complementary characters

Hello and welcome back! Today we will once again be discussing the importance of both heroes and villains and what their roles offer to the plot. In this article from the Newsday posts, Steve Knopper highlights what makes a good supervillain by giving examples of successful DC and Marvel characters. While both comics chose to display their villains in completely different ways, they have both managed to create memorable characters and alluring story lines. By analyzing the two types of villains, Knopper makes it is evident that the reoccurring successor of a good villain is the “the mythology laid down in the vibrant hues of the comic books”. As I’ve mentioned in my previous blogs, your hero is only as good as your villain. While fans know every detail about a superheroes mythology, the villain’s tragic back story is just as crucial to the story line. Knopper provides us with examples of a DC and Marvel movies that successfully portray their villains and their different approaches of creating them. Marvel portrays their villains and heroes as mirrored images of the superhero, this relationship is made evident in the first Spiderman movie. Both Peter Parker and Norman Osborn endure freak lab accidents where Parker becomes the heroic Spiderman and Osborn mirroring the protagonist, becomes the evil psychopath, The Green Goblin. DC comics on the other hand portray their characters as arch-nemeses where the villain exploits the weaknesses of our superhero. For example, Batman, while still being human, possess human traits such as morals and a psyche that can be attached; the joker exploits these human weaknesses by toying with batman’s morals and issuing him ultimatums that are against his morals.  While the roles of the villains are completely different, Knopper insists that the reason they are both successful antagonist is not because they torment the hero and look scary but because somewhere along the story line, we were provided with their psychological histories. By knowing what drives the villain to do the sinister things he does, he in a way seems more human, more believable and ultimately more interesting.

Knopper’s article complimented the theme of my blog further by exaggerating the importance of a villains back story and explaining the different types of protagonist-to-antagonist relationships in the comic world. Throughout the article, Knopper maintains that “The more you can ground your villain in reality, the scarier he or she will be” in making this comment, Knopper advocates the benefits of an antagonist’s history and what it offers to the plot.  These benefits are later emphasized when Knopper clarifies just how the influential the on-screen relationship was to the box-office success of the movie. Knopper’s 2004 findings imply that the use of these character tactics resulted in their success in the box office and ranked the two movies as the top 5 grossing comic book film of all time. The relationship between Spiderman and the memorably schizophrenic Green Goblin earned Marvel $822 million box-office gross worldwide since its release in 2002 and second on that list was the complementing yet contradicting relationship between the structured Batman and the chaotic Joker in the 1989 film, earning DC $411 million. These findings have important implications for the broader domain of why it’s important for writers to have three-dimensional characters that complement one another. What sounds like such a simple request for success is often over looked by most comic writers who view the superhero as the most important aspect of the comic. As a prominent philosopher Knopper puts it, “You can have the greatest hero in the world, but you cannot have a good story unless you have an equally great villain”. Essentially, we are arguing not that your villain should outshine your hero, but rather complement and improve him.

Knopper, Steve. (2004, Jun 27). It takes a villain, in helping to make our heroes super, these arch- nemeses not only show a human side, but they are so irredeemably bad they're marvelous. Newsday Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/279797004?accountid=7285