Qualifications: Well, for one, he owns Captain America’s shield, and we’d really like to get our hands on that puppy. Also, he has the power to name and define all the major threats facing America and the world. If we get him, then we can finally overtake bears and zombies as the biggest threats around (we’ve been gunning for that spot for years). Plus, he seems to have some sort of teleportation device that allows him to go into the offices of members of Congress so that he can ridicule them. Double-plus, we’re really itching to get that Colbert bump.
Liabilities: With that Super PAC of his, it may be hard to get his attention. It’s tough for even us to compete with those corporate political bucks.
Bottom line: We must have him, and his Threat Down.
4. Sarah Palin
Qualifications: She unsuccessfully ran for vice president, gave up her job as Alaska governor mid-term, had a failed reality show about her family, and people still think she’s got what it takes to be president. Her qualifications are that she somehow gets people to think she has qualifications despite her lack of qualifications. That’s the most incredible power of deception we’ve ever seen.
Liabilities: Her accent is perhaps too powerful a weapon for even us. Also, we’d prefer to avoid having her blabbermouth grandbaby-daddy chattering about us all on ET or whatever.
Bottom line: Sometimes you just need a good old American hockey mom to go out there and work up crowds to maim some superheroes for ya now, dontcha know.
5. Justin Bieber
Qualifications: He commands a massive army of tween and teenage girls, all of whom follow his every move. If we could get our hands on him, then we would be in control of a wave of text messages, tweets and incoherent conversations unlike the world has ever seen. Imagine it: Millions of evil denizens with Twilight backpacks and hot pink cell phones. It would be a thing of beauty.
Liabilities: You can only hear the word “baby” so many times before you start setting things on fire.
Bottom line: Once we obtain the loyalty of his followers, he is no longer necessary. We’ll get rid of him, and then get our colleague Chameleo to wear his face or something.
6. Sarah Silverman
Qualifications: Anyone who’s ever read a profile of Sarah Silverman in just about any magazine will remember reading the part where the writer states, as if it’s never been said before, that she can get away with saying things most comedians can’t because she’s a pretty, mousy-voiced woman. And yeah, it’s been said a billion times, but it’s true. Which makes us think that she might be able to do anything and get away with it, too. Like, I dunno, perhaps sink Japan.
Liabilities: She’d probably spend a lot of time going on and on about how marrying her dog is hilarious or some other dumb shit like that.
Bottom line: We’ll take some crappy jokes if it means we’ll be insulated from all world law-enforcement agencies and military organizations.
7. Morgan Freeman
Qualifications: The amazing power of narration. Whatever Morgan Freeman says, happens. So we’d really like to arrange it so that wherever we go, he’s a few yards above us in a helicopter with a bullhorn, saying that we just escaped or stole all the money or vaporized The Flash.
Liabilities: Could you believe this guy as a villain? No, you could not. You saw Wanted, right? See what I mean?
Bottom line: We don’t need him to be evil, we only need him to say evil things, so that they’ll come true.
8. Lady Gaga
Qualifications: She’s already got the look down, and at times she scares even us. Plus, as you may have surmised, supervillains love to play poker.
Liabilities: The dramatic reveal of her villain name may sound more to the unfamiliar like baby talk than evil grandstanding.
Bottom line: A villain who wears nothing but meat would be both novel and delicious during after parties.
9. Will Smith
Qualifications: None, really (except for perhaps an intricate knowledge of how much parents just don’t understand). No, recruiting Will Smith would be a symbol, that even the nicest guy in Hollywood, the perennial hero, can be corrupted. I mean, even when the guy plays a jerk, he still ends up looking like a good guy. We need to fix that.
Liabilities: The theme to “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” and the song “Summertime” are impossible to get out of your head, and if Smith was around, they’d be in there all the time.
Bottom line: If we are to prove that all that is good can be made evil, we need Will Smith.
10. Oprah
Qualifications: She is Oprah.
Liabilities: She is Oprah.
Bottom line: She is Oprah.
Health
Believe it or not, life is not necessarily a prerequisite for becoming a supervillain. Sure, most supervillains are among the living, and in a lot of ways, being alive does make things easier (even when it’s your own dead body, the smell of rotting flesh is just plain overpowering). But death isn’t a total impediment to super-crime. We’ve worked with zombies, ghosts, demons, wraiths, banshees, spirits, vampires, Frankenstein monsters, mummies, and other undead and/or immortal beings before, and for the most part, they do pretty well (badly) for themselves. Sometimes their jaw falls off during monologues and stuff, but hey, we all have our problems.
To a less extreme extent, major infirmities, such as being confined to a wheelchair, having a terminal disease or out-and-out being really ugly are actually big benefits when it comes to villainy. The more decrepit and disgusting you are, the better (worse), we say.
PROFILES IN LAME SUPERVILLAINY
Ten-Eyed Man
History: Philip Reardon, a Vietnam vet, who was partially blinded when he got hit with some grenade shrapnel, was fully blinded one night after a fight with Batman led to an explosion that burned his retinas. Afterward, a scientist somehow re-attached his optic nerves to the tips of his fingers.
M.O.: The shrapnel must have also damaged Mr. Reardon’s brain, because he thinks it is a good idea to go after Batman, who he blames for blinding him, under the moniker Ten-Eyed Man while wearing a costume calling attention to the fact that he can only see through his fingers. As a result, Batman, being the world’s greatest detective, deduces that he can simply throw something at the Ten-Eyed Man, shout “Catch!,” blind the guy, and win.
Age
As we mentioned earlier, heroes always tend to be young, plucky types with great hair. In supervillainy, we are much less discriminating when it comes to the age groups we’ll accept into our malevolent hordes. But a few age groups seem to really dominate our business:
• The very old
• The very young (evil children are creepy as hell, and we like that)
• Middle-aged men
• Super-sexy hot babes in their twenties and thirties (our favorite category)
• Immortals
If you don’t fit into any of these groups, then you may still have a future in villainy; but be warned: If you’re some hotshot high-school student or college kid coming in here with your barrel chest and well-defined chin, chances are we will shoot first and ask questions later. Ugly yourself up, fella.
Have You Got What It Takes for Treachery?
The Supervillain Qualifications Quiz
If you’re still not sure whether you fit the supervillain mold, ask yourself the following questions:
1. Have you recently been, or plan to be, permanently disfigured as the result of a fall into a vat of acid?
2. Are you the monarch of one or more fictional Eastern European countries?
3. Have you ever killed your own parents? Have you done it often?
4. Have you ever been a part of a grand scientific experiment gone awry?
a. Did it involve radiation? Metal tentacles? Gigantism?
5. If so, were you turned into some sort of half-man, half-animal hybrid, or a person whose body consists of some common material, such as water, rock, or spiders?
6. When you speak, do you hiss?
7. Is one of your
limbs made out of something other than flesh and bone, such as metal, a very large salmon, or a tiny little person?
8. Have you ever created a clone of yourself or someone else?
9. Are you a spandex-wearing cat burglar who also enjoys being a huge cock tease?
10. When you’re giving a speech, would someone transcribing it be compelled to do so in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS?
11. When committing a crime or doing some other covert activity, is your first instinct to leave unnecessary clues behind?
12. Is your ideal home an island that is named after you?
13. Do people rarely or never see your face, either because it is often obscured by a mask or people just always happen to be viewing you from behind?
14. Do you often announce what you are doing at any given time, even if no one else is around?
15. Have you survived being a passenger on an exploding helicopter, airplane, or blimp?
16. Cloaks: Yes or no?
17. Do you often use the word “insolence” in day-to-day conversation?
18. If some guy started flying around in the city where you live, saving runaway subway trains and stopping attempted burglaries in alleyways, would your first instinct be to strap him to a gurney and shoot lasers at him?
19. Are you bald?
a. Are there nodes implanted into your scalp?
20. Are you an immortal cosmic being who eats planets to survive?
If you answered “yes” to more than seven of these questions, you are well on your way to supervillainy. If you answered more than fifteen in the affirmative, you can join the ISS right now. If you answered number twenty with a “yes,” then thanks for reading, Galactus.
Chapter 3
Goals*
Combining goals can lead to unusual and counterproductive behavior.
* Chapter 3 is sponsored by The OH SHIT I AM A SURPRISE GIANT catalog, “Casual business and formal clothing for the big and tall and huge and enormous gentleman.”
A bout one hundred years ago, the man who is now generally regarded as the first true supervillain, Heinrich Misanthroach, otherwise known as Dr. Blattarius (a name he took from the Latin word for “cockroach,” because he was half roach), said, “In all things, my treacherous sons, hatred . . . always, hatred. But know this: Your hatred must be focused. You must know your limits. More importantly, you must know your desires, and work night and day to acquire them. Narrow your misanthropy, develop your plan, and execute.”
“Personally, I want to kill that asshole Mr. Wonderful.”
And so he did. That is, until Mr. Wonderful came back to life (superheroes have a terrible habit of doing that) and destroyed Dr. Blattarius’ device designed to re-write all telegrams with messages demanding humanity’s unyielding obedience to him. Mr. Wonderful unfairly dogged him with a flurry of punches when Doc B’s back was turned (that’s the only way superheroes ever do anything). But we all heard that story in evil grade school.
I bring up that old saw to make this point, which is one of the many things Dr. Blattarius taught us: You have to know what you want, and you can’t spread yourself too thin. It is imperative that you figure out what the one thing you most desire is, and you must make sure to work toward that one thing. Nothing else. World domination is a fine goal, but if you’re simultaneously working on humiliating your greatest enemy, while avenging the death of a relative and making yourself rich, it just ain’t in the cards. Plus, we at the ISS already kind of have the whole world domination thing all wrapped up, and you don’t want to go stepping on our toes. So here’s a few of the other common goals for your garden-variety rookie supervillain. Choose the one that fits you best.
SUPERVILLAIN HISTORY FACT
Olympic gold-medalist sprinter Jesse Owens spent quite a few successful years holding up banks as the supervillain Dash Demon. His career was cut short, sadly, when he let his hubris get the best of him and he was apprehended while attempting to rob a 201-meter-long bank.
Revenge
Just now, my Psychomonitor almost exploded from all the readers out there wondering, “But didn’t you say earlier that revenge wasn’t enough of a motivator for aspiring supervillains?” And yes, I did say that. But you may have also noticed further down in that chapter where I said that the most important motivator for villainy is theatricality. (And if you turn my words against me again, I swear I will cut off your hands and feet and reattach them backwards.) Revenge is a great goal for supervillains, but it’s a requirement that you achieve it in the grandest way possible.
To make sure we’re perfectly clear, if your idea of exacting revenge on someone is to key his or her car, then you’re not a supervillain. If you choose to get him or her back by crushing their car or the building where he or she works with a twenty-ton key, then you’re well on your way.
But make no mistake about it, supervillainous revenge usually doesn’t come easily. It has to be more of a lifetime endeavor. You must completely hate the subject of your torment with so much of your being that it consumes you. A key phrase here is “biding your time.” To put it another way, here’s a question that may give you an idea of whether or not revenge is going to be your number one objective: Would you be willing to devote years of your life to leaving the country, permanently affixing a mask to your face or otherwise obscuring your identity, training your body to make it a living weapon, harping incessantly on the person who wronged you, and plotting for your eventual return and retribution?
Basically, could you be the Count of Monte Cristo? Not the literal Count, though that might help too, but the character from the book of the same name. To have been the protagonist of a book, that guy was a bona fide bad-ass supervillain. So look to Alexandre Dumas for your guide, avenging villains.
The only place where Edmond Dantes is not necessarily the best guidepost for your future as a revenge-based supervillain is in his grounds for revenge. That guy had a lot of good reasons for going back and killing the shit out of his enemies. He was accused of being a traitor, got condemned because some cat wanted to save his political career, and later found out that his rival married his fiancée. That’s some hardcore wronging, and those guys probably deserved what was coming to them.
For your purposes, you can take out all your rage on the first person who stops one of your early criminal exploits, someone who makes you look foolish (preferably when you were in grade school), or a dude who accidentally scuffs your sneakers on the bus. Frankly, the more ridiculous your reasoning for hating the object of your bitterness, the better (worse).
PROFILES IN LAME SUPERVILLAINY
Magpie
History: Some lady with no discernible powers decided it would be a good idea to commit crimes while drawing no attention to herself whatsoever by dressing as a character from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Then she went and named herself Magpie, after the incredibly threatening, tiny little bird.
M.O.: Keeping up with the bird theme, Magpie steals jewels and other valuable items named for birds, and replaces those items with decoy booby traps. Get it? Booby? Like the bird? That’s how Magpie rolls. Also, she chooses to fight Batman and Superman with a handgun and a length of chain.
Riches
Movies and comic books are the scourges of our villainous existence, even more so than those sulking, holier-than-thou superheroes (see Chapter 10), they tend to portray us villains as people who steal money as only a means to an end. We need it for our sick kids, to carry out our mad experiments, or we just like to burn it up because we’re so anarchic, or so those bastard, non-villainous writers assume.
And yeah, we know some guys like that, sure. But don’t get it twisted. In large part, we love money, and find that wealth can often be a worthwhile goal in and of itself. The more of it we can get our hands on, the happier we are; partially because it allows us to buy up more resources for our death rays and torture chambers and to pay off our henchmen and/or bookies (when we choose to pay them, rather than just turning them into platypi), but also bec
ause, hey, we like to live well too.
Giant thrones made out of skulls don’t come cheap, folks. Plus, if you’ve looked on Craigslist lately, cavernous yet mansion-like underground and/or undersea lairs are vastly expensive, even if you steal all the materials needed to build them. So unless you want to locate your base of operations at the Home Depot, where you’ll also stock shelves, you may want to look into robbing some banks (perhaps with a magnet that allows you to steal banks in their entirety) or becoming a serious super jewel thief.
You know what else? Diving into a giant pile of money is a great feeling, too. Trust me on this one. You’re going to want to figure out a way to do that once or twice a day if you even have the slightest hint of money lust in your cold, black heart.
Justice
We went over this fairly thoroughly in Chapter 1, but to hammer home the point, if you see some kind of problem with a guy going around stopping airplanes from crashing, you should go deal with that, whether society understands it or not.
Just because a bunch of big-headed idiots in suits decided to write a bunch of shit down and call them “laws,” doesn’t mean that’s what’s right. Show them what’s right, pilgrim. Show them with your bare hands. Even if that means razing their capitol building right off the ground while reciting lines from The Art of War.
Violence for Its Own Sake
Think hard about this scenario: A crowd of hundreds gathers in an auditorium to watch the latest performance of the great magician, Classico the Magnificent. Ah, but the performer tonight is not Classico at all. It’s you, tuxedoed and mustachioed; the perfect double for Classico as he takes a quick, unconscious (and nude) break in the dumpster behind the performance hall. You take the stage, performing admirably enough that the audience simply thinks Classico is on the bottle again. Finally, you reach the night’s final, show-stopping illusion, which involves sawing your assistant in half. But surprise! Your assistant is not Classico’s assistant at all. It’s the famous superheroine, Infinity Woman, who you captured earlier in the day with your army of tiny robot men. You bring her out, the crowd recognizes her, and you remove your disguise, revealing yourself to be a supervillain extraordinaire. Then, the coup de grâce: You unveil the giant, diamond-tipped buzz saw with which you have replaced the trick saw. As the frightened crowd looks on, cowers, or attempts to escape, they’ll only find out that the doors are welded shut, as you begin to lower the saw, laughing heartily.
The Supervillain Handbook Page 3