Necessary Evil: Super-Villains of DC Comics Page #10

...of all the DC heroes,

that resonates the most.

Those characters are considered, you

know, sort of the greater villains.

There's an interesting thing

about a lot of Batman's rogues...

...and here I'm specifically thinking

of, like, the Penguin and Two-Face...

...and Clayface and the Joker.

They're all physically

deformed in some way.

And that physical deformity

actually drives their evil.

Massively more difficult to have

villains of scale for Superman.

Character is incredibly powerful.

Who's tough enough to fight him?

Brainiac felt like a character who could actually

fight Superman and win without superpowers...

...because he's a computer.

He's a computer character.

So you must be Brainiac. Okay.

Brainiac was an alien who

was collecting cities...

...of different world cultures as

he moved throughout the galaxy...

...throughout the universe.

And he comes to Earth to shrink

Metropolis, among other cities...

...and put it in a glass bottle...

...and take it in his interplanetary collection

back to wherever he may have come from.

We didn't want it to always be Lex Luthor

that was fighting Superman, or Brainiac.

But then you start running

out of the famous names.

So we kept coming up

with new guys, you know.

LANGLEY:
The Parasite, he becomes this

individual who draws power from others.

He draws super power from Superman

or other superheroes he was around.

He draws life force from other people.

Sometimes even identity

from other people.

ROMANO:
I think Metallo's a

really interesting villain.

And a large part of why I like

him is because he was human...

...but now he's got

this Kryptonite heart.

So he still has a heart,

but it's a deformed heart.

It's an obscene heart.

It's a heart of evil.

And that heart affects what he does, and

it has such a massive effect on Superman.

DIDIO:
Characters like Superman and Wonder

Woman, the rogues' galleries get a lot smaller.

Wonder Woman in particular

has a very small gallery...

...because of who she is

and what she represents...

...and how she becomes more iconic makes

it harder to play off of her weaknesses...

...because a lot of people don't

see weaknesses in the character.

There's no major villainy that could

exploit those weaknesses in her.

We added another layer to Wonder Woman's

origin by making her the daughter of Zeus.

So she has divine blood.

And then we wanted to

take it even further.

It's like, "Well, let's create

somebody new, a new god. "

And it is... We created this

character called the First Born.

He has no name. He was the

first child of Zeus and Hera.

And he was cast out of Olympus

because there was a prophecy...

...that he would take over Olympus.

So here is her original brother who's

been cast out of heaven and hated by all.

So now he's got a major hate-on

for his family and the world.

NARRATOR:
Just as heroes wit! bond

together to fight a common enemy...

...so too will the villains.

The fusion of good is matched

only by the unification of evil.

The Crime Syndicate,

the Secret Society...

...the Rogues, the Legion of Doom.

Though their members differ...

...all villain team-ups employ

the same battle-tested strategy:

There is strength in numbers.

My favorite aspect of

working in this business...

...is when I have created various

incarnations of various teams.

We need one character who can fly. We

need one character who's really strong.

We need one character who's

maybe got some magical powers.

And just putting that

together is half the challenge.

The story writes itself more

often than not after that.

KIRSHEN:
In The Challenge

of the Super Friends...

...where you've got the Justice

League members marching...

...towards the screen and then the other

side, the Legion of Doom are marching.

They're coming at each other, and there's this

explosion when the two sides hit each other.

I mean, you know, as a 6-, 7-year-old

kid, you know, it blew your mind.

Normally, villains are seen as individuals

and they have their own personal plot...

...to take over the world

or something like that.

But the idea of them combining together, you

know, makes their threat that much bigger.

Superviilain team-ups, ha, ha,

are their own unique animal...

...because on the one hand...

...there's a huge potential

and disappointment ratio...

...when supervillains team up.

The potential is, well...

...it's two great tastes

that taste great together.

It's two threats are better than one.

You know, when Lex Luthor

and Brainiac team up...

...you know, when the Joker

and the Riddler team up...

...that's incredibly, you

know, resonant and powerful.

The problem is that 99.9

percent of the time...

...the ability of the superhero

to overcome their plan...

...is usually hidden in the

conflict between the supervillains.

The supervillains, they can't get their

act together. A comic book is 22 pages.

They can get their act together for 19

pages, but those last three are just, ugh...

...they're just falling apart.

I'd like to complete this transaction

with as little bloodshed as possible, Lex.

Now put your hands up and

have Toy Man turn us around.

WOMAN:
Don't look at him, Big Boy.

Grodd is leader.

PORTER:
The Rogues are different. The

Rogues can come together for a common goal.

They're guys that seem silly at first, but

you look at somebody like Mirror Master.

Okay, the guy can teleport through any

reflective surface, not just a mirror.

He can bend light, illusions.

He can make himself appear

in multiple places at once.

I mean, there's so many very interesting

things that he can do on his own...

...that when you put him into a group

with other villains that are versatile...

...you have a really cool set

of personalities and powers.

Although, they do have, you

know, specific rivalries.

Heat Wave and Captain

Cold don't like each other.

Yeah, one's hot and one's

cold, but there are reasons.

In our "Flash Run," all the Rogues...

...they used to have guns and wands

and mechanical devices dating back...

...to when they were originally created.

But we made them have superpowers...

...and it's because of Captain Cold.

He made them undergo this transformation

that gave them superpowers.

Well, it had negative side effects.

For poor Heat Wave, it burnt off

basically all the top layer of his skin...

...so he looks really gross and messed up, so

he hates Captain Cold for making him that way.

Why do they hang out together?

There's strength in numbers,

and Flash is fast enough...

...he can fight more

than one person at a time.

There's something about the Rogues.

They wanna pull their jobs,

live their lives and be alone.

Like, it's their job to pull

off heists and steal stuff.

That's how they make their living. They

consider themselves blue-collar guys.

"Gonna pop a beer and we're gonna spend

the money we made by robbing the bank. "

What other villains can you think about?

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