No thank you.
PROFILES IN LAME SUPERVILLAINY
The Spot
History: Dr. Jonathan Ohnn was a C-list scientist working for an A-list supervillain, The Kingpin, trying to figure out how the powers of a B-list superhero, Cloak, worked. After some generic sciency mumbo-jumbo happened, he got sent to another dimension and emerged looking like a Dalmatian.
M.O.: Can teleport using the black, circular portals all over his body. But instead of using them to transport into banks and steal money or to blackmail The Kingpin and take over his empire by learning all his business secrets, he instead decides to use his immense power to simply go directly to Spider-Man so he can lose to him in a fight. Brilliant.
When it comes to having a murderously skewed sense of justice . . . well, that’s definitely good (bad) to have in your hip pocket. It’s a hell of a justification for doing stuff that just plain makes no sense. For example: If a superhero saves a busload of children from going over a cliff, he or she is clearly an impediment to the natural way of things. Or at least, that’s what you keep spouting to yourself as you continue to fight against a guy saving dozens of children. Nature intended for those children in that bus to go over that cliff, you mutter. The hero is hampering the natural order of things. This so called “hero” is anti-nature. He or she must, then, be stopped. *
Really, it takes a combination of some or all of these things to make you a grade-A supervillain in the making. You need the perfect storm of power, madness, bloodlust, jealousy, and, most importantly, a flair for the dramatic.
It’s not enough to want to humiliate your old college lab partner for embarrassing you in front of some girl you wanted to get down with; you have to want to do it in a mask and cape. You need more than a mere desire to seize and control a continent with an iron fist; you have to want to do it using an army of robots that look exactly like you. And murder, as necessary as it is, will not get you over that line between plain old crime and glorious super-crime, dear readers. There needs to be an urge in your heart to want to skeletonize people with a heat ray so big that you’ve got to shoot it from space.
Or getting a radioactive shark to eat some hyperactive vigilante who thinks he should help people by getting all up in your business.
Or using bright-green gas to turn people’s lungs inside out.
And during all of that, you have to be compelled to monologue. Constantly.
It’s called showmanship, and it’s pretty damn well mandatory.
Macbeth had it; talking to a knife floating in front of you before you stab the king to death? Oh yeah, that’s some supervillain mojo right there. Of course, Macbeth felt some guilt about what he did, and that’s a pretty big problem. We’ll be addressing that issue in Chapter 10.
Ultimately, this is what it all boils down to, folks: Murder, rob, plot, and give them a spectacle. In supervillainy, you’re not just a genocidal maniac who wipes out entire cities, far from it! What you actually are is a genocidal maniac who gives people the show of their lives before you turn them into thick, purple goo.
Training Exercise 1: Testing Your Mettle
It’s one thing to say you have the fire in your belly needed to take on the harsh realities of being an international supervillain, but to actually go out there and do it, and enjoy it, well that’s a whole different proposition. So here’s an eight-step plan to test your belly-fire quotient.
Step One: Acquire several unnaturally large monkeys.
This should be relatively easy. Giant monkeys are readily available on most remote jungle islands and at zoos located next to volatile nuclear power facilities.
Step Two: Sic said monkeys on a major American city.
And we mean major. A giant-monkey rampage in Missoula, Montana, or Winston-Salem, North Carolina, is barely even national news.
Step Three: While the monkeys create chaos, sneak into City Hall.
All the city’s police and emergency personnel, and if they know what’s good for them, political leaders will be off dealing with the monkeys. Or they might be dead. Either way, it’ll free up the building for you.
Step Four: Steal the city charter.
It will be in one of two places: Under glass as soon as you walk into City Hall, or in a safe behind a painting in the mayor’s office. There are no other options. Be careful, because it will be on parchment, even if it was rewritten all of fifteen years ago.
Step Five: Replace the charter with a forgery proclaiming that the city is now its own sovereign state, and that you are its supreme leader.
No one will be the wiser.
Step Six: When the mayor absent-mindedly walks in and sees what you’re doing (because a superhero stopped your monkey distraction, the bastard), abscond with him.
It helps if you have some kind of flying platform with which you can escape out the window as police and security fire at you.
Step Seven: Threaten to kill the mayor when a meddling superhero confronts you as you’re trying to escape to your hidden lair.
It’s best to plot your route so that you’ll pass over as many bridges and/or imposing skyscrapers as possible.
Step Eight: Escape, preferably after roughing up the hero or embarrassing the mayor.
Releasing another round of giant monkeys would really serve as a great distraction as you rush off and lick your wounds. They’re always a great distraction.
If you can do all these things without one qualm of conscience, without feeling like an idiot or ever questioning whether what you’re doing is the most efficient way of securing control of the city, then keep reading, friend and fiend.
* Or maybe you love insects more than people, so you start hassling entomologists (supervillain name idea: Mister Murder Moth) or anyone who ever kills a bug. That could work.
Chapter 2
Qualifications*
Kirby University is the number-one school for dramatic hand gestures.
* Chapter 2 is sponsored by MISS IDENTIFY’S MASK OUTLET, “Slightly warped masks, discount prices, reasonably obscured appearances!”
It’s great that you’re so amply motivated to destroy all your enemies and proclaim victory from the top of an island shaped like your head; it’s good to start somewhere, and those are certainly worthwhile goals (more of which we’ll discuss in the next chapter). But before we get there, I must give fair warning: Without the right talents and necessary skills, you still may not make it into the hallowed halls of professional super-evil.
It sounds harsh, I know, but here’s some hot truth for you:
Not everybody’s cut out to be a supervillain.
Some people, the average rabble out there; well, they deserve to be trampled, either as helpless civilians, expendable henchmen, or hapless, overhyped “heroes.”
That difficult standard is true in any profession, of course. Some people want to be professional writers, for instance, of novels and screenplays and great works of high art and import. But most end up writing silly little fake how-to guides about how to become a supervillain. They are sad, depressing people, these wannabe writers. They need emotional help, because they know they will, probably very soon, die alone and penniless, with nothing of value to their name. That’s just how the world works.
But I digress.
You’re going to need some credentials if you want to be respected in professional villain circles. There are plenty of guys out there, total amateurs, running around with no direction, no know-how, and no respect. We snicker at these guys behind their backs and stick lit matches in their butt cracks at supervillain expo events. Don’t be one of these guys.
Here’s how to avoid the old flame-ass:
Education
Like it or not, if you’re interested in the villain game, you’re going to want some degrees, and I’m not talking community college degrees, I’m talking Graduate degrees.
It would take me about a thousand hours to list for you all the supervillains whose names are preceded by “doctor,” “professor,�
�� or at least, “nurse.” There’s some inexplicable force in higher education that drives people to villainy, and vice-versa. Maybe it’s the constant pressure of getting papers, theses, and what have you done on time or the persistent badgering from professors or dealing with smug fraternity assholes in Birkenstocks and pink polo shirts all day.
Or, more likely, it has something to do with the fact that college campuses are places where curious students and disgruntled instructors can perform the ancient and mysterious art known as mad science. There’s test tubes and beakers and shit everywhere, which means there’s all kinds of opportunities for making poisonous gas bombs or building clone robots of yourself or developing chemicals that will transform innocent, wholesome, and delicious milk into a potion that turns everyone who drinks it into lizard-man hybrids that you can summon to come break you out of prison. (Trust me on that one.)
There’s also something about professordom that just kicks people into villainy mode as well. I’ll attribute that to the fact that grading papers all night would make pretty much anybody want to murder an entire city’s worth of people. Or, it’s possibly the small contingent of college students who have a near-unflappable tendency to regularly become superheroes. Stupid young bastards with their bright eyes and minds full of hope. We will crush them! Grrrrrrrrraaaaagggggghhh!
Moving on, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that not all supervillains have to live in some ivory tower. Many are also medical doctors, dentists, psychologists, attorneys, and, of course, businesspeople.
Yes indeed, the MBA can be a supervillain degree, too, so long as you can become the founder/chairman/CEO/president of your own company, the resources of which you can use to hunt down and destroy your over-powered nemesis. The cool thing about it is that, no matter how many times you get arrested or outed as an international super-criminal, your business conglomerate will always continue to exist somehow, and you’ll always be the boss.
I know that statement’s in no way based in any sort of objective reality, but you can’t argue with the way of things, which are laid out in several decades’ worth of comics. People with long, long rap sheets always manage to come back to respectability, just like superheroes who are maligned when some impersonator starts robbing banks in their costumes and immediately get exonerated the second someone realizes that just about anybody could sew together some blue spandex. Look, we don’t write the rules; that’s just the way it works in the world of superheroes and supervillains. Live with it, ‘cause it ain’t changing; not if we have anything to say about it.
SUPERVILLAIN HISTORY FACT:
Though quite evil, Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot, Joseph Stalin, and Fidel Castro were not, at any point in their lifetimes, supervillains. They were never part of a supervillain group and never created a supervillain name for themselves. The only supervillain who was also a 20th century dictator was Benito Mussolini, whose widely-known moniker, Il Duce, was Italian for “Commander Crossword.” The clues he left for heroes at the scenes of his various crimes were structured in the same way as crossword clues. His catchphrase was, “What’s a five-letter word for DEATH?”
Breeding
“But King Oblivion,” I hear through my trusty Psychomonitor, “what am I, a lowly high school dropout and generally blithering idiot, to do? I don’t have the time or the money to get a GED, and, frankly, I would fail out of college, because I am intellectually inferior to you in every way.”
Thank you for your honesty, reader. (Though you should note that I prefer to be addressed as “sire.”) The very fact that you’re even struggling through reading this book is a testament to your commitment to the evil arts (unless you forced someone to read it to you, in which case, that’s the kind of initiative that can get you places).
Luckily, you have a few options . . . like stealing a diploma. But you could also accept that not all villains need to be super-brilliant masterminds like me. Some can simply be thuggish brutes, which we brainy villains like to call “the muscle.”
We’ll get more into those distinctions later on in Chapter 4, but for now, rest assured that there is supervillainy without higher education, albeit a form that has more to do with punching and bank robbing than death rays and world domination.
So set your sights low, non-doctor-and-professor set. That is, unless you have the great luck to have been born a member of some country’s royal family or hold the title of some other type of nobleman or woman. Then, you can order anybody you want around without ever having to learn anything of any kind. So be warned, if you’re not a duke or a lordess or something, and you have no mental aptitude whatsoever, you may want to consider going back in time and setting it up so that your ancestors offed a baron or something. Just putting that out there.
Experience
Now, before you go out there and try to turn Australia upside-down, Ph.D.s and duchesses, you need to know that it’s going to take more than a fancy degree or some kick-ass title to make your name in this business.
Just like anything else in this world, you’ve got to get out there and work your way up the ladder. But how do you do that? Well, there’s a few ways that you can put your stamp on this art we call supervillainin’.
Franchising
Show some entrepreneurial spirit and start your own operation. Acquire some capital (aka: Kill and then assume the identity of a bigwig capitalist), and then brand and make yourself known locally. After that, expand to a regional operation. Eventually, if your work is bad enough, people will notice, and you’ll be a national or even global outfit.
Henching
Just like the old-fart corporate CEO who always likes to tell the story about how he started out in the mailroom (or for today’s “young professional,” a lowly intern), you can reach the heights of supervillainy by getting work as a lowly henchman. Stay loyal, do the work, and maybe, one day, you’ll take the reins when your boss-villain retires or kicks the bucket. (aka: Kill your boss and assume his or her identity.)
Petty Crime
Rob some banks, beat up some superheroes, maybe set off a bomb or two. Your objective is to get on the news. Catch the eye of some bigger-name supervillains in your area. Make your services available to them whenever they need to kidnap the governor’s daughter and don’t want to get their hands dirty. Soon, you’ll be in their inner circle and right where you want to be. (Or, you could find someone in their inner circle, kill him or her, and assume his or her identity.)
The Superhero Switcheroo
One very quick way into big-time supervillainy is to become known as a superhero before taking some sort of dramatic turn to the dark side. This kind of thing happens pretty often (we have a way better dental plan and our outfits are simply much more comfortable), and usually with pretty good (that is, bad) results. Nothing gets the smelly, hero-loving masses more riled up than a heel turn. (If you’re uncertain about how to become a superhero, well, this ain’t the right book for you, hoss. Maybe you could kill one and steal his or her identity.)
Nepotism
Be the son, daughter, nephew, cousin, brother, sister, or in-law of a successful supervillain, and affix yourself right onto his or her evil teat. (If you don’t have any supervillain family members, then kill the family member of a supervillain and assume his or her identity.)
Kill someone close to a villain and assume his or her identity
This is fairly standard practice.
With enough work, you’ll eventually work your way up to a fairly high position in the world of pro evil. But, and I should make this as clear as I can, don’t shoot for my seat. If you even try to sit in my chair made of skulls perched atop a solid fire column deep within our subterranean fortress, I will personally incinerate you, and it won’t be instantaneous. It’ll take days—painful, painful days.
Let’s move on.
Ten Celebrities We’d Like to Recruit
One thing we in the supervillain world are always looking to create is a higher profile. In today’s world, what better
way to do that than by recruiting some famous celebrities? Here are our top-ten choices, the people we feel will bring us the most attention, but whom we also feel have got what it takes for this supervillain life.
1. Tom Cruise
Qualifications: A certain religious group he’s in big with. He’s an Operating Thetan level VII, which means he’s probably in direct contact with the Overlord Xenu himself. And yes, the story goes that Scientologists hate Xenu and stuff, because he trapped the Thetans in their meat bodies. But if we can use Cruise to get to the overlord, even under the pretense of an attack, we’ll take it, just to get Xenu on the team.
Liabilities: He believes in some crazy shit, like the existence of Overlord Xenu.
Bottom line: Tom Cruise is crazy, y’all. But he may be able to get us in touch with an evil galactic overlord. And even if he can’t, well then hell, we’ll take the chance to crib some notes from the people in charge of the church of Scientology, who seem to have a pretty good (bad) evil system worked out.
2. Katy Perry
Qualifications: Clearly, she is a master of hypnotism.
Liabilities: We’ll have to work really hard to not become mesmerized by her off-putting, yet somehow insanely catchy, mind-controlling songs, all of which are brilliantly named after older, also very-popular songs.
Bottom line: Obnoxious? Certainly. But we’ll deal with it for the collective consciousness of the masses.
3. Stephen Colbert
The Supervillain Handbook Page 2