Thrillpowered Thursday: the blog is back

[Grant Goggans]

This week, the nature of villainy, as I ask why the arrest of Deputy Chief Judge Martin Sinfield is so incredibly satisfying.

[TordelBack]

That there is your best piece yet, Mr. Goggans.  I enjoyed it mightily and agree with every word (apart from the ones about Voldemort!): brilliant summation of what made that whole story so great, and what is so masterful about Wagner's Dredd.

[I, Cosh]

Yep, another good entry. While I love the variety of villains and wouldn't want them all to be mundane, it's often the ones who can almost seem reasonable that are the worst/best. Death and the others are great looking OTT comic villains but as far as an actual "arch-enemy" goes, I'd always pick Orlok as the most satisfying as you can't help feel Dredd would be acting the same way were their positions reversed.

[Greg M.]

You're a great writer, Grant, and your piece articulately sums up and encapsulates a very astute take on Sinfield's unique brand of 'banality of evil'-style villainy - but unfortunately all your sound analysis is squarely undermined by the fact you like neither dogs nor Doctor Doom. I'm not sure such a thing can be possible.

It is funny to think of Sinfield as 'that guy' because, of course, Dredd used to be 'that guy' too. My taste is often for more operatic villains  - I always end up cheering on the Torquemadas and Dooms of the comics world because they're so deliciously wicked I actually want to see them succeed. As such, your article made me think about which 2000AD villains have had, for me, the most satisfying downfalls - the ones that have you punching the air, and declaring "Yes!" most emphatically. I keep coming back to Konstantin Romanov getting stabbed in the back in 'Nikolai Dante'. I think that might be the most well-earned fate (even though it wasn't permanent.)

[Colin YNWA]

Very interesting as ever Grant. For me the definition of a good villain depends a lot on the actual story. So Death was a great Dredd villain up to a point (as is Cal for me) as Dredd was about an over the top world, suitably anchored, but still unbound and filled with fantastic imagination. As its become more grounded and the drama more, will subtle do? Death has become pantomime and Cal would be too now. For the modern Dredd the great villains are Edgar and Sinfeld, as you say 'that guy'. PJ Mayor is another piece of Wagner genius as he somehow manages to straddle the two - just give him a rest for a while.

For Nemesis, Torquemada is pantomime, surrounded by goons, but that's just perfect and so he's a great(est?) villain, he's Nemesis'... well nemesis, his perfect opposite in one key aspect, to the strips 'hero' but in others his equal, he is brilliant and has the measure to his enemy. Dante had a host of suitable foes, none more so than his big two, again correct for his story and his struggle. As we saw in his final episode, while Dante felt he was utterly different to Vlad and yet was he? As Vlad so viciously pointed out. Perfect for the hero and the story.

And so it goes

A villain for the hero.

[Dark Jimbo]

For Nemesis, Torquemada is pantomime, surrounded by goons, but that's just perfect and so he's a great(est?) villain, he's Nemesis'... well nemesis, his perfect opposite in one key aspect, to the strips 'hero' but in others his equal, he is brilliant and has the measure to his enemy.

I think Torque works so well - despite a lunacy that screams out of the pages at you it's so utterly bonkers - is that, like all the best bad guys, he doesn't see himself as the villian (it's perhaps no coincedence that my favourite Death moments have been when we're reminded of this same trait in him - he genuinely thinks he's a force for justice and can't understand why Dredd, himself a judge, keeps trying to stop him!) Torque knows very well how evil/unfair/perverse his actions are, but for him every last one is a means to an end, a perfectly acceptable debasment if they'll help him achieve his goals - there's a consistency behind every last thing he does, even as he descends ever deeper into madness. Forget Ghandi, forget the Dahli Lama, forget Nelson Mandela - in all human history, only one man has ever achieved the impossible dream of eradicating warfare, bigotry, intolerance and racism forever. Only one man has had the foresight and sheer force of will to unite the entirety of the human race behind him as one, and that man is Torque. Okay, so he's done that by simply directing the bigotry and warlike urges outward, projected onto other species and worlds, which you or I may not think is any sort of real progress at all - but in his own mind he's mankind's self-appointed saviour and will let absolutely nothing ruin what he has created. Right or wrong, he's doing exactly what Nemesis is doing - fighting for what he believes in.

[Greg M.]

For me, the strength of Torquemada is in his relentless energy as a character. Everything he does, he does with absolute relish. Everything he says, he believes whole-heartedly. He does nothing half-cocked - every wicked aspect of his life is pursued to a level of ridiculous excess. All Torquemada's amps are turned up to 11. As such, the sheer force of his personality becomes frighteningly charismatic. He once prefixed his most famous mantra with the claim "I can't say it often enough!" To me, that's Torquemada in a nutshell - he never gets bored of playing his own greatest hits.

[Frank]

For me, the strength of Torquemada is in his relentless energy as a character. Everything he does, he does with absolute relish. Everything he says, he believes whole-heartedly. He does nothing half-cocked - every wicked aspect of his life is pursued to a level of ridiculous excess. All Torquemada's amps are turned up to 11. As such, the sheer force of his personality becomes frighteningly charismatic. He once prefixed his most famous mantra with the claim "I can't say it often enough!" To me, that's Torquemada in a nutshell - he never gets bored of playing his own greatest hits.

That'd be the jouissance. See also, Mr Quilp from The Old Curiosity Shop, Satan in The Old Testament (but not Milton's Paradise Lost), and The Hooded Claw.

[TordelBack]

Right or wrong, he's doing exactly what Nemesis is doing - fighting for what he believes in.

Except of course that Nemesis, like Great Uncle Baal before him, is just pissing about amusing himself with humans (at least until Thoth [spoiler]gets done in,[/spoiler] after which he's just indulging his venegful urges).  Or to put it another way, Torquemada believes utterly in something and Nemesis simply doesn't care about anything beyond himseld.  A fine inversion of the usual morality of these things.

[strontium_dog_90]

Torquemada's speech at the end of the world - in the story where Nemesis teams with the ABC Warriors - is some of the greatest writing in comics ever. He is simultaneously deeply pathetic and remarkably terrifying - a pretty impressive combination to pull off!

[Grant Goggans]

Sorry, everybody... I was ill earlier in the week and I blew my deadline.  Blog'll be back next Thursday.

[Grant Goggans]

Sorry again about that break, everybody.  In today's entry, the death of Feral.  Wagner just wasn't very nice to this character, was he?

[TordelBack]

The problem I had with the Feral business wasn't his grim and affecting death, it was why it was necessary to so completely demolish his established character.  Introducing the idea that he lied about Johnny, and didn't have the guts to sacrifice himself (and bearing in mind that he was only a kid at the time, who could blame him?), would probably have worked fine with only a slight adjustment to his history (even his reportedly running into Johnny's trapped soul in Darkest Star wouldn't have been completely inconsistent).  Making such a very contemptible character seemed over the top - there's no reason he couldn't have continued down the path Ennis and Hogan described, just with that early failure and consequent lies always in the background of his struggles to be better.  Still, the deception/execution episode is very powerful stuff.

[The Adventurer]

While I have no affinity for Feral (I believe I had read The Final Solution before reading Life and Death of Johnny Alpha, but no Strontium Dogs era stuff to speak of) I sort of thought the way he went out was a bit of a real 'F-You' to the character and those that worked on him.

That being said... its Strontium Dog. Nobody gets a truly happy ending, and its a harsh universe. He went out in a sad, brutal, and darkly humorous way, which is probably the best kind of send off you can hope for in Stronty Dog.


As for Savage: Crims. I thought it was confusing rubbish that went on for far too long.

I can't wait to hear what you have to say about Age of the Wolf next week Grant. I should reread the first book in advance. I remember getting really frustrated with its pacing after a really interesting set up.

[Colin YNWA]

Yeah the complete demolition of Feral seems to be underscored by the fact that he's fatten up before he dies. Feral was a visually very dramatic character (if as Grant says arguably derivative of the pointy claw brigade over in the mainstream, but I'd suggest that he pre-dates the real start of that era?), lean and fast, sharp and Gothic. He was a glorious design by Simon Harrison, a representation of the pasty white teen, fuelled by anger. To therefore have him die as a fat wasted 'old' man can, with an uncharitable reading, can be seen as a rather vicious, contemptuousness and ultimately needless utter trashing of what he was. I of course don't know whether this is the case, I have no idea of John Wagner's motives here, but at the very least it was a careless way to treat someone else's character... which may of course very well be the point!