Last edited by brettc1; 03-23-2019 at 01:51 PM.
If ten years of recording The Young and the Restless for my mother have taught me anything, it's that characters in serial dramas are always happily in love...until they're not
“The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. Instead of altering their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views...which can be very uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering.” - the 4th Doctor
Best Riddler story arc ever was when he tried to prove he was a better detective than Batman. Yes, that means he was HELPING the police.
The epitome of this was a one-off Superman story called "The Choice". Superman fights and beats 3 male supervillains during the story and Scorch. Each of the four villains was offered a seat in the Justice League for the low low price of becoming a superhero. Who accepted? If you guess Scorch..... WRONG! I mean Scorch did something in a different story. This story it was Major Disaster. Yes, the guy whose name explains what his powers create.....
Also Scorch never actually joined the JL. She sometimes helped them, but in the Burning Martian case that went.... badly, for Scorch and only Scorch. So yeah Scorch got to do a heroic sacrifice even though she wasn't ever a hero. But that's not really the same thing. Yeah the story with Scorch and the Burning Martian... that wasn't really a face turn story, that was more of a "corrupted by evil" story. J'onn wanted to overcome his fear of fire because he didn't know why it was there. Which eventually awakened the Burning Martian. Who was beaten more by Plastic Man and (I forget whether it was Aquaman or Major Disaster that brought the tidal wave) than Superman. Scorch started out as a chaotic neutral instead of ever being evil. She only acts heroic when there's an actual villain in her way.
Wait... I said Plastic Man. Plastic Man is a reformed villain... mostly. Look up the reason why Barda felt like choking him... ooh boy....
Vegeta.
Anyways the trope is nice because it makes the characters feel like people who make decisions. What motivates the Riddler to do things? Or Scorch, or Deathstroke, Lady Shiva(I loved her Jade Canary phase), or Poison Ivy? To me, the best Poison Ivy stories are those where she has reasons for massacring people, and doesn't just kill people because she's a villain.
If ten years of recording The Young and the Restless for my mother have taught me anything, it's that characters in serial dramas are always happily in love...until they're not
“The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. Instead of altering their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views...which can be very uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering.” - the 4th Doctor
I see the case for the Male and Female Villain to anti-hero ratio... Like when it comes to characters like the Riddler and Clayface vs. Poison Ivy and Harley, the fact that there are so many prominent male villains who are indeed NOT going to be redeemed, the former two see like drops in the ocean compared to the latter two when the only prominent bad gals besides those two in the Bat rogues gallery are Catwoman and Talia, who were less villainous than Harley and Ivy ever were. Hilarious in retrospect as Ivy's original purpose was to be a prominent female criminal as Catwoman was softened at the time. So it feels like more female villains are being softened up in comparison to their male counterparts as the pool is much smaller. I mean look at Ivy and Talia in comparison to Ra's? The endgame and goals are similar, but you know they wouldn't redeem Ra's over his daughter or the eco terrorist version of Ivy.
With Wonder Woman she has many female baddies, but the real question is how many of them get used often?
If ten years of recording The Young and the Restless for my mother have taught me anything, it's that characters in serial dramas are always happily in love...until they're not
“The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. Instead of altering their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views...which can be very uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering.” - the 4th Doctor
Talia has been pretty damn villainous in her recent appearances and most of Diana's female villains haven't been redeemed. Or even been portrayed as being particularly sympathetic.
If ten years of recording The Young and the Restless for my mother have taught me anything, it's that characters in serial dramas are always happily in love...until they're not
“The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. Instead of altering their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views...which can be very uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering.” - the 4th Doctor
Last I heard of Croc, they'd retconned it so that he never actually ate people and is in a Beauty and The Beast-style relationship with June Moone. And Ra's for a long time was depicted as an antivillain whom even Batman had some degree of respect for.
Orlando also had the Bana leader as antagonistic and Circe, Zara, Blue Snowman etc aren't shown as sympathetic.
Last edited by Agent Z; 03-27-2019 at 01:54 AM.
The current versions of Cheetah and Cale work better being somewhat sympathetic. They've had aspects of Golden Age Priscilla Rich and Paula von Gunther folded into them respectively, so it's inevitable. The core concept of the Cheetah back in the Golden Age was a woman struggling with her good and evil sides, and she works best that way. I don't think it absolves them of their actions. Barbara Ann in particular can naturally go down a darker, increasingly monstrous path without losing her tragic foundation.
But yeah, it would be nice to give more page time to complete, unrepentant a-holes like Poison and Clea to balance it out.
I would agree. Circe used to be a straight up “I’m gonna kill Wonder Woman and live forever” villain. Now, not so much.
I was thinking of these two as well. I liked how in the movie, Poison is just a straight up sadist. Her scene with Steve showed some of her back story motivation but they never had her do a face turn.
Last edited by brettc1; 03-27-2019 at 01:21 AM.
If ten years of recording The Young and the Restless for my mother have taught me anything, it's that characters in serial dramas are always happily in love...until they're not
“The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. Instead of altering their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views...which can be very uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering.” - the 4th Doctor
She's a wild card, but since rebirth her motivation isn't simply "I hate Wonder Woman and want to make her life as difficult a possible, before I kill her". She's a magic user for hire that helped Cale because of their business arrangement, not because she's Evil. She still has a grudge against the Amazons but she's more passive and reasonable about it now, at least in the WW book.