Playing Favorites excerpts, pt 44

Every Most Tuesdays I post excerpts from best selling at not selling super blog, Playing Favorites.

Seriously, I never read Osborne as a Spider-Man villain, so maybe being a cackling maniac with no depth was what made him one of the arch-nemeses of one of comics’ standard bearers, but, man, I’d like to think that there was some characterization at work that made him a loathsome counterpoint to the naïve, morally-driven Peter Parker. Even in the movie, he was an aggressive, dominating figure who loved his family, but took it (well, just Harry) for granted in his quest to remain powerful (perhaps even powerful enough to protect them, which I don’t think was the angle from the movie, but it could have been, given that if they did explicitly cover what happened to his wife, I’ve long since forgotten.). That’s a hero.

Playing Favorites excerpts, pt 43

That said, Victoria Hand is a pretty good example of an ideologically-motivated villain who becomes a hero even because her environment (and not she changes). I suppose that The Punisher would also count as someone whose morality wouldn’t change, though the context of their actions might mark them as a villain, but I’m hard-pressed to think of any other characters who would qualify for this. I mean, The Crime Syndicate of America (from Grant Morrison’s “Earth 2” Justice League of America) sort of counts, because (or so I hear it) in their universe, the paradigm supports evil, selfishness, and corruption, while on the DC main universe, it supports good, selflessness, and integrity.  The bad guys can’t win in the DCU and they can’t lose on Earth 2. They’re still criminals and jerks, but their effectiveness is, in fact, determined by just what universe they’re in (I don’t know if this is a subtle nod to the ‘uber if their name is on the cover’ principle of comic book battles or not, but it’s Grant Morrison, so there really is no telling).