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Jun. 18th, 2008
OKC has some puzzles and IQ type tests now. They're about to launch a new quiz engine that's all pretty and AJAX and shit.
I played this one memory game and got 28 correct - Genius level 4!!
http://www.okcupid.com/puzzles/memory
I played this one memory game and got 28 correct - Genius level 4!!
http://www.okcupid.com/puzzles/memory
Heroes Making Villains
Jun. 18th, 2008 02:58 pmThis topic is starting to intrigue me.
Batman made Joker by dropping him in a vat of goo. Iron Man made a whole bunch of bad guys using his tech. Superman "made" Lex Luthor bald, but mostly his very existence just pisses Lex off enough to inspire him to be bad (same with Reed Richards and Dr. Doom). The Hulk made all his villains by inventing his gamma technology.
But it wasn't always this way, right? There were days when Supes and Bats and other heroes just fought criminals who were already bad. They didn't create their own nemeses. And there are plenty of heroes who didn't necessarily create their own rogue's galleries; though a potential Superman-style "inspiration" argument can be made in many cases by saying that super-villains just appear once superheroes appear.
When was the turning point for this? Is there a clearly defined time period we can point to which shows when comic book heroes started making their own villains - post-WWII maybe? Are there classical mythological or literary references one can cite where heroes make their villains? Arthurian legend leaps immediately to mind (fathering Mordred), as does Norse mythos (Fenrir the wolf being just one example). Is it simply a case of the comic storytelling medium maturing and creating more complex stories, or does this say something else about how we perceive or define heroism (and villainy!) and how that changes over time?
Batman made Joker by dropping him in a vat of goo. Iron Man made a whole bunch of bad guys using his tech. Superman "made" Lex Luthor bald, but mostly his very existence just pisses Lex off enough to inspire him to be bad (same with Reed Richards and Dr. Doom). The Hulk made all his villains by inventing his gamma technology.
But it wasn't always this way, right? There were days when Supes and Bats and other heroes just fought criminals who were already bad. They didn't create their own nemeses. And there are plenty of heroes who didn't necessarily create their own rogue's galleries; though a potential Superman-style "inspiration" argument can be made in many cases by saying that super-villains just appear once superheroes appear.
When was the turning point for this? Is there a clearly defined time period we can point to which shows when comic book heroes started making their own villains - post-WWII maybe? Are there classical mythological or literary references one can cite where heroes make their villains? Arthurian legend leaps immediately to mind (fathering Mordred), as does Norse mythos (Fenrir the wolf being just one example). Is it simply a case of the comic storytelling medium maturing and creating more complex stories, or does this say something else about how we perceive or define heroism (and villainy!) and how that changes over time?