Playing Favorites excerpts, pt 49

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

Elijah Snow is a pretty good candidate for heroism because after his team is crushed, his memory is erased, and he finds that the most powerful beings in the world have become more powerful and more evil, he returns to his mission of finding them and stopping them. Just by opposing The Four, Snow is putting himself at risk because it’s the right thing to do, but when he's about to defeat them, he gives them one last chance to renounce their path and do good for the world. When he destroys them, it's very reluctantly. 

 

Throughout the series he makes sure that many special people are taken care of by the Planetary organization. He engages people of dubious moral character and offers to be friends with them rather than enemies. He loves the world and fights to keep it beautiful and free. His duty has always been to journey to the strange corners of the world and share the wonders he’s seen with others. Maybe he isn’t entirely responsible, taking on The Four again and putting his team at risk, but they're adults and willing to follow him and the very same ideals that bring him into conflict with The Four. That said, as grumpy, disagreeable, and self-righteous as he is, he doesn’t ever back down from doing what he thinks is right. Even when he thinks he’s just a peon field agent, the commits Planetary to generous acts that protect the unique landscape of the world around him. Elijah Snow is a hero, and he’s one of the best.

Playing Favorites excerpts, pt 48

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

I’ll admit that I don’t know much about Blue Beetle 2 (Ted Kord. Let’s also take a second to give mad props to The Blue Beetle for being a legacy character that stays dead. Long live Jamie Reyes!), but I do know he figured out that the telepathic, meta-phobic Max Lord was behind an organization called Checkmate that was going to subvert the OMAC system that Batman helped create to expunge all superheroes from the planet.

Playing Favorites excerpts, pt 47

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

Alright, let’s consider Dick Greyson instead of Damian Wayne, Captain America instead of Ultimate Captain America, Katy Kane instead of The Midnighter, the Blue Beetle instead of Booster Gold, Spider-Man instead of Deadpool, and instead of Rorschach, Crusader. Tentatively, of course.

Playing Favorites excerpts, pt 46

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

So, yeah, it looks like in my category of bad-guys who aren’t bad-guys, I like the ones who believe strongly in their purpose, don’t kick puppies, and provide the reasoning behind the actions of otherwise unsympathetic actors in the universe. These characters aren’t heroic in the conventional sense, though they do have strong beliefs that bring them into conflict with their own side. In fact, villains who just do whatever they want when they want usually aren’t that interesting.

This conflicts with my pettiness point somewhat. Sure Lex, wants to kill Superman and he doesn’t ever say, “I can’t kill Superman this way; it would destroy this orphanage.” In the trailers for the DC Universe Online, he wrecks the world (or at least Metropolis) just to kill the Justice League just to kill Superman. I suppose there’s a difference between pettiness of means and pettiness of ends. While Chaplain Action, He-Man of The Cloth and Victoria Hand have fairly high-minded goals and means, Lex and Doom have very petty ends and very highbrow means. Minor criminals have tiny goals and pathetic means. I suppose they’re called petty criminals for a reason.

Playing Favorites excerpts, pt 45

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

Since my villains list thus far has consisted of Doctor Doom, Lex Luthor, and Victoria Hand (with a brief aside on Norman Osborn), I think it’s safe to say that this exercise is somewhat self-indulgent. In that vein, I’d like to talk about Chaplain Action, He-Man of the Cloth!

Chaplain Action, He-Manof the Cloth appeared in The Authority arc “Transfer of Power,” where the original team was presumed dead/murdered and a government-sponsored team I refer to as The Republican Authority took their place as the center point of the story. Chaplain Action, He-Man of the Cloth was originally part of a publicity effort to cast the new Authority as devoutly religious (to contrast with the…somewhat hedonistic style of their predecessors). When the cameras turned off however, he continued to (mostly somewhat) bring the team to heel on their moral excesses. Even when success pushed the team itself to the same hedonistic heights (depths? No. Definitely heights.) as the original, it was him who provided the bulk of the leadership and integrity. While his main focus was on bringing The Colonel (the racist, sexist electricity-manipulating jerk who was team leader) in line--with violence of course--he also managed to focus on the best parts of the team and attempted to bring them to the surface.

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).

Playing Favorites excerpts, pt 42

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

Materialistic villains are a simple counterpoint to heroes, but I can see why it’s not a dynamic that’s played up more often. Modern super-criminals  who are after money will usually use it to either do drugs, buy weapons to kill superheroes, or get foiled in the attempt and never have their full plans revealed. It’s usually unambiguous that they’ll spend it on something terrible when it’s discussed at all. It’s pretty rare that they’ll spend it on rent or their daughter’s operation (Thomas Hayden-Church). Sometimes, there’s a plan to retire somewhere far away with a special someone, but more often, that special someone is a harem. If they didn’t, if they were paying off student loans or funding cancer research (the real kind, not the kind that you test on human subjects to accidentally turn them into super-villains), then the heroes would be put in an ambiguous moral situation. The righteous violence that pervades the medium is grounded on a sense of clear right and wrong, and that ambiguity undermines a central theme. That clash with the fundamental nature of the comics is why you rarely see those types of robberies.

Playing Favorites excerpts, pt 41

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

Okay, I’m on this thing now.  I know Dean Cain’s Clark from “Lois and Clark” did some petty things that I don’t think of as super(though I can’t think of any specific examples), but maybe that’s part of his relatability? I mean, wouldn’t we do some petty things against people who are jerks if we had Superman’s powers?  Most of us would go beyond ‘petty,’ which is strange because I’ve used that word so much to describe super-villains. They aren’t petty, they’re petty and they won’t let it go. Oh, man, with the exception of the hairpiece thing, I’m not really sure what I’ve got on Superman doing that kind of thing. I’m sure it was common in The Silver Age. On the one hand, I get that Superman is a persona; he is that guy of course, but he’s also Clark Kent, average human reporter who doesn’t carry the weight of the world on his shoulders all of the time. Someone who does relax, who has fun, and enjoys the life that he works so hard to preserve for others. No, again Clark Kent is a reporter who’s clumsy and awkward. He doesn’t exude confidence or enjoy the company of others. Again, I’m thinking is the guy who can bench press planets and have quiet evenings with Lois Lane is someone else entirely, someone who can do all the things I listed two sentences ago. A guy who misses his planets and a family he’ll never see, but enjoys baseball and his mom’s apple pie. A guy who talks to his wife about the burdens of being a living icon while causing some occasional mischief with his god-like powers. Again, I think of Superman as really being Kal-El, Last Son of Krypton, Clark Kent by day, Superman…also by day.

Playing Favorites excerpts, pt 40

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

Throughout this all, Doctor Doom is reserved, almost reactionary. He doesn't go looking for fights, but finishes them utterly once they start. He doesn't commit genocide against other alien invaders, just wrecks their ability to make war. He doesn’t go out looking for a fight with The Celestials, he just stops them from interfering in the affairs of lesser civilizations because they interfered with his. He gains the Inifinity Gems because he's confident that he can and should wield this power. While I haven't read any of the “Infinity Gauntlet” that wasn't written by Brian Clevinger, I'm pretty sure there was a lot of fucking hand-wringing over what to do with the Infinity Gems once Thanos was defeated. A lot of “that's too much responsibility for one man”s being thrown around. While Doctor Doom doesn't doubt the morality of his actions, once he can surpass his petty desires to rule the world, avenge himself on Reed Richards, and save his mother's soul, his moral compass points as well as any superhero's that doesn't doubt itself and eagerly agrees to ignore The Prime Directive if someone else does first.

It's strange that Doctor Doom's actions in this story still aren't heroic; they're responsible. He doesn't have that moral myopia that only lets him hit the guy in front of him. He'd rather the job be done definitively than to keep bloodshed at a minimum. The exception is that he doesn't concern himself with the massive consequences of fighting the most powerful beings in the universe because he is right and they are wrong. Indeed, that kind of moral myopia isn't foreign to Doom, it's actually his normal level of petty elimination of people who oppose him. He will change the status quo of existence itself because it inconveniences him. That the consequences destroy Earth are no matter; he uses the last of his power to give the Earth a glorious rebirth. Of course, Doom himself is given a rebirth as a simple human, so much the better to begin his quest anew.

Doom must strive. Doom must oppose. It's only in adversity that Doctor Doom finds his calling. It's only by punching so far above his weight class that he can find the challenges that a genius—nay, a man—of his caliber requires. The central point of his character isn't to protect others or even to take his petty vengeances, it is to seek, to strive, to find, and not to yield (Yes, Tennyson). It’s the same unquenchable fire that drives heroes, but its direction is totally inward, pushing Doom to test and prove himself. Doom must be the best, he must be worthy of his own image.

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Playing Favorites excerpts, pt 39

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

In the What-If, however, Doctor Doom detects The Beyonder's survival and doesn't fall for his trickery. The heroes are not revived and Doom is free to master his new powers and return to Earth.

He does, and pwns heavily. He is opposed first by Tony Stark and Doctor Strange. He simply adjusts Tony's Blood Alcohol Content to make him permanently drunk (bypassing the 'bottle' part of “Demon in the Bottle”) and though Doctor Strange has spent time in a hyperbolic time chamber preparing new spells for the battle, Doom simply Silences him and punts him elsewhere in the multiverse. Then the other heroes rally; pregnant Sue Storm, Daredevil, Ghost Rider, US Agent and...seriously, they are fairly unmemorable from that point forward. It's the C-Team plus S.H.I.E.L.D versus deus ex Doom and in the end...well, Doctor Doom only knows how to rule worlds and defeat that Accursed Richards, and he left all of his Richardses on WarWorld.

Playing Favorites excerpts, pt 38

I bring this up because this episode (and the related What-If that was released a few years ago) gives us insight into a villain as he becomes powerful beyond imagination. The first thing Doctor Doom does with his powers is restore his face. He later presents himself to the heroes and claims they have nothing to fight over any longer. If they insist on fighting him, he will defend himself. Captain America claims that Doctor Doom is still to be opposed, citing the fact that the first thing he did was restore his face. It brings the pettiness right to the surface. If Doom is still so interested in such minor things, how noble, how far-looking can he be? (I can't remember if he specifically threatened their lives, though I'm inclined to say he didn't, as I don't recall it being mentioned that much.) It brings that issue of pettiness right to the surface. A hero is expected to have a certain amount of vision, not to focus on small or superficial things.

Playing Favorites excerpts, pt 37

Some of this is even exemplified in “Secret Wars.” Considered, the first ever massive company-wide crossover event, it featured the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, the X-Men, the Avengers, and a host of their crappy villains (plus Doctor Doom, Enchantress, and Magneto) magically scientifically transported to a world made of cobbled-together parts of other worlds (so...generic rock planet plus one freaked-out Denver) on the whim of an all-powerful entity curious about the nature of good and evil (if this seems familiar, it's because this is almost the plot of a classic episode of Star Trek, and it is exactly the plot of two others. I can only suppose that Lincoln and Kah'less were too busy in the mid-eighties to really help out the X-Men with this one.). 

Playing Favorites excerpts, pt 36

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

Villains, on the other hand, usually care about themselves and whoever they’re destroying. That selfishness may be one of the central qualities of super-villainy (well, the “villainy” part anyway). It’s very personal. That nothing else in the world matters so much to them as their revenge or ideological expression makes them interesting. Sure, Batman is single-minded, but he single-mindedly defends the people of Gotham (and the world). The villains, by being focused on anything but saving lives, end up being the bad guys almost by default.

Playing Favorites excerpts, pt 35

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

Anyway, as a control freak who doesn’t like or trust anyone, this makes perfect sense for Lex Luthor, and it gives you a pretty good idea about who he is. It even fits with one of his older origin stories where there’s a lab accident that causes his hair to fall out and he blames Superboy, who (if I remember correctly) saves him from his own accident (paging Doctor Doom).
 
That said, Batman is virtually a man without fear (with better vision, a better tailor, slightly less demon possession, a kid, a butler, fewer headstones with his name on them, three adopted kids, only one of which kind of wants to kill him, and he doesn’t live in New York either [I’d bring up that he was never played by Ben Affleck, but then…Clooney.]). He takes risks to make things better, but hope is a fundamental principle for Batman and as much as he benefits from the status quo, he would change it if it meant a better world.

Playing Favorites excerpts, pt 34

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

Luthor thinks he’s doing humanity a favor--like a sloppier Adrian Veidt--but in reality he’s in it for himself. In fact, he pictures himself as a leader of humanity--asserting his ownership of it--but how much does he ever even get out of the US? I’d be interested in comparing Lex and Clark Kent (the conservative business man versus liberal reporter angle is obvious and I’m skipping it); world-owning homebody versus world-traveling learner. 

Batman’s motivation is more difficult to pin down. Yes, he’s fighting crime. Yes, his parents were killed in front of him. Yes, he would like a world where no child will ever have to watch his parents die in front of him. However, I’m not sure what Batman’s end goal is. I’m sure he has one; he’s The Goddamn Batman. He’s not The Punisher; venturing out into the night simply to act out against the evils that men do, content to know that he will not eliminate crime or improve the world, only that he has punished wrongdoing, and punished it again and will go on punishing it until there is no longer a Punisher. Then…nothing.  

Playing Favorites excerpts, pt 33

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

So I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention mad scientist Lex versus evil corporate Lex versus Smallville Lex who’s basically the current canon Lex now somehow. I think that it’s an interesting thing; I don’t think I’ve ever seen a definitive Lex Luthor. I’ve seen fun Lex Luthors and I’ve seen Lex Luthors who are good combinations of previous Luthors, but I’ve never seen the one that is the Lex Luthor you’ve been reading about in pieces finally assembled into an elemental representation of pure, uncut, Columbian Lex Luthor. Every interpretation of him I’ve seen has been adulterated just a bit. “Kingdom Come,” “Final Crisis,” nineties hirsute clone Lex…even “Action Comics” Lex comes across as overconfident, human, egotistical, obsessed with Superman, ruthless, and manipulative, but I think one reason there are so many Lexes floating around is because while being ‘the ordinary guy who’s a Superman villain’ is a compelling plot, the character hasn’t yet found its full voice.

Lex also invites similarities to Batman, which makes sense because while it took a while for Lex to distinguish himself from the masses to become the Superman villain, Superman is the elemental hero. While his mental characteristics are purported to be as prodigious as his physical characteristics, for the most part, Superman is generally physically superhuman, and as the basis of superheroes, (and righteous violence, yaddah, yaddah, yaddah) most other heroes are built in that mold. I won’t say Batman subverts the mold of standard superheroes or anything because he’s just a hair younger than Superman, but I will say that as a human who one day found himself in a world where struggling against titans was ordinary, he had to become more than a man in a bat suit. Both Batman and Luthor struggle against creatures who could crush them with a single blow, but Luthor attacks the kindest of their lot while Batman must stop the most ruthless. Both work with a keen intellect, but Batman is a tactical thinker, and almost always improvising. Luthor is a strategic thinker and usually working offense versus one target. The offense versus defense is the easiest difference between them. Luthor hates something and wants to destroy it. Collateral damage happens and he’s not too concerned about it. Some of his plans even involve hurting people who aren’t Superman just to get to Superman. He’s ruthless whereas Batman is relentless. If anyone pays for Batman’s war on crime, it’s Batman. He never asks anyone to pay for his mistakes, he goes out of his way to protect innocents, and when he fails to accomplish either of those things, the bat-despair is palpable.

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Playing Favorites excerpts, pt 32: The More I Wrote, the More I Loved Lex Luthor

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

Luthor, Luthor from “All-Star Superman” that is, really does things just to spite Superman. That Superman would have Lex use his intellect for good is enough for Lex to take that off of the table. Now while Lex does gain (and revel in having) kryptonian powers, I’ve never been a fan of the school that he wants to be Superman. It’s an interesting thought, though it reduces Lex’s defiance to pettiness. I like the interpretation that’s just below the surface in “All-Star Superman” that Lex is science and secular thought and Superman is religion and faith. Lex deals with the facts, and people forget just how reasonable selfishness and crime and murder are and why heroes aren’t those things and villains are (Not that heroes aren’t sometimes. There’s a time and place for selfish, murdering, criminal heroes. That time was the nineties).

Playing Favorites excerpts, pt 31

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

However, if Batman is merely good at surrounding himself with morally non-challenging figures, Doctor Doom must have a post-graduate degree in it. Even getting beaten by That Accursed Richards over and over again hasn’t taught him to respect Reed. Getting captured and dethroned by The Avengers wasn’t enough for him to show Osborne any respect when Osborne was offering to release him. He and Namor famously toast one another only to stick knives in each others' backs. Look, I’m not saying that Doctor Doom is dumb; he is obviously gifted in the areas of science and magic, but ‘learning that some people will kick your ass unless you step up your game‘ is apparently the great balancing element of his intellect. Perhaps even overbalancing. Doctor Doom is both incapable and unwilling to hear the voices of failure which surround him. Don’t get me wrong; against anyone who doesn’t have their own comic, Doctor Doom will destroy you like the flotsam you are, but once you get an important character, there will be some technobabble, Doom will get overconfident, and then he will find himself in over his head and be defeated.

Playing Favorites excerpts, pt 30

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


It isn’t just that Batman is so much better at thinking these things through, it’s that he doesn’t need adulation for it. The same can be said of Spider-Man and Superman, though while they don’t need applause or approval, they do take heed of criticism. This is what makes them humble characters while Batman rides an interesting line between that particular definition of humble and Doctor Doom’s level of social neediness. Batman’s independent nature, perhaps existing almost outside of normal human social interaction is part of what makes him a wish-fulfillment character; our interactions with others are necessary, but many believe that if they weren’t, our lives would be much simpler.  Getting rid of the tedious, mundane human interactions is one aspect that makes him a fun character. Though it doesn’t make him heroic, it does enable him to be more heroic, as he never has to deal with or compromise on moral dilemmas concerning loved ones, wives, parents, etc..