18482--Being Fierce and Influencing People

No!  No!  No!  There goes another another villain who, while crazy as a bag of cats, somehow seems to have their shit together enough to make our valiant heroes look like a bunch of circus clowns.  It's frustrating to read and aggravating to watch when put to a screen.  How has this social defective managed to leave our champions with their pants around their ankles and spanked like a frat pledge?  Sure, we're talking about a criminal mastermind, and one who's prepared for pantsing protagonists as part of the evil plan, but also who's been artfully crafted to be a challenge.  Mental aberrations aside, I think this may be why some people develop a love for certain villains.

Villains driven by emotional anguish (often some perceived tragedy they've overreacted to or, worse, caused) tend toward focus and intensity.  This makes them more on their game than the average person and that dark intensity draws an audience emotionally.  You know who else benefits from this?  Batman.  Yeah, a big shock, I know.  What a lot of people forget is that Superman used to enjoy that same sort of mojo.

Superman's spent a lot of years as a symbol of law and order, but he started out as a crusading rebel for truth and justice.  Before his powers grew to levels that allowed him to perform large scale rescues, he spent a lot of his time battling social injustice and corruption.  Without the restraint he would develop after a few years on the job (which would also bring on a full origin; his first radio show, in fact, had him arriving on Earth as an adult), Superman fought criminals and championed the common man against systemic oppression with less concern for law than for justice and truth.  It was the patriotic rallying cry of war that shoved him into the role of boy scout.  He was polished into a partner of the establishment, given to a softer touch.  On the cover of Action Comics #1, he's smashing criminal's getaway car (a move actually depicted in the story).  Almost seventy years later, when Superman Returns pays homage to that iconic moment, that scene is sort of replicated, but with a runaway car that's rescued and goes from being hoisted overhead to being gently set on the ground.

Technically, the same thing happened to Batman and Wonder Woman, but it was necessary to help them all survive the post-WWII era that saw psychiatry and Congress try to turn the people against them.  Since bringing Robin in to sidekick for Batman had backfired by triggering claims of homoerotica rather than paternalism, many efforts were made to normalize the heroes.  The less-than-edgy dark knight was even given a platinum badge to show how great an establishment supercop he'd become.  The influential 60s TV show added the character of Dick Grayson's aunt, Harriet Cooper, to Wayne Manor's residency to break up the sausage party with a wholesome, family friendly image.

Still, Batman being who and what he is was the easiest to drag back across the line, out of the light and into the dark from whence he came just as they had spawned The Shadow before him.  In the 70s, Denny O'Neill re-established him as a grim, nightstalking detective in a dangerous, dark Gotham.  After Crisis on Infinite Earths, Frank Miller was tapped to turn the caped crusader into a rebel again.  He still had Jim Gordon as a friend in law enforcement, but that was about it.  Relegated to the shadowy fringes of society once again, he gave the imperfect world around him the help it needed whether it was wanted or not.  And it was decided, of course, that he and Superman should no longer be buddies.

It's a hard thing to make Superman feared while he's publicly saving lives, abating disasters, and then racing off to save the world again.  Powerhouse that he has become, he also has to be instilled with copious levels of restraint so he's not portrayed as a bully who does whatever he wants whenever he pleases.  Being superhumanly good is simply a better fit with the narratives of Wonder Woman and Superman.

Still, I was thinking that if the loss of Krypton were to keep the Man of Steel more focused on saving Earth and its people, even from themselves, it would be easier to paint the picture of a Superman intensely determined to save the world.  Superman jumping in to help whether it was wanted or not, concerned more about truth and justice and Freedom yet little about law or the desires of government, would force discussion of issues touched upon in half-assed fashion in Dawn of Justice.  Indeed, how would the world cope with a man of Superman's capacities after he's shifted alignments from Lawful Good to Chaotic Good with a passionate drive to save us from our own self-destructiveness?

16613--You Don't Give Someone a Gun Unless You Know Which Way They're Going to Point It

I used to revel in the exploits of superheroes.  There were neverending thrills to be found in champions of all things good and right fighting to stem the tide of relentless evil.  The willingness of individuals to push themselves beyond the limits of the average, struggling to hew order from chaos in realms where weaker beings dared not, simply felt right.

Time marched on like it's supposed to and...the audience changed.  We learned things that made us ask more questions.  "Why?" started coming up with increasing frequency and we sought answers in places that made us look for other parties to hold responsible than whoever happened to be drawing our attention.  We wanted to know not only who was behind them, but why our superheroes weren't doing something about them.

This is to say that heroic figures as powerful as some of those presented in popular adventure fiction should also be running about like Fox Mulder, shining lights in dark corners where a lot of folks don't want those lights shining.  If these icons were going to truly uphold their ideals, Superman and Wonder Woman would be fighting corrupted governments to protect the oppressed masses, Batman would be more wanted than Rorschach for having exposed the secrets of the Kennedy assassinations and a litany of other shadowy operations far more disturbing than a midnight mugging (though fighting street crime obviously holds a special interest for him, considering...) and Thor would have been labeled an eco-terrorist years ago for his hard stance against pollution.  A wise Professor Xavier would use his resources to lead his civil rights activists discreetly lest they draw armed opposition.  These and other powerhouses would be targets of The Man.

These sorts of scenarios don't seem to be much focused upon in our fiction.  In fact, the Comics Code Authority placed a specific ban upon any creative avenues that would cast authority figures in a bad light.  Modern heroic tales go further in that direction from time-to-time since they set the CCA aside, but the protagonists still work largely within the confines of the established order and political powers don't spend their time figuring out how to track them down and kill them in their sleep.  In that regard, The Man (in his many guises) probably appreciates the distraction afforded by supervillains, natural disasters, alien invasions and random street crime.    Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?  The Shadow Government says it does.  Still, there remains the issue of our heroes not being who they appear to be.

The mystery men and women we call superheroes are much more than their colorful public personas, just as our parents had lives of their own before they started raising children.  Many of our iconic heroes are truly nothing like the champions they pretend at being.  Behind their costumes, they are royalty (Thor, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Black Panther, Sub-Mariner), they are the wealthy upper-class (Batman, Zorro, Green Hornet, Iron Man, The Wasp), they are doctors and scientists and government agents.  Some are even mild-mannered members of the respected news media (Superman, Captain Marvel).  If we want to push the issue of how much the government really knows and covers up, a few of those capes belong to aliens and alien-human hybrids.  Can you fight The Man when you are The Man?

Because of the very magnitude of our biggest heroes, they couldn't honestly be allowed to build careers on being rebels against governmental administrations because as loose cannons they couldn't be trusted.  They'd quickly be painted as selfish individualists possessed of dangerous abilities that needed to be put in check ASAP.  If anything, it looks as though we've been conditioned to celebrate extra-legal champions of the common man while being slipped a simultaneous message to blindly trust the wealthiest and most prestigious among society's power structure as figures of authority.  Conversely, it means we can't trust them to stand against the most pervasive forces in our lives.  Does that count as sneaky when it's been done right in front of us for decades?  Does conditioning us from childhood count as sneaky?

Even when they operate outside the strict letter of law, these heroes remain figures of order and justice, poster children of The Conspiracy that makes itself invisible through immensity.  As long as they're to secretly remain integral parts of traditional, institutional society and not be branded enemies of the state, bucking the system and rebelling against The Man will have to remain practices of the common man.  The common man created society and has to bear the responsibility of policing it while our heroes use their superior attributes to grab headlines for transitory accomplishments of lesser significance.  I still enjoy their adventures in the right context, but I know they can't save us from ourselves or the monsters we've unleashed.  Only we have the power to do that.

16490--Come to the Bright Side

I side with the good guys.  I'll let you know that up front.  I enjoy heroes, even the ones with the tarnish on their armor.  I'll go as far as enjoying an anti-hero when there's no better option.  I suppose it has more to do with being able to see a respectable mission statement driving their actions.  I love Superman and Wonder Woman, but I also am a fierce supporter of Batman and The Shadow and Jack Bauer.

I don't cheer for the bad guys or think they're cool.  Sure, I can see that there are varying shades of bad, ranging from the laughable and sad all the way out to horrifying agents of inhuman evil.  Some people find themselves drawn to the seductions of the dark and consider those of a heroic nature to be weak or "lame".  I keep an eye on those people.  They make me wonder about them.

I don't live under a rock, so I've seen the rise in interest of vampires as heroic and romantic figures rather than as predatory villains that an audience will enjoy seeing defeated.  I still find this a curious phenomenon and find that fighting the dark side makes far more sense.  Give me "Blade" over "Twilight" any day.  I'm still on the fence over "Star Wars", since Lucas added all that stuff about the "good guys" starting up a slave army.  I definitely wasn't crazy about Darth Maul being a popular Halloween costume choice.

Long ago, I went to watch a movie with a friend.  It was a comedy remake of a foreign film that ran longer than it needed to, but my friend really wanted to see it.  Let's just say that it focused on three men and a baby of uncertain parentage.  This was an era when irresponsible sex or, as Julia Roberts taught us, being a prostitute to a rich guy was funny.  Anyway, at the climax of the film, a couple of the men and the baby were being pursued by gun-wielding criminals intent on doing bodily harm to the helpless comic actors.  My friend bounced on the edge of her seat tensely urging the protagonists to "Get away!  Get away!" with anxious whispers.  To me, it was obvious that they'd come out OK because this wasn't the kind of movie that Hollywood was about to throw a bloody body count into any sooner than they would bring a serial killing pedophile onto "Full House" to destroy the Olsen twin empire in its infancy.  Still, she made me wonder..."Are there bad guys out there cheering for the criminals to catch the men and the baby even though it was clear that there was no chance of evil triumphing in this movie?"  There was no way for me to answer that at the time, so I filed it away in the vast brain cell storage repository I keep atop my neck.

A few years later, I was on a business trip.  I worked for IBM at the time, so they were fairly common.  On this particular trip, I had the good fortune to meet a lot of people from different parts of the country and talk with one who had worked on a computer network installation in a juvenile detention center.  Well, having not had the exposure to the criminal element that I would in years to come, I leapt on the opportunity to explain to him my movie theater question and ask if he had perhaps gleaned any insight he could offer me.  He paused thoughtfully and cocked his head to one side as he searched his own memory repository, then looked at me with epiphanous intensity as he said, "You know, they do!"

Ah, sweet confirmation!  Even though our entertainment industry has given us the hard-sell on messages like "crime doesn't pay" and "good will triumph", bad guys will cheer for bad guys.  Who doesn't like Superman?  Bad guys, that's who.  When you're composing your next work of intriguing fiction and remembering to infuse your antagonist with heaping quantities of humanity for the audience to identify with, don't be shy about making bad guys bad.  Why?  Because they are.  I've met a lot of them.  They're human, but they're quite willing to disregard that you are.  Some of them are good at hiding their dark qualities from the masses, but they do harbor them and eagerly seek the bright virtues in you that afford them ready prey.  They seek your trust and your empathy.  Whether harboring fear or anger or whatever other dark motivators, bad guys are ultimately true to their labels.  They range from the laughable and pitiable to the cold and monstrous.

Flirting with the dark may give you a thrill, but you're turning your back on what's good for you to invite something bad inside.  Next time you're relishing your gaze into the abyss, delightfully engaged by intriguing villainy, be careful not to lose yourself in there.  You have to live with what comes back out.