“I Am The Villain of This Story!”: The Development of The Sympathetic Supervillain by Leah Rae Smith, B.A. A Thesis In English Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Texas Tech University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS Approved Dr. Wyatt Phillips Chair of the Committee Dr. Fareed Ben-Youssef Mark Sheridan Dean of the Graduate School May, 2021 Copyright 2021, Leah Rae Smith Texas Tech University, Leah Rae Smith, May 2021 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to share my gratitude to Dr. Wyatt Phillips and Dr. Fareed Ben- Youssef for their tutelage and insight on this project. Without their dedication and patience, this paper would not have come to fruition. ii Texas Tech University, Leah Rae Smith, May 2021 TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS………………………………………………………….ii ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………………...iv I: INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………….1 II. “IT’S PERSONAL” (THE GOLDEN AGE)………………………………….19 III. “FUELED BY HATE” (THE SILVER AGE)………………………………31 IV. "I KNOW WHAT'S BEST" (THE BRONZE AND DARK AGES) . 42 V. "FORGIVENESS IS DIVINE" (THE MODERN AGE) …………………………………………………………………………..62 CONCLUSION ……………………………………………………………………76 BIBLIOGRAPHY …………………………………………………………………82 iii Texas Tech University, Leah Rae Smith, May 2021 ABSTRACT The superhero genre of comics began in the late 1930s, with the superhero growing to become a pop cultural icon and a multibillion-dollar industry encompassing comics, films, television, and merchandise among other media formats. Superman, Spider-Man, Wonder Woman, and their colleagues have become household names with a fanbase spanning multiple generations. However, while the genre is called “superhero”, these are not the only costume clad characters from this genre that have become a phenomenon. Their adversaries, likewise, have also become infamous in their own right. Supervillains have made their way into the spotlight over time, in part because of the rise of their superhero’s fame, but also because of their prevalence with their origin stories for an audience who no longer believed in purely evil characters. Characters who at their comic book infancy were nothing more than over-characterized, take over the world concepts now strive to prove their goodness toward the world by attempting to be heroes themselves. Several of these supervillains have undergone a great transition in their audience’s perspectives. These have changed due to the growing depth of their origin stories, from their stories being nonexistent to having sympathetic tales founded around personal trauma that call for understanding and potentially forgiveness. The concept of forgiveness and redemption toward a supervillain is one that is introduced in greater prominence in the Modern Age of comics, yet could not be present as such without the gradual introduction of the sympathetic origin story. Also, sympathy could not be given to supervillains if not for the changing perspective of its audience toward the world around them. These two caveats are necessary in order for the iv Texas Tech University, Leah Rae Smith, May 2021 development of the sympathetic supervillain to occur, transforming the classic comic book trope into a new creation and addition to the superhero mythos. v Texas Tech University, Leah Rae Smith, May 2021 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Bad guy. Antagonist. Evil mastermind. World Dominator. The list of monikers goes on. Whatever you call them, the concept of the villain is not unfamiliar. Whether seen on the big screen or read on a page, the concept of villainy has been an age-old trope in storytelling, and has evolved from vengeful gods to witches in the woods enticing children to their cottages to eat them to intergalactic titans bent on universal domination. It is a role that presents its complications with the identified character in denial of the title or embracing it emphatically, “I am the villain of this story!” (“Onyx”). One of the more recognizable type of villain is that of the supervillain, a character that typically appears in superhero comic books. Initially overdrawn, out of proportion, and ridiculous, these bad guys colored the pages of comics and comic strips since the first superhero comics in the late 1930s, and became popularized within the comic medium. Their crimes were initially that which directly affected the common man: robbery, government corruption, domestic violence. These were familiar crimes, crimes that were of a great concern to the readers, and spurned the detestation of that character, as observed by Professor Kelly Bergstrand and Professor James M. Jasper, “We construct villains for the powerful emotions they inspire in audiences who fear and hate them” (231). These two-dimensional characters were initially unremarkable, many being forgotten after their defeat by the hands of justice. The role would eventually grow from petty thieves to planet swallowing cosmic entities as the scope of evil swelled in the minds of the readers due to mounting global awareness and escalating events around them. These elements were further enhanced via 1 Texas Tech University, Leah Rae Smith, May 2021 the growing technological advancements in communication and media, permeating the populace more as years went by. As the definition of evil changed, so did those who were identified by it. This is evidenced in the changing characteristics of many supervillains displayed in superhero comics. Characters that at one point were the representation of what should be spurned and hated, supervillains in the past forty years have become more sympathetic, their arguments for their actions causing confliction in their sensibility, and at times they are even performing heroic acts, seeking redemption in the hopes that the superheroes will forgive them of their past actions. This growing sympathy then asks, can these supervillains be forgiven? Can they be redeemed of their villainy? My argument in this thesis is that since the inclusion of the supervillain trope in superhero comics, the villain has gone from a character defined only by their seemingly innate wickedness, to being driven to crime due to trauma, to attempting to become a form of hero themselves. They have been evolving gradually over the span of eight decades. This transition is owing to the growing inclusion of sympathetic origin stories used to manipulate audience perspective, to question the identification of them as villains, and the justification of their actions. This culminates into the modern tale of the supervillain who many, currently in comics, attempt to perform good acts in terms of redemption, as well as challenge the superheroes’ beliefs in whether or not they are deserving of forgiveness. I argue that this is a response to the changing perspective of the audience, from facing a world war, fighting for civil rights, and experiencing domestic terrorism; the audience has changed and so does their concept of what is good and what is 2 Texas Tech University, Leah Rae Smith, May 2021 evil. The transformations of a supervillain reveal the altering sympathies of an audience who are becoming disillusioned by the changing nature of the threat they face: from an external to an internal one. Although in storytelling the protagonist/antagonist or the hero/villain tropes have been a constant, comics did not follow the same path initially. American comics first started to appear on shelves in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and they more often than not were a collection of comic strips from newspapers. These comic strips featured stories that starred such characters as the Yellow Kid and Skippy Skinner, and would last to the mid-1900s. They would then be replaced with comics featuring Western and Sci-Fi stories inspired by pulp magazines. While the original collection of comic strips featured simple tales of the feats of the main character, it is the later comics that present the protagonist/antagonist feature. The hero/villain trope—in pertaining to superhero comics—initially was created on the basis of an “us vs them” mentality, where the audience was encouraged to side with the do-gooder and to condemn their villainous counterpart. This has been true for many scenarios of good vs evil that preceded comics, Throughout history and across genres, authors have used narratological techniques to set apart villains, antagonists, and opponents from other characters in a narrative text. One way that authors and/or narrators do this is to exert a certain amount of control over villains. Villains, while necessary for an interesting story, must be carefully controlled by creators lest they confuse or mislead other characters and/or readers (Weiner et al, XXIII). This assertion of control over these characters limited the depth that they could reach. However, since the initial target audience was children, the scope of their character was best constrained to good and bad. This created the familiar trope of superhero vs 3 Texas Tech University, Leah Rae Smith, May 2021 supervillain that has come to be associated with comic books. This also created the great chasm for the readers over who are on the side of the superhero and the supervillain, “our cultural tendency to see good guys and bad guys, or bad guys and innocent victims, may make us unable to see the common reality in which both sides are in the wrong” (Baumeister and Beck, 59). This is a realization that is later had in superhero comics as readership became older and more aware of the world around them, a world that did not have definitive sides of good and evil, but was filled with questionable good guys and relatable bad ones. While this adjusts later on, the initial belief is in the idea of strictly good and evil without any leeway on either side. It encompasses the notion that good guys are always good and bad guys are always bad, that “people may simply be evil without justification or reason. Interestingly, the comic industry itself engendered this fear” (Bainbridge, 66).