain above all else. Unlike some other people I see discussing Victor, I do accept and even enjoy this, and I am not inherently opposed to him being the villain of this arc. What I do have a problem with is the exact time period and framing of when the comic is set, because it's very contradictory to what has been established since LeeKirby, and because I also just think it would be a more interesting story. Imagine Steve teaming up with a group of scrappy resistance fighters fresh out of the ice. The time is different, but he remembers teaming up with the French resistance and other such groups across Europe. He is delighted to help what he sees as the underdogs, only to learn that they are actually wanting to reinstate a racist monarchy and are prejudiced against the local Rromani population. That would be a very interesting story about how not all resistance groups are made equal, and Steve having to learn that he cannot be intervening in the affairs of foreign countries whose history and politics he doesn't actually know anything about.
But no, Victor is a dictator who Steve sees as roughly analogous to Hitler, and while Reed Richards and other characters do challenge him on this, I don't actually think the narrative of the comic particularly disagrees with Steve, because the most recent issue has Steve heroically proclaiming he is in front of another power-mad despot, and later on Steve and Victor have a fight, which Steve is victorious in.
Victor even kills one of the random Latverians nearby out of carelessness, and it's Steve, the Moral Paragon, who has to yell at Victor that these are his own people, which Victor doesn't care about. This isn't particularly unique to this series, One World Under Doom obviously did it last month, but it's also shown up in previous Doctor Doom material also, but combined here with the repeated comparision of Victor to Adolf Hitler (once per issue so far) is at best, misinformed, and at worst, racist. Victor has been Rromani since 1964 and Zdarsky has written Fantastic Four comics, so he knows that fact, but it clearly isn't particularly significant to Zdarsky.
To reiterate; the problem is not that Victor is a villain. I genuinely feel like people sometimes exaggerate or overfocus on his more sympathetic traits, when his ultimate narrative function is a villain. A sympathetic villain, a complicated villain, a nuanced villain, but a villain. He kills people regularly. He sent a child to Biblical Hell on two separate occasions by two different writers, and people I find overrely on claims of bad writing to ignore the reality that he is a supervillain. One of Marvel's most famous and significant. He is going to do fucked up shit. The problem I have instead is that this is a plot that is just ill-conceived if you know even a little bit about Doctor Doom's origins and motivations, and had those been considered, I frankly think you could tell a much better story and maintain the core of it.
And the Hitler comparisons have been made long before Zdarksy but I do find it distasteful to continue them in 2025, particularly when we are looking at yet another whitewashed portrayal of him in cinemas soon, and Zdarsky knows better, he's just being distasteful.
