When I left off last week I was going through Dr. Peter Coogan’s definition of the supervillain in his book Superhero: The Secret Origin of a Genre (MonkeyBrain Press, 2006), which should be a basic text for superhero genre studies, and discussing a major “supervillain” in contemporary pop culture whom he had left out: Dr. Hannibal Lecter.

Even leaving aside the thousands of supervillains created for comic books, it’s inevitable that Coogan’s book couldn’t mention all the interesting candidates for supervillainy in high and pop culture.

For example, how about the Queen of the Night in Mozart’s 1791 opera The Magic Flute? Aren’t her showpiece arias, full of coloratura fireworks, the musical equivalent of what Coogan (and The Incredibles) calls the supervillain’s proclivity for monologuing? Iago’s “Credo” in Verdi’s Otello (1887), an operatic adaptation of Shakespeare’s play, is an even clearer example.

In his early German films director Fritz Lang pioneered the use of the “supervillain” in cinema through such characters as Dr. Mabuse (beginning with Dr. Mabuse der Spieler in 1922), the mad scientist Rotwang in Metropolis (1927), whose title was the source of the name of Superman’s home city, and the Bondian mastermind Haghi in Spione (Spies, 1928). All three characters were played by Rudolf Klein-Rogge, the movies’ first specialist in “supervillainy.”

There are even candidates for supervillain status in the world of animated comedy. Consider the Hooded Claw, the dual-identitied masked archvillain of Hanna-Barbera’s The Perils of Penelope Pitstop (1969-1971), who loves monologuing (in the unmistakable voice of Paul Lynde) about his latest insanely elaborate death trap for the title heroine. Another characteristic that Coogan attributes to supervillains is mania, and who better exemplifies it than a certain Warners Animation mouse who fanatically persists in his grandiose ambitions in spite of continual failures:

PINKY: What are we going to do tonight, Brain?

THE BRAIN: The same thing we do every night, Pinky: try to take over the world!

Dr. Coogan found three criteria for identifying a superhero: mission, power, and identity, and these are also three of his seven criteria for supervillains.

“Power is central to [the] definition of supervillain,” Coogan writes; “if a malign individual has only the strength, wit, and other resources available to normal human beings, they [sic] are mere villains. If the resources and abilities of the police are sufficient to counter a villain’s schemes, he is just a bad guy. But if a villain transcends those abilities and holds mastery of so many resources that even major world government are working against the odds when they try to stop him, then he is a supervillain, particularly if those resources are matched to a vision that goes beyond mere avarice–if they [sic] have an ego-soaked or ego-driven mania or vision, some great project to accomplish, especially if this project is socially transformative but will have to be forced upon an unwilling populace and especially if it involves mass murder or massive numbers of deaths, or if the project can be viewed–in a sick and twisted way–as art. Therefore, mission and power as the two important defining elements of supervillainy” (Superhero, pgs. 95-96).

There are some major problems with this thesis. First, there are many, many characters who are unquestionably supervillains, but whose goals go no further than robbing banks and killing the superheroes who keep foiling their schemes. Think of the Penguin, the Riddler, Two-Face, the Vulture, Captain Cold, the Mirror Master, and Captain Boomerang, among so many others.

Second, there are many supervillans, such as Doctor Doom, that even “major world governments” would have trouble stopping. Jim Starlin’s Thanos succeeded in wiping out half the population of the universe in The Infinity Gauntlet (1990). If Jack Kirby’s Darkseid got hold of the anti-life equation, he could enslave the entire population of the universe. But if the United States government sent the entire might of its armed forces to capture the Riddler or the Vulture, those criminals wouldn’t have a chance. But, as noted, the Riddler and Vulture operate on a smaller scale than Doctor Doom or Thanos: the former two are basically costumed thieves. But they are supervillains because their wiliness and skills enable them to defy the legal authorities who likewise operate on this smaller scale: the city police. It takes superheroes–Batman and Spider-Man–to capture the Riddler and the Vulture. Once again, context counts.

But even if “the resources and abilities of the police” prove to be insufficient “to counter a villain’s schemes,” that still doesn’t necessarily make him a supervillain. Isn’t a premise of a typical Sherlock Holmes story that the police, represented by Inspector Lestrade, are too unimaginative to solve the crime, and that only Holmes has the genius to find and capture the culprit? In fact, isn’t it a common theme of the mystery genre that the principal villain is too smart for the police, and that only Hercule Poirot, Philip Marlowe, or whoever the detective hero is, can outwit him? Lieutenant Columbo is a member of the police force, but he is invariably the only policeman who notices the telltale clues and identifies the true murderer.

Moreover, in the television series 24, even though our “major world government” has an efficient, highly capable Counter-Terrorist Unit, the show creates the impression that only one man, Jack Bauer, can stop the terrorist masterminds. Are these masterminds, even when they tote around suitcase nukes, supervillains? Or are they simply more ordinary villains who have managed to procure weapons of mass destruction? The main villains on 24 lack the outsized personalities that more likely candidates for the role of supervillain, such as Dr. Lecter and Captain Nemo, possess.

Speaking of these two, they fit the “power” requirement, too. Captain Nemo poses a threat to the world’s navies with his Nautilus. Dr. Lecter’s extraordinary intelligence enables him to outwit most lawmen, with rare exceptions such as Will Graham, the hero of Red Dragon, and Clarice Starling, the heroine of Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal. (Significantly, Graham is an F. B. I. profiler, who attempts to capture serial killers by thinking as they do, and Starling in Silence is studying profiling.)

Coogan’s final criterion for supervillainy is identity. But, Coogan states, “in the reverse of the superhero[’s case], identity is the weakest element of the definition of the supervillain and is not necessary but typical. It is a necessary aspect of inverted-superhero supervillains since they wear costumes and have codenames.” For example, Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot is the Penguin. However, “Unlike superheroes, they often do not maintain secret identities. . . .They often give up their normal lives, deciding to live purely within the super-world. They have abandoned the things that tie them to mundane existence and cut themselves off from normal life. Just as the secret identity helps the superhero retain ties to the larger society he protects, so does the villain‘s abandonment of the ordinary identity magnify his selfishness and disconnect from the larger society he attacks” (p. 96).

“Captain Nemo” is an assumed name: Nemo has abandoned his true identity, which, we learn in Jules Verne’s Mysterious Island (1874), is Prince Dakkar, the son of an Indian rajah. He has indeed “cut” himself “off from normal life” and severed his “ties to the larger society.” The Disney Leagues movie makes evident his contempt for his visitors from the surface world, except for Professor Aronnax, whom he regards as intellectually capable of understanding and appreciating him.

Dr. Lecter does not have a codename, but he is given a nickname, “Hannibal the Cannibal.” Lecter does not willingly abandon society: he is extracted from it and incarcerated when his crimes are exposed. Hence in the first two novels in which he appears, Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs, Lecter is a prisoner. After escaping in Silence, Lecter has adopted a dual identity in the next novel, Hannibal, and has reintegrated himself into civilized society as art historian Dr. Fell. But again, he is exposed and forced to abandon his role in society. But in that novel’s ending (which is very different from the film adaptation’s), he has apparently reestablished himself in society in Buenos Aires, presumably under yet another assumed identity.

Nevertheless, the salient point is that all three books primarily present Dr. Lecter as an outsider. Indeed, as a prisoner, Lecter abandons the social graces he must have possessed as a member of society and adopts a monstrous persona to terrify and intimidate most members of “the larger society” who deal with him.

The Joker has separated himself from “the larger society” of which he was once a part, as the possible origin that Alan Moore gave him in Batman: The Killing Joke (1988) shows. It’s a mistake to attempt to give the Joker a “real name,” as Tim Burton’s Batman movie (1989) did, since the lack of a “civilian identity” distances the Joker even further from “the larger society” that he attacks.

In Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen (1986-1987), Ozymandias purports to be a superhero, seeking to save the world, yet his actions cast him in the role of supervillain. Towards the end of the series, Ozymandias literally separates himself from society by retreating to his Antarctic base, Karnak. (This base is obviously partly inspired by Superman and Doc Savage’s arctic Fortresses of Solitude, but neither Superman nor Savage stay full time at their bases, whereas in Watchmen, once Ozymandias goes there, significantly we never see him leave.)

Nowadays, the notion of giving a superhero a secret, “civilian” identity has fallen out of fashion with various comics editors and writers. Note that Coogan emphasizes the importance of the secret identity in helping him “retain ties to the larger society he protects”; indeed, the “civilian identity” keeps the superhero in touch with his own humanity. This is why Superman must continue his alternate life as Clark Kent. It is the supervillain who typically cuts himself off from “the larger society.” So, when Marvel has Spider-Man publicly reveal his Peter Parker identity in Civil War, and live with his wife and aunt at Avengers headquarters, it should be clear that the company is moving its flagship character in the wrong direction.

Coogan contends that the supervillain can be found in genres other than the superhero genre, and that the supervillain even predates the creation of the first superhero, Superman. It’s true that there are many examples of larger-than-life, even fantastical villains, whom Coogan would class as supervillains, pitted against heroes who, however extraordinary, do not qualify as superheroes. Thus Sir Denis Nayland Smith, who is not a superhero, is the nemesis of the great supervillain Dr. Fu Manchu.

In the classic British television series The Avengers (see “Comics in Context” #52-53), John Steed and Mrs. Emma Peel, who are secret agents, not superheroes, sometimes contended against super-powerful adversaries, such as the Cybernaut robots (whose creator, Dr. Clement Armstrong, was clearly a Mad Scientist), and the Positive Negative Man, who fired lethal electrical discharges from his finger, rather like Spider-Man’s enemy Electro. In one episode, “The Winged Avenger” (1967), the title character is an actual costumed supervillain, a cartoonist impersonating his own fictional superhero, whose weapons are his razor-sharp claws, which also allow him to scale walls. (And this is seven years before the creation of Wolverine!)

In The X-Files F. B. I. agents Mulder and Scully, who fit the detective archetype, regularly combatted supervillains. Many of the latter had actual super-powers, such as the shapeshifting, nearly invulnerable alien Bounty Hunter.

The show’s archvillain is known by a codename: the Cigarette-Smoking Man. The significance of that name is made clear by another alias he is sometimes given: Cancer Man. Cigarettes cause cancer, which is a cause of death, marking the CSM as a figure of death. His real name, like the Joker’s, is a mystery. (The series eventually gave him the name “C. G. B. Spender” but suggests this is one alias among many others.). Though the CSM is a high government official, in his personal life he lives alone, cut off from “the larger society.” Indeed, his covert operations likewise isolate him from society at large. He has no super-powers, but he commands vast resources in the U. S. government and armed forces (making him an Enemy Commander), as well as advanced technology. The CSM also shares the supervillainous trait of returning time and again from apparent death. He has a sense of mission, and justifies his crimes by claiming they are for the ultimate goal of staving off an impending alien invasion. The CSM even has a few psychological “wounds.” He was estranged from his lover, Mulder’s mother (and by the end of the series it was evident that the CSM was Mulder’s real father). If the episode “Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man” (1996) is to be believed, he is a failed writer of fiction, a particularly unusual sort of “wound.”

If James West, the hero of the television series The Wild Wild West (1965-1969) was conceived by his creator Michael Garrison as “James Bond on horseback,” then his archnemesis, Dr. Miguelito Loveless, was the show’s version of a Bondian supervillain. Set in the 1870s, The Wild Wild West was a fusion of the Western with the Bondian superspy genre with science fiction.

Coogan lists five categories of supervillain, and Dr. Loveless fits three. Primarily, he is a Mad Scientist, a genius who invented radio and television a century early, as shown in his debut episode, “The Night the Wizard Shook the Earth” (1965), whose title perceptively links the Mad Scientist with the evil sorcerers of earlier literature. In the series’ second season, Loveless proved able to create scientific marvels that lay beyond the reach of even early 21st century science. For example, in “The Night of the Surreal McCoy” (1967), he opens portals into pocket alternate realities through paintings. (Hey, that’s like Bert’s sidewalk painting in Mary Poppins! See “Comics in Context” #158.) Dr. Loveless is also a Criminal Mastermind, and in another episode, “The Night of the Bogus Bandits” (1967), he leads a private army, making him an Enemy Commander. (In that episode he even wears a military-style uniform.)

Dr. Loveless is fond of monologuing. In fact, there’s an amusing sequence in “The Night of the Raven” (1966) in which West and his fellow agent Artemus Gordon feign lack of interest in Loveless’s latest scheme in order to provoke him into delivering a monologue, telling them all about it, demanding their recognition of his achievement. (These last three episodes will be released on DVD on March 20 in The Wild Wild West Vol. 2.)

Loveless has a strong sense of mission. He commits his terrorist attacks on the California state government (in his debut episode) as part of his plan to take over the southern part of the state and transform it into a utopia for children. Later, in “The Night of the Murderous Spring” (1966), Loveless has extended the scope of his mission to the entire planet: he intends to wipe out the human race in order to return the planet to a pristine natural state.

Like other supervillains, Dr. Loveless sees himself as an artist, and, indeed, a high point of his appearances comes when he performs a song. He has a sense of theatricality: he deceives West by impersonating his own supposed uncle in “The Night Dr. Loveless Died” (1967) and heads his own circus in “The Night of Miguelito’s Revenge” (1968). (Of course, supercriminals typically devise elaborate schemes of revenge against their heroic nemeses rather than, say, simply shooting them dead. Such convoluted plots are the expressions of the villains’ sinister creative imaginations, and hence, their equivalent of works of art.)

Loveless also has very strong “wounds.” He claims to be the rightful owner of Southern California, and that the U. S. government has usurped it. More importantly, he is a dwarf, whose condition causes him continual pain, and he sees himself not only as a target of prejudice but as the victim of a cruel universe.

Loveless’s sense of humor and joy in manipulating West also mark him as a trickster. Many supervillains, such as the Joker, are malevolent tricksters, while various superheroes, such as Spider-Man, with his snappy patter, act as tricksters against their adversaries. If Coogan’s Superhero ever has a sequel, it would behoove him to explore this subject. (I’ve written extensively about the trickster archetype in my analysis of Neil Gaiman’s novel Anansi Boys in “Comics in Context” #105-108.)

And then there’s Count Petofi in the 1897 sequence of Dark Shadows (originally telecast in 1969; see “Comics in Context” #11), who not only has tremendous magical powers (making him an Evil Sorcerer, the counterpart of the Mad Scientist), but has a “wound” that is both physical and psychological: he hates and fears the gypsies for severing his hand. Petofi too regards himself as an artist, and was repeatedly shown happily studying musical scores while silently “conducting” them with his hand. More to the point, his master scheme involved his commissioning of a painting–a portrait of Quentin Collins–which he endowed with magical powers. (Later, Petofi considered the idea of using paintings to magically create an army, thereby making him an Enemy Commander.) Petofi is also an actor, playing the false identity of British aristocrat Victor Fenn-Gibbon when he first appears on the series, and later (thanks to switching bodies) impersonating Quentin Collins.

In writing about the supervillain as Criminal Mastermind, Coogan describes Sherlock Holmes’s archfoe Professor Moriarty, whom Arthur Conan Doyle introduced in “The Final Problem” (1893).

Notice the methods that Doyle utilizes to present Moriarty as figuratively more than human, larger than life. The Batman is figuratively superhuman in that he presents himself as if he were a bat in human form: a “bat man.” Likewise Professor Moriarty is metaphorically an animal in human form. In “The Final Problem” Sherlock Holmes tells Dr. Watson that Moriarty “sits motionless, like a spider in the centre of its web,” controlling his criminal empire. In falling down the Reichenbach Falls, Moriarty “clawed the air with both his hands,” according to Holmes in “The Adventure of the Empty House” (1903), as if Moriarty had claws like a bird or beast of some sort. Describing his first meeting with Moriarty in “The Final Problem,” Holmes tells Watson “his face protrudes forward and is forever slowly oscillating from side to side in a curiously reptilian fashion.”

So Moriarty is also metaphorically a reptile, like a serpent, a traditional symbol of Satan. That would make sense, since Holmes calls Moriarty “the organizer of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city,” as if he were indeed Satan. Holmes also states that Moriarty “had hereditary tendencies of the most diabolical kind.” Holmes does not mean that Moriarty is literally a demon, but through his choice of words, Conan Doyle plants that metaphor in the readers’ minds.

Doyle, through Holmes, goes even further, describing Moriarty as if he were not truly human, but some force of pure evil. Holmes tells Watson that “For years past I have continually been conscious of some power behind the malefactor, some deep organizing power which forever stands in the way of the law, and throws its shield over the wrong-doer. Again and again in cases of the most varying sorts — forgery cases, robberies, murders — I have felt the presence of this force, ” Eventually Holmes discovered that this unseen “power,” this “force,” was Moriarty, working through his many criminal agents. “But the central power which uses the agent is never caught — never so much as suspected.”

But the conceptual heart of Professor Moriarty lies in this statement by Holmes in “The Final Problem”: “You know my powers, my dear Watson, and yet at the end of three months I was forced to confess that I had at last met an antagonist who was my intellectual equal.” Moriarty is Holmes’s equal; he is Holmes’ evil opposite; he is symbolically Holmes’s evil twin. Years ago I even saw a play in London, The Secret of Sherlock Holmes (1988), by Jeremy Paul, which postulated (Spoiler Alert! Skip to the next paragraph!) that Moriarty was Holmes, who suffered from multiple personality disorder.

So Holmes and Moriarty are equals but opposites. How, then, can Moriarty be a “supervillain” when Holmes, by Coogan’s definition, is not a “superhero”?

Or what about the Master, the archvillain of Doctor Who? He fits Coogan’s definition of supervillain, and, indeed, I wrote the Master’s entry for Visible Ink’s The Supervillain Book. The Doctor has certain superpowers, notably his ability to “regenerate” his body when he is on the brink of death (that is, when a new actor takes over the role). But Coogan would surely define the Doctor as a science fiction hero, not a “superhero” (one word). Yet the point of the Master is that he and the Doctor are both Time Lords, possessing the same abilities. The Master is the Doctor’s equal and opposite. But the Master is a “supervillain,” according to Coogan, who might classify the Doctor as a “super hero” (two words), his term for heroes with “extraordinary abilities” who do not qualify as heroes of the superhero genre.

But as I wrote in last week’s column, I believe that it’s confusing to have to distinguish between “super hero” (two words) and “superhero” (one word), when they sound alike in spoken conversation. Besides, most people will assume the terms mean the same thing (as Marvel and DC do).

Moreover, in his book Coogan establishes that the superhero is the protagonist of the superhero genre. That logically suggests that the supervillain should be defined as the principal kind of antagonist in the superhero genre. (Obviously, superheroes fight other sorts of villains as well: Batman and Spider-Man regularly combat ordinary muggers and bank robbers.) I believe it will lead to confusion to categorize characters outside the superhero genre as supervillains.

Coogan precisely defies the superhero, and explains why characters like the Phantom, the Shadow, Buffy, Luke Skywalker and others don’t fit his definition. By doing so, Coogan enables us to comprehend more clearly what sets the superhero apart from other kinds of adventure heroes.

I believe that by including in the supervillain category characters as far removed from the superhero genre as Beowulf’s Grendel and the Satan of Milton’s Paradise Lost, Coogan may be making the same error as those who would include, say, Beowulf himself under the heading of superheroes.

Coogan correctly perceives traits that are common to the sort of villains that he designates as “supervillains,” whether or not they operate in the superhero genre. But couldn’t he just as easily have found characteristics that link the “super heroes” (two words) of different genres? For example, don’t Spider-Man, Buffy, Luke Skywalker, and Harry Potter have many things in common. (For one thing, they’re all effectively orphans, though Buffy loses her mother in the course of her series, and her father not through his death but through his neglect of her.)

Coogan makes reference to the work of the late literary critic Northrup Frye, the author of Anatomy of Criticism (1957), who wrote about he called the “mode” of “romance,” by which he meant stories of extraordinary adventure. According to Frye the hero of romance is “superior in degree to other men and to his environment” and “moves in a world in which the ordinary laws of nature are slightly suspended.” Coogan states that his “super heroes” (two words) fit Frye’s description of the heroes of romance; superheroes (one word) would, as well. I have coined the term “megaheroes” to refer to such heroes of romance, of which the “superheroes” (one word) of the superhero genre constitute a subset.

Though Frye (as far as I know) did not address this subject, the romance mode would also include the villain of romance who is “superior in degree to other men and to his environment” and “move in a world in which the ordinary laws of nature are slightly suspended.” I believe that such a larger-than-life villain can also appear outside the romance mode. Iago, for example, is a character in a Shakespearean tragedy; Hannibal Lecter first appeared in what seemed to be realistic “low mimetic” crime thrillers. However, the presence of such extraordinary villains indicates that Othello and The Silence of the Lambs actually contain elements of romance, as Frye used the word. Coogan refers to these villains of romance as “supervillains.”

I propose that the villain of romance should be called the “megavillain.” The supervillain would then be defined as the principal kind of antagonist in the superhero genre. Hence, supervillains constitute a subset of the category of megavillains. Beowulf’s Grendel, Shakespeare’s Richard III and Iago, Milton’s Satan, the Queen of the Night, Professor Moriarty, Dracula, Dr. Fu Manchu, Goldfinger, Dr. Loveless, Dr. Lecter, Dr. Mabuse, Darth Vader, Lord Voldemort, the Cigarette-Smoking Man, the Hooded Claw, Magica de Spell (from Uncle Scrooge), Maleficent (from Disney’s Sleeping Beauty), the Master (from Doctor Who), and the Brain (from Pinky and the Brain) are all megavillains. Doctor Doom and the Joker are megavillains who are also supervillains, since they operate in the superhero genre. And the Winged Avenger is a Displaced Supervillain, who finds himself transplanted into another genre.

Of the five types of “supervillains” that he identifies, Coogan asserts that only the “Inverted-Superhero Supervillain” (basically, the costumed supervillain), is specific to the superhero genre. Coogan also writes about the “gravitational pull” of a genre, and I find it instructive to study the “gravitational pull” of the superhero genre on the comics villains whom he lists as examples of the other four types of “supervillains.”

As an example of the Monster, Coogan names the Lizard from Spider-Man. Yet the Lizard should also qualify as an “Inverted-Superhero Supervillain.” He has a dual identity, like his nemesis Spider-Man, but whereas Peter Parker merely dons a costume to become a metaphorical “spider man,” Dr. Curt Connors literally transforms into a reptile to become the Lizard.

“In superhero comics,” Coogan writes, “the two foremost enemy commanders are Dr. Doom and the Red Skull” (p. 66).

Doctor Doom, of course, wears a full costume, including an armored battlesuit that endows him with superhuman abilities. The subtext of his relationship with his principal nemesis, Reed Richards, is that Doom is Reed’s equal (or near-equal) and opposite: he is like Reed gone wrong, an extraordinary genius who seeks to dominate humanity.

As he was originally portrayed, as a terrorist with a death’s-head mask, the Red Skull could easily have been a villain out of the pulps. But notice that when Stan Lee and Jack Kirby first brought the Red Skull from the 1940s into the modern age of superheroes, they considerably upgraded his power and ambitions. In possession of the virtually unlimited power of the Cosmic Cube, the Red Skull was no longer Hitler’s underling, but dreamed of conquering the world and even the universe (see Tales of Suspense #79-81, 1966). In the hands of certain gifted writers, the depiction of the Red Skull shifted to that of an “inverted” version of his superhero nemesis, Captain America. Indeed, Roger Stern established that the American government devised the costumed persona of Captain America as a response to the Red Skull, Nazi Germany’s iconic figure of terror (Captain America #255, March 1981). Mark Gruenwald literalized this analogy, by establishing that the Red Skull’s consciousness had been transferred into a body cloned from Captain America: he was literally his evil twin (Captain America #350, February 1989)!

As for the Criminal Mastermind, look at the history of such characters in Spider-Man. The BIg Man and the Crime-Master wore masks concealing their faces and had codenames and secret identities. Built like a sumo wrestler, the Kingpin is strong enough to stand up to the super-powered Spider-Man in combat, and wields advanced weaponry (the disintegrator gun in his cane). Silvermane started out as an elderly gangster and was converted into a superhuman cyborg. And the Green Goblin is unquestionably a costumed “inverted-superhero” supervillain.

The category of the Mad Scientist presents more difficulty. A definition of the superhero as a hero with super-powers cannot work because it excludes Batman, the second most important protagonist of the superhero genre. Similarly, any definition of the supervillain must include Lex Luthor, who has no super-powers, codename, dual identity, or (usually) distinctive costume.

Significantly, the most prominent non-costumed mad scientists in the superhero genre–bald men, sometimes with thick glasses, most of them in lab coats–come from the earliest days of superhero comics: the Ultra-Humanite and Lex Luthor in Superman, Dr. Sivana in Captain Marvel, and Professor Hugo Strange in Batman. It shouldn’t be surprising that in these early years, in which the superhero was a brand new creation, that superhero comics were still using the pulp-style Mad Scientist as a principal villain. Significantly, with the debut of comics’ first costumed supervillain, the Joker, in Batman #1 (1940), he immediately supplanted Professor Strange as Batman’s leading villain.

As the superhero genre evolved, the new Mad Scientists who were created in the genre usually became inverted-superhero supervillains as well. Doctor Doom is an evil scientific genius like Lex Luthor, but Stan Lee and Jack Kirby presented him in full costume from the beginning. (Note that in his 1986 Squadron Supreme series, Mark Gruenwald took Emil Burbank, the Squadron’s Luthor counterpart, and converted him into the armored Master Menace, a variation on Doctor Doom.) Another Marvel villain, the Wizard, started out as a plainclothes Mad Scientist, but eventually adopted a costume, a more elaborate codename {“Wingless Wizard”), and a specialty super-power (his antigravity discs). Gardner Fox’s Justice League villains Professor Amos Fortune and Doctor Destiny likewise began as plainclothes Mad Scientists and ended up in costumes. When Steve Englehart revived Professor Hugo Strange in the 1970s, he turned him into a metaphorical shapeshifter, who masqueraded as Bruce Wayne and, memorably, as Batman in costume (see “Comics in Context” #84). Even in the Golden Age, Dr. Sivana and his two nasty kids, Sivana Jr. and Georgia, were presented as the “Sivana Family,” an inverted, evil counterpart to the superheroic Marvel Family. The Ultra-Humanite became a kind of shapeshifter in the Golden Age by transplanting his brain into a woman’s body, and in the 1970s became a true superhuman, in the body of an ape.

Lex Luthor has consistently remained one of the foremost villains of the superhero genre since his introduction. The gravitational pull of the genre has affected him, too: In the “Powerstone” storyline in the 1940s Luthor temporarily acquired superhuman strength, and there have been periods over the decades in which Luthor has been depicted in costume (as in the Justice League Unlimited animated series). But typically he lacks costume, codename, dual identity, and super-powers.

Ultimately, there are two reasons that make Luthor, Sivana, and Professor Strange not just megavillains but true supervillains.

First, they control resources, primarily those of advanced science, that enable them to rival or even surpass the power of their superhero adversaries. (As seen in Matt Wagner’s recent reworking of the original Hugo Strange stories, Batman and The Monster Men, Professor Strange’s foremost achievement was the transformation of ordinary people into super-strong giants.)

Second, Luthor, Sivana, and Strange focus their criminal efforts on battling their respective superhero nemeses. Coogan argued that Shang-Chi became a superhero when he swerved as a member of a superhero team. I contend that this “gravitational” effect works with Luthor, Sivana, and Strange as well. All three could be villains in pulp novels outside the superhero genre. But their exclusive, longrunning connection to the superhero opponents establishes them as supervillains.

I have much more to say about Peter Coogan’s Superhero book, but other topics await. Be assured that I will be referring to the book often in future columns. It should become a basic text for study of the superhero genre, and you should all go get yourselves copies. Then perhaps all of us who write about superheroes will share a common definition of just what a superhero is.

Or maybe not. Denny O’Neil wrote a highly appreciative introduction to Coogan’s book. But in his new blog at ComicMix, O’Neil referred to “all superheroes, from Gilgamesh on”. No! Denny, please go back and reread Peter Coogan’s Chapter 5!

ADVERTISEMENTS FOR MYSELF
This very weekend, from Friday, February 23 through Sunday the 25th, I am appearing at the second New York Comic Con at Manhattan’s Javits Center. I am doing signings of the Marvel Encyclopedia and The Ultimate Guide to the X-Men at the DK Publishing booth on Saturday from 2 to 3 PM and on Sunday from 11 AM t 12:30 PM.

Most importantly, “Stan Lee: A Retrospective” is now open at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (www.moccany.org) in Manhattan. Museum president Ken Wong and I jointly curated the show, which features original comics artwork from the 1960s and rare collectibles, and which will run through July 3. Next week I hope to tell you about our opening night reception, featuring a visit from Stan the Man himself!

–Copyright 2007 Peter Sanderson

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