Classic EBI #30: A Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy
EVERYTHING BUT IMAGINARY 10/01/03 -- "A WRETCHED HIVE OF SCUM AND VILLAINY"
“A Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy”
Last week, for those of you who came in late or who have an MTV attention span, we thoroughly dissected that old chestnut, “You can’t judge a book by its cover.” I think I quite brilliantly debunked that one. Another of those clichés that normally gets my dander up, but which I think is entirely true in this case, is that a hero is measured by the villains he faces. Indiana Jones is always at his best when he’s fighting Nazis (Temple of Doom, people, Temple of Doom…). Bart Simpson is never so sharp as when he’s facing Sideshow Bob, and where would Neil Gaiman be without battling the dark forces of Todd McFarlane?
Call me biased, but I think comic books have the greatest villains in all of fiction, and the greatest of those villains are the dark mirrors of their heroes. Let’s compare a few of the classics. Superman was raised in a world that was not his own, living a life without luxuries and wealth, but with the two greatest assets in the world: great power, given him by Earth’s yellow sun, and the love and guidance of a mother and father strong enough to teach him to use his own incredible strength.
His arch enemy? Lex Luthor, a man born in a city slum with no power and no guidance, but a keen, diabolical mind to make up for it. Starting with the murder of his own parents (after taking out an exorbitant insurance policy on them) Luthor built an empire that eventually led him to the presidency of the United States. While Superman’s power is physical and inspirational, Luthor’s is political and economical. They are together, in their own way, the most powerful men in the world.
The Batman is a creature driven by a thirst for justice, an effort to restore a balance that was taken away when his parents were torn away by chaos. The Joker (if you accept the origin given in Alan Moore’s Batman: The Killing Joke) is also a man who had a life of quiet that was destroyed, but instead of trying to restore order, he chose to embrace the chaos. Control versus insanity. Justice versus atrophy. A great hero and a great villain.
These two are great villains because they are, in essence, the exact opposites of the heroes they face. Another tract is to make a villain almost the same in power and skill, but opposite in motivation. While some good villains have come from this mindset - Venom from Spider-Man, Zoom from the Flash, Sinestro from Green Lantern, Flintheart Glomgold from Scrooge McDuck - I can think of only one really great villain that could actually be his foe if only for a twist of fate: Dr. Doom. Both Victor Von Doom and Reed Richards were brilliant young men, but inner rage and an accident made Doom a madman, while a thirst for peace and another accident made Richards Mr. Fantastic.
Sometimes the heroes are actually made by their villains instead of vice versa. The founders of the Legion of Super-Heroes first banded together to protect R.J. Brande from an assassination plot. Dr. Strange became a master of the mystic arts to save the Ancient One from Baron Mordo. The G.I. Joe team was assembled to defeat the ruthless terrorist organization called Cobra. (Actually, they were assembled so that Hasbro could milk a classic property for decades to come, but let’s not nit-pick.)
The thing with these villains, of course, is that you know they’ll never entirely succeed in their goals. They may win skirmishes, they may inflict serious damage and even death, but the hero always wins out in the end because, in a shared superhero universe, the stories have to remain viable month after month, ad infinitum.
If you’re Mark Waid and Barry Kitson, though, you’ve found a way around that problem. It’s called Empire, and it’s scary in its implications.
Golgoth is the villain who finally succeeded where Ra’s Al Ghul, Darkseid and even the insidious Condiment King failed - he took over the world. He sent his armies out and crushed democracies, toppled kings and slaughtered (almost) every hero who came in his path. He grasped the reigns of power. And then he found out that once you’re at the top, you’re the one everyone is gunning for. His ministers are as twisted and evil as he is, each of them with schemes and plans of their own, held in place only by a narcotic that their armored ruler has addicted them to.
The book is a brilliant examination of the nature of evil. Waid actually paints Golgoth as a man with many of the troubles any of us who haven’t spent the balance of our lives in a successful bid for world domination would have. He worries about his daughter. He’s nervous about people plotting against him. He’s trapped in a job that isn’t nearly as satisfying as he thought it would be when he applied for it. If he hadn’t gotten to this place through treachery and genocide, he could actually be a sympathetic character.
This is a very different Waid than the one that made his name on Flash - dark, cynical and twisted. The only “hero” we’ve met in three issues is a shattered man, only finding gossamer threads of hope by living in his own past. This won’t be a book like the early Thunderbolts, where the villains turned to the side of the angels once they saw the light. In the world of Empire, it seems the only people who can topple the despot may well be worse than he is.
It’s a great idea and it’s a great title, although I’d like to see it move over to the Vertigo imprint. Call me old-fashioned, but even with the “Mature Readers” stamp on the cover, when I see a DC Bullet on a comic book, I’d like to think the stuff in there is something I could show even my younger cousins to entice them into comics. Language and violence aside, Empire is just too much for them.
But for those of us who fancy ourselves adults, Empire is just right. I like to think of myself as a generally cheerful, optimistic guy. But even I like to wallow in the darkness now and then.
FAVORITE OF THE WEEK: September 24, 2003
I’ve already said how brilliant this book was in my review of it, but Fables: The Last Castle leapt out at me last week. Bill Willingham’s saga of fairy tale characters trying to survive in the modern world delved into the past in this special, showing how dire things were for the last Fables attempting to escape the mysterious Adversary. It’s a heartbreaking read, and a great place to start for those who haven’t tried Fables before.
Blake M. Petit is the author of the superhero comedy novel, Other People's Heroes, the suspense novel The Beginner and the novel-in-progress ”Summer Love” at Evertime Realms. He’s also the co-host, with good buddy Chase Bouzigard and Not-On-the-Internet Mike Bellamy, of the 2 in 1 Showcase Podcasts. E-mail him at Blake@comixtreme.com and visit him on the web at Evertime Realms. Read past columns at the Everything But Imaginary Archive Page.