Comic Book Villains
 

I've always been a fan of Batman - but I've never really been a fan, fan. I enjoy the comics, the movies, and everything else, but what really gets me interested in something are the characters. I like Spawn, Hellblazer and other comic books of the same genre because, in my opinion, the dark, tortured anti-heroes are usually more interesting than the guys who are given powers and automatically decide it's their destiny to save humaity. The antiheroes just seem more real, like someone who hears his alarm clock blaring, knows he should get up, but sleeps in an extra hour.

I love back stories - which is how I spend most of my Wikipedia time. Anyhoo, after I saw Batman Begins, I became very interested in the back stories of the Scarecrow, and Rhas'al Ghul. Hearing that the Joker was going to be in The Dark Knight, I looked him up, too... which got me hooked on the back stories of every Batman villain. I've been looking at Catwoman, Two Face, Mr. Freeze, The Penguin, Bane, and hoping that Harley Quinn is going to pop up in TDK.

It seems that around the 1960's, Batman villains such as the Riddler were given a much darker persona - the Riddler showing severe symptoms of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, while the Joker becomes both a whimsical performer, and an inhuman, brutal killer; actually beating Robin to death with a crowbar.

I've always found the human psyche to be a fascinating thing, and even more fascinating when one differs from societies collective persona, these most often being criminals. Based on evidence presented in trials, it more often than not goes deeper than someone just having a really bad day at work and choosing to go after a few people, and you can begin to sympathize them to an extent.

Nothing is really ever in black and white, and in the words of Max Payne, (who I've been quoting an awful lot of recently)


EDIT It's occurred to me that this is in the wrong forum, as I was originally intending to create a thread about the new Batman movie. If any mod is reading this, could it be moved to the proper section? Thanks.

The batman villains often have severe psychological aspects that give their characters more depth than the "I AM STRONG FEAR ME"-esque villains like Juggernaut.

actually those are the divided differences between what's inside the DC world and further the differences between the DC and Marvel universes.

In DC, you have villians and characters under two genres. The Superman Genre [where you have heroes established as saviours of humanity and villians who are classic villians showcasing the simple good versus evil]; then you have the Batman Genre [where heroes and villians are less stereotypical and are very damaged in their histories creating darker worlds based the shades in between good and evil].
Marvel's world actually follows more of the Batman Genre creating a world of characters that aren't established superheroes, but superpowered people who have to say "should I really have to deal with this?" [heroes and villians alike].

one thing I loved about Spiderman was when he first got his powers he did exactly what most of us would do. Try and make some quick cash

If I had Spiderman's powers? Yeah, I'd go off and save people and be all heroic and stuff, my hair always blowing in the wind as I pose... but mostly I'd be jumping on and offa stuff, climbing up walls and swinging around the city... It'd all be like "WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

=3

which he also did

Naw the 60s was silly fun, Jason Todd didn't get crowbarred 'til like the mid-80s.

And the little shit had it coming.

*Re-reades Wiki Page*

You're right. Heh. But Todd was the... second Boy Wonder? ...What does Batman have to do to get a decent side-kick? Put an add in the paper?

SIDEKICK WANTED
Must be able-bodied and willing to
perform dangerous acrobatics and fight
dangerous villians. Physically fit a must.
Must also have natural resistance to
explosions, bullets, gas, toxins, bone breaks,
and pain of any kind. Answer soonest Bat
Signal to schedule interview.

I think I'd prefer a balance of both looking at that

A balance of deranged minded criminals, but an equal ammount of baddies that aren't criminally insane, plus the ones that aren't either and are spose to be mind sound but still can't help but find the bad guys side fun to play on, all should be capable of having as much significance as the other.
I mean I don't just wanna see it biased to ciminally insane characters always giving our heroes the hardest confrontations, or master minds always pulling the other bad guys strings. Each life should have as much potential as the other, and now BB's death speech has gone through my memory >.<

I believe popular opinion is that the first Robin was a good side-kick. He just, well grew up