Who Is The Most Tragic Supervillain?

[ERON]

I've always found the Lizard to be very tragic. He's a family man who was trying to cure his disability and help others like him, but he ends up becoming a rampaging monster. And whenever he reverts back to Dr. Curt Conners, he has to live with whatever horrible things he did in his Lizard form.

[Surf]

Bizzaro. Kind of always saw him as disabled in a way and this is removed from the ties to any Bizzaro world there have been ties too in past stories. Not sure where he stands now, I know he's had several minis over the last 20 years.

On top of that a clone wouldn't necessarily be pretty, like a Conner but he would be used nefariously.

[DrNewGod]

Bizzaro. Kind of always saw him as disabled in a way and this is removed from the ties to any Bizzaro world there have been ties too in past stories. Not sure where he stands now, I know he's had several minis over the last 20 years.

On top of that a clone wouldn't necessarily be pretty, like a Conner but he would be used nefariously.

Particularly the Timm-DCAU version of him. Not evil, just sad, and hopelessly unable to understand the world in which he was born.

[foxley]

That's the definition of tragic.

No. That's a definition being unable to learn from your mistakes.

I can feel sorry for Victor Fries or Harvey Dent or the Preston Payne version of Clayface. I cannot feel sympathy for a character whose overwhelming character trait is arrogance.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

No. That's a definition being unable to learn from your mistakes.

Again that's what tragedy means. In the classical sense and in the Shakespearan sense.

Tragedy isn't simply about who has the best sob story. It's about characters whose strong personality coupled with their surroundings and backgrounds leads them to a dark, inevitable fate. A fate brought about in part by circumstances but in part as a result of their own choices and conviction.

In the case of Doom, the accident that scarred his face came about because he wanted to save his mother's soul from Mephisto. That is a pure heroic motivation, and like Han Solo when told by someone that his calculations are risky he goes, "never tell me the odds" and in his case it backfires on him. So on one hand it's deserved and arrogant for him not listening to Reed, on another hand, Victor suffers for acting the way all heroes do but he ends up scarred and damaged instead. Victor von Doom had the perfect origin story to become a hero but circumstances (being born in a dictatorial regime, being orphaned and losing his two entirely loving and good parents, coming to America and having that accident) lead him down a path where he becomes a villain...and Victor even after being masked and achieving powers often balances a heroic aspect and a villainous aspect, always capable of great good and tipping one way then another and so on.

I cannot feel sympathy for a character whose overwhelming character trait is arrogance.

Arrogance is the classic tragic flaw. It is the tragic flaw, whether it's Oedipus, or Hamlet, or King Lear, or MacBeth, or Faust, or Captain Ahab, or if we want to use modern tragedy, Willy Loman (The Joker in The Killing Joke is close to Willy Loman).

Again tragedy is not about who has the sob story. It's about a little more than that.

[Alan2099]

I don't get how you can see Dr. Doom as tragic. Everything single problem in his life was caused by his own hubris, and yet he just constantly blames others.

His mother died after making a deal with the devil for power and the devil decided not to bother giving her control to go with it.
His father was blamed for the murder of the Baron's wife when he couldn't cure her of a terminal illness. He died of exposure trying to shield Victor from the cold.
After his father's death and until he went to college, he was hunted by this countries government.

None of these things were Victor's fault.

[DrNewGod]

His mother died after making a deal with the devil for power and the devil decided not to bother giving her control to go with it.
His father was blamed for the murder of the Baron's wife when he couldn't cure her of a terminal illness. He died of exposure trying to shield Victor from the cold.
After his father's death and until he went to college, he was hunted by this countries government.

None of these things were Victor's fault.

Well, there was that thing where Dr. Doom was mainly hunted because he was running a series of scams on the aristocrats he (justly) blamed for his father's death, including one that made a dude go bald. And there's that thing where he can't live without proving himself Mr. Fantastic's intellectual superior, even when it knocks his glide-path to world domination off course.

Personally, I do see him as tragic, but I can see where there's room for debate. Ease of sympathizing with is not a necessary condition for being tragic.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Well, there was that thing where Dr. Doom was mainly hunted because he was running a series of scams on the aristocrats he (justly) blamed for his father's death, including one that made a dude go bald. And there's that thing where he can't live without proving himself Mr. Fantastic's intellectual superior, even when it knocks his glide-path to world domination off course.

Personally, I do see him as tragic, but I can see where there's room for debate. Ease of sympathizing with is not a necessary condition for being tragic.

Most tragic villains and heroes aren't sympathetic or likable figures.
-- Agamemnon is the tragic figure in the play Agememnon but a dude who sacrifices his daughter to the gods for trade winds is not a sympathetic character, nor an open warmonger and a terrible general who comes home with a sex slave and who takes offense at his wife having side-action and then murdering him.
-- Faust selling his Soul for Eternal Knowledge and using his gift to have loads of sex and pranks and then whining about the contract he signed and trying to go backsies is not exactly sympathetic either.
-- Even Hamlet is not all that sympathetic. He's got a heroic motive of wanting revenge for his father's death but throughout the play he insults and murders, without remorse, people who are innocent and had nothing to do with his father's death. He's also a misogynist and class snob (being Prince and all).
-- In a modern tragedy, Willy Loman of Death of a Salesman is a tragic figure but he's also a self-centered POS of a Dad who cheats on his wife and fills his kids with terrible unrealistic expectations and ideas.

If you look at movies, Al Pacino's Michael Corleone is maybe the most famous Tragic Hero of American Cinema but he's also a mob boss who murders a ton of people and kills his own brother, and yet people sympathize with him, right?

Doctor Doom has fundamentally more sympathetic origins than many of these characters.

[ERON]

I think most of us in this thread are using the everyday definition of tragic rather than the literary definition. There's no need to get hung up on semantics.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

I think most of us in this thread are using the everyday definition of tragic rather than the literary definition. There's no need to get hung up on semantics.

Okay what is the everyday idea of tragic then? Because that's pretty damn nebulous as it is.

[ERON]

Definition of tragic
1a: regrettably serious or unpleasant : DEPLORABLE, LAMENTABLE
a tragic mistake
b: marked by a sense of tragedy
2: of, marked by, or expressive of tragedy
the tragic significance of the atomic bomb
— H. S. Truman
3a: dealing with or treated in tragedy
the tragic hero
b: appropriate to or typical of tragedy

Definition of tragedy
1a: a disastrous event : CALAMITY
b: MISFORTUNE
2a: a serious drama typically describing a conflict between the protagonist and a superior force (such as destiny) and having a sorrowful or disastrous conclusion that elicits pity or terror
b: the literary genre of tragic dramas
c: a medieval narrative poem or tale typically describing the downfall of a great man
3: tragic quality or element

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Definition of tragic
1a: regrettably serious or unpleasant : DEPLORABLE, LAMENTABLE
a tragic mistake
b: marked by a sense of tragedy
2: of, marked by, or expressive of tragedy
the tragic significance of the atomic bomb
— H. S. Truman
3a: dealing with or treated in tragedy
the tragic hero
b: appropriate to or typical of tragedy

Definition of tragedy
1a: a disastrous event : CALAMITY
b: MISFORTUNE
2a: a serious drama typically describing a conflict between the protagonist and a superior force (such as destiny) and having a sorrowful or disastrous conclusion that elicits pity or terror
b: the literary genre of tragic dramas
c: a medieval narrative poem or tale typically describing the downfall of a great man
3: tragic quality or element

Okay that's more or less tragedy as I have used the term.

So what exactly do you understand as the everyday meaning of the word tragedy? What makes you assume it's so much different from mine?

[ERON]

Okay that's more or less tragedy as I have used the term.

So what exactly do you understand as the everyday meaning of the word tragedy? What makes you assume it's so much different from mine?

No, you keep talking about hubris and arrogance. That's the literary definition of a tragic character - a character who experiences a downfall due to the tragic flaw of hubris. The everyday definition of tragedy is simply misfortune or calamity, regardless of cause. Most of us are discussing villains who suffer from tragedy in the everyday sense of misfortune. If you want to use the literary definition, that's fine. The OP didn't specify one way or the other. But there's no need to jump all over other posters for using tragedy in the colloquial sense.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

No, you keep talking about hubris and arrogance. That's the literary definition of a tragic character...

Tragedy originated in literature so why is it such a bad thing I talked about things in a literary sense, when I mention and discuss fictional characters?

- a character who experiences a downfall due to the tragic flaw of hubris.

Did you not just post this? [Emphasis from me]

Definition of tragic
1a: regrettably serious or unpleasant : DEPLORABLE, LAMENTABLE
a tragic mistake

So you clearly put tragic mistake or tragic flaw in your dictionary copy/paste and then complain about me arguing and defining a tragic flaw?

Spare me the faux-populism.

[ERON]

Tragedy originated in literature so why is it such a bad thing I talked about things in a literary sense, when I mention and discuss fictional characters?



Did you not just post this? [Emphasis from me]



So you clearly put tragic mistake or tragic flaw in your dictionary copy/paste and then complain about me arguing and defining a tragic flaw?

Spare me the faux-populism.

I never said it was a bad thing that you were using the literary sense of the word tragedy. I am well aware that the definition I posted included the literary definition. The point was that the literary definition is not the only definition. I don't take issue with you using the literary definition; I take issue with you chastising other posters for not using the literary definition.