Mandarin vs Kingpin

[MichaelC]

But even by simply giving Mandarin a Batman-style origin where his parents have died, that already humanizes him, because it explains his motivations and characters beyond stereotypes. There's a guy under all those robes and the bad facial hair. Build on the guy under it.

The odd thing is, he was given that humanizing story, in just his, irrc, third appearance. His origin story combines the angst of tormented aristocratic children like Roman Sionis, tormented super-soldiers like X-23, and the disturbing exploitation of explorers like Christopher Columbus.

And then...literally nothing has been done with it for fifty years. He's actually deteriorated as a layered character since his initial creation, despite having been improved visually.

[big_adventure]

The odd thing is, he was given that humanizing story, in just his, irrc, third appearance. His origin story combines the angst of tormented aristocratic children like Roman Sionis, tormented super-soldiers like X-23, and the disturbing exploitation of explorers like Christopher Columbus.

And then...literally nothing has been done with it for fifty years. He's actually deteriorated as a layered character since his initial creation, despite having been improved visually.

To be fair, the 50-year-old or older villains that have been really evolved can be counted on one hand, and most of them "suffer" from being the favorite character of whoever controls the series or the publisher at a certain time. Doom went from a psychopath to a misunderstood genius psychopath. Magneto went full on hero for a long time. Blah blah blah. Mandarin isn't unique in that, is what I'm saying.

[Shellhead]

Most of the superheroes have shown little character development in the last 50 years. DC and Marvel are fond of making dramatic changes, and then later reversing those changes.

[Powerboy]

The odd thing is, he was given that humanizing story, in just his, irrc, third appearance. His origin story combines the angst of tormented aristocratic children like Roman Sionis, tormented super-soldiers like X-23, and the disturbing exploitation of explorers like Christopher Columbus.

And then...literally nothing has been done with it for fifty years. He's actually deteriorated as a layered character since his initial creation, despite having been improved visually.

I was going to mention that, Mr. Ninja. He was an aristrocatic kid who lost all his money, I think, although it was undermined by his insufferably aristrocratic attitude of both economic and racial superiority.

[MichaelC]

I was going to mention that, Mr. Ninja. He was an aristrocatic kid who lost all his money, I think, although it was undermined by his insufferably aristrocratic attitude of both economic and racial superiority.

"Lost" heh, that's one way to put it. Another way is that he(or his aunt, it's a little ambiguous) squandered all his money training him into a kind of evil Übermensch/Renaissance Man.