Séamas O'Reilly: The daily minutiae of world domination

"For each glorious moment spent clenching his fist and cackling at a sworn enemy, there would have been 10,000 flamboyantly tedious acts of admin. Eight emails about changing his password, or a dozen video calls with Blerg in accounting, for every minute he spent smiling on that throne."

Seamas O'Reilly: "find any mediocre man with a God complex, and, the number #1 perk of their mind-numbing march to domination is that they get to sit in a large chair in a big, empty room, while people say nice things to them."

As an avid fan of comics, sci-fi and all varieties of pulpy genre entertainment, I’m accustomed to tyrannical villains whose only wish is, humbly enough, to “rule the world”. In fiction, such an impulse serves a clear story function: a lust for power, control and domination is a lot more dramatic than someone who wants the things I want, like the deposit for a modest three-bed house, or a home library that has one of those little wheeled ladders that zips along the shelves. 

But even then, I find there’s a degree of disbelief I cannot suspend. Granted, the worlds of Star Wars and Marvel comics are not studies in realism, but I find laser swords, intergalactic travel and superpowered antics much more relatable than the power-mad motivations of a Darth Vader or a Doctor Doom.