The Supervillain Field Manual

by King Oblivion, Ph. D.

  But who should your mentee be? Look to these criteria:

  It must be someone you trust with every fiber of your being.

  To be perfectly clear, this is probably no one.

  It has to be someone who will not double-cross you.

  Again, this is problematic, given that you’ll be teaching them important double-crossing techniques.

  Will this person try to kill you and take over your criminal empire?

  If you’re any kind of teacher, then almost certainly.

  In the event this person can somehow be trusted and won’t double-cross or kill you, you have to ensure they won’t do idiotic things, like reveal your true identity to all your henchmen or enemies.

  This a long shot.

  If, somehow, this person meets all these criteria, you also have to keep them from naturally usurping you by simply becoming better than you at evil.

  And look, they’re young, and you’re not getting any younger. It’s inevitable.

  Long story short, don’t bother with mentoring. That’s what I’m saying.

  Here’s the capper: Because you’re the bad guy—at least in the eyes of the public—you’ll get no recognition for any of your effort. You’ll be derided as a loser and a scoundrel* who got what they deserved. Forces in the hero-loving world are going to try to shame you into obscurity or recontextualize you so that you’re a joke rather than a threat.

  Don’t let them!

  Don’t allow them to pressure you into giving up!

  Work smart, spin things to your advantage, and you’ll maintain your aura of ominousness.

  The Preparation

  Superheroes get a ton of credit for being prepared; for being able to slip through the noose when we villains cash in on our grudges and push ahead with our Byzantine revenge plots. But look, a lot of that is merely luck. Superheroes are lucky, lucky bastards. Like when it turns out that they have just the right enzyme to cut through the very specific, super-strong cellulose their enemy made the ropes out of. Or they studied up on mutant alligators and learned a song that can put them to sleep in seconds. How is that anything but coincidental?

  The answer is that it isn’t. Coincidence and Fate may be a supervillain’s worst enemy. I have a theory that those two are living beings that actively work against us. This is yet another reason why we shouldn’t get anything close to the bad rap we get when it comes to our “loser” status, and should perhaps declare some kind of attack on Coincidence and Fate, but I digress.

  Back to my point: You have to be ready for luck to bite you right in your becloaked ass. Otherwise, you’ll go to jail—or maybe death—looking quite the fool. So before you make a move against the one you’re sworn to hate, be sure to have these things in place first:

  An Escape Route

  Whether it’s a jetpack, some sort of helicopter contraption on your back, a drill that creates underground tunnels, a teleportation machine, or having some guys in an idling car nearby so that you can jump in, it is imperative that you enter into any potential conflict or melee with an exit strategy. And since virtually any situation could potentially become a conflict or melee, that means you should have an exit strategy for every potential circumstance, even if you’re just sitting at home watching reruns of Breaking Bad. Have that drop chute ready to go. (But try not to mistake any loud noises from fictional meth-related crimes for an attack on your HQ.)*

  Henchmen

  You can buy yourself a precious minute or two by throwing a handful—or if you have the resources, a battalion—of henchmen at your opponent(s). That minute could mean the difference between you being in a brig somewhere or waiting around in a Global Brotherhood of Minions regional post to grease some wheels and wait for new recruits.

  Decoys

  Mannequins?

  Those might fool someone with no superpowers what so ever for a second or two (and they’re pretty creepy, so that’s a bonus).

  Holograms?

  Cool, but as soon as a superhero swings a punch at one, they know they’re hitting nothing but light. Actually, that’s probably giving them too much intellectual credit, but they know they’re not hitting you in the face.

  People in Disguise?

  Fine, until someone gets close enough to see their faces or hear their voices—and for some superheroes, they can make such distinctions from a city away.

  Clones?

  They’re awful and melt easily.

  Your Best Bet?

  Robots that look exactly like you. Sure, they’re pretty expensive, and you can bank on at least one getting destroyed every few days or so, but it’s so, so worth it. Plus there’s the added bonus of sending them to social functions and stuff you don’t want to attend. That’s right, Aunt Penny, that wasn’t me at your fourth wedding! Mwa-ha-ha!

  Moral Quandaries

  It’s a little trite, but if you can figure out a way to make a superhero choose between saving a helpless innocent— better yet, someone the superhero personally knows and loves—and chasing after you, they’ll always go with helping the person in danger. It’s one of many reasons having a pit of live, man-eating snails and some rope on hand at basically all times is just a bang-up idea.

  Other Distractions

  It’s certainly smart to have some henchmen on hand to throw at your adversaries, but if you can spare them, also send a few out into the city to bust a water main or take over police HQ at the very instant you’re about to take that knockout blow. Or better yet, call up one of your local supervillain colleagues and ask them to put one of their plans in action on the same day as yours.* Give the superheroes something else to do that seems more urgent than your middling cash grab or attempt to turn a major bridge into a portal or madness dimension.

  WORST PRACTICE IN ACTION: The Joker’s Ultimate Escape

  In their last-ever meeting—or at least, when they both were in their 50s—Batman decided he’d had enough of the Joker and broke his neck. A pretty stunning defeat for the clown prince of crime, right? Well, the Joker just wouldn’t have it. So, while laughing his little head off, the Joker twisted his own neck around even further until he was dead, framing Batman for his death.

  Theaching Moment: Even when it looks like your arch-nemesis has you dead to rights, there’s always a way to one-up the hero. Plus, it’s pretty well established that if you die, you’re going to come back. So it’s a legitimate escape route. If you have to go there, go there.

  Timing

  In the heat of the moment, it can be a little tough to really know when to stomp the brakes on a plan you’ve been putting together for months, maybe even years if you just served some time in Laser Jail.* Is it the moment a superhero shows up to stop you? The second they escape your death trap? Should you wait until that hero has cleared your defenses and is on their way to your Control Hub? It’s hard to give a hard-and-fast rule here, since so many evil plans are different—for instance, some involve sending the superhero to the wrong place so that you’ll have more time to send the downtown area underground is a good example.

  So I’ll say this: If a superhero gets the opportunity to lay you out, odds are they will. Let’s face it, they’re just plain stronger in most cases; to the point of having an unfair advantage. I mean, really, how is irradiating one’s muscles to gargantuan proportions any safer or better than taking illegal steroids? It’s a double standard, and they are all assholes.

  Anyway, don’t let them get to that point. Bounce out of there before it’s even much of a possibility; there will be other plans. But you’ll have to wait that much longer to enact them if you have to cool it in Laser Jail, or in the cases of some superheroes who have gone to work in the past decade or two, death (which you will come back from—it’s a serious revolving door down there, but it’s also a huge hassle) for five to ten.

  Managing the Fallout

  Now that you have made every effort to save your life and your freedom, it’s time to turn all your efforts toward ensuring that your reputation as an
evildoer remains intact. The last thing you ever want is to be tagged as some sort of . . . not a coward, necessarily. A loser. A failure. An also-ran. Defeated.

  But . . . well . . . you have been more or less defeated. So your challenge here is to essentially fight the truth, or at least a version of it. But look, we’re supervillains. When the truth is at odds with our purposes—and it very often is—we make it our business to pound the truth into an unrecognizable pulp. In fact, we’ve perfected the procedure. It takes a little finesse—some smooth moves here and there—but it’s definitely achievable.

  As famous proto-supervillain George Washington* once said, “I cannot tell a lie.” He couldn’t because he had just hacked the truth (a superhero disguised as a cherry tree) to shit with an ax. Follow his example with these methods:

  Play the Victim

  The reason I didn’t want to use the word “coward” earlier is that this method is perhaps the most cowardly thing anyone can do . . . but it also proves pretty effective. From jail or your headquarters, broadcast yourself speechifying about how you, an honest, hardworking businessperson/entrepreneur/environmentalist/social activist/peace lover, were simply attempting to build a healthier, safer city by encasing it in a giant dome. Some vigilantes out there say you were trying to trap everyone and maybe make them fight until one of them asked for the merciful embrace of death, which you denied ( but that was just some wild speculation). It was never your intent! And they, the superheroes, stole the pleasure of dome life from you, the hard-working citizen. True, this method won’t cement anyone’s reputation as a ruthless evildoer, but it’ll certainly get the people on your side. Play it really well, and you might even get them to question their loyalty to the superheroes.

  Score a Minor Victory

  You may lose the war, but if you can manage to win a battle— maybe you don’t manage to put the city under a giant dome, but you do manage to put city hall in a plastic bubble for a couple of weeks, or flip over a few buildings as you speed away in your rocket escape pod—you can’t possibly be a complete loser. So always include something in your plans that are totally doable, and wave the flag of victory until you’re red in the face.

  Talk the Talk

  You know how people say that if you repeat something enough times, everyone will believe it? Put it to the test. Repeatedly tell everyone—the public, the press, your enemies, your peers—that you are the most dangerous supervillain who ever lived. It won’t matter how many times you lose, it’ll still be seared into their brains. (This will be doubly true if you use some hot brands to literally sear it into people’s brains. Look into it.)

  Cool Off, Sharpen Your Edge, and Make a Comeback

  If your recent loss is just too embarrassing, go underground for a few months. Get a new, darker, more intense costume. Bulk up. Maybe replace one or more of your hands with a giant hook or scythe, and return to the scene as an edgier version of yourself. Everyone will automatically forget your previous defeats and stand in awe of your dark, edgy new persona.

  Look Better by Comparison

  If things get really desperate, arrange for another supervillain (an independent who you don’t like very much) to take an even more embarrassing fall to steal the headlines away from you. You can even get one of your henchmen to pose as a superhero and pants them in public.

  Say Something Really Smart in Public

  This will convince people that you’re really smart.

  Brainwash Everyone into Believing You Are the Greatest Possible Threat to Their Safety

  This is a really useful thing to do, no kidding.

  Defeated by Teenagers: Avoiding the Scandal

  People new to the super-evil game tend to experience a little bit of shock when they realize just how many of the superheroes they fight on a day-to-day basis are idiot, punk kids. Some are college-age. Some are even younger than that.

  It’s bad enough to get your clock cleaned by an adult flying around the world with a pompadour on their head and some bright-red tights on. Imagine what it feels like to get laid out by a high school sophomore. Yet many supervillains have dealt with that exact type of trauma, and not only lived through it, but have weathered it without any permanent damage to their status as evildoers. I asked one such supervillain, a fellow by the name of The Comptroller, to describe his experience:

  Your enemy.

  I used to pull these jobs where I’d confuse the dickens out of people in various levels of government and business by talking to them about revenue percentage gains in the fiscal year, and then I’d clean out their safes while they were—to put it in layman’s terms— mumbo-jumboed unconscious.

  It was all really great work until this group of kids, I think they called themselves The Minor Chords, caught onto what I was doing and started waking up my victims by playing this really dour rock music. They were impervious to my attacks, since financials meant absolutely nothing to them, and therefore they couldn’t be incapacitated with it. And their leader, pick me up and drop me down a smokestack. She would do this every single time. I think she thought it was funny, but she never laughed. I never saw her laugh. They were all pretty weird kids.

  Anyway, I started getting really worried that all my business associates and, you know, other independent contractors who do our sort of work, would start to view me in an unfavorable light. I was nearly forty years old, being thrown down smokestacks nearly every other week by this kid who couldn’t have been a day over seventeen. It worried me for a while.

  After a few months, though, I developed a system; one where I could continue to occasionally lose to the young superheroes and still come out looking like I didn’t deserve to be on the Z-list. I worked it out pretty easy. Here’s the secret: Don’t talk about them like they’re teenagers. Tell everyone they’re adults. That may sound unbelievable, but it isn’t. It really isn’t!

  See, these kids, when they get superpowers, they bulk up. They get big, they look like they’re grown-ups. And unless they’re sidekicking, they even give themselves adult names. You know, names that end in ‘–Man,’ or start with ‘Captain.’ They don’t want anybody to know they’re really adolescents. The only way anybody would know is if you told them! I very nearly made this mistake.

  So if, for some crazy reason, your teenage adversary is trying to smash up your lair using a name that makes it clear he or she is a teen—mine sure didn’t—tell ‘em it’s embarrassing for them that they’re using that name. People’ll think they’re kids! They’ll give in to peer pressure and change it in a second.

  So that’s it. If a teenager keeps beating you up every week, tell everyone they’re about twenty-eight. That’ll fix everything right up.

  Okay. I told you everything. Can I leave now? Can I . . . hey, can I leave now, King? I cooperated! I told my secret! I retired from this supervillain stuff! You can’t leave me down here! Come on! Why are you doing th—”

  So there you have it! A simple way to keep teenagers from making you a laughing stock, unless you’re dumb enough to tell everyone who was anyone in supervillainy about it in a book they’re all going to read.

  You deserve to be in there, Comptroller, you teenage-beating-taking idiot.

  * You’re not really that shocked, are you? Consider the source, folks.

  † And if you try, I’ll booby trap my brain to explode if you try to extract any more truth out of it.

  * You’re welcome, everyone.

  ** Important Note: If you don’t have a ship, get one.

  * In less-informed circles, this word has a sadly unfavorable connotation.

  * More about planning specific exit strategies in Chapter 11.

  * More on this in Chapter 4.

  * You never hear about Laser Jail on the news, because the media has agreed to the Superhero-Industrial Complex’s requests to keep it secret, but most supervillains end up there nowadays. Think of regular jail, but add lasers. That’s pretty much how it is.

  * See The Supervillain Handbook for more d
etails regarding Washington’s days in the early goings of organized super-evil. He was a card, let me tell you.

  Chapter 3

  When You Win

  Like I said before, the deck in this game is stacked against you. Tons of people are rooting for you to lose, and they’ll rig the game as thoroughly as they can to see a superhero seize victory.* But every once in a while, when a plan is laid out exactly right, with every “T” crossed and every “I” dotted, when the stars align in perfect order and maybe the superheroes get into an argument with each other about who’s the saddest, you finally pull out a win.

  It’s a hell of a moment. Think about an Olympic gold medalist standing on the podium, their hand over their heart, their country’s flag reaching toward the ceiling as the national anthem plays for everyone in the stadium. Tears well up in their eyes as the culmination of a lifetime of work and dedication comes together in the most glorious moment of their lives. Now imagine someone shrinking that stadium down to the size of a peanut and feeding it to an elephant, just to see the Olympic stadium get pooped out later. Wouldn’t that be awesome to pull off? That’s what a supervillain victory feels like.