I’ve been thinking about super-villains and their degrees of notoriety and significance lately, because I’m almost always doing that. As a result: this addendum to my greatest work, the Super-Villain Definition entry on this very blog.
Essentially, the only thing that separates a minor super-villain from a super-villain is continued relevance. Signal Man and Boss Zucco and Darkseid are all equivalent in their super-villain status on this front despite being entirely different otherwise (indeed, the only reason Boss Zucco is counted as a super-villain in my estimation is that he will continue to occasionally reappear as long as Dick Grayson is a comics character): they are antagonists to super-heroes.
So: the gradations of super-villain are as follows
ALSO-RANS
These are the not-quite-super-but-more-than-regular guys. Sad sacks, the lot.
-the generic costumed villain: fellas who throw on a hood or a mask to protect their identity but don’t have a special name or any real style.
-the generic mad scientist: they have super-science but fail to make an impression
-style but no substance: a while back I ran across an utterly unremarkable crook who called himself the Crime Broker. Occasionally a name almost pulls someone through, and that is the most tragic of the also-rans.
MINOR SUPER-VILLAINS
-one and done: most minor super-villains are of this ilk: they show up, are killed or captured and never return.
-the recurring foe: we haven’t actually run into a lot of these yet but they are what it says on the tin: a villain who makes occasional appearances as part of an ongoing rogues gallery but ultimately falls out of history – Zatara’s foe the Tigress is one such.
-the reason for being: we’ve seen a few of these, such as the Mask or Fang Gow – villains who are the focus of a hero’s career, reappearing story after story.
SUPER-VILLAINS
-the rogues gallery: over time in something like the Marvel or DC Universes, a certain number of one and done characters – your Signal Mans or Calendar Mans – are brought back, recurring foes like Dr Sivana or Lex Luthor keep on recurring and such ‘reason for being’ villains who don’t end up decisively defeated lose some of their significance. This is your population of super-villains.
To what end did I feel the need to write this up? See tomorrow’s post, in which we start talking about non-minor super-villains more!
