Oftentimes, the villains are far more interesting than the heroes (venom, juggernaut, dr. doom, etc) and seem to be quite popular among fans as well
so why don't any villains have their own ongoing series? is it a morality point...where comic book companies don't want to promote evil? (i doubt it) or is it just because they don't think a villain book would be profitable (i believe the opposite) or is it some other reason I haven't listed?
well if they get their own series, we can actually see them winning...now wouldn't that be cool
also, they could depict villains as multi-dimensional...show their characters beyond just the crimes they commit...show us their motivations and their problems
The problem is having a character we can identify, sympathize, or empathize with enough, to want to follow them month after month.
Dr. Doom was really good in his own series under Marvel's 2099 imprint. And the Suicide Squad made up of villains at DC worked. But these characters are not really doing evil things - they're doing something that's benifiting society in some way. So, once a villain has an ongoing series, they have to change a bit. Even in a miniseries, a character like Sabretooth has to be pacified a little for the reader to want to follow him.
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"I'm not smart so much as I am not dumb." - Harlan Ellison
It lasted about ten issues. Trust me, the less said about it, the better. For everyone. But if you're fine with it being not better, noted comics blogger and owner of the Big Monkey comics chain and podcast had this to say about it: http://absorbascon.blogspot.com/2006/05/joker.html
Roughrider has it right, though, I'd say. And the other problem would be that you require a bit of character conflict to make a series interesting- a character who is just evil or insane, like, say, Carnage, would make for a terrible series. No motivation outside of the fact that he's crazy. It would be exceptionally one-dimensional.
Magneto had a mini a while back, when he was Joseph, before he was retconned to not Joseph... it was... well, I think it could be put down as "very 90s."
Doom's 2099 series was good, Lucifer was good, even though they're "bad guys," because they had interesting reasons for doing what they were doing. They were morally ambiguous rather than being downright evil, and it made for an interesting read. Suicide Squad is, of course, incredible and one of my favorite series of all time, but it wasn't really a series about a villain, and more like a series about a concept that involved villains.
On that theme as well, of morally ambigious-ising the characters in order to make them work as protagonist rather than antagonist, the ever infallabile Simone has done it too: Villians United and Secret Six. But again, it was a case of turning the characters from "evil" into something more up in the air, or at least giving them new motivations rather than just antipathy towards a hero.
Salvation Run is shaping up well- I kind of hope that it means that we're going to get "World War Rogues." That would be sweet.
Certain villains could work well in their own series. I would totally follow a "Luthor" series, especially if it played up the angle that Luthor really believes that Superman is, overall, a detriment to the development of the human race, and made Luthor's reasons for his actions clear.
Last edited by tjcoady on Dec 19th, 2007 at 12:38 AM
Well,anongoing would have to focus on a fairly unambitious villian generally,as you can't really have a series about a villian with world domination in mind,nless you have them pull of a series of smaller missions for the grand scheme,then conquer earth,then be deposed,then be on the run and try to rebuild their empire...
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Dec 18th, 2007 05:58 PM
