Books can encourage us to vary our minds, broaden our horizons, and even take daring actions. Or to grow to be a supervillain.
Admittedly, most villains don’t go this route: they as a substitute select a gimmick based mostly on some bodily attribute, or a distinct obsession, or on their conveniently prescient and alliterative identify. (How did his dad and mom assume naming a toddler Otto Octavius was going to go?) However for a choose few villains, books — or one specific ebook — serves as a means for them to focus their evil energies.
There are a number of “ranges” of bookish villainhood. First up, you’ve got those like Loki or Ares, who star in lots of books revealed by people however should not themselves guided by their (or anybody else’s) literary exploits. They don’t actually matter as bookish villains in my thoughts, though Loki has spent the previous few years making an attempt to flee the shadow of the unflattering tales mankind has been telling about him for hundreds of years.
Typically, bookish supervillains will latch on to 1 ebook particularly and, as is the way in which of supervillains, obsess over it to an unhealthy diploma. The Mad Hatter — certainly one of them, anyway — revolves his life round Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. So does Alice, Batwoman’s archnemesis. I’m no advocate of ebook banning, however possibly Gotham’s college system ought to rethink this one.
Tim Drake, AKA the good Robin, has extra lately discovered a thematically applicable villain in Moriarty, a man who loves mysteries a lot that he named himself after Sherlock Holmes’s notorious foil.
Then there may be Karl Lykos, an vitality vampire who tried to steal a mutant’s life power and ended up turning himself right into a pteranodon, such as you do. He determined the one logical plan of action was to call himself Sauron after the dangerous man from The Lord of the Rings and go on a rampage. Actually the dweeb of all time.
Some bookish villains have solely tenuous bookish connections. Extra like a bookish-ish villain, if you’ll. The Pied Piper borrowed his identify and his shtick (and his dopey hat) from the parable of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, however he didn’t present any specific affinity for the character past that preliminary inspiration. Dumas is an obscure murderer with an obsession with masks, iron and in any other case.
Not often, you’ll get a villain who simply actually digs books typically. The Bookworm, performed by Roddy McDowell within the ’60s Batman TV sequence, is a speed-reading, “annoyed novelist” who perpetrates bookish crimes, like making an attempt to steam Batman and Robin to dying inside an enormous, hole cookbook. He does all this whereas quoting literary classics. He even went as far as to put on an asbestos swimsuit — books have been generally sure in asbestos as soon as upon a time — a choice that I actually hope prompts his former hench individuals to sue him for poisonous publicity.
Extra lately, a personality based mostly on the Bookworm — A.S. Scarlet, a nod to his alias within the TV present, which in flip was a reference to A Research in Scarlet — has popped up within the comics.
In the meantime, Gwenpool, an antihero at finest, is Marvel’s greatest fangirl and makes use of that to her benefit when she abruptly enters the Marvel Universe.
Lest you go away pondering that the one readers in comics are the dangerous guys, there are a couple of literary heroes on the market, too. Frankenstein’s Monster is an agent of S.H.A.D.E., a authorities group devoted to stopping superhuman threats in secret. An analogous character, Younger Frankenstein, was a member of the Teen Titans. And the second Flash, Barry Allen, was explicitly impressed by the comedian ebook adventures of the Flash of the Forties, Jay Garrick.
Lastly, there are the non-bookish heroes who similar to an excellent ebook. Superman’s love for the film adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird is outwardly such a defining trait that he tried to make use of this truth to persuade Lois Lane of his id after he got here again from the lifeless in 1993. Captain America has been identified to hold round Avengers Mansion studying Tolkien. (Has he ever fought Sauron? I have to see that hastily.)
In brief, a ebook doesn’t need to be inherently good or inherently dangerous. It’s what you make of it that basically counts. So, what are you going to do along with your studying experiences: struggle for justice, or identify your self after a legendary villain and attempt to flip everybody into dinosaurs?
