Me As A Supervillain Without A Supervillain Fortune

1. The supervillain has a selfish, antisocial mission. The supervillain seeks something—typically wealth or power, but often fame or infamy in addition—that will serve his interests and not those of others or the larger culture.
   
   
2. Supervillains are superior to the ordinary authorities. They have cunning, genius, resources, powers or extraordinary abilities that render the ordinary agents of the social order helpless to stop them, or at least put the authorities at a distinct disadvantage.
   
   
3. The supervillain’s dream reaches far beyond the acquisitive scheme of the ordinary crook. The supervillain is an artist whose medium is crime.
   
   
4. The supervillain’s mania is what raises him above the common person and above the common criminal. It is this mania that permits the supervillain to view the epic criminal acts as art or as analogous to great accomplishments in other fields and also to accomplish (or nearly accomplish, as he is almost always stopped by the hero) his great scheme.
   
   
5. The supervillain’s selfishness is absolute, solipsistic. He sees himself as the center of existence.
   
   
6. This self-aggrandizement arises from a sense of victimhood, from a wound that the supervillain never recovers from.
   
   
7. The supervillain’s wound prompts him to monologue, to sit the hero down—whether to dinner or in a death trap—and tell his story.
   

Seven Characteristics Of A Supervillain

Lately my self-image has been very . . . crumpled.


Lately I’ve seen myself as a kind of penniless, irrelevant version of Lex Luthor, the supervillain on the TV show Smallville.

Lately, in fact, I’ve seen myself as Lex as he appeared at the end of the episode where he winds up in a straightjacket, banging his head against the padded wall of a cell in the Belle Reve mental hospital. (Season three, episode 8, “Shattered.”)


At first, my thinking was something like this:

        Although I try pretty darn hard to have as few
        of the seven characteristics of a supervillain as possible,
        just like Lex, the supervillain on Smallville,
        I still manage, damn it, to push away
        everybody who tries to be my friend.


Then I did some soul-searching. To be honest, I told myself, I’d probably have to admit that all seven of those characteristics apply to me (in one way or another). So then my thinking changed a little, to this:

        Although I try pretty darn hard to manifest
        as few of the seven characteristics
        of a supervillain as possible,
        just like Lex, the supervillain on Smallville,
        I still manage, damn it, to push away
        everybody who tries to be my friend.


Then I did more soul-seaching (and a lot of sighing). Now, my thinking is something like this:

        Oh, what the heck. I am what I am.
        Those seven characteristics do
        pretty much describe my deepest secret soul.
        I’m going to push away
        everybody who tries to be my friend. Instead
        of fighting my inner nature, I should re-dedicate myself
        to acquiring a suitable supervillain-type fortune
        (through some suitably clever,
        supervillain-type scheme) and just embrace
        my true, inner self. Then I can get a lair
        where I’ll have a little privacy.
        I can get a beautiful sidekick
        who will roll her eyes
        when I launch into a monologue
        about my latest silly-ass scheme.
        And then I can just have some fun
        with the whole supervillain thing . . .