Turn a super-hero into a super-villain

Cafe Society
1

Oh, do I really have to do a setup?

Oh, ok. Imagine, if you will, that you’ve just been hired as a writer for your favorite comic book company. Given a five-year contract and a mandate to shake things up, you decide to take a marquee hero and, over the course of time, turn him or her into a major villain.

Five rules:

  1. Only out & out heroes–characters whom the majority of their peers would describe as a hero–are eligible. No Lois Lane or Edwin Jarvis, and, for that matter, no Punisher (too ambiguous).

  2. I’m talking character development, not reveals or externally-induced transformation. No revealing that Sue Richards is actually a Skrull, or having Superman being impersonated by Ultraman, or having Dick Grayson captured, tortured, and brainwashed into an assassin. I’m looking for storylines in which a heroic character, over time, switches sides.

  3. No reformed villains backsliding. Too easy. Also, no characters whose basic premise includes the possibility of becoming evil due to a magic whammy. In other words, Angel is out.

  4. The fourth item is always blank on my lists. Except when it’s not.

  5. I have no idea what I meant this to be. Sorry. Hot barista.

And go.

2

Well, it’s been done before, but…

The easiest is Superman.

He looks at the world, gets tired of the crap he sees, and the demands of a certain portion of the populace that he fix EVERYTHING.

So, he finally gives in, and tries to set himself up as an autocrat.

Now, Spider-Man’s harder…

He could make a deal with the devil to save Au…er…

Well, he could decide to throw good taste and journalistic ethics aside to ge…

OK, Iron Man, th…

Hrm.

Batman!

He could grow even more paranoid and plot how to kill the Jus…

Uuuh…

Green La…

… Hrm. I’ll get back to you.

3

Heroes turn villainous?

Never gonna happen. Nope. Never, no how.

4

I think I’ll just have them flip out and murder all of their friends for no good reason. Anyone who complains I’ll just call a whiner.

(Comic book fans can hold the longest grudges…)

5

OK: Doctor Strange started out as an arrogant, greedy neurosurgeon and went through a transformative experience that turned him into – or, rather, brought out his essential nature as – one of the Good Guys. But the other side of him is always there, right? It would be real easy for him to get seduced by the Dark Side. Just let him come up against a situation that is beyond even the Sorceror Supreme’s powers unless he . . . makes a deal, with some sort of dark forces, for the best of reasons. And it’s a slippery slope from there . . .

6

Some variation on this has been done for all the big names, I think, so I give you…

The Villainous (or Just Plain Nuts) Squirrel Girl

Phase 1:

It’s hardly surprising that Doreen would become interested in environmental issues, given the close tie with animals granted by her powers. Deforestation and water pollution affecting woodland areas are particular hot buttons for her, and after an incident in which contaminated wastewater from an industrial plant defoliates a large section of forest, she becomes an environmental activist. When her superheroic activities extend beyond her typical efforts against street crime, they most often involve somewhat naive efforts to investigate polluters and other environmental threats.

Phase 2:

The increasingly anti-industrial Doreen becomes disillusioned with other heroes she has long liked or admired, like Iron Man and Penance (formerly Speedball), as they either have ties to industrial concerns or are too wrapped up in their own issues to think too much about the environment. She stages protests with the aid of her squirrels, with slogans like “Won’t Somebody Think of the Squirrels?” and no sense of proportion whatsoever.

A series of escalating incidents begins in Central Park, with squirrels harassing and even attacking litterbugs and vandals. Squirrel Girl’s approach to breaking up small-time drug deals and muggings becomes more vicious. Squirrels begin to be seen in unusual locations, lingering near prominent people and around the windows of boardrooms. (Ideally, that last would be a cross-comic thing, with squirrels appearing in the background in other comics.)

Phase 3:

Doreen’s squirrel spies provide her with evidence of a genuine conspiracy to conceal environmental violations on a massive scale. Powerful figures in several industries and in the government are implicated. She tries to persuade other heroes to help her expose the racket. Some don’t take her claims seriously. Others simply have other business that seems more important (alien invasion, war, terrorists…). Squirrel Girl is on her own.

When she discovers that the mastermind behind the conspiracy are moving to destroy crucial evidence, she decides to act. She and her squirrel army raid the facilities of a major chemical firm, only to be cornered by mercenaries hired to torch the place. With none of the typical supervillain flaws to restrain them, the mercs simply open fire on her. Her squirrels, led by Tippy-Toe, counterattack, providing enough of a distraction for her super agility to get her out of the line of fire with only minor injuries, but it’s a slaughter. The bulk of the squirrel army gets shredded by automatic weapons fire. Through a gap between barrels, Squirrel Girl sees one of the mercs grab Tippy-Toe (who was clawing at his face) and break her neck.

Sudden montage. The death of Monkey Joe. Other heroes laughing at her, or refusing to help. Tippy-Toe, lying horribly twisted in a pool of squirrel blood. Fade to red.

Next scene, Squirrel Girl is walking out of the complex with a few more superficial wounds. She’s holding a small case, presumably full of evidence. Her claws have left red streaks on the case. Through the open door behind her, we can see scattered human bodies among the rodents.

Phase 4:

Squirrel Girl has retreated into a National Park and declared it off-limits to other humans. Her network of squirrel scouts makes it all but impossible to find her on her own ground, let alone capture her. From her lair beneath a very large hollow tree, she sallies forth for occasional acts of eco-terrorism. Her most vicious campaign involves the use of squirrel volunteers inoculated with rabies. These suicide squirrel squads infected individuals she decided had committed “crimes against the Earth” before they were themselves overcome by the disease. She has also engaged in systematic theft from polluting companies and used the proceeds through various proxies to create an environmental group called “The Lorax Foundation” as a front for her activities.

Several superheroes have since entered her domain in an attempt to reason with or capture her. As they should have expected, given her past record, all of them wound up badly beaten and worse humiliated. (Except Wolverine, who refuses to discuss the incident.)

7

Reed Richards has a midlife crisis. After decades fighting evil as Mr. Fantastic it finally occurs to him how much potential his superpower has in pleasing the ladies. This doesn’t turn him into a villain, merely a womanizer . . . but it corrupts his soul and eventually, just like on many a Law & Order: SVU episode, he’s laying plots to get rid of his inconvenient wife. And from there it’s just a short step to boundless greed and world conquest.

8

OK…the Flash, one of the few that it hasn’t been done with that I can see it working…

Wally’s family life is finally settling down. He’s found a paying job. Jai and Iris’s ageing seems to have stabilized. He and Linda are even able to manage some alone time.

It’s good.

But everything breaks down. Zoom, Chronos, or some other time-based villain attacks.

Wally wins the day, of course, with the twins’ help.

But it’s not a victory without price. The temporal energies involved in the fight kick-start the twins ageing again. Wally, Linda, the JLA, the JSA, the Titans, and so forth do what they can - pooling their own scientific knowledge, calling in favours, etc.

But, in the end, it’s to no avail. The twins die of old age before their 5th birthday.

Wally and Linda are driven to despair, and they can’t even turn to each other for comfort, because they both blame themselves, and each other, because they allowed the kids to play hero with Wally. Their marriage is in shambles, even if they don’t officially break.

It begins to effect Wally’s job performance, and he’s fired.

His children dead, his marriage a wreck, his job lost…Wally’s desperate. The other heroes can’t help him - he’s fallen into such a black hole, their support rings hollow to him, and all they can do is support him. They can’t change the past.

Everything Zoom’s said to him comes rushing back. It’s not that they can’t change the past, it’s that they won’t. They say they shouldn’t…Wally even believed it himself, even after Zoom killed his kids the first time. But, he brought them back, didn’t he? And that didn’t hurt things. Granted it was an accident, but the principle holds, right?

So, he breaks the rules. He steals some of Chronos’ tech, and prevents the kids’ deaths. And things look fine.

So…why shouldn’t he fix more things? Why shouldn’t he break the rules?

He helps prevent the decline of Hunter Zolomon’s life, preventing the creation of Zoom. The changes are bigger - the twins are still infants, for instance - but, hey, even better.

So, he continues making changes, trying to fix everything he thought went wrong.

Barry didn’t need to die.

Neither did Ted Kord. Oh, but that turns the world into Max Lord’s personal playground. Well, we’ll just kill Max a little bit early, then. Maybe screw up his attempt to remove the Lord Havok technology.

There. No more Max, no more OMACs.

But, why stop at Max? Why should Lex Luthor not have a convenient accident before coming to Metropolis?

Why should the Joker have walked away from the accident with the chemicals?

Why should Hitler have not died in the trenches in WWI? Why should Josef Stalin have made it to adulthood?

Why shouldn’t he just remake the world to his liking?

9

Dude, have you seen his wife?

No?

Well, neither have I.

10

Mr. Incredible–the family gets killed.
And the killer is Sansweet. The suicide who sued him out of the Supers business.

Bye, Mr Sansweet.

After this revenge killing, Bob Parr decides that he’s taken enough crapola from the brainless masses. Now, he will dish it out.

11

Another motive for murder. How’s a guy supposed to get away with anything when his wife can turn invisible?!

12

“All my life science has been really great, but now, Sue’s gone, and lemme tell you, science ain’t blowing me.”

13

Aquaman is working to keep the Pacific clean, and having great difficulty since China, Japan, and the US (among others) are constantly moving superfreighters across the surface, spilling shitloads of Nikes, and dumping God-only-knows what into the ocean. He tries to confine himself to the worst offenders.

He finds a shipping company that (a) handles the cargoes that nobody else will, and (b) brazenly dumps them out at sea, he gets fed up and begins pulling empty ships from that fleet down into underwater volcanoes with the help of whales and giant squid. Unfortunately the shipping company is a state-owned subsidiary of the Chinese Communist Party, and they assume that their ships are being covertly sunk by the US Navy.

Tensions edge upward between the two nations, and in an effort to enforce peace, Aquaman gets the largest of the Pacific-dwelling creatures to hold back a US carrier group that’s on its way to rattle its sabers. A submarine captain panics when his vessel is dragged down, and he fires his torpedoes, which explode against the kraken, pulling both beast and boat to a watery grave. Aquaman immediately calls off the attack, but the US assumes Chinese complicity.

Things go to hell quickly, and finally Aquaman has no choice but to blockade all trans-Pacific naval traffic until the two sides will agree to a peace treaty. Each side is too proud and believes that it has been aggrieved, but the blockade has a ripple effect: with sea trade between the two nations questionable, the economic fate of both superpowers is at risk. They counter-attack, and Aquaman’s army (navy?) triumphs. The cost in lives is too great though – embittered by the loss of so many good cetaceans, he stubbornly maintains his ultimatum: clean shipping or no shipping.

The economic ruin causes the collapse of the dollar and the yuan, and millions go hungry. Riots in China and the US result in untold billions of dollars in damages and hundreds of thousands of deaths. By the time he realizes the impact to the world above, he has convinced himself that he’s doing the Right Thing, and in between managing raids on the remaining ships in the Pacific, sketches out plans to move his operations to the Atlantic as well…

14

Not to mention the damn Spectre stepped on his home. Gotta piss you off, especially when you assume he’s not a Christian.

15

Due to extensive and repeated injury, an aging Batman suffers a stroke that changes his personality for the worse. This kind of thing actually happens in real life, so I’m not reaching here. He stops having any concern for Human life, starting with criminal scumbags and eventually proceeding to violent hatred for the common people who refuse to get involved, who pretend not to see the crime around them. In short, he starts to follow the path that Ras Al-ghul wanted him to follow in Batman Begins.

16

This is genius.

17

I kinda did something like this, once, in a…short story.

More like a Twilight Zone-style alternative interpretation than a “Start of Darkness,” though.

That’s probably the angle I’d go with…hopefully I can have something on paper this week.

18

I really liked yours, Tengu.

19

I’m with all those who thought that Tengu rocked.