Pro:
Something in your life to take your mind off of incredible stresses.
Con:
An incredible stressor that keeps you from dealing with that other stuff—evil plans—and which therefore makes you incredibly stressed.
Pro:
Free labor, at least for a few years, anyway.
Con:
Labor of the quality a child would perform, because it’s being performed by a child.**
Pro:
While others can only give you their word in regards to loyalty, your child is your blood.
Con:
Children are often very rebellious, which in your case means they’ll probably join the Peace Corps or, worse, go into heroing; at least during those volatile teen years.
Pro:
Someone else to blame in case things don’t go the way you planned.
Con:
Certain to be a constant disappointment because of you blaming things on them.
Pro:
Can carry on your legacy after you have died or when you’re serving a stint in prison.
Con:
May have plans different from your very specific ones for your long-lasting legacy; might try to take whatever you had planned and make it “hip.”
Pro:
Is a little you.
Con:
Is a little you.
Let me appeal to your inherent impetuousness and/ or laziness with this additional point: Planning and preparation actually make destruction easier. It may be hard to believe that laying groundwork is really the path of least resistance, but consider whose book you’re reading and maybe have a little damn respect. Also, remember this statement: Make it your mantra.
The Most Effective Chaos Causes Itself
That may be a little too poetic to clear your lead-lined skulls, so I’ll clarify. You can destroy a car at a time if you go out and run around a parking lot, flipping them over. But what if extremely panicked people were driving those cars? A bunch would probably get completely trashed on their own without you having to flip a single car. Or consider this scenario: You could walk into a bank with a disintegrating ray and aim it at individual people, who will probably be scared. Or you could toss a disintegrating grenade in there and freak everyone out at once.
I know it can feel a little disappointing to know that you can actually do more damage with a hands-off approach than one which involves you carrying around an enchanted flamethrower, but you can get involved with the flambé party once you really set the stage for it.
How do you set the stage? Like this:
Start with Talk
This is part of the ongoing theme I’ve been talking about throughout this guide: Sometimes, words are the most powerful weapon you have. Making all the mailboxes around the city come to life and eat people or infusing all the water with deadly high-fructose corn syrup or even lacing dollar bills with a drug that makes everyone’s hair fall out can really cause a lot of havoc; but you know what would make things even more chaotic? A really vague threat, issued to everyone via a giant TV in the public square. “Need to send a letter? Te box may request additional postage!” you might say. Or “We’d all like a little extra cash. Why not go take a few bucks out of the ATM right now? You’ll only regret it . . . later.”
Why these more cryptic, riddlesque statements instead of more direct threats? For one thing, directness is no real fun. Forthrightness is simply not supervillainous. More importantly, what you want to inspire, in addition to fear, is curiosity. People will certainly be scared by anything you say, especially if you’ve built yourself a worthwhile, terrifying, “insomniac name” reputation. But if you make your pronouncement vague enough, you’ll also get people wondering, “Just what the hell was that masked psychopath talking about? I feel this weird urge to know!”
That’s when people, entirely against their better judgment, will drink that diabetes water or go take out that alopecia cash. They’ll lead themselves to their own downfall.
Plan for a Long Game
It’s difficult for supervillains with destructive personalities to get involved in protracted scheming, but consider how much more you can do with a series of concentrated events throughout a series of weeks or months:
• A stadium turned into liquid here;
• A museum filled with gas that makes people intangible there;
• A portal opening up so a dinosaur can come through and trample a thousand cars over yon.
This could, bit by bit, whittle down the human spirit. A rush of carnage can do a lot of damage in a short period, but when it’s over, it’s over, and people go back to their lives. Spread it out, and you’ll fnd the fruit of destruction well-ripened for the picking when you finally do unleash the final barrage.
The Calm Before the Swarm
Once you have warned everyone that something is coming, just lay fallow for a while. Don’t do anything. Stay at home and make some pottery. Let them stew in it for a few days. Be quiet . . . too quiet. The collective freakout will reach immense proportions. Don’t wait too long, though. You don’t want people forgetting. Collectiblast waited three years once and his pog-themed trap backfired on him.
Gain Some Trust
The old “I’m reformed, honest!” gambit can really work to your advantage. If people are stupid enough to believe that you, a known criminal, have given up wanting to melt humans all of a sudden, they’ll also be stupid enough to give you access to places they almost certainly should not. Take advantage! Get yourself into sensitive areas so you can better poke them. The one downside is you can probably only pull this off once.*
WORST PRACTICE IN ACTION: Darkseid Comes to Earth
Darkseid really plans ahead. When his son, Orion, “killed” him by ripping his heart out, evil New God sent his spirit back in time to inhabit the body of a human. He then had his servant, Libra, indoctrinate hundreds of supervillains and get them to join his service. Through that pre-planning, Darkseid actually conquered Earth and damn near destroyed it, but Batman shot him with a radion bullet and Superman sang into a machine and everything went back to the way it was. But at least Batman had to go spiraling through time after that.
Teaching Moment: If you can control what vessels your spirit inhabits and hire people with Svengali-like persuasion powers, do it. You’ll get a lot more destroying done.
Amassing Your Arsenal
In The Supervillain Handbook, I spoke about the importance of the various ray guns you may wish to use. And indeed, ray guns are the bread and butter of things supervillains use to zap people. But to only use ray guns is to limit yourself, like a chef who has a kitchen full of utensils, but only uses ladles.* You need to expand your horizons, particularly if you want to do mass villainous destruction. Rays are great for scalpellike precision, but sometimes, you really have to go big.
With that in mind, here are many of the tools available to you, and what they’re best for:
Plasma Cannons
Remember what I said earlier about how it’s always smart to have cannons? These shoot plasma. They’re the logical next step from ray guns.
Portals
It’s not so much the portals that are your weapons as what you can send through them: Alien squid monsters, omnipotent beings from other dimensions, the Justin Bieber album from the 2040s that will make everyone in the future hopelessly insane. So many options.
Gases
For knocking people out, making them laugh themselves to death, or simply making it hard to see. Gases are extremely versatile.
Acid
If you really want to mess up a face, it’s hard to compete with acid.
Bombs
You can go with the conventional, fiery type, or you can go with the kinds that beam death light everywhere or send anyone they blast spiraling through history. You can’t go wrong with whatever you choose.
Lasers from Space
Lasers are way more fun when they are shot from space. That is a fact.
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Giant Animals of Various Species
Sometimes a little bit hard to control, but you always get a lot of bang for your buck with these. I’d suggest keeping away from fish or birds, though. Stick to lizards, dinosaurs, apes/gorillas, bugs, horrifying mythical creatures, and so on.
Robots
Robots are like henchmen, except you can make their arms ray guns.
Or you can make them walking bombs.
Or you can make them gigantic and have them terrorize the city like a big ape would, without all the control problems! Robots are really an excellent choice.
Nanobots
Like robots, but tinier. You can have them do all the stuff robots can do; just on a smaller scale. Instead of knocking down your enemies or buildings, they can knock down someone’s pancreas. And sometimes, you just need that.
Celestial Objects
Nothing like a comet or a meteor to really leave a crater worth writing home about.
Mind Barbs
These are barbs you shoot with your mind. Super-effective.
Demons/Hellfire
Again, you’ll likely encounter some serious control issues with these, but nothing and no one does chaos better than demons shooting fire from hell. They always get the job done.
Doomsday Devices
These intentionally vague devices do what they say they’ll do: They end the world. This is why it’s preferable to only use these as a threat, rather than as an actionable weapon. Some of us want to rule stuff, so have some consideration.
Communication Through Kabooms: Saying Something With Your Wrath
As I mentioned prior to my lengthy argument convincing you that patience can actually get you somewhere—you brusque, uncivilized animal—I mentioned how important it is to really get a message across with your slings and volleys. Wanton and careless destruction is fun while it lasts, but unless you really attach a lasting, personal meaning to it, it will be forgotten as soon as your victims rebuild their bridges or come to terms with the fact that their Uncle Willis is made of sand now.
Now, that doesn’t mean you have to, for example, spell out your name with big fiery letters across a city street or re-sculpt all the statues in Rome so that all the faces are yours. You can take a more subtle approach. If and when your rampage is documented in those propaganda rags called comic books, someone is going to have to characterize the sounds of your fury with words. Onomatopoeias. And though they may simply seem like words that represent sounds, they also all send slightly different signals about just who made them.
So know what you’re saying. Here are a handful of common examples, and what you’re saying when you make them happen:
BOOM: “I’m a straightforward person with an explosive personality. I hate frills, which makes me a pretty weak supervillain, to be totally honest.”
KABOOM: “I have an explosive personality, but I don’t mind frills at all. Frills like the letters ‘K’ and ‘A.’”
BADOOM: “I have an explosive personality, and am bad. And like doom. I am multifaceted.”
BOOM-SHAKA-LAKA: “No one can compete with the intensity of my dunks.”
WHAM: “I speak with my fists. Also, I’m never gonna dance again.”
FWOMP: “I let my body and its massive girth do the talking for me. This is because I get tired from opening my mouth.”
KRAKADOOM: “I control the very lightning and thunder itself! Potentially, I also love crack.”
BADOOSH: “I am a bad douche.”
KRRRSHH: “I hate glass! Glass can eat me.”
KRAK-OW: “My hits are so furious that they have two syllables. Additionally, I lack any sensitivity toward folks with Polish heritage.”
KA-CHUNK: “I am a decapitator. The chunk I have ka-ed is your head.”
WUSHHHH: “Floods are my thing. Some of Old Testament God’s ideas were gems.”
FAWOOSH: “I am a firestarter. Yes, yes, like the guy from that ‘90s song.”
RAT-A-TAT-TAT: “I keep my distance and use guns, though preferably none made after 1945.”
BUDDA-BUDDA-BUDDA: “I use more modern weaponry and lack any sensitivity to members of a particular religious group.”
KRK-KRK-KRK: “I am as cool as ice; therefore I use it to destroy. Yes, yes, like that guy from that ‘90s song.”
SHINK: “A recluse; I use stealth and blades to do damage. I shun attention, which makes me a very weak supervillain.”
SKRRRRCH: “I rip my victims to pieces! It also helps if my victims are made of paper.”
SQUITCCCH: “I like things messy, which is why I’m eating this meatball sub while I stomp in your ribs.”
ZZZZZKK: “Electrical power courses through my body! I am in constant pain!”
HRRRKK: “I am in constant pain, but electrical power does not course through my body.”
HRONK: “I attack with the fierceness of a rhinoceros or possibly a whooping crane.”
SKRONCH: “I can crush people like I would an aluminum can! I also crush a lot of aluminum cans!”
SWOOSH: “I have no regard whatsoever for Nike’s long-standing trademark!”
PING PING PING: “I am Darkseid or I wish to be destroyed by Darkseid.”
BADABING: “I am a stereotype.”
* This, despite the fact that they’re supposed to be leaders. Just between us, they’re sheep. I’m assuming they’re not reading this chapter. If you are a to-be leader and you’re reading this, I’m not talking about you! Do everything I say.
** Not that I would know. I’d never know anything about that.
** Not much worse than henchmen, though.
* And if you already did it to get out of an alliance—as I mentioned in Chapter 5—or to get some media attention—as I said in Chapter 6 (what can I say a lot of recipes have the same ingredients)—you’ve probably used your one get-out-of-jail-free card. You’ll have to land on Chance—a plastic surgeon’s office—to get another one.
* Ladles are the bread and butter of kitchen utensils.
Chapter 11
When the Carnage Happens
Now that you’ve worked out every angle to ensure that your campaign of mayhem will have its greatest possible impact and really communicate exactly what you want to say to the world, it’s time to put yourself out there. Or don’t put yourself out there, however you want to do it. What I mean is: It’s time to start melting some things . . like faces.
There are multiple ways to approach this:
• You may go in for the quick hit.
• You may stretch things out.
• You may place yourself right in the middle of the fray.
• You may remove yourself from it entirely.
Try to look badass around any and all explosions.
There’s really no wrong way to go about it.* That said, you should choose a stratagem that is best suited to your skills and gimmickry.
Supervillain FAQ: What fight training do I need?
In a perfect world, we would all be able to build fortresses on the moon and make oceans boil peacefully and at our leisure. But it’s not a perfect world, and, occasionally, people who see some sort of moral problem with our activities come into those fortresses—our private property—and try to do us harm. And, as much as we may want to slide our way out of legitimate fights by virtue of being slippery sons of bitches, sometimes you’ll have no option but to put up your dukes.
So it is incumbent for those of us in the supervillain community to learn a few pugilistic tricks of our own; to stave off those attackers and protect our soft spots. But there are so many different fighting styles out there. What technique best suits the evil set?
Consider these questions:
Do you know magic?
If so, then use that shit. No punching can do more to terrify and harm than shooting fireballs at someone’s face. Or turning someone into a frog. Or making their hands their feet.**
How big are you?
If you’ve got some size and strength, offensive
moves, kicks and throws and the like are worth trying out. If you’re smaller and wimpier in stature, think about defensive fighting; like the kind where you jump inside a giant, impenetrable metal ball and roll yourself away while screaming.
If you live in a video game, that helps.
Who’s your opponent?
Maybe you’re going up against a hulking brawler. In that case, a more fluid, lithe style could serve as a contrast. Or maybe the person you’re fighting has a lot of agility. Strength training and precision can bring them down with much force. If your nemesis is an ancient kung fu master, consider developing a fighting technique in which you drop to your knees and beg for mercy.
How hard are you willing to work to become a great fighter?
If your answer is “not very,” as I’m sure it is for most of you, just hire some people who already know how to fight and have them stand around you at all times . . . even in when you’re taking a dump.
Are you a fair fighter?
Of course you’re not. Go for the junk.
Length of Attack
The Supervillain Field Manual Page 11