Which is a better power for a supervillain in a comic book setting both practically and from a story standpoint?
Assume they’re a normal villain and not a mastermind Lex Luthor type.
1: The strength and durability of any person they kill is added to their own. If they kill 10 men capable of lifting 100 pounds each they now can lift 1,000 pounds and are 10 times as durable as a normal person. There is no limit to how strong they can get.
2: Every life they take is added to theirs. If they die from any cause in a moment they’re returned to pristine condition as long as they have an extra life. There is no limit to how many lives they can get.
I think the first one is likely more “useful,” as well as interesting. Not only does it make said villain increasingly powerful, but it makes it even more important, from a story standpoint, that they be stopped as soon as possible (before they grow so strong and durable that nothing can stop them).
With the second one, stopping them is just a matter of putting them in a room, and killing them again and again until they runs out of extra lives. For instance: drop them into a cauldron of molten steel (a la Terminator 2) or a room full of poison gas, and seal it. Being “reborn” repeatedly won’t help if you keep getting reborn into an immediately-fatal environment.
Not to mention, serial immortality also does nothing against nonlethal actions taken by heroes. Surviving death doesn’t matter when you’re rotting in a cell in the Zig.
The only thing the second one has going for it is that it gives the villain a motivation for murder, but the first one also does that.
Oh, wait, one other application for the second one is if it also includes death by old age: That would allow you to have a villain millennia old, but without making him godlike in the process.
Very true, and many superheroes try to not kill. OTOH, prisons and the like in comic books are apparently just stupidly easy to get out of, given how often supervillains return.
The second point is kind of key: if you aren’t a mastermind/manipulator type, the possibility of serial immortality and fundamentally learning infinite skills/knowledge/wealth leaves you as a shlub that spends eternity going from one grift to another. It would be great for about 1-2 graphic novel compilations (we’ll say a 12 issue mini-series), but not much more.
If you’re going to show up in recurring stories, the first - and if they’re even half smart, they’ll probably arrange for a big kill early on (botulism or something else easy to create/get in a local water supply). But if they’re just tough and strong, their abilities are fundamentally self limiting. They can be mentally manipulated, dragged out to isolated areas by speedsters or flight heroes, teleported, sedated, the works. The problem is, there are tons of ‘heavies’ out there that are already strong and tough, he won’t be memorable, other than the fact he’s an active killer - which makes him harder to keep in a stable as a villain - he’d be put in the villain SuperMAX and no one would want to release him, even fellow capes - because they’d be a better target than the average joe.
So he’d be caught (he’s probably not smart enough to keep off the radar for long) - thrown in jail, and eventually probably executed depending upon the judicial system. So, he’d be a short term arc story for one hero.
Thinking some more about this: Strength-stealer is no good as a recurring character. When he’s first revealed to the world, he’s either stopped quickly, or he becomes unbeatable. On the other hand, he has motive to commit lots and lots of murders very quickly, which creates a strong motive to stop him.
Life-stealer, however, can play the slow game. His optimal MO is probably to commit one murder every time he reaches old age, because dying back into the prime of his life shortly afterwards is a great way to shake the heat (the authorities, whoever they are, are looking for an old man, not a young one). Plus the odd kill here and there as opportunity arises, when he’s sure he can get away with it, to build up a “rainy day fund” of reserve lives, to deal with when he occasionally gets into deep trouble and gets Rasputined (hey, maybe he was Rasputin!). On average, he’s probably only getting one kill every 30 or 40 years, which makes him a much lower priority target for a superhero.
One way this character could work well is if the strength gain isn’t permanent, and he slowly returns to normal strength if he doesn’t keep his body count up. That way, you can do the, “We have to stop Captain Murder before he murders enough people to be unstoppable!” plot pretty much every time he breaks out of prison.
The life stealer idea is harder to make interesting, I think. First, it only really works if the villain keeps dying in ways that make it impossible to recover the body, and there’s only so many times you can crash your helicopter into a volcano. Once the heroes figure out that the villain will just come back to life after he dies, there’s no reason for them to hold off on using lethal force as soon as they encounter him, and then just locking the body up until it starts breathing again. Second, if you’re going with the “Expert in multiple disciplines because they’ve lived so long,” angle, then the life stealing becomes moot - they’ll have accumulated enough of a body count by the present day that they’re basically just regular immortal. Certainly, the heroes aren’t going to kill the villain enough times to burn through thousands of years of murders.
Well, part of the question would be when said villain got the power. If it’s in recent historical times (such as the Marvel New Universe “White Event”) then they are pretty much a person with default modern powers. They’re be familiar with modern tech, reasonable proficient at whatever job/jobs they were doing prior to the event, but with minimal saved lives. We’ll use an example where they figured out the power right after killing a person in a fit of rage, who happened to in same fight inflict a mortal wound on the character. Boom.
This sort of villain’s story is going to likely be short - since they may already be wanted for murder. Although if they just ‘know’ the power, they’re still stuck trying to find a way to kill someone without noticing. I’d bet they could probably manage a few, since if they’re smart (not supervillain smart, but smart) they’d kill someone random, without a target.
(( for @kenobi_65 - this person could have been the one responsible for the Tylenol Tampering Murders as a clever way of getting his saved lives bar up ))
The problem is they still are stuck working for a living. This power doesn’t make them money in any way, or make it easier to do crimes, they can just survive nearly anything. Short of going to work for another supervillain as a test subject, they may still find themselves stuck to weekly shift in an office.
Now, maybe as a novel (or RPG setting) this would work, but in a (generally) action heavy visual media like a comic book, I think it would be dull past the set up (thus my 12 issue mini-series).
Switching to the historical option, I could see them becoming a reoccurring villain in a story - the hero’s can’t touch him/her legally, because all the crimes happened beyond any statute of limitations, and probably in another country. Sadly, this person doesn’t have combat skills - they are probably the best ditch digger in the world, or maybe all organic farmer, but many skills that would have been of immense value historically are largely obsolete in modern society.
But they’d be a great reference for the heroes as a living witness to history. It would be one of those characters that the hero would hate having to deal with, because he knows they’re evil, but no one else has the knowledge needed. The sort of character who is probably at least charming, and good at reading people (from lots of experience), but whose very very casual respect for life leaves the Protagonist constantly questioning themselves and their world.
Now one more cool question - is their ability limited to human lives? Because I could see such a character being the worlds oldest butcher as well. The OP only said “every life they take”. At which point, it would be able to be a sympathetic character. Or, it could be like the Light Novel “Omniscient Reader” where he killed a bunch of insect eggs and received kill credits on a technicality.
Well, the White event happened in 1986 - so by now they’d have developed an understanding of what they are and how their powers work. My point (poorly made I acknowledge) is that if they came into their powers recently, they don’t have the advantages an ancient variant has - knowledge of old abandoned cities they could ‘stumble’ over, caches of coin they set aside a long time ago, and a giant pile of stored lives they could have accumulated when it was easier to ‘die’ and re-appear as a new person somewhere else.
But it goes to the point -
Story-wise, the 2nd is probably more interesting. But in a comic book setting, to be a supervillain, you generally have to DO something. The heavy can do all the usual stuff, rob banks, beat up people, destroy things. The immortal could certainly become the worlds most successful suicide bomber (after all, they’d be getting ‘credit’ each time they attacked a target) - or perhaps set themselves up as some sort of minor God / Prophet with a loyal following they milk.
But that doesn’t fall under most comic-book style villainy.
Right, I get that - my point is, without all that stuff, they’re just a guy. If they’ve only been immortal since '86, what makes them dangerous enough that you’d need a superhero to fight them?
In comics heroes respond to any threat as long as they’re close by when it happens, they’re asked to by the authorities or they see it on the news. Even if the immortal villain in this scenario was “only” robbing a bank or taking out a rival gang in a manner indistinguishable from a normal criminal they’d be sufficient of a threat to warrant a response by one vigilante or another. Even more so once it’s apparent they can’t die permanently.
My take-away is that everyone is thinking of “murders”, but that’s not what the OP suggests. It’s just “taking a life”. That would include lots of killing that isn’t considered murder, legally. Imagine if this guy was a soldier during a time of war? US combatants, if they’re front-line trigger pullers, would tend to kill a lot more people than US soldiers get killed these days. It even provides a good opportunity for the person to find out that they have superpowers, because of the one time an IED blows them in half, and then they wake up fit as a fiddle.
And my example above is also how they become a “supervillain”. Imagine a soldier in Iraq or Afghanistan, who, after being part of a force that killed a whole lot of people (collateral damage, anyone?), becomes effectively immortal, but also ends up becoming sympathetic to the opposing side in the war.
Imagine an immortal suicide bomber who comes back to life after every bombing. Even a bad bombing would likely take a few more lives, making them that little bit harder to permanently kill.
And it also makes it very very hard for normal law enforcement to arrest and imprison them. How do you arrest a person who has no reason not to always wear a bomb vest? It goes off, kills everyone trying to arrest the person, who then wakes up and walks off.
I guess our parallel lines of thought is that I’m focusing on what is the better story, but not always on what is the better supervillain/superhero story. Neither of us are wrong, but I’m not sure we’d find a place where we both meet a mutually satisfactory conclusion.
It reminds me of the problem of the various street-level superhero stories - are a bunch of normal thugs really something to take seriously? There’s an old Spider-Man comic where he’s attacked by a WWE sized African American thug with oversized brass knuckles, and he gets frustrated and swats him away - throwing him across the room and into a wall. His point is that even as a low level super (relatively), that his biggest issue is holding back with ‘norms’. The immortal is, aside from not being ultimately killable, just a guy.
For me, that could actually be an advantage from the story telling POV, but is a probable negative from a traditional action comic POV.
As always, the devil is in the details. What kind of story do you want to create? What is the medium? Tv, novel, rpg- each has different needs.
That said, what are the mechanics of the power? Does the guy have to be in physical contact? Can he poison someone and be a continent away and still benefit? What about if he orders a murder? What if it’s self defense, or an accident?
Your villain is the CEO of a company that makes cigarettes, opiate based medications, firearms, and pesticides. He grows more more powerful with every death his perfectly legal products cause, but the heroes can’t touch him.
Yeah, this is where you’d have the real story telling. There are some crimes that punching won’t solve.
Another story arc - this guy is the CEO of a Blackwater-esque Private Military Company, who likes to go out in the field every now and then to get his hands dirty, and rack up a few more free lives. He goes out of his way to exacerbate volatile political situations so as to always have business available.
