邪恶有许多面孔 Evil has many faces.
发笑者 A man who laughs.
大都会的掌控者 The master of Metropolis.
恐惧的守护者 The Guardian of fear.
星球的征服者 A conqueror of worlds.
面孔虽多, 但名号只有一个: Many faces, but just one name:
超级罪犯 The supervillain.
法力无边, 魅力非凡 Powerful, charismatic...
智力超群, 残暴无情 intelligent, ruthless.
超级罪犯反映了我们的恐惧和挫败 The supervillain reﬂects our fears and frustrations...
日常生活中的险境和危机 the dangers and perils of everyday life.
他们会犯下等闲之辈无法企及的弥天大罪 They commit the heinous crimes we will not.
而在这样一个没有绝对的对错 对错无绝对 And in a world where right and wrong are not absolute...
生活中存在着灰色地带的现实和漫画世界 where shades of gray exist in life as well as the comic page...
邪恶就不仅是不可避免的, 而是不可或缺的 evil isn't just unavoidable, it's necessary.
可以说, 在漫画世界里, 反派对整个故事来说甚至 In the world of comics, one could argue that the villain is even more vital to the story...
比品行端正的英雄更为关键 than the just and moral hero.
因为少了相应的反面参照 For without a proper adversary...
也就缺了故事的关键: we lack the very essence of story:
冲突 Conflict.
毕竟, 驱使英雄见义勇为的不正是这些反派吗? After all, isn't it the villain who catapults the hero into action?
没了反派, 整个故事就再无看点. 即便英雄仍在, 也无事可做 Without the villain, there's really no story. The superhero exists and does nothing.
若不是反派为非作歹, 超人就只是克拉克·肯特 If the villain isn't acting out, Superman stays Clark Kent.
超级英雄永远在被动地应对危机 而率先挑起事端的一直是反派 The superheroes are always reacting. The villains are making things happen.
他们心怀诡计 惹是生非 Villains are the ones with a plan. The villains are the ones who are taking the initiative.
如果把"主角"定义为触动事件的导火索 If you define "protagonist" as somebody who sets something in motion...
把"敌手"定义为主角遇到的绊脚石 and "antagonist" as somebody who stops him...
那基本上漫画里的所有反派都算主角 almost all the villains in comic books are protagonists.
故事的发展离不开反派提供的源源动力, 他们总会带来挑战 You need that ongoing impetus of the bad guy, the villain, the one who's always gonna be a challenge...
叫板社会规则 the one who is going to threaten society's rules...
备受支持这些规则的人的指责 非难 and be put in their place by somebody who upholds those rules.
缺了反派少的不只是故事的看点或其中的冲突 Not only is there no story or conﬂict without the villain...
英雄的精髓也难以体现 but it's through the villain that we see our hero at their very core.
反派的存在让我们看到英雄并非完人, 他们也有弱点 We see their many ﬂaws, we see their many weaknesses.
看到是什么让他们成为这样的英雄 We see what makes them the hero they are.
如果没有坏蛋 Without the villain to define the hero...
也就无法定义英雄 you don't have a hero.
就像少了把他们锻造成形的铁砧 You have no anvil from which the superhero is pounded into the shape that he is.
漫画里的反派 Villains in comic book stories...
让英雄或者说超级英雄有机会施展拳脚 allow the hero or the superhero to really flex their muscles.
反派实力越强 The more power the supervillains have...
就越能体现超级英雄的重要性 the more you can showcase how important that superhero is.
所以反派越强大, 英雄越牛掰 因为他们必须战胜 So the stronger your villains are, the stronger your hero is. Just because they have to overcome...
机智精明, 实力过人的对手 somebody who's smart, powerful...
而且这些敌手目标明确, 会把想法付诸实践 who knows what they want and who's on a mission that they have to do * they believe in.
所以要是英雄能阻止他们, 自己也就变得更为强大 So if the hero can stop them, you know, it makes them that much better.
在DC宇宙里一切更为真实, 因为反派众多 But all the more true in the DC universe because we have such rich villains.
其中一个经典的例子就是闪电侠和逆闪电 从名字就能看出他们的特点 One of the classic examples is Flash and Reverse-Flash. The very names give you what they are.
逆闪电有过非常惨痛的经历 Reverse-Flash suffered something so horrible.
他觉得闪电侠能改变过去, 他知道闪电侠能穿越时空 And he felt like the Flash could have fixed it. He knew that the Flash could go through time.
之前见过他这么做 He'd seen it happen before.
他说"为什么你不回到过去阻止悲剧发生? 为什么你不肯?" He said, "Why don't you go back, prevent this from happening? Why wouldn't you do that?"
闪电侠不同意 The guy won't do it.
"他不肯这么做是因为他没能跟我一样遭遇不幸 "Well, he won't do it because he hasn't felt tragedy like I have.
所以我要让他感同身受, 让他成为更好的英雄 So I'm going to have him feel tragedy to make him a better hero.
你必须有能力做出行动, 保护你爱的每一个人 You need to be able to take the measures to protect everyone you love.
你不愿意为我穿越到过去, 也许你愿意为了自己这么做. 所以我要给你考验 让你接受试炼" You wouldn't do it for me. Maybe you'll do it for yourself. So I put you to the test."
谜语人, 他考验的是蝙蝠侠的才智 The Riddler, he's all about Batman's intellect.
对我来说他就像个磨刀石. 是他说 He, to me, is the sword-sharpener. He's the guy that says:
"要是你不够聪明的话, 所有人都会这么死去" "if you are not clever enough, everybody dies in that way."
在某种程度上他表现了蝙蝠侠其实 He shows in some ways that Batman, at his roots...
心里想要成为最厉害的侦探的 needs to be the greatest detective.
这个角色诞生于侦探漫画, 角色的核心就是福尔摩斯 At his heart, he's born in Detective Comics. At the core of the character is Sherlock Holmes.
他是那种...因为他没有超能力, 所以要比其他人都机智 He's that guy that, because he's human, needs to be smarter than anybody else...
才能打击这类的罪行 to solve these crimes.
在我看来, 谜语人登上舞台, 而且挑战的是蝙蝠侠最最重要, 最为核心的技能 For me, the Riddler steps on to the stage and challenges that really really basic and fundamental element...
也是所有技能中最不可或缺的一个 of Batman's capabilities that needs to be there almost more than any other.
我觉得这个就是蝙蝠侠的超能力. 他永远都是最伟大的侦探 I mean, that's Batman's superpower. He's the greatest detective of all time.
反派和他们对头之间的关系 The relationship between a villain and their rival is more complicated...
比对错之分, 正邪之争更为复杂 than a question of right versus wrong, good versus evil.
他们共同形成了一种动态, 这种动态有时是相互依存的 Together, they form a dynamic that is, at times, interdependent.
反派不可能脱离英雄单独存在, 而英雄, 无论男女, 亦是如此 A villain cannot exist without a hero and a hero, his or her villain.
他们处在一种同生共死 共生共亡的关系之中, 要是反派离开了英雄 They're very much in a symbiotic relationship in that if the villains were to do off the hero...
我想他们很可能会有些百无聊赖 I think they would probably find themselves a little listless.
我们在创作"家庭之死"的时候 When we did "Death of the Family" story...
小丑找到蝙蝠侠, 而且对他说:"其实在内心深处, 我们彼此相爱" he comes at Batman saying, "Deep down, we really love each other."
而意料之中蝙蝠侠说:"小丑, 在地球上我最厌恶的就是你" And, of course, Batman says, "I hate nothing more on the earth than you, Joker."
小丑认为蝙蝠侠这些年来组建起来的家庭 The Joker feels that the family that Batman has built around him all these years...
在把他拉入泥沼 再拖他的后腿 要把他搞垮 is dragging him down.
他说:"这些人会榨干你的灵魂" He says, "These people are draining your soul.
蝙蝠家族的其他成员在吸食你的生命 These other members of Bat *, they're sucking the life out of you.
我是你朋友. 我想让你做到最好 I'm your friend. I wanna make you be the best that you can be...
这样我们双方都能够长久地享受这样的关系 so that we can both have a relationship that we could enjoy for so many years...
而且没有这些蠢货在一边不断地蚕食你的生命 without these knuckleheads on the side constantly draining you.
所以我要帮你解决掉他们, 清除掉所有这些家庭成员 And so I'm gonna take care of them for you, and I will wipe out all these family members...
这样你就不用拖着这些个累赘了" so you can be free of their encumbrance."
小丑内心其实是想表达: What the Joker, at his core, is saying is that:
"你可能不像我们爱你那样, 爱着我们... "You might not love us the way that we love you...
或者你只是不愿意承认你也一样爱着我们 or you might not want to admit you love us the way we love you.
但这就是你的坏蛋陈列室 坏蛋集邮册 他觉得:"我们都爱你呀" But this is the rogues' gallery that you have," he's like, "All of us love you.
我们只有一个目的, 让你成为更好的英雄 All of us are here only to make you a better superhero."
这往往会引出这么个问题: 是先有英雄? 还是先有坏蛋? The question always becomes: What came first, the hero or the villain?
是英雄们先出现在公众面前施行善举 Did the hero introduce himself to society to do better good...
而且由于身着制服 and because they put on that costume...
吸引了同样穿着制服的坏蛋与之对垒或者跟其叫板? the costumed villain arose to confront him or to challenge him?
还是穿着制服的反派先于英雄出现... Or did the costumed villain arrive first...
创造英雄是为了阻止这些反派得逞 and the hero was created in order to stop that type of villain from succeeding...
或阻止他们的力量增强? or getting more powerful?
超人必须直面银河系的危机 There are threats that our Superman has to face in the galactic threats...
所以我倾向于认为人类应该对超人的存在心怀感激 so I would tend to think we're grateful Superman is there.
虽然另一方面有些人可能会说:"要不是超人跑来这里, 地球也不会遇到这些危险" Though on the flipside some people might say, "if Superman weren't here, would these menaces be coming to Earth?"
贝恩跑去哥谭完全是为了挑战蝙蝠侠 Bane comes to Gotham specifically to fight Batman.
谜语人最初出现的时候也是一样 This is the Riddler as he originally appeared.
他一开始跑到哥谭市是因为他为蝙蝠侠带来的挑战所吸引 First moved to Gotham because he was attracted by the challenge of Batman.
他们两个到那都是为了叫板蝙蝠侠的 They both came there to challenge Batman...
去验证一下他有没资格做他们的对手, 给自己找些乐子 to see if he could be a foe worthy of them, give them something interesting to do.
问题在于是先有反派还是先有英雄? So the question is which came first?
我不确定我是不是真想回答这个问题 And I'm not sure if I really wanna answer that question.
我只能说两者都不可能脱离对方单独存在 The one thing I can say, one can't exist without the other.
只要有反派, 就会有英雄 As long as we have villains, there will be heroes.
同样地, 只要有英雄, 反派就也会在 And as long as we have heroes, there will be villains.
但究竟是什么让我们对反派如此着迷... But what is it about the villain that keeps us so entranced...
为之吸引, 为之倾倒 that captivates and enthralls us?
是什么让我们一边为其奉上掌声, 一边又恨不得他们一败涂地? What makes us applaud the very person we want to see vanquished?
其原因常跟我们爱的反派一样多样复杂 The reasons are often as multifaceted as the villains we enjoy.
成功反派的一些特质, 会让我们联想到... What makes a great supervillain is something that we can relate to...
其实也是成就伟大英雄的一些特质 It's the same thing that makes for a great superhero.
超级英雄的形态表现的是我们放大了的希望和愿景 In the superhero we have this exaggeration of what our hopes and desires are.
同时, 反派表现的是我们心中 At the same time the villain has aspects of us...
对自己崇拜超级英雄力量的质疑 that challenge the strengths that we're admiring in the superhero.
我情愿相信大部分人是认同英雄的 I would like to think that most people identify with the hero, heh.
但在这个时代或许也会有人支持反派 But in this day and age there might be some who identify with the villain.
我能理解带着把能喷射冰的抢去抢银行的行为 I understand getting a gun that shoots ice and going into a bank and trying to rob it.
我们理解诱惑 We understand temptation.
所有流传的老故事都跟诱惑有关... The oldest stories ever told have to do with temptation...
无论是潘多拉, 还是亚当和夏娃 whether it's Pandora or Adam and Eve.
这是人类最最基本的特质, 而且会伴随我们终生 This very basic quality in human beings that runs with us throughout our lives.
现在存在着像小丑和黑手这样的反派... Now, there are villains like the Joker or Black Hand...
他们心理扭曲, 想法阴暗... that are so twisted and dark...
你喜欢看他们干坏事, 但你不会认同 you love seeing them do their stuff, but you don't relate to them.
至少你不会承认你认同 At least, you don't admit you do.
每个人都希望自己能隐形, 会飞翔, 能透视 Everyone wishes that they could turn invisible or fly or have x-ray vision.
而我觉得当反派最棒的一点就是大家都希望他们能进行报复 And I think what's cool about villains is everyone wishes that they could break bad.
要是一个反派无法释放出我们克制的那部分情绪 自我, 那他的存在又有什么意义呢? What's the point of having a villain who can't act out aspects of ourselves that we repress?
我也可以很邪恶. 我要把我丈夫的电话给你... I can be evil. I'm gonna give you my husband's number...
让你跟他来场长长的谈话 and you can have a long chat with him. Heh, heh, heh.
我相信有些人会把自己跟, 比如说超人, 联系在一起 I think there are some people who really associate themselves with, like, a Superman.
另一方面, 有些人更爱莱克斯·卢瑟的才智 On the other hand, people covet Lex Luthor's keen intellect.
我小的时候超爱VS这个角色 When I was growing up I loved the character of Vandal Savage.
DC重启了 闪电侠 系列, 里面的闪电侠是沃利·韦斯特 DC had relaunched The Flash with Wally West as the Flash...
"无限地球危机"发生之后, 在最开始的两期跟他对战的就是VS After Crisis on Infinite Earths and his first villain that he fought was Vandal Savage in the first two issues.
VS是不死之身. 哪有人不想长生不死的呢? He was immortal. And who wouldn't want to be immortal?
而且谁会不想对历史产生这么深远的影响呢? And who wouldn't want to have this far reach into history?
他是那种无物可失的坏蛋. 这种人非常危险 He's one of those villains that has nothing to lose. That's a very dangerous man.
他知道他一定会复活的 You know, he just knows he will be resurrected.
这么一个人怎么会被打败? How do you defeat that person?
你状态不错哟. 一直有练吗? You look good. Been working out?
你再晒晒可能更棒 You could probably use a little sun.
就又回到这个问题, 我再跟谁说话? Then again, who am I to talk?
坏蛋好像都很开心. 好像非常享受当个坏蛋 They seem to be happy. Heh. They seem to enjoy being bad.
大部分的英雄, 尤其是 Most of the heroes, especially of late...
他们好像都心事重重, 愁眉不展. 从来没享受过什么事情 they're all broody and sad. They never seem to be enjoying anything.
但你看看那些反派, 他们就是在享受自己的人生 You look at the villains and they're having the time of their lives.
大家爱哈莉, 一部分是因为她很搞笑 Harley became popular because, in part, she's funny.
她跟小丑有的一拼. 她会说笑话, 逗人发笑 She can stand up to the Joker. She can tell a joke. She can get a laugh.
我在漫展上看到女生们扮成她... When I go to conventions and I see young ladies cosplaying as her...
我觉得她们就是看到哈莉的那种喜感还有那种古灵精怪 I think they just tap into that feeling of fun and that she can just be kind of whimsical.
哈莉·奎因确实是个讨喜的角色 Harley Quinn certainly is one of those characters you love.
就算她抡个锤子砸人, 你也还是爱她 Even if she's smashing somebody with a hammer, you love her.
有一堆反派, 比如说拉弗利兹... There's a handful of those villains, like Larfleeze...
也就是橙灯. 他会夺人性命但他又充满喜感 the Orange Lantern. He's deadly but he's fun.
他由贪婪支配并会为此取人性命. 但他还是很搞笑 He's overwhelmed with greed and he'll kill for it. He's still funny because of that.
他跑来地球听说有个叫圣诞老人的... He comes to Earth and finds out there's a being called Santa Claus...
会把你心愿单上罗列的东西都给你 who gives people things that you list.
拉弗利兹听到说圣诞老人... When Larfleeze finds out there's a being called Santa Claus...
会送你心愿单上的礼物之后, 他列了个超长的单子 that answers your Christmas list, he makes a giant list.
但是圣诞老人没有出现, 他气炸了, 说: When Santa doesn't show up, he gets pissed off and says:
"我要弄死他." 然后就开始搜捕圣诞老人 "I'm gonna kill him." And he goes on a hunt for Santa Claus.
很少有角色能让故事这么成功 There's very few characters that you can pull that story off with.
拉弗利兹就是这么一个角色 Larfleeze is one of those characters.
虽然反派或许诙谐, 或许迷人 But while villains can be fun, as well as fascinating...
但他们也直接反映了我们的恐惧 they're also a direct reflection of our own fears.
他们迫使我们审视个人内心深处的恐惧... They force us to examine the deep and personal terrors...
而这些恐惧是我们在日常生活中所无法克服的 that we are unable to face in our everyday lives.
当漫画作家创作出超级罪犯的时候... When writers create supervillains...
当小孩子想象怪兽的时候... when children imagine monsters...
他们都会试着去理解一个让人惶恐不安的世界 they're trying to make sense of a scary world.
都会努力地给自己壮胆 They're trying to feel strong.
这个时候会有很多的内心反应 They're trying to do so many things.
在某种程度上, 反派要反映出我们的恐惧和忧虑... Villains in some ways, you know, should reflect our fears and our concerns...
既包括个人的, 也包括整个社会的 you know, both as individuals and as a society.
而且会随着时代变迁而改变 They change over time.
但更重要的是这些反派表现的是全球性的恐惧... But the more important thing the villains present is our more global fear...
全人类的恐惧, 我们对失去的恐惧... our more human fear, our fear of loss...
对死亡的恐惧, 还有对未知的恐惧 our fear of death, our fear of the unknown.
反派基本上代表着一切我们害怕的事物... The villain represents basically everything that we fear...
或者一切我们要抗击的事物 or everything that we need to fight against.
p是一个很赞的想法, 它是个星球的吞噬者, 把我们都吓得要死 Parallax is interesting because the idea that it's a world-eater, that scares the hell out of us.
某个宇宙怪物随时... At any moment some universal malevolence...
都可能来地球搞定我们. 这是蛮恐怖的事情 can come and take us over. That's a pretty scary thing.
在放映"超人动画系列"的时候, 我已经不是小孩了 By the time they were doing the Superman animated show, I was already an adult.
但不管什么时候看到达克赛德那几集, 我还是会觉得: But whenever you'd watch those Darkseid episodes, I'd always be like:
"天啦, 这真是太糟糕了" "Oh, God, this is gonna be bad." You know...
你可不想小看一个 anybody who can make Superman bleed...
能让超人流血的人 is somebody that you don't wanna be trifled with.
毕竟我们又能怎么对抗他呢? Because what are any of us really gonna do against him?
我真的把s和他的军团做成 打造成恐惧的代表 I really made Sinestro and the Sinestro Corps embody fear.
他们就是宇宙恐怖分子 They're cosmic terrorists.
他们到地球就是为了毁灭海港城 Their mission when they come down here is to destroy Coast City.
"我们要把绿灯侠的城市打成弹坑... "We're gonna make Green Lantern's town a crater...
把它变成恐惧的代名词, 这样这里就再也无人问津了" and a symbol of fear, so that nobody will ever come back here."
但哈尔·乔丹和绿灯军团说:"我们不怕. 我们会跟你们的恐惧抗争到底." And Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps says, "We're not afraid. We're gonna fight your fear."
哈尔飞到他哥哥那里, 他哥哥跟自己的妻儿在一起 Hal flies to his brother's house and his brother is there with his wife and his kids.
哈尔·乔丹跟他哥哥说:"你们现在必须得走." Hal Jordan says to his brother, "You have to leave right now."
他哥哥说:"我们是不会离开的. 我们相信你. His brother says, "We're not going anywhere. We believe in you.
我们不怕. 我们就守着这里." We're not afraid. We're standing our ground."
然后另一位绿灯侠突然说:"哈尔, 你看外面." And suddenly another Green Lantern says, "Hal, look outside."
外面一开始有人在窗边放了一盏绿灯... And someone's put a green light in their window...
然后另一家也在窗边点了盏绿灯 and another person puts a green light in their window.
瞬间整个城市就充满了绿灯的光芒... And suddenly there's green lights all throughout the city...
以示对哈尔的支持 as a support gesture to Hal.
对我来说, 那一刻让哈尔再度充满勇气克服恐惧... And for me, that was a recharge moment for Hal Jordan overcoming fear...
同时也是, 感情上对我来说: but it was also a moment, emotionally, for me saying, like:
"我们就是这样对抗恐惧的: 迎头抗击." "This is how we deal with fear. We take a stand."
他们就是我们的心魔 They're our personal demons.
Like, they're the fears we have about ourselves...
come to life in these incredibly colorful and bright...
and sometimes funny, sometimes terrifying ways.
All of us face those things in our lives, where you face adversity in some way...
where you're positive you're not gonna make it through this one.
And I think we've all been there at some point where you're just thinking to yourself:
"I am not capable of overcoming this."
Whether it's a small day-to-day thing or it's a big thing.
And what villains do is they represent those fears on this macro way...
I think, for the hero, who's the representative of all the things we think--
We hope that humanity is capable of or we're capable of at our best.
Then when the hero overcomes those things at the end because they have to...
it says to us that we can too.
Every myth has a creation.
Just like our heroes, every villain must have an origin.
And what qualities do we see in the most popular villains?
Instilling a sense of fear simply isn't enough.
Villains must be layered, nuanced.
We must ask ourselves: What makes a bad guy, a bad guy?
You wanna give your villain idiosyncrasies, and you want to make him strangely weird...
and interesting psychologically.
Those kind of characters lend themselves to having stories told about them...
because their bones are so strong.
You can put, you know...
You can hang a lot of meat on them.
They have their own path and they all have their own story.
And, you know, while their powers may be similar...
hopefully their personalities are not.
If a villain is great-looking or is great just visually...
but doesn't have a back-story...
it really takes away from enjoying its run.
The wonderful thing about Batman: The Animated Series...
is that they not only featured...
and celebrated a number of DC villains in Gotham City...
but introduced a number of origin stories.
Of course, we have this back-story of Harvey Dent...
and his struggles with his anger.
We even get to see this session he has with a psychiatrist.
And the psychiatrist puts him into this state of hypnotism...
and asks him to draw up his alter ego.
He calls it Big Bad Harvey.
Later in the episode, of course, we see his full development into Two-Face.
And I'll never forget that moment...
where he breaks open the door out of his hospital room.
He then turns at the same time that there's lightning...
and we see the image of the second half of his face.
Black Hand really came into his own...
in Green Lantern 43 when his origin was revealed.
Taking a character like Black Hand who was a minor villain...
and looking at him and saying, "if we have an emotional spectrum..-...
and all the colors represent life...
the absence of color has to represent death. There's got to be black."
Black Hand, by becoming the avatar of death, having a black ring...
committing suicide to become a zombified Black Lantern...
which is one of the best moments Doug Mahnke's ever drawn in his life.
It's creepy, twisted, dark.
Once people actually got to get inside his head a little bit and see who he was...
then it became much more of a connection.
A hero's motive is usually straightforward:
Save the day, serve justice, defeat evil.
Villains, however, are driven by a variety of forces.
It could be as grandiose as taking over the world...
or as direct as forcing others to share their agony.
They can be much more complex, personal and often even relatabie.
What makes a villain the most memorable is the reason they're doing whatever it is they do.
It's not the crime. We've seen a hundred thousand crimes.
We've seen Luthor break into banks.
We've seen all these characters do weird things.
But why they do it.
Every one of us is driven by, you know, our own singular, you know, needs and wants.
So are villains.
A character like the Anti-Monitor from Crisis on Infinite Earths...
needs to absorb all the universes.
And that's the only way he could survive.
Behold the definition of true power.
He's not doing it because he cares at all about life.
And that makes him frightening because you can't reason with him.
He's not an intellect that you can talk to and say:
"Don't you realize you're doing something bad?
Can't we figure out something else to do?" He's not interested. He has one need.
When I created Clayface Ill at the behest of the late Julius Schwartz...
I came up with a character who was a monster...
because he had screwed up.
He was someone born with acromegaly, essentially the elephant man disease.
And in trying to fix himself...
became somebody who basically can draw the calcium out of your body...
and reduce people to little clay-like masses.
But he didn't want to. It's just how he survived.
There may also be, certainly, revenge involved.
A lot of villains feel that they've been wronged in some way...
whether it's by society or a loved one or the police.
With Mr. Freeze, when we developed the character for Batman: The Animated Series...
I thought, "Somebody that cold has to be that cold for a reason."
Essentially he had some funding to carry out his research to cure his wife, Nora.
And the man who pulled that funding...
he then became the focus of Mr. Freeze's evil-doing.
His mission is to go after the one man who took away the love of his life.
He actually says to Batman:
"This is my sole purpose, and if you get in the way, you'll pay for it."
Which kind of implies, “Look, if you just step aside, I won't harm you."
As a villain, you can argue whether he's a villain or not.
Atrocitus, he was motivated by anger at the Guardians of the Universe.
His family got killed because the Guardians of the Universe...
they created these manhunters, androids...
which were their predecessors to the Green Lantern Corps.
Atrocitus skips over the denial stage of grief...
goes into anger and stays there. Forget going into the later ones.
The only bargain he makes is to stay angry...
and avenge his family by going after the Guardians however he can.
That's why the Joker is so interesting, because he sort of doesn't have a motive.
He knows he's crazy.
Most of the crazy villains, most of the villains who in comics, who are insane...
have no idea they are.
But the Joker is aware of it and he loves it.
He loves the concept that he is chaos to Batman's logic and order.
And, obviously, we have the most recent incarnation on the big screen.
Heath Ledger's Joker is a perfect example of that.
And he even says it. He's a dog chasing a car.
And when he catches it, he doesn't-- He doesn't know what he's doing.
He just sort of does things.
With Lex Luthor, he just wants power.
But how does he attain it?
How many ways does he have to go?
Why is he jealous of Superman?
Because he wants to be more powerful than Superman.
Those self-made men tend to feel that they have license.
Tend to feel that they're superior to everybody else.
He has these personality characteristics that one would consider narcissistic...
in the sense that he has this element of superiority...
that he is more powerful than others. Thinks that he's more intelligent than others.
And, therefore, believes that he deserves more than what other people deserve.
He is like the pinnacle of humanity. He has made himself the best man.
And then there's this alien that's better than him.
I did the revision of Luthor back in the 1980s.
I turned him into a character who brought jobs to Metropolis.
He provided museums and philharmonic orchestras...
and did all this stuff as long as everyone knew he was the best.
He wanted the power. He wanted the control. And he was happy.
He was delighted because everyone honored him.
And then Superman came along, who could fly.
It was ego.
"I am the person who looks down on everybody else."
And the first time Superman and he meet, Superman says:
"I'll be around. If you wanna find me, just look up."
And suddenly there was somebody who was over Luthor and he couldn't deal with that.
ROMANO: I think that's also part of the ego is that villains love to hear themselves talk.
They love to hear their theories as expounded upon by themselves.
The Penguin made a comment in one comic book:
"What's the point in committing the perfect crime if no one knows it was you who did it?"
Lex Luther's brain, as evil as it is, is brilliant.
Once he had him and he was incapacitated...
to the degree that Lex could do anything he wanted with him...
he could aggrandize himself in front of him. "Let me tell you how brilliant I am."
You were great in your day, Superman, but it just stands to reason.
When it came time to cash in your chips...
this old, diseased, maniac, would be your banker.
Mind over muscle.
The grandiose nature of the villains figures into every one of those key aspects.
Whatever their mission is in life, the main thing they want to do.
The one who wants to get the money, he wants to do it in the outlandish way...
the creative, different way.
When you think of some of the more flamboyant villains in the DC Universe...
you sort of think about:
Would they really be happy with all the money in the world?
Would they really be happy with running the city?
You know, it seems to be they're much happier trying to take the city than actually having it.
That's why you don't see a lot of books about supervillains now running city hall...
or "Now I'm the mayor" or, you know...
What are they gonna do with, you know, a billion dollars?
So I do think it's sort of more the pursuit.
It's not enough for the Riddler to rob a bank or steal a diamond.
He's got to drop clues on his way to robbing a bank or stealing a diamond.
The Riddler's probably the most self-defeating villain in the history of comic books...
because he's always providing Batman with a clue to his comeuppance.
He's obviously got some deep, dark...
damaged psychological reason that, you know, deep down he wants to be caught.
He wants to be punished.
Otherwise he wouldn't leave ridiculous riddles to be left for Batman to solve.
The journey toward evil follows a long road...
with many possible avenues.
But for the fallen, the question remains:
Were they born bad or did they willingly turn down the dark path?
Is it the end result of a lifetime of suffering...
or did one horrible incident forever push them over the edge?
ls there real evil? Does evil in itself really exist?
Or it is always a reaction to something? Is it a reaction to some childhood trauma?
There are a number of different, I guess, causes or trajectories toward evil-doing...
or toward a life of villainy.
The best villains probably are born bad.
You want them to be, at least.
There's always, like, maybe they were born bad, and then you had horrible incidents occur...
that sort of kept them down that path.
We have yet really to have true examples of these particular experiences...
that the Joker, Harvey Dent and other villains have gone through.
So I think there is a lot of room for the fictional writing...
and the fictional exploration of one event creating--
Completely redefining a person where it turns them to villains.
I created a character called Man-Bat.
It's this guy who is a Batman fan.
He is a genius. He is a scientist.
Works in museums. But he's just a little off.
And he thinks that if he creates a serum out of bats...
that he can give it as a gift to Batman...
and Batman will have the attributes of a bat.
Wouldn't that be great?
But somebody has to test it.
So he tests it on himself.
It's Jekyll and Hyde.
He's turned into this creature. He becomes a man-bat.
You can say, "Man-Bat is a villain." No, he's not a villain.
He can be manipulated by villains, but he's a good guy.
In fact, he loves Batman.
He thinks Batman is the greatest hero on earth.
And he wants to be like Batman.
But if he's like Batman, he becomes a drug addict then becomes this monster.
You will bow down before me!
First you, and then one day, your heirs!
General Zod is a fantastic villain for Superman.
While some of his actions aren't justifiable, you completely understand why he is the man he is.
You know, someone like the Scarecrow...
the fact that he was bullied into submission...
and picked on by way more powerful people than him...
and he was so scared to live his life because he had this constant air of fear around him.
It drove him to figure out why that fear existed within him.
And then at the end of the day, how he could inflict it upon other people.
You're writing it and you see:
"Why can't you just go left instead of right at this seminal moment?"
That kind of story, I think, is equally inspiring and exciting to read...
for different reasons, but because mostly you see that making the wrong choice...
or falling victim to sort of difficult circumstances and letting them turn you...
and twist you that way is something that gets you nowhere but Blackgate or Arkham...
or, you know, the Phantom Zone or that sort of thing. Heh, heh.
Consider this.
The function and role of the hero and the villain is all simply a matter of perspective.
If we reversed focus and considered the story from the point of view of the villain...
wouldn't they be the hero and the hero the villain?
You have to think that pretty much everyone's a hero in their own story.
The villains who are really interesting characters...
have an affirmative reason for what they're doing.
Their strength comes from...
absolute certainty, 100 percent certainty, that they are correct.
If they're uncertain about what they're doing, then they're not interesting characters.
Perspective of ants. You know, do ants see us as giant villains?
We're walking around. It's ruining my picnic, so I'm just stomping on ants. I'm not thinking.
To someone's point of view down there...
we are these giant gods who are villainous and are destroying their civilization.
So it's really just about your point of view.
Sinestro wanted to control things so much on Korugar, his home world...
he wanted it to be safe for everybody that he started to instill fear like, "I'm in control."
Sinestro is a villain who really did see himself as a hero and couldn't believe...
that he was being chopped off at the knees by the Guardians all the time...
and being perceived to be someone who wasn't looking out...
for the better interest of the universe and his own people.
And, eventually, it pushed Sinestro into a dark place...
where he finally just had to use his powers...
to bring to light what he thought was the best thing.
And Hal Jordan ultimately had to stop this guy who had gone renegade.
So it just set them on a collision course.
BROWN: Lex doesn't perceive himself as a bad person.
He doesn't perceive himself as anything...
but the agent of order and civilization.
You hold the future of the entire planet in your hands.
- I'm here to take it back. - Lex?
You'll never threaten the world again.
I think Luthor is correct in the way he views the world.
He's right. Superman is an alien and we shouldn't trust him.
He has a lot of people on his side today...
in that I think in the '50s, during the Eisenhower years...
the idea of a superman with all these incredible powers...
that we can't stop even if we wanted to, but he's a benign force for good, that's reassuring.
In today's day and age, I don't know if that's as reassuring.
So the idea that there's a guy who is a businessman...
you know, a tycoon who's looking out for his fellow humans...
against a threat that actually can't be contained or controlled...
I think it really speaks to I think a lot of people's fears...
about authority and power today.
In modern story...
just as it is in fife...
the choice between right and wrong often isn't so cut and dry.
Heroes are flawed, sometimes villains justified.
But it's the villain and sometimes society itself...
that further blurs the line.
The same way there's a thin line between love and hate, to me...
the best heroes are the ones that probably act a little villainous.
And the best villains are the ones that might have martyr complexes.
Where we are in comics right now, we probably examine the line between good and evil more...
than ever had been done before.
Batman is always trying to maintain that control within himself.
You know, “This is how my parents were killed.
I'm gonna make sure that doesn't happen to anybody else."
He is a guy who's fighting to not become a bad guy.
Had it not been for the humanizing anchors of his humanity, Alfred...
and a few other key people keeping him in line...
young Bruce Wayne, traumatized...
by witnessing the murder of his parents before his eyes...
could easily have gone the dark side of that line.
All I've ever wanted to do is kill him.
A day doesn't go by when I don't think about subjecting him...
to every horrendous torture he's dealt out to others.
And then end him.
But if I do that, if I allow myself to go down into that place...
I'll never come back.
There's sort of a power struggle going on with the villains too.
There's the character that's sort of more of a gray nature...
who was originally maybe intended to be a villain...
who cleaned up his act a little bit or who is just so engaging that you like him a lot.
You look at a character like Lobo.
Here's this guy who should not be called a hero by any stretch of the imagination...
but he's got just enough honor, I guess you'd say...
like, you know, he's a bounty hunter.
If he goes after somebody, for better or for worse, he'll honor the deal.
And he'll track down the guy and bring him in.
The appeal of Lobo is just the over-the-top black comedy and violence...
I think the character brings.
You know, he's a badass biker from outer space.
Who doesn't love somebody like that?
GUGGENHEIM: Deadshot is nice and simple and clear.
He's like a bullet. He goes from point A to point B and he doesn't waver.
KIRSHEN: He's got layers to him. He's not just doing this for the sake of fun.
He's doing it because this is the thing he's good at. He's good at killing people.
And he only does it for money.
With a character like Deathstroke, I actually did not create him to be a villain.
I created him thinking he was a character who was morally ambiguous...
who was doing certain things for his own reasons.
He was a hunter, he was a mercenary, he was an assassin...
but always on a political, for-hire basis.
And then because his son was trapped by the H.l.V.E., he was forced into becoming a villain.
He didn't want to be, and no matter how many times he wants to get out of it...
he can't because he has a certain code of ethics...
that says he promised to complete his son's mission...
and he can't stop until he does, even though he knows it's not his mission...
and even though he knows it's wrong.
Amanda Waller is one of the greatest characters in DC comics.
She is the black ops government leader of the Suicide Squad...
the program that recruits supervillains and forces them to do missions for them.
And she is manipulative, super smart.
Amanda Waller can only be viewed as a bad guy because she makes the tough choices.
That's the reason why.
And what she's doing is she is willing to sacrifice the individual for the greater good.
Amanda Waller continues to be a presence in the DC universe.
She's created a Justice League called the Justice League of America...
that is designed to take out the real Justice League if need be.
She's prepared for the worst because she's experienced the worst.
She has a very clear moral line and whether you agree with it or not, it doesn't shift.
That's why you'll have that discussion going back and forth...
of whether Amanda Waller is a hero or villain.
Heroes typically have a strong moral code.
"I Will not kill."
"I will uphold the law."
But just because villains commit crimes...
does not mean they are completely without principles.
There does exist honor among thieves, even if that honor is warped and twisted.
I don't think you can generalize about villains...
the same way as you can generalize about heroes across the board.
You know, I do think that there are some villains who have a moral code...
or have a line that they personally will not cross.
Two-Face, where he basically lets his morality be decided by a flip of a coin.
Sinestro certainly has a code of ethics he thinks he's following.
And in a strange way he is following it.
He believes in the Green Lantern Corps so much he's willing to be a villain to them.
Allow me to introduce myself.
I am he who is called Ra's al Ghul.
Ra's al Ghul knows who Batman is.
He can give it away.
He doesn't because there's sort of a respect that he has for Batman.
And he has this hope that one day Batman will come to his side...
so he doesn't destroy Batman that way.
Specifically, the Rogues, they won't kill somebody. That's where they draw the line.
They do have their own-- It may be a warped code, but they have their code.
If you go to the Rogues and say, “You have a chance to kill the Flash.
Here's the plan. This is how we're gonna kill the Flash. We're gonna kill the Flash."
Captain Cold would be like, "You're out of your mind.
If we kill the Flash the whole Justice League's on top us.
We don't need that right now.
We have this thing going. We don't wanna kill the Flash. He's just in our way."
There's versions of the Rogues who have been more bloodthirsty.
Their versions, I don't respond to because I don't think that's who the Rogues are.
The last thing they would ever do is kill the Flash.
That doesn't mean they're uninteresting to watch...
or uninteresting characters for the Flash to go against.
That makes them more interesting. What are their motivations?
The best villains represent the counterpoint to the hero.
A polar opposite in many respects...
but also bearing subtle or sometimes striking similarities.
The villains often mirror the hero's dark reﬂection...
the result of a divergent path, a different road taken.
I think a good nemesis for a hero needs to have some of the hero in him...
have some of the qualities of a hero in him.
You are defined as much by the dark side of the mythology...
as you are defined by this light side of mythology.
So for every mythology about demons, there need to be angels and vice versa.
You need to have a degree of polar opposite.
At the same time, there needs to be those things...
that make them mirror images of themselves.
You have Ocean Master who is kind of a mirror of Aquaman.
He is an Atlantean king, like Aquaman, but he's Aquaman gone wrong.
He's "What if Aquaman went down a different path?"
In the case of Flash, it's Reverse-Flash.
Literally, it's a reverse version of the Flash, a mirror of him.
And then the opposite would be Captain Cold.
On first blush you're like, “Oh, it's ice. He slips."
You look at Captain Cold and you analyze him a bit more.
When introduced, he was called “The Man Who Mastered Absolute Zero."
And absolute zero means zero atomic motion.
That means the atoms do not move.
You know, when things are colder, they're slower on the atomic level.
So that's why Captain Cold, to me, always captured...
the essence of an opposite of the Flash.
When you look at somebody like Batman...
Catwoman is certainly the sexual challenge to him.
Riddler is the intellectual challenge.
Penguin is almost a mockery of what Bruce Wayne is on the social scene.
And the Joker is the horrific version of what Batman is to ordinary people.
Whereas Batman scares criminals, the Joker scares and horrifies the ordinary people.
Black Adam is another good opposite number character.
Kind of got a costume that's similar to Shazam's costume, but it's black.
He's also another member of a police force that has kind of fallen from grace...
the Wizards Protector Society, which is what Shazam is and what Black Adam was.
The Crime Syndicate characters that have been around for decades...
they come from a version-- A parallel Earth, a version of our Earth...
where everyone who's good is bad and everyone who is bad is good.
And so you've got an evil Superman in Ultraman.
Then you have Owlman, who is a dark version of Batman.
And Superwoman, who is a dark version of Wonder Woman.
You have Johnny Quick and Power Ring. Power Ring is this Green Lantern...
who's a coward.
The Crime Syndicate represent the Justice League completely flipped on its head...
and if they were horrible, horrible, evil people.
In terms of what they can accomplish and who they can defeat...
they're on par with the Justice League, but their goals are so perverted...
compared to the honor and the morality that the Justice League have.
Which leaves the governments of the world with two choices, bow down to us or die.
The best supervillains that resonate the most, they do it on two levels.
They do it-- How they psychologically reflect or challenge your superhero...
and then also, in the story, what they've done to affect the superhero's life.
If there is not that personal connection, it just weakens it.
It just becomes another person trying to do something dastardly.
When well-paired, the villain's been able to get inside the superhero's head.
It's almost as if he knows precisely what makes them vulnerable, what their greatest fear is.
When they make it personal and can make it personal...
when the villains have the knowledge to make it personal and know your inner secrets...
that's when things get real.
Talia al Ghul, she fell in love with Batman.
So when it comes to the point of killing Batman...
many times in many stories, she draws the line there.
She will not kill him. She wants him for her own.
Star Sapphire was not only Hal Jordan's boss, but also girlfriend.
And when she was manipulated...
she did not know consciously that she had become Star Sapphire.
Then you've got this interesting dynamic...
of when he ultimately finds out that this is his girlfriend and he's got to battle her.
And how does he battle her when she's so smart without hurting her?
That kind of conflict of people who were once friends and become enemies...
you know, it's almost like the Greek tragedies, these enormous stories of betrayal.
I just ended my run with Green Lantern 20.
And as I was wrapping it up the story kind of organically revolved around not only Hal...
but Hal and Sinestro and that relationship is really key to Green Lantern.
There is this moment where Sinestro, who blames the Guardians of the Universe...
who have done all these horrible things...
against the Corps they created-- They tried to destroy it.
They're ultimately the big bad guys of the piece.
And Sinestro vows to destroy them. "I'm going to kill them one by one."
And Hal says, "I can't let you do that." And he grabs him.
And Sinestro says, "You think they can still be saved?
You think that they can be redeemed?"
And Hal says, “This isn't about them, this is about you."
He says, "I wanna save you.
You don't have to lower yourself to this level. You don't have to kill them.
You can be a great Green Lantern."
And he goes, "Because I believe in you."
And Sinestro looks at him and he says, “Jordan, it's too late. I've already killed them."
And you reveal that Sinestro has already wiped out the Guardians, one by one by one.
And Sinestro's like, "I'm leaving forever.
But before I go, you had a question you wanted to ask me."
And Hal says, you know, "Were we ever friends, Sinestro?"
And Sinestro, who has never called him by his first name--
He's always called him Jordan.
--Says, "You know, that's the tragedy of all this, Jordan."
He goes, "Hal, we'll always be friends."
Might is not reserved solely for the just.
While heroes can exhibit incredible strength or skills...
villains may possess abilities equal to or even greater than their foes.
It's not enough for villains merely to offer a challenge to the heroes...
but, rather, they must present the all-too-real possibility...
that good might not triumph over evil.
You're defined by the height of the mountain you climb.
And so the higher the mountain, the more the epic struggle it is to climb that...
the greater the adventure, the greater the hero.
If I have the powers of the gods, then am I not a god myself?
A good villain, you have to believe that he can win.
If you have Superman fighting a common mugger, that's not interesting.
You know that Superman's gonna win.
The idea that Lex Luthor can out-think Superman, that he is smarter than Superman...
and no matter what Superman's powers are, Lex Luthor can think of a way to defeat him...
makes that dynamic between the pair of them brilliant.
ADAMS: It's why we created Ra's al Ghul.
You need a Moriarty for Sherlock Holmes.
If Sherlock Holmes is superior to every criminal out there...
what's his value?
So we want Sherlock Holmes to have a Moriarty.
We want Batman to have a Ra's al Ghul.
And we want it to be neck and neck.
Superman has all his powers because he's on Earth...
and watching Zod discover that he has those same powers...
I think Superman and Zod could fight for centuries.
And basically, it just comes down to...
The person who's gonna win that fight is the person who puts the most heart into it.
When I was writing Superman, I created the character called Mongul...
who has become very big in the mythos since.
Basically, because I felt, "All right, this is silly.
You've got a guy here who moves planets...
and he has to fight a guy he has to outsmart to beat.
What about somebody who can kick his butt?"
So I came up with Mongul, who was bigger and strong and taller.
And he gives somebody a physical challenge.
Somebody Superman has to work to beat, just on a hands-on basis.
Darkseid is a great villain just because of the amount of power that he holds.
He's godlike and it's not easy to fight him and come back alive.
Going up against a character like Darkseid really proves your hero's worth.
The Anti-Monitor is a character like Darkseid, one of our cosmic-level villains.
He's a force of nature, a force of danger.
Darkseid and the Anti-Monitor can literally cross time and space...
and they represent a threat that, again, only a hero such as Superman...
or a hero of that level can face and that's why they are almost more frightening.
Again, to an earlier point, that's why we need a Superman...
because they have to deal with threats that we as common people can't.
In a battle of equals, the outcome always remains uncertain...
and, on occasion, fortune favors the fiendish.
The villain escapes soot-free.
They get their lucky break or manage to land the killing blow.
What does it mean when the hero falls in battle and the villain emerges victorious?
If it's all too clean and too neat, why are we continuing to buy books?
Why are we continuing to read these stories...
if we don't have the sense that there's a certain danger...
or a mortal danger to our hero?
You know, we have a very clear statement. We said, you know:
"The hero has to win every time.
The villain only has to win once."
Even though we want ultimate good to triumph over evil...
there will be battles along the way where there are setbacks.
The question of "Can the villain succeed?" is always a tricky one.
I believe they can...
but obviously you have to make certain that you're careful, the extent of it.
There are different kinds of villains...
and thus different kinds of impact to what a villain does.
Most of the criminal villains...
the guys who are just out there to rob a bank or do whatever...
don't leave lasting impact.
The ones like the Joker potentially can affect an entire series.
Don't you just love a happy ending?
One of the risks of being a superhero is that the people that you love...
whether they're superheroes themselves or citizens...
you put them at risk.
And so with Jason Todd, essentially that is what happened...
where the Joker murders him...
and we have one of these rare instances where a primary character was murdered.
For Batman, that meant incredible guilt.
That meant feeling that he was responsible for the death...
and that was what the Joker essentially wanted.
I always loved Black Manta. You never knew his real name.
He had that helmet that covered his face. He killed Aquaman's baby.
You have to be a real sick, cold bastard to kill a baby.
It felt so horrific to me that I couldn't do anything...
but look at this character and go, “This is the coldest guy in the DC universe."
In a lot of ways, I think Black Manta to Aquaman...
is very much akin to what Bane is to the Batman.
Both characters were very capable...
and did cause great harm and pain to the main characters.
When Bane broke Bruce Wayne's back...
it was proof positive to all the readers around the world...
that, yes, you got this right all these years.
This is a superhero who has no superpowers...
who, arguably, his greatest superpower is his humanity...
who is vulnerable...
whom you can identify with because he has no superpowers.
And now, maybe for the first time, we're taking that one extra step.
We are crossing the Rubicon...
and we are showing you, and his back is broken...
and Batman is either dead or incapacitated.
And I think readers still remember that. Readers have a visceral reaction to that.
This is someone who could hurt Batman. This is someone Batman...
even in his calmest of nights wakes up and thinks:
"This is a guy who once really severely hurt me, who's still out there."
So I think that's why Bane still has that kind of attraction to readers.
What Bane was to Batman, Doomsday was to Superman...
the embodiment of brutal physical force.
This is the great fear Superman has.
Having a foe that he cannot find a way to stop one way or another.
He was designed to kill Superman.
Every time he dies, he comes back stronger...
with whatever killed him now no longer something that can kill him.
Doomsday stirs up massive chaos...
and delivers the hero his biggest defeat ever.
Doomsday kills Superman.
I can't think of another villain where his appearance on the stage is enough that...
you know, the world is shaking.
I would even argue that the death of Superman story itself isn't even a story.
It's just a fight scene.
The story comes from how the world reacts afterwards.
When you get to see the "Funeral For a Friend"...
you see what Superman meant to the world...
which reﬂected what the real world did a lot...
when they thought we were really gonna leave Superman dead.
They went crazy sad.
Any time you have that level of tragedy impacting a DC character...
we go through and show the repercussions of that act...
and how it affects the relationships between all the heroes...
and the impact it has on all their friends and family.
And so, to me, it's not done lightly.
We don't have last episodes. We have the next episode.
And we do have to deal with the repercussions.
And, again, if the bad guys are winning too often...
then that hero doesn't deserve his own title and he should probably stop being a hero.
Superman died, but that wasn't what the story was about.
His death was a piece of that story.
It was almost the beginning of the story.
And then Dan Jurgens and Mike Carlin, all those guys created Reign of the Supermen...
which is all about Superman's return.
With Batman breaking his back, it was the same thing.
How strong is Bruce Wayne?
His back's broken, but the city still needs him.
So he heals himself and comes back as Batman.
He overcomes that. But sometimes the villains do win...
but it's only momentarily.
Any general can tell you it's not the battles, it's the ultimate war.
And I think if you look at the grand scope of the DC universe...
it is ultimately good triumphing over evil.
The best stories, the stories that kind of last with you...
are the ones that even though good wins, there's a price to be had for that victory.
I don't consider the hero having a victory if it doesn't come at a cost.
They have to have something sacrificed, either personal or physical...
that occurs every time they win.
They have to be giving up something of what they are in order to help mankind.
They're making a sacrifice every time they put that costume on...
every time they're confronting something and putting themselves at risk.
So, therefore, there should be something given up in their social life...
their personal life, about who they are.
They should be a little broken because of what they've done.
Only thing that keeps them going is that they're doing something for the better good...
and for helping other people.
In the history of comics, DC in particular...
there are not hundreds, there are thousands of supervillains.
Thousands of supervillains.
And there's no way we can talk about all of them.
We can only talk about a fraction of them.
I think that the very fact that we have such a wide variety of villains...
that can be anything from, you know...
essentially, a high-tech bank robber to someone like Darkseid who is a new god...
is something I think strengthens our universe.
It gives us, you know, a great spectrum of villainy.
This spectrum of evil is diverse and dynamic...
falling into a vast array of villainous categories and characteristics.
Indeed, the tropes and commonalities of villainy are far-reaching.
First off is the uncontrollable beast...
that rages and rains down destruction on those unfortunate souls caught in its path...
the monster.
My favorite monster is my--
The classic monsters, the reason that they're enduring and scary...
is because they almost-- They look like people that you love...
or that you care about or that you trust.
Your neighbors, your wife, your mother.
Then something infects them or turns them into something that's an unstoppable force.
Probably the most illustrious monster of the Golden Age of comics was Solomon Grundy.
He's an animated corpse.
The heroes, even Batman, is okay with trying to destroy Grundy...
because he's dead already.
I like Bizarro Superman because he's just so off-the-wall.
I mean, he's like just sort of a crazy super powerful...
almost Frankenstein monster version of Superman.
A villain as old as literature...
but only heightened by the advent of the atomic bomb...
the mad scientist reﬂects our mistrust and fear of technology...
of advances that could undo us as a people.
New inventions come along that could be...
the most wonderful boon for humanity...
or it could mean the seeds of their destruction.
So it figures that mad scientists would be one of the true fears...
incorporated into the personified forms of supervillains.
Doctor Sivana was a cackling, bald, bespectacled scientist...
who usually could be seen in a white coat.
And he was responsible continually for the near demise of Shazam.
Before there was a Doctor Sivana, for Lex Luthor...
there was the Ultra-Humanite...
who was sort of like the very first mad scientist.
He put his brain into other people's bodies, or his consciousness in other people's bodies.
So I believe, at one time, he was a beautiful woman.
He was different people throughout his history.
And now he's like a white ape-like creature.
Charmed, I'm sure.
But that just goes to show the power of the mind over the matter.
It doesn't matter what you look like on the outside.
As long as that brain survives, that brain is going to be trouble for you.
A militant general...
a despot, a conqueror.
This is a villain not far removed from our world's own tyrants.
We know them as the dictator, or more simply the overlord.
I have a duty to my people.
And I will not allow anyone to prevent me from carrying it out.
With Zod, it's a pure power thing.
There's something very moving about the fact...
that this story begins with him...
basically seeing his entire planet explode...
like his home evaporate into nothing.
I can't imagine a bigger launching-off point for a character...
and then knowing that he'll do whatever he can to make a new Krypton...
because he can't help himself.
It's the only option he has.
It's what he was born to do.
That's what he's been training to do his whole life.
He's fighting for Krypton, for his people.
And he's a warrior.
And so he's capable of committing, like...
horrific crimes against humanity and/or anything living.
Starro the Conqueror is an alien starfish.
Giant starfish that comes down on Earth and seizes control city by city.
Then in terms of seizing their minds, it was right out of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Culled from our own Mob-laden underworld...
the criminal mastermind is both power-hungry and immoral.
Feeding their insatiable desire for control...
they keep the public in fear as they tighten their grasp on their domain.
Certainly one of the great types of villains is the criminal mastermind...
the guy who holds an entire city or town or village or whatever in a grip of fear.
Penguin has what is informally known as a Napoleon complex...
the small man who wants to be big.
If he could lose that weight, he wouldn't, because it helps him take up more space.
His hat makes him taller.
His umbrella, when extended, helps him take up more area.
From the very first story he appears in...
he wants to rise up in high society and wants to be a crime boss.
A number of stories feature him running for mayor...
not because he wants to do something great. He wants that status.
He wants the power...
and he wants the status to be the big man over everybody else in Gotham.
The criminal mastermind is sort of an extension of the real...
Mob crime organizations or crime families that have been a part of American history...
almost since the country was founded. That's a great character for comics...
because you can take that into the area of caricature.
Currently, guys like Black Mask.
What's more hideous than a guy in this, you know...
awful-looking skull mask...
wearing a business suit, commanding a legion of street troopers?
I mean, that's a great foe for Batman.
To guys like Penguin, Black Mask, they're out to really dominate the city.
They wanna be the distorted, hideous, grotesque face of Gotham City.
Can we get some girls in here? Careful what you wish for.
Unh!
Cat got your tongue?
The apple on the tree.
The seductive siren song of the temptress.
The femme fatale.
The femme fatale crystallizes the qualities of both a villain and a love interest...
mall at the same time.
You can find roots in movies.
You can find the actresses...
who maybe inspired some of the villainesses who were created.
And these were women who used their beauty to lure the hero in...
to get the hero to do their bidding.
And that of course was reflected in the comics.
It was part of the inherent popular culture.
Poison Ivy is a great example of a female villain...
who will actually take advantage, knowing that the male characters...
the male heroes, and even the male villains...
that she's working with, are the ones susceptible to love...
to connecting with her.
And she uses those assumptions for her own gain.
She finds that her power is in, essentially...
taking advantage of other people's vulnerability to emotions.
She took everything that could be seen as objectification towards women...
and then used it as her own power and turns it around on the guys.
She's very interested in controlling people.
Harley Quinn is a case of love gone bad.
The individual who's fascinated with the supervillains...
"fascinated with their egos and their qualities, and Joker plays to that.
So Harleen Quinzel is a woman...
who is a psychiatry intern, essentially, at Arkham Asylum.
When Bruce Timm and I wrote the origin for her...
in Mad Love, then we really got into her personality.
That she wanted to write a tell-all book about Gotham's psychotic criminals...
then wound up falling under the sway of one and becoming one herself.
She wants the toughest case possible.
And who is the toughest case? It's the Joker.
There's this connection that they have together.
I think there is an element of manipulation on his end.
That he, um...
I think he fancies her, but also that he's realizing that...
here's an opportunity for him to get out of Arkham Asylum.
Harley's a bit of a social chameleon.
She molds herself to the people around her. When she hangs out with heroes, she's heroic.
She hangs out with villains, she's villainous. When with the Joker, she's more murderous...
than she is at other times.
Some of the villainesses that we have in the DC universe...
-...are almost more powerful than the villains. - The sky is the limit...
as far as female villains are concerned.
Someone like Cheetah, who is crazy ferocious.
With the Cheetah, I wanted to create somebody...
who resonated with Wonder Woman, with Diana.
We added kind of a back-story that they were friends...
and then ultimately she became the Cheetah.
And Wonder Woman later learned she was never really her friend.
It was all just a play, and it was a bond of trust that was broken.
And the Cheetah has turned into this savage creature that wants to destroy humanity...
as much as Wonder Woman wants to protect it.
At this point in time...
I think we're lucky enough to be in an era where there is a lot more equality.
And you're getting some great stories.
They can be defined by what their plot is...
what their motive is, what their goals are, what their methods are.
And that's great that you don't simply have to define them by gender.
The female villain, you know, historically...
goes back all the way to Greek mythology.
Look at a character like Hera, for instance...
who is both a heroine and a villain, depending on the story.
Other female villains throughout time have a lot of that same complexity to them.
You look at a character like Catwoman, for instance.
In her original incarnation, I believe, she was just an adventurer.
She was out there being a burglar and jewel robber...
simply because of the thrill of it.
We began learning more about her in the 80s, what her past might have been...
and that certainly made her more of a complex and more of a sympathetic character.
And then to the present day where she is...
I believe one of the members of the Justice League.
So she's gone all the way from being a villain to anti-hero to straight-on heroine.
She's very curious to us. She has that duality of both good and evil.
And I think that that allows her to be relatable.
I think that she's the most realistic.
It was just interesting to see this strong, female character.
And she was a precursor, I think...
to a lot of the sort of heroines that we now see on screen.
Women really started to become more popular on the big screen and on TV.
As a result, I think of characters like Catwoman being portrayed...
in the early days of television and film.
Today, happily, from what I have seen and read...
you have superheroes, superheroines, supervillains, supervillainesses...
all on a level playing field.
I think any time you can make the character strong...
whether they're male or female, you'll end up with a good villain.
it should come as no surprise, no coincidence, really...
that the more popular heroes are the ones who typically battle the most sinister...
and charismatic rogues' galleries.
For it's this dynamic roster of villains...
that bolster and buoy the popularity of our hero.
When you look at the very best characters, the very best heroes...
in comic book mythology, they typically have the strongest rogues' gallery.
I think you develop a better rogues' gallery around the superhero...
if the scale of the superhero...
is one where it's easy to imagine the villain coming into being.
You look at Batman, Batman ultimately is a human being.
So therefore you can have villains that face him that are human plus a little.
Batman's rogues' gallery, which I think is the best rogues' gallery...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Supervillain 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.
Don't look at him, Big Boy.
Grodd is leader.
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? They pull a heist, they escape the Flash...
-...and then they go to a bar to have a beer? - The Suicide Squad is the exception to the rule.
And what makes it interesting is it's a bunch of villains...
who are forced by the government to go on missions that are for the good of the people.
And if they fail, if they decide to try and escape, they have devices that will kill them.
So they are forced to do it.
I think the fact that they are forced to be heroes despite their own instincts...
and that they're constantly trying to work out ways to undermine missions...
and to sometimes betray their teammates and be villains even while they're--
When they're forced to do the right thing is the reason why that team, that book...
-...is always around and is always popular. - None of their motivation is theirs.
They're doing the bidding of Amanda Waller and the government.
Are the people that are planting these bombs...
on the backs of the Suicide Squad members...
are they the heroes?
You know, purportedly they are.
But the way they're doing it, it really, you know comes down to...
it's an extreme form of water boarding, I think.
They have reason to hate their handlers, who are supposed to be the good guys...
but they're not seen that way in the books.
So it's an interesting study in what makes a villain and what makes a hero...
because it's kind of flip-flopped in that book.
They're not there to personally screw the other guy standing next to them.
They are there to just survive.
And they are-- They don't want it to be their suicide mission.
And I do think that that's of a different and new angle.
Suicide Squad is successful, because it has a rotating cast.
You could kill some members off. There's always that question...
of something happening to the cast that could change the status quo.
There's always that anticipation that if a mission goes wrong...
somebody could actually die.
It's a gut-level survival instinct.
For the reader, you're just like:
"Who's gonna make it through this mission and how?"
You know, and then, you know, “Are they gonna manage to actually get free...
so they can take care of Amanda Waller?" Heh, heh, heh.
Sometimes it's more exciting to find a villain that's so powerful...
the combined might of an entire team can't defeat them.
So the superheroes and the supervillains have to band together...
put aside their differences.
You always have that classic shot where they reach out and shake hands...
and, like, "Let's team up."
And, to me, that's like the ultimate odd couple.
The problem is though that there aren't that many of those kinds of villains.
So it's always a challenge to find one villain powerful enough to take out all of them.
It's interesting that someone like Lex Luthor could do it...
just because he has the skill to out-think them.
So it isn't always power. Sometimes it's that X-factor.
But if you can manage to do the right storyline...
again, it can be a lot of fun and a really great challenge.
I'm not here to challenge you, Darkseid. Quite the contrary.
I've got something you want. The only thing you want.
People can identify with that...
because when we're faced with something that endangers...
our way of life...
we can set aside our differences and work together.
A fine line exists between a hero and villain.
And sometimes the line is crossed.
In essence, the hero becomes the villain.
But when a hero loses their way, is salvation possible?
One of the great classic stories of literature...
is the drama of the good man goes bad.
What is it that can happen to us that puts us through...
a set of circumstances that drives us to do something we don't morally believe in?
That's a powerful tale.
Trying to turn a hero, you have to actually figure out how to affect their moral center.
It's in the face of a planet being blown up, a city being blown up...
or a wife or a lover dying.
And the idea that "I wasn't strong enough, I wasn't powerful enough and perhaps...
me doing the right thing or being a hero was the problem.
If I'd been more vicious, if I'd been more brutal, I could have changed things."
I think every great turn of a hero to a villain, it comes from that.
LEE: In Injustice, the storyline is that the Joker has killed Lois...
and it's not just Lois' death that drives Superman to almost a level of insanity...
but the fact that Lois was carrying his child...
and so it has double significance and impact on him.
That's enough.
At that point, he kind of loses his frame of reference...
and decides to create almost a totalitarian state...
where he's the ultimate authority. So again in his mind...
he is trying to prevent what happened to Lois and his unborn child...
from happening in the world by becoming...
you know, the enlightened dictator.
But, you know, you see sort of the holes in logic of that.
You know, ultimately, you are creating a greater evil...
by trying to do some small sense of good.
There have been a few stories where heroes go villainous for some time...
and I think probably the most famous one is Hal Jordan when Coast City...
the city he called home, was attacked.
And many people were killed and destroyed and he wanted to bring them back.
And he went to the Guardians and said, "Give me this power so I can do it."
And they said no, and he ultimately killed them...
and became--
Went crazy, became this big villain in the DC universe.
You know, they say that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Usually when a hero falls from grace it's because they've succumbed...
to their own power, like when Hal Jordan became Parallax.
It was Hal Jordan overreaching...
and trying to use his power as the Green Lantern to recreate an entire city...
and he kept wanting more and more power.
And he basically got corrupted by his own...
You know, by his own super power.
And I think that is usually the path down-- You know, down darkness.
Through becoming the Spectre...
and ultimately becoming Green Lantern again he found redemption.
But it took years and it was a great hero's journey that we got to witness.
JOHNS: Hal Jordan was always about overcoming fear and I thought, "Well...
if he's all about overcoming fear, there's gotta be a moment that he gave in to fear.
When was that weakness?" That weak point was when he was worried...
something else was gonna happen once Coast City was destroyed.
And in that moment, he let fear kind of take hold of his heart.
That's when Sinestro unleashed Parallax, who was this--
We created this entity of terror that could possess his soul and corrupt his body.
And essentially turn him into Parallax.
And by having Hal still make a mistake and give in to fear...
it was still on point and gave him a point of failure.
But at the same time...
adding Parallax allowed for an easier redemption.
And so if a hero does cross the line...
does he just go back to work the next day? The idea was no.
It was a 10-year problem for him.
Comic books, by, I think, their basic nature is about wish fulfillment.
Therefore, the concept of second chances...
is actually built into the very concept of the type of material we do.
So the idea that a hero or a villain could be redeemed...
is exactly what comics have to be about.
We can take bad and turn it good.
And we can make good even better.
And that's what comics and fantasy storytelling is all about.
Cry for Justice began with a bunch of heroes trying to track down Prometheus.
Prometheus has actually taken the identity of one of the heroes.
So he actually is amongst them the entire time.
At the end of it...
Prometheus has worked out a way to destroy most of Star City...
which is Green Arrow's home.
He also maims Arsenal...
and then ultimately Arsenal's daughter is killed.
What happens at the very end is the one moderate person...
Green Arrow, then tracks down Prometheus on his own and executes him.
And that then led to a long arc for Green Arrow where he had to redeem himself.
Green Arrow crossed the line and took the life of a villain.
He did not just come back from that adventure...
and say, "Oh, well, I'm never gonna kill people again."
He had a mental breakdown, and we did a year...
a year and a half long story where he lost it.
And it was to show that there's consequences for this kind of stuff.
I do think that in modern comics, it's okay for the heroes to fail.
You just got to have it mean something.
And not just teach them something...
but have them suffer because they did something wrong.
Taking someone's life, you take away all they're gonna have and ever will be.
And it stays with you even if you do it for the right and proper thing.
So, you know, killing in comics is-- When the hero pulls the trigger...
I think it's not done a lot, but I think when it's done...
it has to be done in a real big way...
that has an emotional punch to the hero's psyche and soul.
After we've witnessed such heinous crimes...
after we've experienced firsthand...
pure evil in the face of villainy, can the evildoer be redeemed?
In this comic book world where heroes often get second chances...
can the villain ever be forgiven?
It's a lot harder to figure out how somebody who spent years...
taking what they wanted, killing people...
whatever set of misdeeds will suddenly turn around...
and find God and become moral the rest of their lives.
Does it happen?
Probably does in reality, but it's a real tough story to tell.
Black Adam is an interesting character. He was chosen by the wizard Shazam...
given powers back in the ancient Egyptian days.
He was a slave in Kahndaq.
He took these powers, became Black Adam, the champion, and he was a hero.
And over time, he was corrupted by that power.
He went back to Kahndaq and he said, “I'm leading Kahndaq now, you are free.
I'm here." And then he found someone he fell in love with. Isis was born...
and then Isis' brother Osiris. Like, we kind of created a Black Adam family.
And then that family was torn apart and they were killed.
And Isis, who had been such a great presence for Adam, who had preached peace.
As she's dying in his arms, the last words she says is, "Avenge us."
And that sends Black Adam off.
And he kills an entire country out of rage.
And, obviously, hard to redeem somebody after that.
He believes in doing the right thing.
He just goes about it in such a barbaric and awful way.
Pete Tomasi wrote a fantastic story wrapped around a character everybody should hate.
And made him-- You know, made him a hero...
in a very-- You know, from a very villainous past.
It's a weird spot to be in when you're a writer, when you have to say:
"I committed genocide, but I have to make this character relatable...
and in a weird way have people understand where he was coming from at that point."
So it's a tough line to walk when you're a writer writing a character...
who's as three-dimensional as Black Adam...
because he really is one of those great three-dimensional characters...
that you could horribly understand why he does something.
With villains, though, when you try and turn them into heroes...
they can lose their... What makes them special.
So it's a very rare case where a villain is better as a hero.
Most of the time most readers just can't wait for them to be villainous again.
ROMANO: When we worked on Dark Knight Returns...
where we have Doctor Wolper...
trying to bring the Joker back and trying to work with him...
and now Doctor Wolper also has an enormous ego.
And so you've got Joker's ego, Wolper's ego.
It doesn't work out well. It doesn't work out well for Wolper.
But the Joker absolutely was all about:
"I am rehabilitated. I'm here. I've seen the error of my ways."
And he really just used that as a matter to get himself out of Arkham...
so he could commit tremendous crimes.
I think some of them can be redeemed, but I think what you gotta do...
is you gotta dangle the sense of redemption in front of them then rip it away.
Ultimately, you show why they were a villain in the first place.
As society continues to evolve, so too do our villains.
In September of 2011...
DC relaunched its entire line of comics...
dubbed The New 52.
Two years ago, relaunched the DC universe.
We called that The New 52 and it was basically a soft reset of the universe...
where we basically fixed the things that we felt weren't working...
and kept going with the things that were.
We sat down and thought about: "What do we need more of in the DC universe?"
And one of the things that we wanted to address was the villains.
What is villainy to us in 2013? What is real evil in 2013?
It's horrendous, right? And sometimes if you get too close to the reality of it...
it takes you out of the comic book.
So using super villains as metaphors for whatever that is...
and for the brutal attacks that they do, it's gotten darker. It's darker. And it's scarier.
And the attacks come without notice sometimes and they're personal.
I think that's because we live in a very, sort of, fearful time.
Ever since 9/11, the world's been on edge...
and no one knows when the next shoe is gonna drop.
Is it gonna be a tsunami? Is it gonna be economic collapse?
Villains that sort of embody that sense of unpredictability...
that sense of, you know, doom can come in any form and at any time.
I think that speaks to everyone's sort of hidden fears.
Instead of characters of good and evil, it became about characters of order and chaos.
It became about anarchy.
We are artists and we're trying to reflect what's going on in the world.
That's what all art does. It's a mirror.
While DC's rogues' gallery of villains is already enormous...
there's always room for a little more evil.
With the advent of The New 52, the heroes of the DC universe...
must face new threats and adversaries.
I have a strange belief about the way one proceeds with comics...
is to using old characters and introducing new characters.
My belief is if you're gonna use one or two old characters...
you have to introduce a new one.
I don't think we should ever be so content to keep riding on the same horse.
If the hero has to survive for 16, 20, 30 years...
you wanna know all the different aspects of that character...
and the villain will make them face certain parts about themselves...
that on their own...
they may not even think about or can come up in a storyline.
A villain will find that, because they're always trying to find something new...
to use against the hero...
which makes you explore your hero even more.
The goal of any villain is to challenge our hero, right?
Not to challenge them but to take them to the ragged edge...
of his existence in every way.
The idea is to try and think about what the character is most afraid of...
at that particular moment in his or her life, the hero...
then create a villain that comes right at that thing.
So for "Court of Owls," that story was really about...
you know, a moment when Batman was on top of the world.
He felt very confident in Gotham and it made me realize...
Batman might think he knows the city but he can't know the history of the city.
He can't know everything about it. So what if the city itself begins to come at him saying:
"You don't know me that well." With the Court of Owls...
they're this group buried and layered into the past of the city in ways that are scary to him.
He doesn't believe they exist at all.
Then he sees that they actually have nests for their Talons...
inside Wayne buildings and then in the penultimate scene...
he realizes that the person behind the story...
is actually someone who claims to be a Wayne himself.
The Guardians of the Universe were characters that they're ancient beings...
that divorced themselves from emotion a long time ago.
They thought emotion was dangerous.
They say the law is supposed to be devoid of emotion.
The First Lantern is the being who got the first ring...
who was there to witness the divorcing of the Guardians and their emotional hearts.
And he took that emotional power for himself.
And he had changed who he was...
and the Guardians locked him away like they did their emotions.
The First Lantern is a metaphor for all the pent up emotion the Guardians have buried.
And that First Lantern is now free.
At one point, the First Lantern says-- As he's got them captured...
he's turned the tables and he says, “I'm gonna change this universe now.
But before I do, I want you to have your emotions back.
I want you to feel this."
The Guardians, for the first time in billions of years...
have their emotions back and they feel shame and fear...
and horror about what they've done and what they've become...
which I really enjoyed.
And then that's right before Sinestro wipes them out.
When I got into Aquaman and I was launching Aquaman for The New 52...
my attitude was he wants to be on land.
So he made a conscious decision in issue one, "My life is on land here."
And I wanted to have something that was gonna drag him back into the ocean.
So we created-- Ivan Reis and I created this race of sea creatures...
humanoid sea creatures, man-eating creatures...
that were starving and from the trench and they had eaten all their food...
and they were coming up.
They come up out of the ocean and attack a town...
and Aquaman gets involved with that attack...
and has to go back into the water.
What Aquaman doesn't know is they're actually another kingdom.
They're actually another underwater kingdom that is one of many, with Atlantis.
Although it was spawned from comics...
the DC universe isn't limited to panels and pages.
It has expanded to include all forms of media and given its villains new worlds to explore.
JOHNS: DC Comics isn't just comics, you know?
It starts in the comics, all the characters come from the comics.
But then they explode into everything else.
KIRSHEN: If it wasn't for these amazingly rich and complex and multilayered villains...
that we had to craft our stories around and what is driving you through the story...
what is pushing Batman, you know, to push his limits...
to get to the end of the game is ultimately the plan...
and the storytelling around the villain...
and the villains' interactions with each other as they all try to take down Batman.
You had your shot, Deathstroke, but you're not the only assassin in town.
There is such rich material here and such deep, amazing characters...
that have such long history and love from the fans...
for 50, 60, 70 years that we wanna tell great stories in our games.
We don't want it to just be about the gameplay and cool visuals.
There's gotta be the meat there of a great story.
To me, it was a lot of fun to see that because it explores the world of these characters...
and it doesn't just give you one flavor month in, month out.
The future, including the upcoming Forever Evil comic event...
will continue to emphasize the villains and their many diabolical deeds.
As DC celebrates its villainy, we're doing the first New 52 event series.
I'm writing it. David Finch is drawing it. It's called Forever Evil.
And the context of this is the Justice League is dead.
The villains have inherited the earth. They've been killed by the Crime Syndicate.
So we create an event that now carries on throughout the rest of 2013 and 2014...
that's all about the villains.
And when we looked at the whole lineup of characters, it really came down to:
Why does this character exist in the DC universe?
What role does this character fill?
How do we show that function through story, through character development?
Seeing all the villains manifest themselves in animation...
and television and film and videogames from the comic books, that's...
I mean, that's the true power and testament to the characters themselves.
The supervillains of DC Comics...
come in all manners of shapes, sizes, personalities...
dark recesses and eccentricities.
They conquer worlds, eradicate cities and terrorize the innocent...
all while fighting the hero.
And it's this bond between villain and hero that is inseverable...
"unbreakable, a fusion of soul, a sense of feeling...
a deeply rooted connection that cannot be extricated.
Theirs is a war of intellect, of strength...
of darkness and intertwined fate and destiny to keep doing battle.
They can't give up on each other.
Without the hero, there is no villain.
Without a v