Wrap up: Batman's Villains

     Hello everyone! I hope you enjoyed looking through our blog and hopefully learned many new ideas and perspectives about both villains and superheroes. Although both sides appear entirely different, upon further examination they contain many similarities that, ironically, make them perfect for each other. In my series of blogs, I delved further into the Batman series and discovered that Batman has a little piece of each of his enemies: the scare tactics of Scarecrow, the strength and intellect of Bane, the wealth of the Penguin, etc..
     Despite these overwhelming similarities, it is obvious why Batman is considered the "hero" and his enemies the "villains". Their actions reveal their true intent, destruction and chaos, while Batman's actions reveals his intent to maintain peace in the city. The main difference between Batman and his enemies lies within his one rule: never kill. All of Batman's enemies simply desire money, power or revenge, while The Joker does so simply to be evil and create chaos in the city. The Joker's cleverness has gotten him to realize that chaos will always be contained as long as the hero of the city remains the hero. His plan is to corrupt the hero to remove all hope and possibility of stopping the chaos that will inevitably ensue. All he has to do is get Batman to break his one rule, and it can occur at any instant. As The Joker stated, "All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy. That is how far the world is from where I am. One. Bad. Day." So how different is Batman from his enemies?

Final Post

So for this final blog post I am going to re cap everything that I have learned about villains and the relationships between heroes and villains. The first major point I have discovered is that a hero cannot carry the villain and the billain cannot carry the hero. What I mean by that is, that it takes more than an interesting hero or villain to make a comic good. Next I learned that what makes the relationship between heroes and villains interesting is how relatable the relationships is to the reader. Lastly I have learned that a villain is absolutely nessissary for comics because of how interesting they make them and because Otis the hero villain relationship that drive sales of comics. It has been a pleasure to discover things and share my findings with you all, I hope you enjoyed reading and that you learned something interesting about villains.

final thoughts



Hello and welcome back, I would first like to thank you for being avid readers of the blog up to this point and let you know that unfortunately, this will be my final post on the blog.  I hope I was able to teach you something new or shape your view on the relationship between super villains and superheroes in some way. I had a great time researching and forming an opinion on the relationship between heroes and villains and I can only hope you had as great of a time following the blog.

When I first started this project I had never read a comic book or watched an entire superhero movie. I now have a new found understanding and appreciation not only for villains but for the comic world in general. By doing this project, I learned more than anticipated, I learned the importance of protagonist and antagonist roles in everyday life as well as how to analyze a picture and see the many different things that a simple line could have. I am now able to see the value of many things I have dismissed in the past as irrelevant or unimportant and I am hopeful that you were able to get the same appreciation out of reading my posts. Where I once saw a generic bad guy in a movie, I now empathize with a misunderstood delinquent who is living a life style he feels is proper. A relationship I dismissed as bad guy vs good guy, I now see as a villain pushing a hero to be the best version of themselves, pushing them to their limits, causing them to question their morals and ultimately helping them grow for the better. Most importantly, I found and appreciation for the “villains” and “evil” in my life and a gratitude for how they have helped me grow into the strong version of myself.  

Wrap Up

Hello readers! Sadly, this will be my last blog post about Villains and Superheroes. I hope you all enjoyed what I have had to offer. After doing all of this research and reading, I've learned that surprisingly, not all villains are bad. They all have their backstory and hold a purpose in each comic book. Prior to this blog I would define villains as the "bad guys" and superheroes as the "good guys" without question. Although the villains are, more or less, still the "bad guys," theres more to them then we never bothered to look at. Reflecting back on my previous blog posts, I can't imagine what any superhero would be like without a villain to fight against. There would be no excitement or adventure in the comic if there were no villain. I also learned that we, as readers of comics, overlook villains and their past. In reality, we only care about the superhero when we should be looking at both sides of the story. Villains really are the necessary evil, and without them, there wouldn't be as big of a need for superheroes. As readers of my blog, I hope that you have learned more about the relationship between superheroes and villains. Stop whatever you're doing right now and try to imagine something for me: what would batman be without joker? who would wonder woman be without villains? why would captain america exist without red skull?  Next time before you judge a villain and his action, you should take a step back and realize that the comic you are reading needs that villain in order to succeed and form a storyline. Thanks for reading!

Batman's Thanksgiving

In this video Bruce Wayne is struggling to find people to connect with so he turns to one of his only friends, Alfred. Bruce asks Alfred to find some people that he can connect with, but soon realizes that no one he knows truly understands him. Later that evening, Alfred catches Bruce talking to, what would appear to be a close friend. Bruce tell Alfred that he has found a service that allows him to talk with people who truly get him. Alfred, upon seeing the overjoyed Bruce Wayne, decides to call the number of this service and he is greeted by the answering machine of Arkham Asylum. In our blog we talk about how the relationships between the hero and the villain is very dynamic and complex, and this is what makes villains so interesting to read about. In our video we show that Bruce has such strong and deep connections with his villains that, perhaps if circumstances were different, they could even be friends. Our video demonstrates this by showing Bruce connecting with the people he put away in Arkham Asylum.

Batman's Thanksgiving

Additional sources

As promised, I’m back this week with an individual post. Upon further research of the blog topic, I came across a few articles relevant to the discussion and I felt the need to share.

Tyree, J. M. "American Heroes." Film Quarterly, 62.3 (2009): 28-34.

              The first article I came across was a scholarly source in the form of a journal article. This article answers the question that silently lingers in the back of our heads as we indulge ourselves in an endless array of comic movies, “with so many heroes around, how does the criminal element manage to thrive at all?” (Tyree 28). Author, J.M. Tyree, refers to a statement made by the joker in order to answer the frequently asked question. "as Heath Ledger’s Joker suggests near the end of The Dark Knight, is that the hero and the villain require each other completely, so that one cannot exist without the other, and the cycle of escalating acts of good and evil is a perpetual motion machine set to continue for  all  eternity,  or  at  least  a  substantial  run  of  sequels  and spin-offs” (28). In making this connection, Tyree is saying that what keeps the hero and villain relationship alive is the mutual dependence each character has on the other. As stated in many, if not every blog before this, the villain needs the hero just as much as the hero needs the villain. The hero needs the villain to push him to his boundaries and question his morals, causing him to grow and the villain needs the hero in order to influence his behavior causing him to either change his morals or behave in a worse manner. Another point made by Tyree was that “the hero must confront and vanquish an identical—but evil—version of himself in order both to survive and to save the world from severe property damage”(28). If you are a fan of the blog, I highly suggest reading Tyree’s article since he provides readers with evidence that support almost every argument I have made in my past blog posts.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/10.1525/fq.2009.62.3.28.pdf?acceptTC=true&jpdConfirm=true

Three New Sources: Why are villains good?

Hello readers! Welcome back! Today I will be summarizing three new sources that I have not yet used in order to further strengthen my argument that "Superheroes need villains." I hope that you enjoy!

In this article, the author is both knowledgeable and credible. The author is knowledgeable because she uses real life examples to show the value and benefits of villains vs. heroes.  She is very much credible because she is the author of a book that discusses philosophical ideas.  Her intended audience is most likely teenagers to adults because she uses real life current events that we might have seen on the news. I believe that this article is sponsored by Springer Link, a database for scientific documents and articles.  This site was intended to form an argument, and in this one paragraph, specifically, whether or not villains are good. This site is from the year 2012, therefore we are most likely familiar with the incidents that she talks about. 

(Markovits, Julia. "Saints, Heroes, Sages, and Villains." Springerlink.com. Springer Link, 2012. Web. 12 Nov. 2015.)

In this article, the author discusses the value of villains in the society.  This author is also both knowledgable and credible in his discussion. The author proves to be knowledgable because he did a study on villains, and he seems to be credible because he does a lot of media work with newspapers and has even started his own media platform. The authors intended audience is probably college students or young adults because he makes connections throughout the article as a former college student.  This site was intended to discuss the authors opinions about villains and why they should be given more credit in society. He looks into villains backstories and proves why they are valuable.  This site is from 2012, therefore he is probably up to date with all of the "hero vs. villain" news. 

(Schultz, Dan. "The Value of a Super Villain." Slifty.com. N.p., 2012. Web. 12 Nov. 2015.)

In this article, the author is describing all of Wonder Woman's different villains and why each of them were important to her. This author is credible because he is posting his articles through a website named "Newsarama" which specializes in comic book information and history since 1998. The author is obviously very knowledgable considering he is able to list all of Wonder Woman's enemies. The authors intended audience is most likely teenagers because most teenagers are starting or already have an interest in comic books. This site is intended to inform people about Wonder Woman's unknown villains and elaborate on the relationships that the hero had with all of them.  This site is very current, 2015, therefore, all of the information he has given is up to date and collected from all of the Wonder Woman comics from the beginning. 

(Marston, George. "Top 10 WONDER WOMAN VILLAINS of All Time." Newsarama.com. Newsarama, 2015. Web. 12 Nov. 2015.)