Hopelessly Lost, But Making Good Time #95

By Pam Bliss
March 16, 2009

Hello, and welcome to "Hopelessly Lost ..." the series about making your own comics for people who love writing lines for the bad guys, and for everyone who thrills to the results.

There is more to human relationships than hearts and flowers, or mutual respect and good citizenship, for that matter. Sometimes other people just don't have the hero's best interests at heart, and some rather intense relationships are built on opposition and rivalry. And where would a hero be without a bad guy or two to compete with or fight?

Rivals

In many non-violent stories, the "bad guys" are not evil villains, or even true enemies, but rather rivals of one kind or another. The rival-in-love is a classic example: the guy or girl the object of your affection likes almost as much as they like you is probably not going to be your favorite person. If he or she is also manipulative and tricky in their efforts to make you look bad in front of your beloved, this rivalry, while not bloody, can be deadly serious.

In a sports story the rival can be the swimmer in the next lane at the championship meet, or the goalie trying to block your shots. If your opponent is a good sportsman and plays by the rules, this rivalry can be a classic friendly one, but if he or she is a cheater, then it can turn vicious. In a story of business, the rival can run the hot dog stand on the opposite corner, or be competing with you for a major vice presidency in a multinational corporation or a tenure track position on the faculty. Business rivalries can be very nasty, though only at the top or bottom tiers of society are they likely to be physically dangerous.

Rivalry is a complex human relationship. Rivals are often close emotionally and share many common motivations and experiences, and it's not unusual for rivalries to develop into friendships or even love affairs. Whether this development ends the rivalry or makes it even more intense is up to the storyteller.

Likewise family members, friends, or lovers may become rivals as their lives change. This can put severe strain on the existing relationship, possibly destroying it or turning people who previously loved each other into genuine enemies.

Rogues

Not everyone on society's bad side is an out and out villain. Rogues may break the letter of the law, but they adhere to moral codes of their own that may be quite idiosyncratic. There are many rogues who will not harm the innocent or needlessly endanger bystanders, which is more than some so-called heroes can say, and "steal from the rich and give to the poor (while taking a reasonable cut to cover expenses)" is a classic "rogue's code".

Smugglers, forgers, hackers, safecrackers, and fixers of all kinds can be handy allies. Only the most naïve or foolish or stubbornly law-abiding hero will refuse to work with a rogue just because she operates in a legal grey area. These questionable skills may be essential for many seriously heroic endeavors, and hiring a rogue makes more sense then trying to do such delicate jobs yourself or relying on law-abiding amateurs. A professional rogue has a reputation to maintain; she stays bought and keeps her mouth shut because it is in her own best interest.

A good-hearted rogue is sometimes the next best thing to a hero, and certainly many classic stories, in and out of comics, feature protagonists who are definitely rogues. Rogues are my favorite characters to write; they seem to attract interesting stories.

Villains

But the classic human opponent for a hero in an action story is a villain. Whether we are talking about a cruel dictator, a mad scientist out to rule the world, a criminal mastermind, or a full-on cackling superpowered bad guy (all well supplied with minions), villains are bad news: powerful, violent, ruthless, and above all, evil.

But not all villains are written with such bold strokes. It's sometimes fun for a large scale hero to face a small scale villain, particularly if the hero's own rules of engagement or respect for the law prevent him or her from simply destroying annoying problems. In any genre, mundane "villains" like the nosy neighbor, the reporter who comes too close to the truth, or the local cop who holds a grudge, can have a serious impact on the life of even the mightiest hero.

And small scale villains can be persistent. Since they seldom commit actual crimes, get involved in antisocial violence, or threaten the world with supernatural abilities, they don't generally face execution or long prison sentences, get killed in firefights, or end up trapped on comets soaring through interstellar space; typical fates for large scale villains. Pesky small scale bad guys can keep coming back, storyline after storyline, even in the most realistic series.

Whether your villains are large scale or small, your first responsibility when creating them is to make them real people. Villains are not one-dimensional. They do not exist in a vacuum, or appear on stage to do their dastardly deeds and rant their explanatory rants and disappear until they are needed again. A villain is a person, perhaps a despicable or even a disgusting one, but a person all the same.

At minimum, he or she needs motivations. Only an utter madman gets out of bed one morning and decides to be the worst person in the world. (And even then, the story of why the madness manifested that way is probably an interesting one.) Everyone has reasons for what they do. These are not always rational, even for the best of us, and for villains there is no limit on how strange and exaggerated these reasons can be.

Classic villainous motivations are lust for power (of all kinds), greed, the desire for immortality, and that old favorite, revenge. Feeling themselves to be damaged in some way, or perhaps simply under-appreciated, the prospective villain vows a horrible revenge on a group of people, a city, a nation, humanity as a whole, or even the Earth itself.

It is a truism that nobody considers herself to be a villain. If you are writing your villains as people, everything they do makes perfect sense. To them.

Heroes and Villains

When people think of heroes and villains in comics, they automatically think of superpowered slug fests. If this is the type of comic you want to make, then you are going to need a lot of supervillains. Since a hero has to defeat a villain every once in a while to keep up his hero credential, the same villain cannot appear in every storyline. Most heroes of this type develop a rotating stable of villains they regularly defeat, but who keep coming back for more. The realism of this is somewhat dubious, but it is a convention of the genre.

Otherwise, the defeat of a major villain is the natural climax of an ongoing storyline. Realistically, even the most heroic character is not going to deal with issues of earthshaking significance every day, or even every month. A secret agent might foil a conspiracy, or a police officer track down a serial killer, but he or she also copes with other, more mundane problems (and lesser villains) that may be just as important in the long run. Telling some of these smaller stories will give a series in any genre variety and a sense of balance.

Perhaps it's true that a villain is one of the things that makes a hero a hero. But he needs other people in his life to be a human being as well.

Next time: more stuff. Until then, go out and make some comics.

Pam Bliss has been making comics since 1989, and the minicomic, in all its infinite variety, is her favorite form. Her cartoon short stories are set in the perfect Midwestern small town, Kekionga, Indiana, where just about anything can happen. Her new ongoing series, KEKIONGA, explores the mysteries of that most mysterious place through the eyes of an innocent young superhero. For more about all the Kekionga stories, visit www.paradisevalleycomics.com. Or, for updates on work in progress, essays on storytelling and other subjects, auto industry comments and random stuff, including a thrilling weekly adventure serial, read Sharkipede's LiveJournal No Silver Cars at http://www.livejournal.com/users/sharkipede/.

Paradise Valley Comics
No Silver Cars
Sparky's Minicomics Tips:
- Part One
- Part Two