The big glitch in uber villains is that they’re made for an express purpose, generally a certain storyline, they play their role, do their part, and then if they live through it it’s incredibly unlikely that they’ll ever do anything of substantial value again anytime soon.
Cases in point?
- Prometheus
- Extant
- Bane
- Bastion
Now you have to keep in mind, these are villains that I like. Each of them has done something pretty cool to warrant attention being paid to them, I mean, Prometheus beat the JLA! Extant killed a bunch of JSA members! Thanos had the Infinity fucking Gauntlet! These guys are not supposed to be losers, but each of them has spent more of their lifespan as a jobber then as a threat. Why? Because while their creator knows what they want to do with them, once they leave and the character moves off into the shared universe and other writers start digging their fingers in something is lost.
Or, worse, the character is forgotten completely for years. Hi Extant! Yes, Extant, the late Hank Hall, formerly Hawk of Hawk and Dove fame. During Armageddon 2001, once the spoiler leaked that Captain Atom was heel turning, DC pulled a swerve that nobody cared about and had Hank Hall become the villainous Monarch after Monarch killed Dove (the girl one that he was nailing, not the guy that was his brother), and then Hawk killed Monarch only to see his face without the mask and realize it was him. So accepting destiny, Hank became Monarch and nobody cared. There were some crappy minis with Captain Atom, which are expected when Captain Atom is involved (though I did like his Wildstorm mini), but really, he was in limbo town.
And then came my beloved Zero Hour. Oh sweet Zero Hour with your Monarch turning into Extant after using time mojo and Waverider to go from a guy in an ugly blue suit to a master of time. And then what he did to the JSA? That will never be forgotten! He was a bad ass! He was a bad ass to the point that when it was revealed that Parallax was the true master mind, it didn’t kill any of Extant’s credibility. None of it at all.
No, it was the fact that he was used in the soon canceled Team Titans to explain their existence, and then wasn’t seen again until Geoff Johns and David Goyer brought him back in the pages of JSA…..shit, that’s gotta be near ten years ago. Anyway, they brought him back, made him more powerful, had several bad ass moments both by him, and by the JSA, and then killed him off. Yes, he went out awesome, and he regained some badass cred, and hell, his death helped mold Atom Smasher’s character, but did the character deserve more?
Let’s move along to Bane, who was created for the sole purpose of breaking the Bat, a purpose he fulfilled. What was next for Bane? On the Venom, off the Venom, a good guy, a bad guy, Bruce Wayne’s half brother, he was all over the place! It took a good fifteen years before Gail Simone threw him in Secret Six and gave him back his balls and made him a character worth reading about again as opposed to the generic masked strong man he’d been turned into.
Prometheus was created by Grant Morrison to be the anti-Batman, and in his appearances during Morrison’s JLA run he was near flawless. Hell, Grant even wrapped him up with the Stephen Hawking bit to try and stave off other writers butchering him. Worked for a while until AJ Lieberman took over Gotham Knights and proceeded to ruin both Prometheus and Hush.
Yes, Hush, the bad guy from the arc of the same name where Jeph Loeb wrote a generic mystery story that used the Bat universe as a whole so Jim Lee could draw everything.
Anyway, for some reason Prometheus was Hush’s crappy bodyguard, in that he got his ass kicked more often then not. Hush didn’t fair much better. I mean, the Clayface virus? Killing Poison Ivy so she’ll join up? Trying to scare off Joker? It was just….I tried to wade through, but honestly, I’m getting this off the wiki. I read Chuck Austen’s Uncanny X-Men and I couldn’t get through this. AJ Lieberman neutered two villains with this trash.
Hush was recently brought back to prominence by Paul Dini in Detective Comics and Streets of Gotham, while Prometheus had a Faces of Evil issues earlier this year that more or less said “The real Prometheus has been in a coma and therefore has not been seen since Morrison’s JLA”.
I like that retcon a lot.
So I pose the question, “Why use a character that you don’t intend to take advantage of?” If you’re just throwing them in there for the sake of your generic villain being name brand, well, it’s sad, and it shows, and it does nothing but further devalue a character that could be better served hanging out in limbo until someone else comes along.
Gotham Knights did its Hush storyline less then a year after Hush wrapped up, before Loeb signed his Marvel exclusive, back when there was hope for a sequel to it…..
Well, not hope from me, but obviously some people liked it, and that’s cool, that’s their thing. I can dig it. Hulk sells.
But they used Hush because he was still hot from Hush, and they used Prometheus because he seemed badass. But neither was used successfully and it took other writers coming around and ripping and shredding away at what was thrown in there in order to get them back to the point where they can be taken seriously.
Bastion! Huge waste! He head up the highly underrated Zero Tolerance storyline as the core villain, created a new form of Sentinel, and completely fucked up the X-Men’s world. He wound up being an amalgam of Nimrod and Master Mold, which only served to make him more awesome, but come the end of Zero Tolerance it all just…tapered off. He was put into government custody, and a duo of annuals between Cable and Machine Man gave him a nice little spotlight before his decapitation by Death (Wolverine). That was like, I want to say 98. The next time I saw Bastion? The first arc of the current run of X-Force. That’s about ten years of limbo time for a character with loads of potential as an X villain, and for what it’s worth, he seems to be back to his old genocidal roots in X-Force, so all is right with the long missing super sentinel.
It’s just irritating, you know? Almost like a discouragement for making a new character in the mythos, because while it’s not horrible to let other writers play with your creations, it is horrible for others to come in and completely destroy what you built for the sake of getting over one of their own creations.
That isn’t to say that a villain such as the Joker should be jobbing just because he’s in that special position where no matter what you do with him, people will always love him. He’s the fucking Joker! Shitty writing can’t kill him! But it shouldn’t have to! A good writer should be more then able to make an audience care about a character without having to resort to throwing another character under the bus.
It’s a pet peeve, sue me.
And even a bear
I think now is the time where I have to say that Green Lantern Corps #42 is why this column is late. Yes, most of my columns are late, but after the last page of that book I put down everything comic related and went about, let’s say four days, without touching any of it. I’m back now, and I’m good, but that’s just what happens when you tear my heart out of my chest. I get depressed and mope. And killing Kyle Rayner is the most heart breaking moment I’ve had in comics in the….seventeenish(??) years I’ve been reading.
Sure, I have full confidence that he’ll be back before it’s all said and done, and yes, he died like a total badass, but it still made me ache to see my favorite character of all time laying there as his ring declared him dead.
Did anyone tell Matthew Sturges that Geoff Johns was killing Damage in Blackest Night? Because I read that issue a few weeks ago, and this past week every issue had a JSA: All Stars preview for the book launching in a few weeks, and yet, Damage was alive and kicking. Just odd, I mean, they should have known that this would be running post mortem. Maybe it’s a sign he’s coming back?
That could be cool, I mean, if some Black Lanterns came back, but at the same time, how would you decide who? Would it just be like, everything goes back to normal? No, I trust Geoff Johns enough to not do something that lame.
Then again, I’ve seen Hawkman’s costume in Smallville. Sure, it’s his classic DC costume, but the picture I saw from Smallville? It reminded me how if I ever saw a real Hawkman, I’d piss myself laughing. For as cool as the look should be, I can’t see it pulled off without pencil and ink.
I’ve got this sexy stack of Green Lantern promo rings that I like to wear when I sit around the desk. Call me a nerd, I don’t mind. I’ve got an orange ring!
If any of you guys read the wrestling section, yes, that is yours truly in the fantasy draft who opened up with Edge and John Morrison. I’m awesome like that.
Also on the awesome list, which is made up of movies and TV shows that I want my loyals to give shots to, are the following.
- V
- Prisoner
- Flash Forward
- Dollhouse
- Community
- Human Wrecking Balls
- GI Joe
- Fanboys
- Secret Girlfriend
- Tosh.0
- Jericho
I am in love with the solicits that just dropped this week, and while I’ll talk more about them at a later date, I just want to say that I’ve already gone ahead and preordered Absolute Planetary volumes 1 and 2, Spider-Man: The Clone Saga volume 1, Invincible Iron Man volume 1, and Superman Secret Origin.
CLONE SAGA!
Also, after receiving a message from my buddy Pulse Glazer, I’d like to extend a Gold Standard welcome to the world to Omar Guido Garcia!
Also, follow me on twitter.
But alas, I need to get to work, and I need to get to reading, and I’d very much like to wrap this up so I can start the next one.
Though before I leave you, I figure now is the time to walk out on words of greatness. Words that describe what is on my mind. Words paraphrased from the Miz.
Because I’m Grey! And I’m AWESOME!
The Gold Standard
